[extropy-chat] Q&A with Biologist Aubrey de Grey

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

>From MIT Technology Review: A self-professed "troublemaker," Aubrey de Grey
works to scrutinize and encourage work in human longevity. De Grey, 40, is a
theoretical biologist and biogerentologist at the University of Cambridge in
England. He is a cofounder of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, "a contest
designed to accelerate progress toward real longevity - enhancing medicine,
promote public interest and involvement in research on healthy life
extension, and encourage more such research." Technology Review spoke to de
Grey as he attended a conference on gene therapy in Santa Barbara, CA.
Q: 5,000 years? That seems pretty outlandish. A: I get that reaction a lot -
my estimate gives people the conceptual bends. But if you go through the
logic step by step, you'll see that it's virtually inevitable that we will
attain that sort of life expectancy in that sort of timeframe, just so long
as two things work out. First, we will have to develop first-generation
rejuvenation therapies by 2050 or sooner... what remains for me to explain
is why the development of first-generation rejuvenation therapies - which
I'll define as ones that can be applied to people in their 60s and increase
their lifespan by at least 30 years - is enough to give people who are 25 or
younger at the time those therapies arrive a lifespan not limited by aging
in any way.
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