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Ask Aubrey de Grey About Longevity Research
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jul 09, 2008 01:50 PM
from the take-your-time-phrase-well dept.
from the take-your-time-phrase-well dept.
There may be such a thing as a conventional scientist -- but Aubrey de Grey is not one. Instead, biogerontologist de Grey has spent much of the last 20 years investigating the science of aging by considering the aging process as a multifaceted disease whose manifestations can be mitigated, rather than an inevitability to merely accept. That might not be unusual in itself, but de Grey believes that by addressing the causes and symptoms of aging, human life can be extended to at least 1000 years — a stance has earned him accolades and contempt in various degrees. (He might not especially mind being called names like "rogue" and "maverick," though.) De Grey is also chairman and chief science officer of The Methuselah Foundation, whose M-Prize for extending the lifespan of mice has been mentioned on Slashdot before. Ask de Grey about his research below; he'll answer the top-rated questions, and we'll publish them in this space. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply — so ask all the questions you'd like, but please confine yourself to one per post.
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Science: Humans Could Live For 1000 Years 156 comments
Maajid wrote to mention an article on the Chronicle of Higher Education site about a biogerontologist who thinks he can kill death. From the article: "The 42-year-old English biogerontologist has made his name by claiming that some people alive right now could live for 1,000 years or longer. Maybe much longer. Growing old is not, in his view, an inevitable consequence of the human condition; rather, it is the result of accumulated damage at the cellular and molecular levels that medical advances will soon be able to prevent -- or even reverse -- allowing people to go on living pretty much indefinitely. We'll still have to worry about angry bears and falling pianos, but aging, the biggest killer of all, will cease to be a threat. Death, as we know it, will die."
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Science: Paypal Co-Founder Backs Anti-Aging Research Prize 260 comments
Baldrson writes, "Anti-aging researchers, via The Methuselah Mouse Prize or M-Prize, are receiving an additional $3 million incentive to stop and reverse aging. Researchers win M-Prize money in increments by breaking longevity records for mice or reversing their aging. The philanthropic donation comes from Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal. Mr. Thiel has pledged to match each dollar donated to the M-Prize with his own 50 cent contributions up to $3 million." The M-Prize was created by Aubrey de Grey, a controversial biomedical gerontologist in Cambridge, England.
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Telomerase and aging (Score:5, Interesting)
From the studies I've looked at, and the differing oppinions of the popular media, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions on the effects (or lack thereof) of telomerase on aging. Could you give a brief discussion of that (and possibly other factors/nonfactors and relative importance)?
Straigh to the Point (Score:5, Insightful)
What tangible, confirmed success have you had in extending the lifespan of humans, if any?
Re:Straigh to the Point (Score:5, Funny)
On the individual scale, I have had 100% success, with 0 failures, at extending my own life each and every day.
Parent
Re:Straigh to the Point (Score:5, Funny)
But I can prove that your methods break down at extremely high energies or densities.
Parent
Practical repurcussions (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No one says we have to keep making more people if the ones we have stop breaking. Infact, I think it would make the crisis better. THink about it, it would make every scientific field leap forward if people could continue studying or practicing for a thousand years. For example: if albert einstein were still alive today, imagine what else we may know about physics? Maybe the theory of relativity was just the tip of the iceberg.
Re:Practical repurcussions (Score:4, Insightful)
No one says we have to keep making more people if the ones we have stop breaking.
This won't stop the menopause from happening, and the urge to reproduce is one of the most basic animal urges that exists.
Parent
Re:Practical repurcussions (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?
Have you considered the fact that humans who have longer lifespans tend to have lower birthrates? I'm not suggesting causation, of course, but I am pointing out the fact that birthrates decrease as poverty and disease are ameliorated.
Parent
Re:Practical repurcussions (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's say that you or some other scientist in the field figures out a way to actually get humans to live to 1000 years. Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?
Even worst than that is the wide wealth disparity that it would create. Imagine a Citizen Kane or Bill Gates type who never has to stop amassing wealth. Life+70yrs for copyrights would also take on a new meaning. Imagine a 22 year old fresh out of school trying to compete for a job with a bored multizillionare with 25 PhDs who just wants a job (something to do) and doesn't need to get paid.
Parent
Re:Practical repurcussions (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not really that hard to imagine, given some knowledge of the assumptions used. For example, if we assume that people follow patterns typical to early-21st century America (study until 22, then work until 65, then retire until death), then as the period of retirement lengthens, we will see more and more capital and less and less labor. The result is economically obvious: returns to labor (i.e. wages) will increase and returns to capital (i.e. stock market gains, dividends, etc.) will decrease. What happens to inflation depends (as always) on the money supply, which is a separate issue.
