[MasTaBlau]

Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 7th 2012

And here is Aubrey de Grey in the news again, getting good press in
Australia on the occasion of the 2012 Humanity+ conference in
Melbourne held this past weekend:

"When British gerontologist Aubrey de Grey talks about radical life
extension for humans - decades, even centuries more of existence - he
is not imagining us slogging by with brain plaque, loose dentures and
walking frames. Rather, we would be in rude health, with all the
hallmarks of age in abeyance, even retreat. No wrinkles, fraying
organs, leaky bladders or aching joints. And not much need for aged
care or pensions. ... In a world where life expectancy has already
dramatically increased over the past century or two, we now face the
likelihood of being able to custom-order fresh organs and body parts
on 3D-printers, and to treating the basic causes of ageing with the
likes of stem-cell therapy and nanotechnology.

"De Grey and [Natasha] Vita-More, in Melbourne for this weekend's
Humanity+ conference, are in the vanguard of futurists who believe
that looking great or designing our bodies to suit (blue skin and
magenta eyes anyone?) will be fringe benefits. That is because, in a
fast-approaching era of living longer, healthier lives, it is expected
we will have time to enjoy the wisdom and opportunities of getting
older - we won't be so focused on all the medical appointments,
decrepitude and fragility associated with old age. ... de Grey, who
once said some of today's infants might live to 1000 years old, and
who not so long ago was viewed sceptically by other scientists for his
insistence that ageing is a preventable, treatable medical condition,
now sees much broader acceptance of his ideas among scientists.

'"'Attitudes have changed enormously,' he says. 'The feasibility of
what I have been proposing is now generally accepted. It took a long
time, because essentially ... people who were expert in regenerative
medicine didn't know about ageing; and people expert in ageing didn't
know about regenerative medicine.'

"A bigger battle has been with the attitudes of the general
population, who view ageing as natural and inevitable and who, asked
if they would like to have much longer lifespans, deliver predictable
objections, often saying they would get bored (so much for the human
imagination). De Grey says these responses are because people don't
think of ageing in the same category as other diseases: if they
understood they could live much longer without medical problems or
signs of ageing, they would be enthusiastic. 'They just don't think of
[ageing] as a plausible target for medicine.'"