I had the privilege of attending "A Strategy for Postponing Aging Indefinitely", a talk by Dr. Aubrey de Grey held this evening on the University of Arizona campus. It has already been an extremely exciting week with my team's release of new high resolution test images of Mars taken by the HiRISE camera on board MRO. I only found out about Dr. de Grey's talk yesterday. What a great way to end the week.
Dr. de Grey is quite engaging and funny, with a down-to-earth manner that was very appealing while presenting such radical ideas. To see him in person was a treat since my only exposure to him and his ideas has been through his participation in these forum, his own literature, and the writing of his critics. Dr. de Grey's talk was an introduction to the topic and SENS that was perfectly suited to the audience.
Particularly noteworthy was the number of UA undergraduate and graduate students who attended the talk, many of them apparently part of the Biomedical Gerontology program. Student attendence is generally not common for many similar events on campus
That was a pleasant surprise and for the most part their questions during the following Q&A session were well thought out and often critical but respectful. Only one student resorted to a long political speech that I did not fully understand. It was met with uncomfortable silence until another student asked a question.I am not one for "networking" so I did not introduce myself, but I noticed Dr. de Grey was very friendly and respectful to everyone. This was also evident in his talk, in which he poked gentle fun at his critical "fellow biogerontologists" but admitted that he liked most of them very much, and they him. This is an approach that I hope people in this forum remember, even when in complete disagreement on a topic
This has definitely been an exciting day, with serendipidous nods to most of my passions!
