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

Re:Immortal

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, someone has their tinfoil hat on extra tight today...

Smart project, if you're seeking donations...

[JavaRob]

From the article:

The Methuselah Foundation has in a very short time built up a strong base of support, relying largely on donations from individuals, most of them middle class, most of them outside academia.

I'm actually not surprised that they've managed to rustle up this kind of cash from private donations so quickly. Think about it -- you've been working all your life to make a comfortable living, but now you're feeling old and are starting to think about:
1) your mortality
2) what to do with your money before you go

Introducing the perfect solution.... Not only is it a nice "I'm helping humanity" sort of cause, but you also stand a chance of pushing that deadline out a bit.

You want to be immortal to do exactly what?

[kenaaker]

The biggest irony about human immortality is that most of the people who desperately long for immortality can't figure out what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

For myself, I think a century in good health would be more than enough.

But maybe it's not nearly the idea of immortality, as the ability to choose when you're done.

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

[some guy I know]

For myself, I think a century in good health would be more than enough.

Wait'll you hit 50.
I found it very enlightening to be on the other side of "half my life".
The older I get, the more I think that, no, one century will probably not be enough.
A millenium, maybe, but even then ...
I want to see the future.
I want to go to the stars.
There are four ways to do this:

1. Build a time machine and go to the future that way (highly unlikely).
2. Build a spacecraft whose velocity approaches that of the speed of light, so that time within it slows down, and ride that to the stars, like Ender Wiggin and his siblings (unlikely in my lifetime, if my lifetime extends only another 50-75 years).
3. Freeze myself, like Fry in Futurama (possibly).
4. Undergo medical procedures and live a lifestyle designed to increase my lifespan (most likely).

The great advantage of option 4 is that I will be able to perceive and experience the intervening years.
I think that it will be fun, for the most part.

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

[koreth]

That's a pithy quote, to be sure (though the original is slightly different) but I, for one, think there's way more stuff to see and do than I could fit into a hundred years. Hell, at the rate I'm going it'll take me nearly that long just to make it through all the books on my Amazon wishlist! Plus I can't imagine ever not wanting to live just one more year to see what happens next in the world. I have no trouble entertaining myself on a Sunday of just about any sort of weather.

That said, I agree with your last sentence. It's about choosing when you're done. If a hundred years is enough for someone, they should be able to gracefully bow out after that long.

An interesting aspect of this brave new world may be that suicide (direct or in the form of refusing medical help) is the leading cause of death.

Re:Immortal

[kasparov]

Um... if people live forever, it doesn't mean that new people wouldn't be born who would need to obtain the 'immortality serum'. Birth rates would probably slow, but not stop. (And don't give me the overpopulation angle, necessity is the mother of invention.

But frankly, the people interested in helping people live forever probably aren't that concerened with doing it for profit in the first place. (And if you have ever seen a picture of Aubrey de Grey you will understand what I'm talking about.)

Don't discount non-commercialized medicine/research for eventually finding the 'cure for aging'. Who would have thought that someone would release a 'free' enterprise-grade operating system when they could actually charge for it indefinitely with upgrades and service packs.

Bring on...

[Schwarzchild]

the Boosterspice!!! Just think of how rich someone could get if they could live several lifetimes over.

Re:Are you joking?

[DaemanUhr]

...to the person who cures natural death?

The prize is for curing aging, and curing natural death is not the same thing.

Not that there's not a strong correlation, but 10-year-olds die of natural causes too. It's just that old people are just a hell of a lot more prone to die of natural causes. If we can make old people more like young people, they'll still die, but just far less often.

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.

The X Prize was only $10 million, yet the space tourism industry promises to be a multi-billion dollar industry in the near future. No wonder no one wanted to compete for it... Oh wait, they had at least 27 competitors, and most of them signed up before the X Prize had collected even "1million bucks".

The M Prize continues to grow rapidly. It had reached $500,000 barely five months ago! Even if the prize grows linearly (unlikely, since it's currently growing at least quadratically), that means the prize will break $10 million in just 90 more months, or 7.5 years.

However, assuming it continues its quadratic growth rate, the M Prize should reach over $10 million well before 2010! And that's assuming that another Ansari doesn't step forward and boost the prize up to where it probably needs to be, between $50 million and $100 million.

Sure, it's only $1 million today, but that number will continue to grow rapidly as people donate to the prize and try to break the death meme that holds sway over society today.