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[reason]

In the interview noted here, Aubrey de Grey of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation makes a bold prediction of 12-15 years as to when we might see the advent of the first therapies capable of extending the healthy human life span by a few decades, allowing older people to live long enough to benefit from following improvements to further extend their healthy life spans. It is worth bearing in mind that the creation of novel therapies doesn't mean widespread use or even easy availability of those therapies. Further, it is unlikely that we'll know the effects on human life span of any given combination of novel rejuvenation therapies until at least ten to twenty years have passed, particularly if the therapies are not widely used.

As they say, it is hard to make predictions, particularly about the future. Is 12-15 years an unreasonable prediction? If we think that senolytics are going to be effective rejuvenation therapies in humans, and we believe that one or two of the other more advanced lines of work will be equally effective, then maybe this will pan out, subject to the caveats above. Those other lines of work might include partial epigenetic reprogramming, mitochondrial transplantation, telomerase gene therapies, that sort of thing. But expect surprises and delay! Biotech as a field tends to excel in the production of those two line items. We'll have to look back 30-40 years from now to see where the first rejuvenation therapies worthy of the name actually came into being.

One might think that there would be a rush to use any rejuvenation therapy with compelling data in mice and good safety data in humans, but that hasn't happened for the senolytic therapy of dasatinib and quercetin. Some unknown number of people are in fact using this therapy, given that numerous anti-aging clinical practices now offer it to their patients, but beyond that only a few slow-moving and small clinical trials have taken place. One might also consider the use of rapamycin as a point of comparison, where it is possible to find a few hundred self-experimenters to report on by asking for respondents, but there is no good human data on effects on life span, and nor is there likely to be in the near future. At the present pace of adoption another few decades could pass and we'll still not have access to good data that will tell us anything about effects of early therapies on late life mortality and life span.

Ambrosia Path Interview with Aubrey de Grey

Can you explain the concept of "longevity escape velocity" and its significance in the pursuit of extending human lifespan? When do you think we will reach longevity escape velocity?

LEV is defined as the minimum rate at which medicines need to be improved in order that people receiving the latest medicines can avoid age-related chronic conditions indefinitely. The reason why that rate is finite is that these medicines will be ones that reduce biological age, rather than just slowing the rate at which biological age rises - in other words, each incremental advance will buy time to develop the next one. LEV becomes initially achievable when we have medicines that postpone aging by around 20 years, and I currently think we have a 50% chance of reaching that point within about 12-15 years from now.

Do you see anything being commercially available for longevity/treating aging in the next 5-10 years?

Yes and no. Because aging is not one process but a bunch of only loosely communicating processes, we will address some parts of it sooner than others. So at this point, treatments for some of the easier parts are already in clinical trials and will very probably hit the streets in only a couple of years. But it will probably take a decade longer for enough of the parts of aging to be addressed that we see bona fide postponement of all chronic conditions of old age, which is what most people mean by treatments for aging.

Are there any developments (research, startups etc) that have excited you recently? Any potential up and coming therapies that you find interesting/think more people should know about?

Of course! The field is exploding right now. I'll just pick one: THIO, which is a new anti-cancer drug that kills cells which are making large amounts of telomerase, which means 90% of all human cancers and basically no non-cancer cells. It's in a phase 2 clinical trial being run by MAIA Biotechnology.

View the full article at FightAging

[adamh]

If you look at the many therapies which have come out that boost health, reduce senescence, and preserve cognitive ability, I would say we have reached the early stages of LEV. We have new treatments for cancer and heart disease, there are peptides that reverse muscle wasting and other signs of aging. New things are in the pipeline and coming out every day. My own goal is to live to the age of 140. If I get there and am in good health, sky is the limit.

 

So what are we going to do about the resulting population explosion? They have managed to reduce population somewhat with pandemics, with vaccines, and with wars. But if extended life or super extended life is available, population could double in 10 or 20 years and break earths capacity to feed us and absorb pollution. Should we restrict the 'good stuff' to certain people? The american way is to make it available to everyone... if they can afford it. If it costs $100k a year for indefinite life, close to 98% will be kept out by financial costs or could only afford a treatment or two. The wealthy and super wealthy will be the ones to enjoy the benefits. If it costs $1M per year, then even the wealthy will be pinched

 

I'm sure big pharma would be overjoyed to offer such treatments at super high prices. That is their business plan after all. People would save not just for retirement but for some treatments to extend it. Instead of 80 year old brain dead fossils running the country, they might be 100+ and no intention of stepping down.

