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Paypal Co-Founder Backs Anti-Aging Research Prize
Baldrson writes, "Anti-aging researchers, via The Methuselah Mouse Prize or M-Prize, are receiving an additional $3 million incentive to stop and reverse aging. Researchers win M-Prize money in increments by breaking longevity records for mice or reversing their aging. The philanthropic donation comes from Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal. Mr. Thiel has pledged to match each dollar donated to the M-Prize with his own 50 cent contributions up to $3 million." The M-Prize was created by Aubrey de Grey, a controversial biomedical gerontologist in Cambridge, England.
Er, I'd guess it'd take a long time before such an experiment had any noticeable effect, even if the ideal subjects were willing to participate in it. Heinlein was a science fiction writer.
Even with our "short" life spans now, people commit suicide, engage in risky sexual practices, talk on the cell phones while driving, eat fettucine alfredo, etc, etc. What indication is there for a great public need for extended lifetimes? All this will mean is more work. Retirement at 85 until you can get SS benefits? No thank you. Lifespan is pretty ok right now. We need better quality, not quantity of life.
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When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
Funding research motivates a single lab. Offering a prize motivates all of them.
For good or ill stupid little trophies presented at awards ceremonies is a motivator for most people. The prize looks like a lot of money, but really, compared to what you'll likely have to spend to collect it it's just a stupid little trophy.
KFG
How is this a better idea? It doesn't help me.
Deleted
It's not even the case that one need consider an aging gene as a parasitic gene. Evolution does not work on individuals but rather on populations, and for the population, it is better to have individuals eventually die off to make room for the next generation of random mutations, to try and get a better fit this time around. The population is constantly optimising. The individual is simply static throughout its lifespan.
May the Maths Be with you!
"f there were some mutant strain of mouse that had a dispropotionately long lifespan compared to his peers, free from the negative consequenecs of age, would (s)he not reproduce far more offspring bearing his/her genes than the others, over time?"
Short answer: No.
Look to humans: it doesn't matter how long after menopause a woman lives, she's already had all the kids she's ever going to have. She could live to be 1,000, but unless she's fertile and breeding for a longer time, she's not going to be making that big a wave in the gene pool.
The guy's money is his to do as he likes, of course, but how about funding research into diseases that affect people at a young age - heart disease, obesity, depression - instead of keeping people alive longer than nature intends?
First Google with its "profit-making charity"... in my day they were called "venture capitalist firms" or, if not entirely unreasonable, "angel investors", but never "charities"! Now donating money for research into reversing the ageing process in mice, or putting it through the spin-dryer "gratuitous animal experimentation to defy mortality", is considered philanthropic.
Bill Gates is philanthropic when he gives money for vaccination programmes. Capone's soup kitchen was philanthropy. Neither a wealthy man's likeability nor his PR machine define whether he has performed a charitable act.
'How many of your great-grandparents survived and were still able to function without regular assistance until they were 80?'
All of mine.
Are all your grandparents still alive?
None of mine are, although this is largely a factor of having splipped over the median myself some time ago. My Grandparents were all functional into their 80s. My Mother is in her mid 70s and still mows her own lawn and carries her own backpack.
However, be it noted that my ancestors, although both long lived and productively long lived (Uncle Eli didn't retire until he was 100, to go back to college), they all sucumbed to heart attack, stroke, alzheimer's, etc. None of them simply died peacefully in their sleep for no apparent reason.
And my younger brother died of cancer this past spring at the age of 46. There's one in every crowd.
KFG
God, how I should love to have your genes.
If you had my genes you would likely be dead already. I am a mass of genetic dysfunction. Cystic Fibrosis, Celiac Disease, dyslexic, disgraphic and dyspraxic, with resultant atrophy of childhood skeletal and muscular development.
Life is hard and tenuous. Had I been born at the time of my grandparents I would have died at about two years of age. The lifespan of my ancestors does not take into account familial infant mortality.
Strangely enough I'm "strong and healthy" (excepting the odd "spell" when I just fall over for a few months at a time) and function in the top percentiles at anything I turn my hand/brain to (but mind you I've never turned my hand to American football linebacker or basketball center). Go figure. Life is also funny.
And full of coping mechanisms.
KFG
If we really wish to grow that old, I have more faith in prohibiting people from having children before they are at age X. Set this age to 40, and many people will not be able to have children today. Increase X incrementially through generations, in order to make sure that only the ones that live long enough to reproduce will survive. Longer lives should arise. It's quite inhumane, though.
>> In the case of humanity or other species capable of forseeing the risks of overpopulation
Optimist.