[ExI] longevity dividend course OP-ED assignment 01

[Morris Johnson]

LIVING HEALTHIER AND LONGER


Hey Kids , are you ready for anti-aging / regenerative medicine?
"Get real Dad, be serious, act your age, get over your midlife crisis ,
there is no such as anti-aging medicine , you are going to die sooner than
you think so quit wasting your time and focus on making your last years as
comfortable as possible" has been a typical response.
I respond "ANTI-AGING MEDICINE really exists and the market for doctors who
open anti-aging medical spas is currently 50 billion dollars per year with
each patient worth 4-20,000 dollars per year in products and services. "
Recent episodes of "60 minutes, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and a
Barbara Walters ABC Special on longevity" report that a certain Dr. Aubrey
DeGrey is to this new frontier what David Suzuki and Al Gore are to
environmentalism.
The "Inconvenient Truth" is that the super wealthy are already the first
customers, the investors and the owners and promoters of this entirely new
form of medicine.  Billions of real money are already committed to
commercial products under development.
What we are talking about is a medicine not just designed to rescue you from
cancer, heart disease or degenerative conditions after they are diagnosed
but a whole new system of medical care designed to prevent disease years or
even decades before it might happen.
Not everyone is convinced that even the garden variety anti-aging ideas are
safe. Some recent headlines read.. "Antioxidant Vitamin E supplements may be
deadly" and "Don't bank on anti-aging pills anytime soon - unless you're a
worm"
Some feel we have no business even poking around and tinkering with mother
nature's secrets.  Potential therapies have had a rough start here in the
west but have taken root elsewhere.  When stem cell technologies were banned
in western countries, Chinese students just packed up their lap-tops and
headed home to apply this new knowledge to a more receptive audience.  This
is how a cancer treatment called Gendicine originated.  We in North America
have a regulatory system that does not allow individual risk takers to move
so rapidly to commercialize new medical technology.  If computers and
software had been regulated like medicine we would still be using Commadore
64's and playing Pong. Unwillingness to take risks drastically reduces the
possibility of benefit.
According to Dr. S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois a "longevity
dividend" of lower health care costs, increased savings and worker
productivity would result from a modest deceleration in the rate of aging by
about seven years, and adequate funding could produce "dramatic advances in
preventive medicine and public health within the next few decades."
I am Morris Johnson . At age 52 , after spending 35 years reading scientific
medical research journals I do not just follow fads .  I am neither an
uncritical enthusiast nor an uninformed skeptic.  I personally venture out
within the bounds of my personal means to use the best science the world has
to offer in attempt to catch and surf the longevity wave and secure for
myself a personal longevity dividend.  I have designed and do follow my own
personalized healthy lifespan management program.

Is the science real or bogus.  As I write this I have just begun a 10 week
course to study this thing called the "longevity Dividend".  Tomorrow I will
attend a conference entitled "Improving Human Health 2 – Metabolic
Syndrome".  Let me be your guide to take the mystery out of the term
"Longevity Dividend" and lets explore together the promises and risks for
not just baby boomers and their children but society as a whole. For
example, how might longer healthier lives affect the economics of pensions,
jobs and family relationships and medical care Systems.

This 10 part series will bring you my findings , pose questions and perhaps
add an opinion or two, if space permits.
You may send your feedback "attention Pharmer Mo" at
extropian.pharmer at gmail.com
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