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WIRED article on Aubrey de Grey


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#1 Mark Hamalainen

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Posted 26 June 2008 - 08:49 PM


Check it out:

http://www.wired.com...8/06/methuselah

Digg it and post your comments! Let's make sure the usual knee-jerk naysayers do not own the comments thread.

#2 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 26 June 2008 - 09:50 PM

I 'dugg' it (it is free and easy to do--if you've never done it before, and it just takes a moment).

I posted a comment, and encourage others to do so as well :)

Thanks Mark!

#3 VictorBjoerk

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Posted 26 June 2008 - 11:22 PM

I've posted a comment and "dugged" it

#4 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 01:00 AM

thank you shonghow!

You can also give 'points' on people's comments at Wired, I've given points to some ImmInst members, if any body sees mine under 'shannonvyff' and you like it, please give it a point--I think the comments with higher points might get put into a special section-not sure though...

#5 forever freedom

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 01:12 AM

Great article. Good to know that Aubrey is getting many millions per year (at least its what he says). I can only start imagining the amount of funding if SENS starts showing some considerable results in mice.

Edited by sam988, 27 June 2008 - 01:13 AM.


#6 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 01:33 AM

They have been doing very well! You can always check out their progress on their website: http://www.methusela...dsdetaildisplay

The comments on the article have been very entertaining, I don't usually read comments on articles--but this has been interesting to see current views, they say each 1 person who writes, represents the views 10 or so that don't (no idea if that is current, it is something I read a while back).

#7 niner

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 03:35 AM

Cool. Did you notice the photo credit on the picture of Aubrey? Bruce Klein!

#8 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 04:38 AM

Sweet!

Hey-- it has 200 now (at the time I made this post :) ) and if you dig a comment it has higher billing, all the top five comments should also be 'dug' while you are there so they'll stay up :p.

#9 Johan

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 06:00 AM

Nice article. It's good to know that there has been that much progress in the last few years.

#10 Luna

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 03:44 PM

I think a big job well done is in order.
Seeing all the effort put in the conferences and research.
Motivating and inspiring the people, spreading out the word and having people join to the cause.

Well done Aubrey!

And he is not alone, the whole Methuselah foundation is doing a great job and advancement.

And anyone else who is in advancing/contributing in any way for life extension and immortality, keep it up :)

Congratulations for the latest news:
http://www.wired.com...8/06/methuselah

#11 brokenportal

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 04:00 PM

Good point. Its really amazing that we've made it this far in our life times. The balls rolling, lets keep it moving. No sleep till Inlex, (indefinite life extension)

#12 Ethan

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 05:36 PM

http://www.wired.com...h?currentPage=1

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<H1 id=articlehed>The Fight to End Aging Gains Legitimacy, Funding</H1>
Gandhi once said, describing his critics, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

After declaring, essentially out of nowhere, that he had a program to end the disease of aging, renegade biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey knows how the first three steps of Gandhi's progression feel. Now he's focused on the fourth.

"I've been at Gandhi stage three for maybe a couple of years," de Grey said. "If you're trying to make waves, certainly in science, there's a lot of people who are going to have insufficient vision to bother to understand what you're trying to say."

This weekend, his organization, The Methuselah Foundation, is sponsoring its first U.S. conference on the emerging interdisciplinary field that de Grey has helped kick start. (Its first day, Friday, will be free and open to the public.) The conference, Aging: The Disease - The Cure - The Implications, held at UCLA, is an indication of how far de Grey has come in mainstreaming his ideas.

Less than a decade ago, de Grey was a relatively unknown computer scientist doing his own research into aging. As recently as three years ago a cadre of scientists wrote in the Nature-sponsored journal EMBO Reports, that his research program, known as Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, was "so far from plausible that it commands no respect at all within the informed scientific community." Also in 2005, MIT-sponsored magazine Technology Review went so far as to offer a $20,000 prize to anyone who could prove that de Grey's program was "so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate." (No one won.)

Now, though, some scientists are beginning to view his approach -- looking at aging as a disease and bringing in more disciplines into gerontology -- as worthwhile, even if they still look askance at his claims of permanent reversible aging within a lifespan. The Methuselah Foundation now has an annual research funding budget of several million dollars, de Grey says, and it's beginning to show lab results that he thinks will turn scientists' heads.

What's more, other researchers have also found some success pursuing similarly structured research programs. For example, late last year, the Buck Institute for Age Research received $25 million from the National Institutes of Health to establish a home for the "new scientific discipline of geroscience." The new field, and its research institute, are dedicated to proactively fighting aging with researchers from a dizzying array of fields.

"There are vast areas of what we're calling geroscience, which is the interface between aging and disease," said Gordon Lithgow, a Buck researcher who is managing interdisciplinary geroscience research for the institute.

And de Grey seems to have earned Lithgow's respect not necessarily by the power of his ideas, but rather his powers of persuasion in getting money for researchers to put his ideas into practice.

"We're all out here doing the best damn experiments we can think of … So the response to Aubrey was, go off and get a grant to do [experiments]," Lithgow said. "And to be fair, that's what he's done. He's gone out and raised money in an unconventional way and funded his research."

In research that will first be presented on Friday at the conference, Methuselah-funded scientists will demonstrate a proof-of-concept experiment for using bacterial enzymes to fight atherosclerosis, or the hardening of the arteries. That's an idea that de Grey has been pushing for years.

"Back in 2002, I published an inconspicuous review paper that suggested we might be able to use this approach," he said.

But de Grey isn't quite an establishment figure yet. Instead, he seems to have made the move from outsider crackpot to, well, insider crackpot. Lithgow maintains that de Grey still makes predictions far beyond what the messy lab work of biology can support.

"Aubrey extrapolates from current hard science into, 'If we can do something about this process and that and seven or eight other ands, then there's this great opportunity for great human life extension,'" Lithgow said. "And it's at that point that a lot of scientists are dropping off."

For now, de Grey and his foundation keep trucking along trying to pick off each of those processes one by one.

"In perhaps seven or eight years, we'll be able to take mice already in middle age and treble their lifespan just by giving them a whole bunch of therapies that rejuvenate them," de Grey said. "Gerontologists all over, even my most strident critics, will say yes, Aubrey de Grey is right."

Even as he imagines completing Gandhi's fourth step, de Grey always keeps his eye on the ultimate prize -- the day when the aging-as-disease meme reaches the tipping point necessary to funnel really big money into the field.

"The following day, Oprah Winfrey will be saying, aging is a disease and let's fix it right now," de Grey said.

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#13 Cyberbrain

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 05:38 PM

Indeed, well done Aubrey!

Keep up the good work!

#14 forever freedom

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 05:45 PM

http://www.imminst.o...mp;#entry247613

#15 maestro949

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 05:47 PM

setting to invisible as it's a dupe.

(edited by Matthias: Let's merge the 2 threads 22798 and 22809 to avoid the internal Posted Image-icon.)

Edited by Matthias, 29 June 2008 - 05:45 PM.


#16 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 27 June 2008 - 06:29 PM

up to 725 digs now, I've seen this info and the request to dig it, shared at Extropy, WTA, Austin Intelligentsia, Methuselah, Trans-Spirit, Kurzweil A.I., Longevity Meme, Cryo-Net, Emergence IEET News, along with here of course--just about everywhere, very impressive that so many organizations support Aubrey's work.




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