{"id":90,"date":"2017-10-04T15:25:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T15:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kohette.com\/wpthemes\/narratium\/?p=90"},"modified":"2023-05-02T14:54:19","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T14:54:19","slug":"meet-aubrey-de-grey-the-researcher-who-wants-to-cure-old-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"Meet Aubrey de Grey, the Researcher Who Wants to Cure Old Age."},"content":{"rendered":"

Aubrey de Grey has been called many things. \u201cTranshumanist\u201d is one of them, but one he dislikes. \u201cImmortalist\u201d is the tag used to describe him and his colleague Bill Andrews in a documentary shown at South by Southwest this March, though de Grey rolls his eyes when someone drops the word \u201cimmortality.\u201d<\/h3>\n

The British gerontologist considers himself a \u201csimple medical researcher,\u201d but his research is about fiddling with cells to stop ageing in human beings, and potentially postponing death indefinitely. If it\u2019s not immortality (in de Grey\u2019s world, you could still be dispatched by an infectious disease or a shotgun), it\u2019s quite a close beast.<\/p>\n

He believes that tackling the individual illnesses that haunt old people\u2019s lives is a fundamentally flawed strategy; the right course of action is to act at the cellular level to prevent ageing from setting off those illnesses in the first place. His Silicon Valley-based foundation-cum-laboratory, the SENS Research Foundation, is completely devoted to this feat.<\/p>\n

In the past, de Grey\u2019s views were often met with skepticism or hostility, when not openly guffawed at. That has not completely changed, but the idea that ageing should actually be regarded as a disease, and that it might even be treated as such, is increasingly gaining ground. Recently, that’s been given a boost by research into tackling ageing on a genetic level.<\/p>\n

\"Aubrey<\/a>
Aubrey de Grey when I met him in Cambridge. Image: Alessandra Antolini<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I wanted to ask de Grey how things are going at the frontline of the anti-ageing battle, so we exchanged some emails (he doesn\u2019t carry phones, \u201cghastly, horrible things that deprive people of essential solitude\u201d), and we finally met in Cambridge last week.<\/p>\n

Drinking a pint of ale and tormenting his greying Old Testament-style beard, he initiated me in the science and doctrine of which he\u2019s the standard-bearer, most of which can be summarized in one question: If we could really wipe old age and death off the planet, why shouldn\u2019t we?<\/p>\n

First of all, let\u2019s look at some recent news. A couple of weeks ago, scientists at Harvard linked the circulatory system of a young mouse to that of an older mouse. The result was that some tissues of the old mouse were rejuvenated. What\u2019s the significance of that?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very important. This whole idea of linking two animals of different ages\u2014it\u2019s called heterochronic parabiosis\u2014to study ageing has been around for a little while now. At SENS, we work very closely with some of the guys who did that at Harvard. Of course, we\u2019re not going to do the same thing to people.<\/p>\n

In general, the experiment has led to a very useful discovery: There\u2019s a particular protein in the bloodstream of young individuals, called GDF11, that helps to reactivate certain aspects of cell division in certain parts of the brain. Now, that\u2019s only a small piece of information; there\u2019s lot more that is not yet known. But I expect that, within the next five years, at least another half a dozen similar rejuvenating factors will be discovered.<\/p>\n

So is this mice thing the first step to defeat ageing?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to quite say that. All we know is that GDF11 can stimulate certain types of cells to divide when they would not previously divide due to old age. Now, cell division is not the whole story of ageing. In fact, sometimes it can be a bad thing to make cells divide more often, because they may be more exposed to cancer. But still, it\u2019s a whole new tool, and it\u2019s very important.<\/p>\n

Do you think that people may be starting to think that ageing is the real enemy?<\/p>\n

I do think so, yes. The things that I\u2019ve been saying for years are finally beginning to get understood. People are understanding that diseases of old age are not really diseases: They are aspects of ageing, side effects of being alive. If you want to cure them, what you\u2019ll have to cure is to be alive in the first place\u2014but you can\u2019t actually do it. So we\u2019ll have to take a preventative maintenance approach. That means that we\u2019ll have to identify the various types of molecular and cellular damage that the body does to itself as a side effect of its normal metabolic operation. Once you\u2019ve identified them, which has already been done, you have to find a way to repair that damage and prevent it from developing into a pathology of old age. That\u2019s what I\u2019m working on.<\/p>\n

What are you really trying to achieve? Longevity or immortality?<\/p>\n

Well, first of all, any longevity benefit that I may achieve would be a side effect. I don\u2019t work on longevity, I work on health. And it just happens that, historically, the main thing that kills people is\u2026not being healthy. So healthier people will likely live longer.<\/p>\n

\n

“Don\u2019t use the word immortality when you talk about my work. It\u2019s taken; it\u2019s a religious word.”<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How much longer? It depends on how much longer we can keep people healthy. The best we can say at the moment is that the human body is a machine. Therefore, it ought to be the case that we can have the same kind of impact on the human body that we already have now on simple manmade machines, like cars. So, as I said, we can rely on preventative maintenance: repairing any damage before it makes the doors fall off. It seems to work really well with cars; we’ve got one-hundred-year-old cars around now. So, if you do sufficient maintenance, the sky\u2019s the limit. We should be able to maintain the human body in good health indefinitely, however long we like.<\/p>\n

