Longevity Meme Newsletter, February 10 2003

LONGEVITY MEME NEWSLETTER
February 10 2003

The Longevity Meme Newsletter is an infrequent e-mail containing news, opinions and happenings for people interested in life extension: making use of diet, lifestyle choices, technology and proven medical advances to live healthy, longer lives.

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THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS BAD PUBLICITY

Or is there? There has been some discussion on mail lists and in forums regarding comments made by Michael Jackson during recent television spots. The pop star (and very rich person, according to some sources) wants to live forever; something he briefly spoke about in a very matter-of-fact way. This cropped up as a couple of throwaway lines in many, many articles. The following link is representative of many:

http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,11228,00.html?tnews

The actual quote:

"Elsewhere, in the ITV documentary, Jackson ruminates about life and death--actually, mostly about life. Jackson's not big on dying.

'I would like to live forever,' he tells Bashir."

As you should all know by now, I'm very big on publicity and public awareness for live extension. Given the low profile that life extension has, I'm all for the possibility of life extension being put forth in any way in the mass media.

Was this Michael Jackson thing good, bad, or a non-event? I have no idea.

I sometimes look at this whole situation from the marketing director point of view: life extension is a wonderful product with no downside that everyone would want if they only realized just how great it actually is. When you have a product like this, you are in an enviable position: there really is no such thing as bad publicity. If people lambaste your product as a terrible thing, all they are doing is spending their money to educate more of the public of the existence of your wonderful product!

That is what I would like to believe, in any case. It would make it easy to dismiss comments of the sort that show up near the end of this Washington Post article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39931-2003Feb7.html

Look for the section entitled "The President's Ethicist." Dr. Leon Kass, Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics is in fine form as usual, decrying life extension technology in any number of ways.

Unfortunately, we cannot dismiss Kass. While he is helping (in his own backwards way) to raise awareness of the possibilities of life extension, he and his bioethicist cronies have a real ability to damage and hold back research in the US. He offers the justification for legislation currently under debate that would shut down or criminalize vast swathes of anti-aging research in this country. France has already done this: it's not as though we can pretend that it can't happen here.

WHY IS PUBLICITY IMPORTANT?

Research and research funding ebbs and flows on public awareness and public opinion. Government funding is usually a small amount of the whole if a field is popular or well known. If the market sees a dollar to be made by selling people what they want, then companies will bloom and research funds will pour forth.

Life extension, aging and anti-aging research is currently seriously under-funded in comparison to, say, cancer, heart disease or AIDS research. When you stop to think about it, this is a very strange state of affairs. After all, everyone ages. Almost everyone is prepared to pay money to slow or halt the progress of aging. Witness the success of vendors claiming to supply "anti-aging" products!

So why is anti-aging, aging and life extension research languishing? One answer is that the wider public really doesn't understand the possibilities that life extension research could bring in the near future. This isn't an insurmountable barrier, however. We can look at what happened in the 80s and 90s for AIDS research, for example. Activist groups were well aware of the possibilities that future research could bring. They worked long and hard, and raised a great noise to the heavens. Lo and behold, the flow of money to AIDS research increased dramatically. Today, AIDS in Western countries is almost a manageable, chronic condition rather than a death sentence. This happened in only 20 years. When political and economic barriers are overcome, AIDS patients elsewhere in the world will enjoy the same benefits.

So something like this could – and indeed should - happen for aging. We need to organize, speak up and make ourselves heard.

FIN

And that's all for this newsletter. See you next time.

DISCUSSION

Have comments for us, or want to discuss the newsletter?

Reason

Founder, Longevity Meme

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Fight Aging!