Fight Aging!

Aubrey de Grey has been putting up new introductory material at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) website at a fairly steady pace in recent weeks. Given his schedule, I've no idea where he finds the time. If you haven't taken a look already, you should read the following:

1) The curious case of the catatonic biogerontologists

The SENS strategy as described here purports to have all the characteristics that should make it persuasive: it's detailed, it's thorough and it's all firmly based on established experimental work in the various relevant areas of biology. So, you may well ask, where's the catch? Why, on all the many documentaries on aging that remain so popular, don't my colleagues come out and advocate the work that I advocate?

There are three main reasons why most mainstream gerontologists remain so conspicuously absent from the growing band of vocal advocates of the SENS approach to curing aging. They are all understandable, but given the importance of the problem and the key role that senior specialists play in determining public opinion and hence public policy, I feel that none of them is a legitimate excuse.

2) What can you do to further the SENS effort?

3) Why should you do whatever you can to expedite the defeat of human aging?

Because saving lives is the most valuable thing anyone can spend their time doing, and since over 100,000 people die every single day of causes that young people essentially never die of, you'll save more lives by helping to cure aging than in any other way.

Aubrey's arguments on the best use of our time are very direct, to say the least. You may not like the delivery, but it is important to think about the big questions like this. Is saving lives important to you? If so, what are you doing about it? These are simple questions, and it is easy to rub people the wrong way with them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't ask, however.

In past ages, people would lie awake at 2am to wrestle with these questions, knowing that there was nothing they could do that would make a difference. But that is no longer the case - we now live in an age in which science will cure aging, and in which each and every one of us can help to make that happen sooner rather than later...or too late.