You can be certain that it won't be possible to drop $1,000 in "the bank", watch it grow at (say) 1% after inflation for 1,000 years, and end up with $20 million in then-current dollars. Interest rates on demand deposits usually don't exceed inflation; interest rates on CDs do, but have a fixed lifetime. Would you buy a 1,000-year CD? What are the odds the bank will even be around after 1,000 years? Or that you will be (given accidents and other unforeseeable events)?
Regardless, what seems much more likely is that if people really can live 1,000 years, people will not follow our current pattern of study-work-retire-die. Rather, it will become study-work-retire-study-work-retire-etc. You might become sick of your job after 75 years, so quit for a while, learn a new trade, and start that. You've got plenty of time, after all.
A question I'd also like to see raised is what are the social implications? What would happen to monogamy, for example? Heinlein discusses this a bit in Methuselah's Children and at more length in Time Enough For Love.
Parent
Re:Practical repurcussions (Score:4, Informative)
As DarkSarin points out, this is exactly backwards. Cf the effects of the Black Death on Europe - vastly increased power flowing to serfs (leading to the end of serfdom itself).
Parent
Re:Practical repurcussions (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, he has. Extensively. Please browse any of his websites. There are many scientific discussions addressing this very topic.
My personal counter to your rather far-reaching question is "what's your cutoff?" We extend life each and every day with new medical advances. Indeed, our lifespans have already been doubled in the last couple of hundred years. Is 105 acceptable to you? Too old? Should I not get my yearly flu vaccine because that may extend my life?
Civilization adapts. I want the choice. Do some research on the debate of longevity. After you do, please come back and tell me how old I should be allowed to live to and then we can have a different discussion.
Parent
Re:Practical repurcussions (Score:4, Funny)
what's your cutoff?
"128 years ought to more years than anyone would ever need to live."
-Loether 2008
Parent
Re:Practical repurcussions (Score:5, Insightful)
Do people really still believe in the Population Bomb? Birth rate has been declining steadily for at least the last 40 years. If the trend continues, within 100 years, worldwide population growth will be negative.
Note that in Western Europe and the United States (and Canada, which really should just give up and become six more States), population growth rate is already negative. If not for immmigration, the USA would have had a smaller population last Census than the one before, for the first time ever.
Parent
Re:Practical repurcussions (Score:4, Funny)
Nah. But if you want to invade North Dakota and Montana, feel free.
Parent
Canada will never become a state... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the Republicans will never allow it.
They know that even _Alberta_ would send 2 democrats to the senate.
Parent
If we stop aging... (Score:5, Interesting)
Has any research been done on how extreme longevity affects a person psychologically?
Re:If we stop aging... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
"My attitude..." (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Dorian? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dorian? (Score:4, Funny)
More to the point : how long do you think this joke can last? Can this joke be made to last for as much as 1000 years? Have there been any recent advances in extending the lifespan of a joke?
Parent
What Have we Learned so far? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people understand that parts of biological life break-down over time for various reasons, mostly environmental. What have we learned so far about humans, for example, and why cell death occurs?(Setting aside environmental causes like cancer, virii, toxins, etc.) If you had 60 secs to get a college student excited about wanting to study and research life extension, what would you say besides the obvious 'live-forever' meme?
Economics of Anti-Aging (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people are very afraid of dying, and would spend almost any amount of money to live longer. Anyone promising to help them do so can extract nearly limitless quantities of money from people. Given that, why should we believe you aren't a complete charlatan?
Re:Economics of Anti-Aging (Score:5, Insightful)
Because he has the same overpowering incentive to do the work that investors would have to invest in it?
Because he's dedicated his life to longevity research and made many breakthroughs in the field?
Why in the world would you propose someone is a charlatan when they in fact have dedicated massive (and to some degree, successful) effort to the cause you're proposing they're being fraudulent about?
Parent
Re:Economics of Anti-Aging (Score:5, Insightful)
He never achieved his PhD in any conventional sense. He studied computer science as an undergrad at Cambridge. His bio, the way he touts himself, makes it appear he earned a PhD in biology from Cambridge, which he did not. He is not associated with Cambridge in any way, yet he weasel words things to make it easy for people to misinterpret his association with them. There are good reasons to believe he is a charlatan.
