What the LifeStar Project is Presently Up To
You'll recall I mentioned the LifeStar Project initiative of the Millard Foundation recently:
The Millard Foundation principals, and by extension the LifeStar Project, differ from other large Foundations interested in aging and longevity - such as the Glenn Foundation and the Ellison Foundation - by virtue of their strong support for the "repair the damage" viewpoint that informs the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence. Aging is exactly the results of an accumulation of biochemical damage acquired over time: we should be trying to directly repair that damage, not just slow down its accumulation by tinkering with genes and metabolism.
From the LifeStar website, a look at what they're presently up to:
What is needed - and does not yet exist - is a concerted, focused, competent, and fully-funded effort to finish the development of the complete set of therapies and protocols that will prevent the occurrence of the diseases of aging....
Our focus right now is developing the basic "Foundation Document" - which will set forth the mission clearly; of course, the formal project plan and proposal will be thousands of pages and will take most of a year - and funding - to prepare. In the meantime, we are working to set forth the mission and the basic plan in a book to be published later this year, which we hope will elicit the necessary support for humanity to embark on this exciting and historic endeavor.
I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this book in due course. I can't say as I agree with their apparent focus on inducing government funding and participation as the best path forward, however. I'm in the philanthropic funding camp: culture the visionaries who will pay for research and development most likely to succeed, bootstrap the proof of principle onto the table, and the rest will follow as people see what can be achieved. Involving politicians in anything, let alone something of vital importance, does not have a good track record.