M Prize For Anti-Aging Research Hits $1,000,000

Reason writes "William Haseltine of Human Genome Sciences (the 'father of regenerative medicine') has pushed the M Prize for anti-aging research - a project cofounded by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey and Dave Gobel - over the $1,000,000 mark in pledges. Congratulations to all involved! Read the press release here."

Comments

Immortal

[Seumas]

There will never be a discovery (publically at least) of indefinitely life-extending consequence. There will, however, be discoveries that prolong life. But not too much at a time.

If you figure out a way to make people life forever or at least a very long time, you can only make them pay for it once. If you discover a way to make people live an extra decade, they'll pay through the nose for it, eventually die, move on and you'll have a new generation of customers.

It's just like medications and diseases. It's not in the interest of commercialized medicine to research and discover CURES. It's in their interest to research and discover medications that make living with a disease tolerable or prolong your life with the disease rather than eradicate it.

Re:Immortal

[dshannon]

Sorry, but you just miss a major point - if someone manufactures a pill, taken once daily, that make you live *forever*, then that's an awful lot of pills a day we're all (many of us at least) going to be paying for, *forever*, ergo a lot of moolah to be made. A single-shot serum seems as ridiculous as all those 'fountain of eternal youth' movies.

Are you joking?

[Mercury2k]

Wow, only 1million bucks to the person who cures natural death? No wonder why nobody is in a rush. You can make more money engineering bio weapons for the states. ;p

Re:Better causes

[koreth]

Besides, the only people who will benefit from this are the very rich

A conclusion you reach based on what? Plenty of medical treatments that started out expensive are widely available now.

Hell, that's true of technology in general, not just medical technology. Think about flying from New York to Shanghai on a schoolteacher's salary in the 1930s, when the term "jet set" actually referred to air travel. Should money have not been spent on the aviation infrastructure we all enjoy today, since it was just a bunch of vain bastards using it at first?

Only big companies and the military could afford early computers. UNIVAC was clearly no use to starving kids in Africa, so for the betterment of humanity we really should have put a stop to that line of research and put those scientists to work in soup kitchens instead. We'd all be so much better off now.

After all, if it benefits one rich person a decade or two before it benefits ten poor people, it should never be developed and all eleven people should suffer. Or at least that seems to be the logical result of what you're saying.

If you'd rather skip using any treatments that were initially high-priced, that is of course your prerogative.

And we think social security is screwed up now!

[museumpeace]

It got that way partly because the math on which it was founded [men living to 60 if they are really lucky, women not working and popping off at 75] has been overturned by medical advances so now there's a shitload of oldsters who need a check every month.
boy would immortality or anything like it mess our society up!

Re:You want to be immortal to do exactly what?

[some guy I know]

If you need to watch two buildings collapse and half your life pass by to realize that you should be appreciating it more, congratulations, you've been wasting your life.

You have totally misinterpreted what I wrote.

1. The 9/11 attack didn't affect me at all, except for making me annoyed with the networks for pre-empting my normal TV shows for weeks with endless repeats of the same footage with nothing new to add, and with the FAA for the even longer lines at airports.
Oh, and I'm also annoyed with congress and Bush for using it as an excuse for ramming through all of that unconstitutional civil rights-robbing legislation, and the war in Iraq, and, ...
OK, 9/11 did affect me, but not in the "life-affirming" sense.
I mean, more people die each year on our nation's highways than did in the 9/11 attack.

2. I have always wanted to live a good life.
It's just that, when I was younger, I thought that 100 years or so would be enough.
Now that I am closer to 100, I believe otherwise.

When I was 18, I didn't expect to live past age 30.
I fully expected that the USA and USSR would eventually have their nuclear war, and that almost everyone would die.
I was quite surprised, pleasantly so, that I made it to 50.

And when it is my time, whether it be tomorrow or if by some miracle I live to the ripe old age of 50, I will accept that and go without regrets and not be clamouring for an extension.

If medical science discovered a cure for your condition, wouldn't you like to live longer?
There's so much to see, so much to do.
But, if you want to give up at 50, then fine for you, if that's really what you want.
As for me, I'm not going without a fight.