[ExI] Aubrey de Grey in Today's Washington Post

[Jef Allbright]

Full article follows, for easier forwarding and sharing. </hint>
- Jef

 "Death-Defying: Aging Can Be Cured, Scientist Maintains"
 by
 Joel Garreau
 The Washington Post

 <Photo> Biologist Aubrey De Grey created the Methuselah Foundation to support
 scientific research that would extend lifespans by, oh, 900 years.
 (Washington Post Photo)
 ________________________________________________________
 Tuesday, November 20, 2007; Washington, D.C. -- Aubrey de Grey may be
 wrong but, evidence suggests, he's not nuts. This is a no small assertion.
 De Grey argues that some people alive today will live in a robust and youthful
 fashion for 1,000 years.

         In 2005, an authoritative publication offered $20,000 to any molecular
 biologist who could demonstrate that de Grey's plan for treating aging as a
 disease - and curing it - was "so wrong that it was unworthy of learned
 debate."  Now mere mortals - who may wish to be significantly less mortal -
 can judge whether de Grey's proposals are "science or fantasy," as the
 magazine put it. De Grey's much-awaited Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation
 Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime was
 published in September by St. Martin's Press.

         The judges were formidable for that MIT Technology Review challenge
 prize. They included Rodney Brooks, then Director of MIT's Computer Science
 and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; Nathan Myhrvold, a former Chief
 Technology Officer of Microsoft; and J. Craig Venter, who shares credit for
 first sequencing the human genome.

         In the end, they decided that no scientist had succeeded in
blowing de Grey
 out of the water. "At issue is the conflict between the scientific
process and the
 ambiguous status of ideas that have not yet been subjected to that process,"
 Myhrvold wrote for the judges.

         Well yes, that. Plus the question that has tantalized humans forever.
 What if the only certainty is taxes?

 Dodging Death Has Long Been a Dream

         Our earliest recorded legend is that of Gilgamesh, who finds
 and loses the secret of immortality.  The Greek goddess Eos prevails
 on Zeus to allow her human lover Tithonus to live eternally, forgetting,
 unfortunately, to ask that he also not become aged and frail. He winds
 up such a dried husk that she turns him into a grasshopper.

         In "It Ain't Necessarily So," Ira Gershwin writes:

 Methus'lah lived nine hundred years
 Methus'lah lived nine hundred years
 But who calls dat livin' when no gal'll give in
 To no man what's nine hundred years.

         Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey, 44, recently of Britain's
 Cambridge University, advocates not myth but "strategies for engineering
 negligible senescence," or SENS. It means curing aging.

         De Grey says he thinks that with adequate financing, scientists may,
 within ten years, triple the remaining lifespan of late-middle-age mice. The
 day this announcement is made, he believes, the news will hit people like a
 brick as they realize that their cells could be next. He speculates that people
 will start abandoning risky jobs, such as being police officers or soldiers.

         De Grey's looks are almost as striking as his ambitions.  His slightly
 graying chestnut hair is swept back into a ponytail. His russet beard falls
 to his belly. His mustache -- as long as a hand -- would have been the envy
 of Salvador Dali. When he talks about people soon putting a higher premium
 on health than wealth, he twirls the ends of his mustache back behind his
 ears, murmuring, "So many women, so much time."

         A little over 6 feet tall and lean - he weighs 147 pounds, the same as
 in his teenage years -- de Grey shows up in a denim work shirt open to the
 sternum, ripped jeans, and scuffed sneakers, looking for all the world like a
 denizen of Silicon Valley.

         Not far from the mark. De Grey's original academic field is computer
 science and Artificial Intelligence. He has become the darling of some Silicon
 Valley entrepreneurs who think changing the world is all in a day's work.
 Peter Thiel, a Co-Founder and former Chief Executive of PayPal -- who sold
 it in 2002 for $1.5 billion, pocketing $55 million himself -- has
dropped $3.5 million
 on de Grey's Methuselah Foundation.

         "I thought he had this rare combination -- a serious thinker
who had enough
 courage to break with the crowd," Thiel said. "A lot of people who are not
 conventional are not serious. But the real breakthroughs in science are made
 by serious thinkers who are willing to work on research areas that
people think
 are too controversial or too implausible."

