An Interview With Aubrey de Grey
LabLit publishes an interview with biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, heavier on the human interest side than usual: de Grey moved from computer science to gerontology "because I met the right woman. There is a 19-year difference between us; I met her when she was 45 while I was at Cambridge. As scientists we spoke about science a lot. And we spoke a lot about the problem of aging and the more I read about it the more I got worked up about the problem. Now, 100,000 people die every day because of aging, which is not a joke. ... Luck has played an important role. When I wrote the first Bioessay in 1997, the editor of the journal was highly impressed with the essay and asked me to write a book. I finished the book before the deadline in Spring 1998 but the publishing house was in trouble. It took them a whole year to stand up on their feet and before they could publish my book they asked me to review it. In a year, I knew a lot more biology than before. I changed the bad job I had done into something that I am proud of even now. ... I believe that scientists can change fields easily and sometimes make a bigger impact in the new fields they enter. I think it's because people who move do not look at the same problem from the traditional point-of-view. This enables them to come up with unique solutions. We are not trapped by dogma and if we are bold we can rise quickly."