Parent
Re:Economics of Anti-Aging (Score:5, Interesting)
Per his Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] he was in fact awarded a PhD from Cambridge. He did apparently get it without studying biology at Cambridge, which is pretty weird. Of course, that's also Wikipedia, so take it with an appropriately sized grain of salt.
It does look as if his biology credentials are weak (if one can even glean that from a Wikipedia entry), but it also looks as if he sincerely believes in the work.
On the other hand, I think someone taking a public stand and saying "treat this is a solvable problem" is doing a great service. It's sheer idiocy and superstition that we treat aging as if it's untreatable.
Parent
Jason Pontin on de Grey (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying he is a charlatan. It's just that I'd like to see some proof that he isn't. For instance, why does he do so much public speaking on the subject? What research does he actually do himself? How is his research funded?
What do his colleagues in the field think of him? Here is a great quote from Jason Pontin:
But what struck me is that De Grey is a troll. For all de Grey's vaulting ambitions, what Sherwin Nuland saw from the outside was pathetically circumscribed. In his waking life, de Grey is the ÂcomÂputer support to a research team; he dresses like a shabby graduate student and affects Rip Van Winkle's beard; he has no children; he has few interests outside the science of biogeronÂtology; he drinks too much beer.
Parent
Re:Economics of Anti-Aging (Score:4, Insightful)
First, I didn't say treat it as if it's a disease, I said treat it as if it's treatable.
Second, 'superstition' makes no sense in your play on words.
Finally, why in the world is it idiocy that we treat aging as if it can be treated? We already know some aspects of aging can be treated. It's just a complex chemical process (as are essentially all biological processes). To ignore the possibility of treating a process that will eventually kill each and every one of us if we don't get killed by something else first sure sounds like the height of idiocy to me.
What's worse, though, is the derision heaped upon people promoting the idea of fighting aging. That's why I said that Aubrey's public stand is important, even if he contributes nothing to the science.
Most were sure that heavier than air machines couldn't fly, no one could travel faster than sound, and travel through space was impossible less than a decade before each of those things happened.
Parent
After Death? (Score:3, Interesting)
Social/Societal Implactions of extreme longevity (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you or your organization research the societal implications of extreme long life? How will our cultures, society, and laws, and families/family structures have to change to accommodate long life? Are we ready for it?
1000 years? (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that the most promising research to-date on life-extension (resveratrol and caloric restriction) can produce about a 40% increase in maximum lifespan at best, how do you estimate that we can achieve a lifespan of 1,000 years (about a 10-fold increase in current maximum lifespans)?
Re:1000 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the statistical rate of death from accidents involving major trauma yields about one event every 1000 years.
He's assuming we can solve the aging & disease problems, but not being splattered by a semi.
Parent
What about the insurmountable problems? (Score:5, Interesting)
Given such limitations, do you still consider near-immortality as a realistic possibility, or will we merely see a continuation of the current trend of higher functionality up the extreme natural limit to our lifespans (110 to 120 years), at which point people simply die of nothing?
Human Fertility (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, would a child not encounter puberty until age 130?
Surely you've been asked the overpopulation question before, what is your response?
How to Deal With the Memories? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's say we can live for 400, 600, 1000 years. How will we cope with all those centuries of memories? Even people nearing a century often (usually?) can't cope with that much info about themselves. Their personalities are often severly constrained, or at least exclude quite a bit of who they were 3/4 of a century ago. Is perhaps some of that limitation not merely "hardware", which your research targets, but also our "software", the way we integrate experiences into our personality and worldview?
Across 1000 years, a lot of those experiences are going to conflict, made as they are out of the human condition. How do we keep our minds together as well as your medicine proposes to maintain our bodies?
Myself, I drink to forget. Maintaining a window of clarity here towards the end, at the expense of a murky past I can't recall, is my own contribution to your grand project. Here's mud in yer eye!
Think of the mice! (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with extending aging, as you can see with these rodents, is eventually they all get cancer. This is because their life in the hands of a caring human being can be MUCH longer, relatively, than if they were out scurrying in a forest somewhere. Maybe you can extend general human life, but you are going to start seeing a lot more cancer and a lot more Alzheimer's.
Re:Think of the mice! (Score:4, Interesting)
I would rather die of cancer at 200 than of anything else at 70.
Parent
A personal question, perhaps, but relevant: (Score:5, Interesting)
What system of philosophy do you subscribe to that drives you to discover such things? Is it just the desire to see man taken to his highest potential, or is it something deeper?
