Fight Aging!

Like the Maximum Life Foundation, which I commented on in a post here not so long ago, the Manhattan Beach Project is a wrapper for entrepreneur Dave Kekich's view of longevity science and advocacy for progress in enhancing the healthy human life span.

Our first scientific anti-aging conference was held in Manhattan Beach, California over nine years ago. This was no ordinary conference. Rather, it was a high-powered brainstorm session to figure out how to reverse aging. Twelve researchers from around the world combined their genius and their levels of expertise in their specific specialties, and they laid the groundwork for what eventually evolved into a scientific roadmap for full age reversal. Each scientist represented a separate discipline. Fields such as stem cells, genomics, nanotechnology, information technology and more were represented. You see, aging is extremely complex, and each scientist contributed a piece of the puzzle.

Just as the Manhattan Project was designed in 1942 to build the atomic bomb to end WW II, the Manhattan 'Beach' Project was founded at the original conference on June 23rd, 2000 as an all-out assault on the world’s biggest killer - Aging.

It has to be said that whenever I look at Kekich's work I am struck by a strong feeling of "personally, I wouldn't go about marketing it this way." The nuclear weapons program analogy there, for example, is extended to a "Nuke Aging" logo on the Manhattan Beach Project website. But what do I know about getting people to see things my way? The clearest sign of diversity in a cultural movement is exactly my reaction to the very characteristic Kekich approach. Diversity means that the range of attempted initiatives is (fortunately) not bound by the limits of any one subculture's imagination: very different attempts will be made to convince various demographics of the merits of longevity science, which should increase the chances of success in at least one initiative.

But onwards: a Longevity Summit under the Manhattan Beach Project umbrella is scheduled for what looks to be the end of November. The Summit agenda lists a mix of well known names from the longevity advocacy and aging research communities, speaking on a range of interesting topics:

I. Intro - David Kekich
II. The Law of Accelerating Returns - Ray Kurzweil via video
III. Caloric Restriction - Stephen Spindler
IV. Evolutionary Genomics of Life Extension - Michael Rose
V. Telomere Maintenance - William Andrews
VI. Aging Genes and Manipulation - Stephen Coles
VII. Restoring Your Immune Function - Derya Unutmaz
VIII. Extracellular Aging and Regeneration - John Furber
IX. Stem Cells/Regenerative Medicine - Michael West
X.Tissue/Organ Storage - Gregory Fahy
XI. SENS/Mitochondrial Rejuvenation - Aubrey de Grey (Two topics - 30 minutes)
XII. Artificial General Intelligence - Peter Voss
XIII. Nanomedicine - Robert Freitas/Ralph Merkle
XIV. Genome Reengineering - Robert Bradbury (Multiple topics - 35 minutes)
XV. 7 Steps to Help Ensure Your Longevity - David Kekich
XVI. Cryonics - Ralph Merkle

A number of transhumanist community favorites are in the list, as you can see. The topic list more or less covers the range of plausible near future research and development paths: the directions in which, ideally, the research community will spend the next few decades moving at speed. A lot of persuasion and fundraising lies between where we stand here and now and getting that process underway, however.