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Silicon Valley's Quest To Extend Life 'Well Beyond 120'
HughPickens.com writes: The Guardian has an interesting article on the current quest sweeping Silicon Valley to disrupt death, and the $1 million prize challenging scientists to push human lifespan past its apparent maximum of about 120 years. Hedge Fund Manager Joon Yun's Palo Alto Longevity Prize, which 15 scientific teams have so far entered, will be awarded in the first instance for restoring vitality and extending lifespan in mice by 50%.
"Billionaires and companies are bullish about what they can achieve. In September 2013 Google announced the creation of Calico, short for the California Life Company. Its mission is to reverse engineer the biology that controls lifespan and "devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives." ... In April 2014 it recruited Cynthia Kenyon, a scientist acclaimed for work that included genetically engineering roundworms to live up to six times longer than normal, and who has spoken of dreaming of applying her discoveries to people.
Why might tech zillionaires choose to fund life extension research? Three reasons reckons Patrick McCray, a historian of modern technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. First, if you had that much money wouldn't you want to live longer to enjoy it? Then there is money to be made in them there hills. But last, and what he thinks is the heart of the matter, is ideology. If your business and social world is oriented around the premise of "disruptive technologies", what could be more disruptive than slowing down or "defeating" aging?
"Billionaires and companies are bullish about what they can achieve. In September 2013 Google announced the creation of Calico, short for the California Life Company. Its mission is to reverse engineer the biology that controls lifespan and "devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives." ... In April 2014 it recruited Cynthia Kenyon, a scientist acclaimed for work that included genetically engineering roundworms to live up to six times longer than normal, and who has spoken of dreaming of applying her discoveries to people.
Why might tech zillionaires choose to fund life extension research? Three reasons reckons Patrick McCray, a historian of modern technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. First, if you had that much money wouldn't you want to live longer to enjoy it? Then there is money to be made in them there hills. But last, and what he thinks is the heart of the matter, is ideology. If your business and social world is oriented around the premise of "disruptive technologies", what could be more disruptive than slowing down or "defeating" aging?
So many billionaires in Silly Valley, and none of them is willing to invest more than $1 million in extending their lifetime to forever?
Clearly they don't expect much to come out of this research.
I've posted this in another post, and yet again.
A certain irreducible background incidence of cancer is to be expected regardless of circumstances: mutations can never be absolutely avoided, because they are an inescapable consequence of fundamental limitations on the accuracy of DNA replication, as discussed in Chapter 5. If a human could live long enough, it is inevitable that at least one of his or her cells would eventually accumulate a set of mutations sufficient for cancer to develop. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bo...
Its true that cancer is an almost inevitable consequence of simply living, and the longer you live the more likely you'll have it -- but many cancers are treatable, depending on the particulars of the strain. You think these people aren't prepared to pay top dollar for the best treatments when/if the time comes that their longevity has a consequence?
I find that many people claiming aging is absolutely inevitable are suffering from a case of sour grapes. SENS is a very real, very realizable goal. The human body is of limited complexity and we're putting the pieces of the puzzle together fast. Skepticism is understandable, after all people have been promising cures for aging ever since the emperor of China ate mercury. But recent advances show real promise and are based on real research.
It's popular to say one wishes for death at an arbitrary age... until one is that age and it's time to try to live or try to die. The upshot of recent newsis there's a very real chance that the first person to reach escape velocity is already alive. Here's to hope for a prosperous and very long life for each of us.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I don't know about you..
but one of the greatest things about the modern age is the considerable technlogically amplified pleasure(entertainment, learning, naked pics) that are available to everyone even if you're a slob working for 5 bucks a day in Asia.
A fair comment, I agree completely, and to be clear, I don't expect 100% leisure time or an age of work-less abundance. I'd just like to see everyone (myself included) continue to have a right to continue to earn a living. However the greed of the top percentage of our society will ensure this childish, fanciful and ridiculous dream of mine is unsustainable for the myself and most of our society. Western civilisation as we know it is returning on its unstoppable orbit, ultimately terminating in the embrace of serfdom. The Black Death was the only thing that allowed us to escape last time and then only at enormous cost.
Remember, as a '1-percenter' it's less about ensuring one wins, as that's already well-assured dear boy. More important is that everyone else loses! That's where the joy and the true victory lies!
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Silicon Valley's Quest To Extend Life 'Well Beyond 120
followed by the government's quest to extend the pension age well beyond 115
And why do you feel that defeating cancer isn't already part of the research into helping us live longer?
You can make the same argument about all of it, the longer you live the more likely you are to catch any deadly disease. The longer you live the more likely your heart is to give in. The longer you live the more likely you are to suffer a stroke. The longer you live the more likely you are to go deaf and lose your vision.
Cancer is no different, increasing age increases the chance of suffering all these things. Part of living older is defeating or delaying each and every one of these possible threats. What makes you think that cancer is somehow a distinctly different problem on the way to the same goal as the rest of it that means that it should be singled out and held up as a possible problem of increasing age more than anything else?
Luckily this could never happen again today, because they need all those children for the Foxconn plant.