Fight Aging!

Thoughts on aging from Hybrid Reality: "In the 2050 family picture, there will be many siblings in their 60s with graying hair, a handful of adult children with their spouses, and just two or three grandchildren. It's a strange picture: a family with more older people than younger people. Everything we've grown up seeing in our families and neighborhoods is contrary to this picture. Yet this is exactly the kind of family that will dominate the middle and late half of the 21st century. We're moving to a world of old people, and unless science can radically stop the aging process, that family will be yours in 2050. ... Old age brings maladies like diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's; it makes one tired easily, unable to sleep well, or run and have sex easily; it makes one's metabolism slow, one's bones brittle, and one's skin wrinkled. In other words, old age is not fun. Frankly, it is hard to argue with the fact that old age is generally more unpleasant than youth. [Aubrey de] Grey believes that science is capable of stopping the aging mechanisms of our bodies. If he receives the funding he needs, he is convinced that we can decouple chronological age from biological age, i.e. even if we're chronologically 70 years old, for instance, our bodies can biologically look and feel as if they're 50, 30 or even 20 years old. ... Which world do you want to live in: the gray world or the youthful world? If you support the young world, you need to push the FDA to treat aging like a disease so that anti-aging research can be funded, and perhaps even write a check to the SENS Foundation started by Aubrey de Grey. ... You need to act today: your future family portrait depends on it."

Link: http://bigthink.com/ideas/24760