[Galaxyshock]

Should we restrict the 'good stuff' to certain people? The american way is to make it available to everyone... if they can afford it. If it costs $100k a year for indefinite life, close to 98% will be kept out by financial costs or could only afford a treatment or two. The wealthy and super wealthy will be the ones to enjoy the benefits. If it costs $1M per year, then even the wealthy will be pinched

 

I agree I see a similar scenario to end of world disaster movies where only selected few are given the opportunity to enter the "Noah's ark" (whatever it is that saves them). Perhaps you wouldn't have to be super wealthy but be accomplished scientist or something and would be granted the life-extension therapies. I guess the people working on such therapies would be the first ones to have access to them and kept working on to indefinite life-extension. Maybe we at LongeCity are also at the first line! Oh well, maybe I'm too much into sci-fi, would love to be proven wrong here as I see making them available to everyone the best basis, perhaps to the extend of being a human right. I mean I can see rebellion emerging if only the rich are given the opportunity to live forever.

[adamh]

I agree I see a similar scenario to end of world disaster movies where only selected few are given the opportunity to enter the "Noah's ark" (whatever it is that saves them). Perhaps you wouldn't have to be super wealthy but be accomplished scientist or something and would be granted the life-extension therapies. I guess the people working on such therapies would be the first ones to have access to them and kept working on to indefinite life-extension. Maybe we at LongeCity are also at the first line! Oh well, maybe I'm too much into sci-fi, would love to be proven wrong here as I see making them available to everyone the best basis, perhaps to the extend of being a human right. I mean I can see rebellion emerging if only the rich are given the opportunity to live forever.

 

I'm sure politicians would see to it that they are given treatments free, the rest of us, well you better make a lot of loot. That assumes it will be very expensive and given as a package. Like maybe you go in for a couple days. More likely it will be a combination of therapies rather than a one dose does it all. Many things will be cheap, we are all supposedly watching our diet and taking good supplements. I suspect it will be a combination of things that reverses age.

 

But, they are able to reverse aging on a cell and send it back to the stem cell stage. Its apparently very tricky and the cells could become cancerous if reversed too much. Could something like that be the magic bullet that stops aging?

 

Lets say it happens and anyone can get the treatment and its not that expensive. Then we are faced with a population explosion. The number of people could double every 20 years. How do we deal with that?

 

Since nothing so far has been cheap its more likely big pharma will calculate how high to price it based on what will bring in the most cash. If they price it at $1M per year, their client base is going to be very small. If only a few hundred or a thousand take the expensive treatment at that price, perhaps lowering it to $100k would bring in more? If 10 million take it per year they would gain 1 trillion dollars per year. That is almost enough to satisfy the greediest person 

 

As for the general public rebelling, they have put up with being used and abused their whole life, they see the rich getting what they want and haven't rebelled yet. What can people do, say 'I demand this'? After those in charge are done laughing, the reply will be "no"

[Mind]

At the bottom of the first post of this old thread you will find a peer-reviewed demographic analysis of radically extended lifespans by Leonid Gavrilov. 

 

Population growth is primarily driven by the birth rate NOT the death rate. You can see this for yourself through taking a thought experiment to the limit. What if rejuvenation treatments made is so no one died - while at the same time no one had kids. The population would slowly decline (because of accidents, murder, suicide) - not explode.

[adamh]

At the bottom of the first post of this old thread you will find a peer-reviewed demographic analysis of radically extended lifespans by Leonid Gavrilov. 

 

Population growth is primarily driven by the birth rate NOT the death rate. You can see this for yourself through taking a thought experiment to the limit. What if rejuvenation treatments made is so no one died - while at the same time no one had kids. The population would slowly decline (because of accidents, murder, suicide) - not explode.

 

Are you saying if no one died the population would not explode? Of course it would, you know it. What has not having kids to do with the situation? Its a special case that is not possible at the present time and unlikely to ever happen. 

 

People are not going to stop having kids, you can't force that let alone convince everyone not to do it. So what happens in a more realistic scenario in which people live to, lets say, 120 and birth rates continue? Social security goes bankrupt along with most pensions. Population explodes, it may double every 20 years meaning the 8 billion however many now might be 32 billion in 40 years. 

 

As we can see, if everyone had access to prolonged life, world population would grow until food scarcity, war and disease killed off enough to bring balance. Pollution would massively increase, food and drinking water become scarce or unavailable, there would not be enough housing or room for everyone. Barring some sort of drastic population control we would be in a dystopian state

 

Making extended life expensive is the only way we have at present to stop this from happening. Or else bar research and that isn't going to happen. People are not going to voluntarily have no kids, they want kids to support them in old age and to have grandkids. Make it cost $100k a year and people will have a reason to save and invest, not just for retirement but to have extra years. 