So\u2026it\u2019s immortality, right?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t use the word immortality when you talk about my work. It\u2019s taken; it\u2019s a religious word. Immortality means zero risk of death from any cause, but I don\u2019t work on stopping people from being hit by trucks. I work on keeping them healthy.<\/p>\n

By the way, what\u2019s your relationship with religion?<\/p>\n

I personally have no religious views, but I have sometimes been attacked by religious people, who said that I was playing God. But it\u2019s quite interesting that it\u2019s really easy to get people coming from a religious background to understand that it would be a sin not to work on this. That\u2019s because ageing causes a lot of suffering, and alleviating suffering is something the scriptures told was our duty. I had some success with that argument.<\/p>\n

Ok, what about the social and political consequences of this potentially indefinite extension of life you\u2019re aiming at bringing about?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve addressed this issue once or twice, and I noticed that the mistake that people always make is that they think I\u2019m saying we would live much longer in a context where nothing else changes. They think like, \u201cThe rest of the world will be just like now but everybody will be biologically 25 forever.\u201d That\u2019s obviously complete nonsense. If we just look at the mathematics, before we\u2019ll have anybody living until the age of 200, a lot of things will have happened, and changed. For example, people always panic about paying pensions to people that live longer. But why would you need a pension if you\u2019re healthy? Even the very concept of work won\u2019t exist in the same way, because we\u2019ll probably have more and more automation. Look, we have at least one hundred years before we\u2019ll have any 200-year-old people.<\/p>\n

But we should probably start planning everything in advance. Right now, nobody is going to behave as if it\u2019s going to happen. If you actually managed to do it, one day, society would be completely off-guard.
\nThat\u2019s true, but I am not going to tackle each individual problem\u2014pensions, kids, resources\u2014that might arise in a post-ageing society. I prefer to help people focus on the fact that we\u2019ve a problem today, a really rather bad problem. That is that 100,000 people every fucking day are dying of ageing. That\u2019s the important thing, not worrying about hypothetical problems.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, people are programmed to find reasons why it would be a bad idea to defeat ageing. This is mainly because they fear the unknown, since the world would be very different without ageing.<\/p>\n

\n

“Any longevity benefit that I may achieve would be a side effect. I don\u2019t work on longevity, I work on health.”<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Aren\u2019t you afraid that living for, say, one thousand years, may be boring?<\/p>\n

I find this a very sad question. Of all the ridiculous questions I get about defeating ageing, this is the saddest. Anyone who asks that question must have such a miserable life.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not very happy with my life right now, I must admit.<\/p>\n

How could you possibly imagine that you could run out of things to do?<\/p>\n

I have a long list of things to do if I was to live 1,000 years: just think about all the films you haven\u2019t seen, all the books you haven\u2019t read. And by the time you\u2019re through them, you would have at least another thousand years of backlog.<\/p>\n

Apart from anything else, the main thing that people enjoy with life is other people, mutual interaction. And we have seven billion people to interact with. But even if there were only seven million people worth talking with, people don\u2019t stay the same; they change over time, so you\u2019ll never actually get bored.<\/p>\n

Do you define yourself as a transhumanist?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really like to be called \u201ctranshumanist,\u201d it sounds like I\u2019m doing something weird. I\u2019m not doing anything different from any other medical researcher, except that the consequences of what I\u2019m doing might be quite big. I think it\u2019s a mistake to label visionary technologists with something that starts with \u201ctrans.\u201d It creates a kind of psychological separation that is really counter-productive.<\/p>\n

But would you do some of the things that some transhumanists advocate, like uploading your mind on a computer?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m enjoying my body of meat, but if I had no choice I\u2019d certainly be just as happy to continue my existence in another form of hardware, rather than not continuing my life at all. It remains to be seen what\u2019s actually gonna happen. My current suspicion is that uploading, if it\u2019s possible at all, is still a lot harder than the medical approach that my team and I are taking. But I could be wrong, so I\u2019m very happy that there are people exploring alternative methods.<\/p>\n

Are you experimenting with any life-extending practice right now?<\/p>\n

Sure: I\u2019m doing this interview. I mean, I\u2019m not following any particular diet or practice, because what we have today is quite useless. The most important thing is getting the word out, getting the things to happen sooner, hastening the development of the therapies, rather than trying to use the little we have today.<\/p>\n

What are the chances that the two of us are gonna live to a thousand years?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know, but I\u2019m working on it. It\u2019s going to happen, it\u2019s just a question of when. The work I do is simply speeding up the inevitable.<\/p>\n

But it is very important to me, because for every day that I bring forward the defeat of ageing, I\u2019m saving 100,000 lives\u2014100,000 lives: thirty World Trade Centers. And I\u2019m very happy about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aubrey de Grey has been called many things. \u201cTranshumanist\u201d is one of them, but one he dislikes. \u201cImmortalist\u201d is the tag used to describe him and his colleague Bill Andrews in a documentary shown at South by Southwest this March, though de Grey rolls his eyes when someone drops the word \u201cimmortality.\u201d The British gerontologist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"template-simple-featured-image.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":770,"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kcsnowbourne.webstead.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}