Stagnant Aging vs. Constant Aging (Score:5, Interesting)
If the average human lifespan were extended to 1000, would the average human age at a normal speed (i.e., like now), then hit a certain specific age and remain at that age until the end (everlasting youth), or would the aging be constant?
Beard required? (Score:5, Funny)
What can we do NOW? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I gave you a lab rat today, how long could you extend his life?
What about me - is there anything I can do (other than a healthy lifestyle), or could have done, today, to start extending my life?
How long before the answers to either of these questions change significantly? 5 years? 10? 20?
Longevity Plan (Score:5, Insightful)
In your opinion, if I wanted to give my best effort to extending the number of years I'm alive, what would be the top things I should do?
I'll let you decide how many things to include.
Thank you
Gary
Which is more difficult an issue to tackle? (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering your line of study, would you say the more difficult issues to deal with regarding life extension are technical ones (how do we do it?) or moral ones (why do we do it?)
I'll Bite... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. elastin.. It's not alive, it doesnt regenerate. and even if replaced in a full sized organism, it would already be "loose" because it tightens as we grow, and eventually breaks down.. How do you replace this substance throughout the body? (I'm hoping this covers a bunch of the other materials of the same type)
2. degradation of cell function.. as mutations occur in cells, the functional protiens become non-functional.. while these arent cancerous, they are problematic as they're just hobos in the body. to stop this would require freakloads of genetic therapy, rather than the smaller amount needed to repair cancer.
3. Overcoming telomerase,, so does it get nuked by your gene therapy, or are the stem cells engineered to full length only..
4. How do you keep the protein digesting enzymes needed for removing garbage from inside cells from eating barr bodies and other useful proteins that would normally inhabit and possibly pollute a cell.
5. How do you prevent damage to someone who has 2 copies of a gene that are both useful (the two having a broader functional range than any known single gene) from getting your genericized version at both? wiping out the advantage.
6. How do you keep the memories from fading to nothing?
Thanks,
Storm
The power to extend life, and to take it away... (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you a proponent of assisted suicide?
Should humans someday find that living to 1,000 as "normal" (through genetic advances, let's say), there will certainly be some that would prefer to live to 750, 500 or 100. Do you find it ethical to provide them an "early ticket"?
How do you tell if it's not possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
Others have listed potential problems, I'm interested in the follow-up question to those: what do you look for to say "this won't work"?
Simply stating "I believe it can" is the realm of religion. What evidence would it take to convince you that it isn't possible after all?
What first? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not much over 40, and I can already tell my memory isn't as good as I was younger. My father, another 30 years older than me, has significant problems with short term memory, despite otherwise decent health. Do you agree that focusing primarily on minimizing the debilitating effects of aging is the best approach, rather than focusing simply on extending life itself regardless of the quality of life it would give?
Aging and Evolution (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you considered that aging, as a mechanism of limiting average life span, may not be a "disorder" but rather a biological adaptation, important for evolution? At the level of populations, where a lot of evolution occurs, it may be advantageous to limit the number of previous generations with which new ones have to compete. Useful new mutations will also be more likely to gain penetrance, I would think. And beyond that, life span is one of those system parameters - like mutation rate, recombination frequency, generation length, etc. - that determine the performance of evolutionary systems themselves as optimizers.
Which is not to say we are bound to accept it, of course. Many species live longer than humans, and many more not nearly as long. There is certainly more to it than the analogy of machinery "wearing out". Were mankind able to unravel this process and stop or reverse it, that would be quite an adaptation in itself, wouldn't it?
Physical fitness and the first bridge (Score:4, Interesting)
To get to what Ray Kurzweil calls the "First Bridge" -- to live long enough to take advantage of the first generation of longevity-enhancing therapies, in 15 to 20 years from now -- many people must change their lifestyles to stay as healthy as possible, so they're in good shape when the time comes.
The role of physical fitness seems to be given mere lip service in the popular longevity literature. By "physical fitness", I don't mean just the lack of obesity, but rather the ability to run at least a marathon, for example. Evolution has selected bodies for us that are capable of very demanding physical tasks, yet most people sit around with resting heart rates at least double what they could be if they were fit.
Do you know of any serious research efforts into the effects of peak physical fitness on optimal health and longevity?
Advantage of The Methuselah Foundation (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm curious if you try to leave old-age diseases and disorders for traditional medical research and take on the problems leftover? What areas of aging has traditional medical research been ignoring?