Fight Aging!

One of the first posts at Fight Aging! was a draft presentation for The Three Hundred initiative of the Methuselah Foundation. This initiative has now been launched, and you can read the invitation and call to action at the Foundation website:

What's it worth to you to live 150 healthy years? What's it worth to you to raise the average human lifespan to 150 years, just as a start?

These are not idle questions.

Our fund-raising experience has convinced us that there really are thousands of individuals who will be willing to step forward and choose life over money. So we're taking an entirely different approach to fundraising.

We are looking for a few good people to make a meaningful, but affordable commitment: $1,000 a year, by the end of each year, for 25 years, which amounts to $85 a month or $2.75 a day, the equivalent of one visit to Starbucks.

Our model is a classical one. It's based on another battle that saved the future of Western Civilization: Thermopylae. In 480 B.C., 300 Spartan warriors fought against incredible odds, so that the rest of Greece could mobilize against Darius's Persian hordes. Without their delaying action at the narrow pass of Thermopylae, the achievements of Greece and our culture as we know it would have been swept away.

The Methuselah Foundation is asking you to follow in the footsteps of this noble Three Hundred, not to risk your lives, but to provide some of your treasure, so that others may live ... and live ... and live, so that the human species can beat back an enemy even more dangerous than the Persians - the Grim Reaper himself.

This special group - strictly limited to 300 individuals - will live on in history just as the original 300 have, even to this day. You can be one of them.

The names of the 300 Spartans who died at Thermopylae were engraved on a stone tablet in Sparta that was still legible seven centuries after the event. A momument stands to this day to pay homage to their sacrifice. We are asking you to lend your name to this enterprise, and be remembered for as long as the race survives. We are asking you to participate in one of the most historic moments in human history, the moment when we overcome the final barrier.

We have reached a potential tipping point in human history: a time in which the quest to extend the healthy human life span can be taken seriously and extensive resources devoted to understand and defeat the aging process. The pledges of the Three Hundred will help further large sums to be raised for Foundation projects such as the Methuselah Mouse Prize for anti-aging research.

I am a member of the Three Hundred, and I have put my money where my mouth is. To become one of the Three Hundred is to take the initiative, to recognize that our contributions will make an ever-growing difference to the future of medical research, health and longevity. We are the rainmakers; the pebbles who trigger the avalanche; the first to heed the call. By our actions, we lead the way and will long be remembered for it.

Think deeply, follow my lead, and join the Three Hundred. Take part in the fight to cure aging!