 

By limiting extended life, we give ourselves enough time to perhaps colonize the moon, ramp up food production and clean up the environment. A huge population load in the next 20 to 40 years could sink us and drastically lower the standard of living for everyone

[Galaxyshock]

I think that age reversing treatments would postpone the retirement age so the pensions wouldn't be an issue. This would also give the general public a piece of the longevity pie. I do agree about the population growth possibly becoming a problem, people aren't suddenly going to stop breeding. But I see the changes happening gradually and all we can do is try to adapt.

 

As for the general public rebelling, they have put up with being used and abused their whole life, they see the rich getting what they want and haven't rebelled yet. What can people do, say 'I demand this'? After those in charge are done laughing, the reply will be "no"

 

When it's essentially your and your close ones lives at stake, the threshold to do something more radical lowers. But probably things wouldn't escalate to "longevity wars" (would be a cool subject for a movie though). So the key here would be a peaceful transition to extended lives. I think that's what LongeCity advocates.

 

I kinda have a feeling these things have been discussed before in these forums, if someone could link to few threads would be nice. I'll also need to have a closer look to the thread Mind mentioned, maybe I've understood a thing or two wrong.

[adamh]

They say that birth rates are dropping in developed countries like that means we need more people. We don't. When you add in the very high rates from third world countries, world population is still rising. There was a time when the thing people were afraid of was not climate change or putin, it was the population bomb that was going to go off and ruin the planet. The more people exist, the greater is the demand for food and clean water plus shelter, clean air, medical care, etc. Already, people are going hungry and dying from starvation. Its mostly in backward countries so we send a care package and forget about it.

 

There are those who suspect the bio-engineered covid virus was meant to "solve" the problem. It didn't do the job and even if you add in the many who were killed by the "vaccine", you still have a rising population. What were the 30 some odd usa bio labs in ukraine doing? Oh you didn't hear about that? The major media decides what you hear about.

 

So, we come back to the conundrum of how do we simultaneously release extended life to the masses while avoiding a major population boom? If each woman needs to have 2.1 children to replace those who died, but far far fewer are dying, then the rate must be lower. And if we are to reduce from some 8B people to a more manageable 1 or 2B then the rate must drop to 1.0 or perhaps below that. Since we know people will keep right on cranking out brats, something has to give.

 

Big pharma who jacked up the price of epipens a few years ago from about $37 to some $700 is not going to give this away cheap or for free. That is one thing we can bank on and they have much of the govt in their pockets. The calculus will not be how many people can we help and still make a huge profit, no, it will be how can we extort the hugest possible amount no matter what harm is caused. Therefore, I predict the cost will be high and you better start saving and investing.

[Mind]

They say that birth rates are dropping in developed countries like that means we need more people. We don't. When you add in the very high rates from third world countries, world population is still rising. There was a time when the thing people were afraid of was not climate change or putin, it was the population bomb that was going to go off and ruin the planet. The more people exist, the greater is the demand for food and clean water plus shelter, clean air, medical care, etc. Already, people are going hungry and dying from starvation. Its mostly in backward countries so we send a care package and forget about it.

 

There are those who suspect the bio-engineered covid virus was meant to "solve" the problem. It didn't do the job and even if you add in the many who were killed by the "vaccine", you still have a rising population. What were the 30 some odd usa bio labs in ukraine doing? Oh you didn't hear about that? The major media decides what you hear about.

 

So, we come back to the conundrum of how do we simultaneously release extended life to the masses while avoiding a major population boom? If each woman needs to have 2.1 children to replace those who died, but far far fewer are dying, then the rate must be lower. And if we are to reduce from some 8B people to a more manageable 1 or 2B then the rate must drop to 1.0 or perhaps below that. Since we know people will keep right on cranking out brats, something has to give.

 

Big pharma who jacked up the price of epipens a few years ago from about $37 to some $700 is not going to give this away cheap or for free. That is one thing we can bank on and they have much of the govt in their pockets. The calculus will not be how many people can we help and still make a huge profit, no, it will be how can we extort the hugest possible amount no matter what harm is caused. Therefore, I predict the cost will be high and you better start saving and investing.

 

FYI, even in many less developed countries the birth rate is dropping. Read the Gavrilov peer-reviewed paper, he goes through several scenarios. Even if people had one or two kids per couple, the population would likely remain stable, even with robust rejuvenation therapies. Its math.

[adamh]

"Its math"

 

Yeah funny math that denies the world population is growing and claims eliminating death will not cause a huge rise in population. It reminds me of the politicians who say raising taxes will not take money out of people's pockets and who claim inflation is low when all they did was exclude everything that went up like gas, food, rent, and so on and just count things that only went up a little. They called it "math" too, of course it was all bs but if you point out the many flaws they say you are anti-science or something. Like they do with the "vaccine deniers" lol

 

Actual math says that if the death rate is below the birth rate, you have an increase in population