         At midday in George Washington University's Kogan Plaza off H
Street, N.W.,
 you are surrounded by firm, young flesh. Muscular young men saunter
by in sandals,
 T-shirts, and cargo shorts. Young blond women sport clingy,
sleeveless tops, oversize
 sunglasses and the astounding array of subtle variations available in
flip-flops and
 painted toenails.

         Is this the future?

         "Yes, it is precisely the future," he said. "Except without
people who look
 as old as you and me."

         "Of course the world will be completely different in all
manner of ways,"
 de Grey said of the next few decades. His speech is thick, fast and
mellifluous,
 with a quality British accent.  "If we want to hit the high points,
No. 1 is, there
 will not be any frail, elderly people. Which means we won't be
spending all this
 unbelievable amount of money keeping all those frail elderly people alive for
 like one extra year the way we do at the moment. That money will be available
 to spend on important things like, well, obviously, providing the
health care to keep
 us that way, but that won't be anything like so expensive. Secondly,
just doing
 the things we can't afford now, giving people proper education and
not just when
 they're kids, but also proper adult education and retraining and so on.

         "Another thing that's going to have to change completely is
retirement.
 For the moment, when you retire, you retire forever. We're sorry for old people
 because they're going downhill. There will be no real moral or sociological
 requirement to do that. Sure, there is going to be a need for Social Security
 as a safety net just as there is now. But retirement will be a periodic thing.
 You'll be a journalist for 40 years or whatever and then you'll be sick of it
 and you'll retire on your savings or on a state pension, depending on what
 the system is. So after 20 years, golf will have lost its novelty value, and
 you'll want to do something else with your life. You'll get more retraining
 and education, and go and be a rock-star for 40 years, and then retire again
 and so on."

         The mind reels. Will we want to be married to the same person for
 a thousand years? Will we need religion anymore? Will the planet fill to
 overflowing?

         But first - why are these questions coming up now? And why are we
 listening to answers from Aubrey de Grey?


Why We Age?

         Aging consists of seven critical kinds of damage, according
to de Grey.
 For example, unwholesome goo accumulates in our cells. Our bodies have
 not evolved means quickly to clean up "intracellular aggregates such as
 Lipofuscin." However, outside our bodies, microorganisms have eagerly
 and rapidly evolved to turn this toxic waste into compost. (De Grey made
 this connection because he knew two things: Lipofuscin is fluorescent, and
 graveyards don't glow in the dark.)

         By taking soil samples from an ancient mass grave, de Grey's
colleagues
 in short order found the bacteria that digest lipofuscin as easily as enzymes
 in our stomachs digest a steak. The trick now is getting those
lipofuscin-digesting
 enzymes into our bodies. That has not yet been done. But, de Grey says,
 comparable fundamental biotechnology is already in clinical use fighting such
 diseases as Tay-Sachs. So he sees it as merely an engineering problem.

         Examples like this make up the 262 pages at the center of Ending Aging.
 "It's a repair and maintenance approach to extending the functional
lifespan of a
 human body," de Grey said. "It's just like maintaining the functional
lifespan of a
 classic car, or a house. We know -- because people do it -- that
there is no limit
 to how long you can do that. Once you have a sufficiently comprehensive panel
 of interventions to get rid of damage and maintain these things,
then, they can last
 indefinitely. The only reason we don't see that in the human body now
is that the
 panel of interventions we have available to us today is not
sufficiently comprehensive."

         By 2005, his ideas had attracted enough attention as to no
longer be merely
 controversial. De Grey was being pilloried as a full-blown heretic.
"The idea that
 a research program organized around the SENS agenda will not only
retard aging,
 but also reverse it -- creating young people from old ones and do so
within our
 lifetime, is so far from plausible that it commands no respect at all
within the
 informed scientific community," wrote 28 Biogerontologists in the
Journal of the
 European Molecular Biology Organization. Their recommendation: more of the
 patient, basic scientific research that is their stock in trade.

