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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.
Pay the money to people with a family history of long lifespans if they breed with other qualifiers. Even if this prize leads to mice with long lifespans it may not deliver usable insights into human ageing
http://michaelsmith.id.au
How much did the guy inventing the serial to USB converter get for expanding a mouse's lifespan?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You get to the age of 300, while still looking 21, and then someone initiates a chargeback.
Instant death.
I am definitely buying one of those immortal mice to my daughter. That should teach her a valuable lesson about life.
Full Tilt
I recollect reading in atleast 1 book of Richard Dawkins (not sure which), that ageing was evolutionarily inevitable.
The reason being that parasitic genes in a host that usually end up killing or harming it will quickly be removed from the gene pool. So such genes are not evolutionarily successful.
On the other hand, if their effect was triggered only after a certain number of years (when an animal has already performed its main purpose of reproduction), there is no drive for it to be removed from the gene pool. An animal with the parasite would be as successful in spreading its genes as one without it. So over the years, the early-acting bad stuff has been wiped out bit by bit by natural selection, while the latent ones have been accumulating all along.
I'm sure someone with more knowledge in this will chip in.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
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
Bill Gates - genuinely philanthropic - his ego might like the fact that he is the man that's saving the world, but at least he's saving other people.
The paypal guy has just looked in the mirror, realised he's getting older, and wants to live longer. He's worked out that if a few days' coding, some neat financial agreements and a bit of luck can make hundreds of millions of dollars; perhaps a few million dollars and some injecting of mice can lead to him living forever. The guy is more Frankenstien than philanthropist.
Job done.
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?
And of course, you will pay for the costs of freezing yourself, and maintaining the equipment, how, exactly?
More than likely, it will be much like a couple of SF stories by different authors - the section of Larry Niven's "The Long A.R.M. of Gil Hamilton" wherein a law allowing corpsicles to be thawed and broken up for parts is being considered.
However, I like a short story I read many years ago - a man has himself frozen, and is awakened. He wakes to find another, older man next to his bed. They strike up a conversation about what has changed - the young man asks about the older man's earrings, which he is informed are antenna. He is then told he is being prepped for heart surgery. "But I don't have a bad heart" the young man says. "No, but I do" says the older man.
www.eFax.com are spammers
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.
There, that's better.
There's a painting of his cousin, Dorian Gray in his attic.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .