Maintain us like classic cars - periodic, preventative repairs to "consign ageing to history"
My third and final guest from the recent Longevity Leaders conference in London is a superstar of the longevity space. Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey is – by many a reckoning – a genius.
He likens human ageing to that of planes and automobiles. Our bodies, like the machines we’ve built, will last longer and still work well if we ensure we regularly maintain and repair them.
Aubrey is Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation he created in 2009, a non-profit dedicated to combating the ageing process. He’s based in Mountain View, California – the home of SENS – and Cambridge, UK. The University of Cambridge is where he got his BA in computer science and PhD in biology.
Aubrey maintains we’ve been “culturally brainwashed” into a “collective trance” about ageing, viewing it as immutable and unavoidable, part of the natural or divine order that should not be perturbed. He’s working towards the day when advances in biotech “consign ageing to history”.
He believes his long-standing prediction that the first person to live 1,000 years is already among us will be seen as an understatement in future. We start there.
Notes
- The “straightforward” logic of his 1,000-year human longevity prediction
- How his SENS Research Foundation is funded
- His ideas get a mixed mainstream reception
- Styles self as “the maverick, out there taking the bullets”
- Economic and health benefits of longevity therapeutics for all, not just the rich
- Ageism in what he calls a “post-ageing world”?
- Science of ageing as he knows it
- Humans will undergo periodic, preventative maintenance to “consign ageing to history”
- Legacy? None because “I’m not planning to die”
Links
- Aubrey’s SENS Research Foundation in California
- Aubrey’s 2007 book Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs that Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
- Rejuventation Research journal – Aubrey is Editor-in-Chief
- Aubrey on Twitter
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