         "Each idea that we decide to pursue will cost years of work
and a great deal
 of money, so we spend a lot of time -- at meetings, seminars and in
the library --
 trying to search for and weigh alternatives, and looking for
loopholes in our chain
 of arguments before they are pointed out to us either by peer reviewers or
 experimental results.

         "Presented by an articulate, witty and colorful proponent, a
flashy research
 agenda might catch the eye of a journalist or meeting organizer who
is hunting for
 attention, publicity, and an audience; however, the SENS Agenda is
easily recognized
 as a pretence by those with scientific experience. "Why not simply
debate with de Grey
 and let the most convincing arguments win? It is ... our opinion that
pretending that
 such a collection of ill-founded speculations is a useful topic for
debate, let alone a
 serious guide to research planning, does more harm than good both for
science and
 for society."

         The resulting uproar was followed by the put-up or shut-up
smack-down in MIT
 Technology Review. The upshot was intriguing.  "In our judgment none of the
 'refutations' succeeded," Myhrvold, one of the judges, wrote in an
E-mail. "It was a
 bit ironic, because they were mostly the work of established
scientists in mainstream
 gerontology who sought to brand de Grey as 'unscientific' -- yet the supposed
 refutations were themselves quite unscientific.

         "The 'refutations' were either ad hominem attacks on de Grey,
or arguments
 that his ideas would never work (which might be right, but that is
what experiments
 are for), or arguments that portions of de Grey's work rested on
other people's ideas.
 None of these refute the possibility that he is at least partially correct.

         "This is not to say that the MIT group endorsed de Grey,"
Myhrvold emphasizes,
 "or thinks he has proven his case. He hasn't, but admits that
up-front. All of science
 rests on ideas that were either unproven hypotheses or crazy
speculations at one point.
 ... The sad reality is that most crazy speculations fail. ... We do
not know today how
 to be forever young for 1,000 years, and I am deeply skeptical that
we will figure it
 out in time for me!"


No Point in Being Miserable

         So beyond the question of whether immortality is feasible, is
it a good idea?
 For every Woody Allen who says, "I don't want to achieve immortality through
 my work; I want to achieve it through not dying," isn't there a Ralph
Waldo Emerson
 who asks, "What would be the use of immortality to a person who
cannot use well
 a half an hour?"

         Why is it, when you bring up the idea of living forever --
even if robust and
 healthy, not drooling on your shoes -- some people just recoil
viscerally?  "It's probably
 the majority that recoils viscerally," de Grey said. "It's what I
call the pro-aging trance.

         "Since the beginning of civilization, we have been aware that
aging is ghastly
 and that aging is utterly inevitable.... So we have two choices.
Either we spend our
 lives being preoccupied by this ghastly future or we find some way to
get on with
 our miserably short lives and make the best of it.

         "If we do that second thing, which is obviously the right
thing to do, then it
 doesn't matter how irrational that rationalization might be... It
could be, 'well, we're
 all going to go to heaven'. Or it could be, 'we're going to have
overpopulation'. Or it
 could be, 'it will be boring'. Or, 'dictators will live forever'.
"It doesn't matter what
 the answers are. It's so important for them to maintain their belief
that aging is
 actually not such a bad thing, that they completely suspend any
normal rational
 sense of proportion."

         But if people don't die, won't we indeed fill the planet
shoulder to shoulder?
 "The birthrate is going to have to go down by an order of magnitude," de Grey
 acknowledges. "But even if that is going to be a severe problem, the
question is
 not, do problems exist? The question is, are they serious enough to
outweigh the
 benefits of saving 100,000 lives a day? That's the fundamental question. If you
 haven't got an argument that says that it's that serious that we
shouldn't save 30
 <bleeping> World Trade Centers every <bleeping> day, don't waste my time.
 It's a sense of proportion thing."

         So de Grey soldiers on, not that it is anywhere written that
anything he
 advocates will work. His approach, however, does have echoes in history...

 On October 9, 1903, The New York Times wrote: "The flying machine which
 will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of
 mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years."

 On the same day, on Kill Devil Hill, in his diary, a bicycle mechanic named
 Orville Wright wrote: "We unpacked rest of goods for new machine."