Fight Aging!

A couple of recent opinions from the Russian end of the longevity science advocacy community - the second edited somewhat to remove the standard set of automated translation artifacts. Machine translation is improving, but still somewhat slowly at this point.

We Have to Have More Courage to Insist Aging is Accepted as a Disease

Right now one can't come to the hospital and say, "doctor, I've got a problem, I am aging." People would laugh at such a patient, however this is the best kind of patient, the smartest one, one who cares about his future and wants to prevent the upcoming illnesses and frailty.

How to start a conversation about life extension?

Let's say you touched the light of truth and decide to convince people of the need to spend their resources on radical life extension. First, please accept my admiration - what you think - is the most important task for you, for me and for all the people on the planet. Now your goal is to convey a simple message to your buddies to live - good and bad die. Here you will find a shock, most people do not agree with this rather obvious postulate. The overwhelming majority stand against their own immediate death, but insist on the fact that the after-life is beautiful and that man should not argue with nature in the matter of aging. Why should I have to argue with this sort of person? It may be worthwhile to wish them a speedy dispatch to their forefathers, such that they stop creating negative public opinion about the radical life extension, thus helping to kill you by making progress a little less likely.

There is another school in transhumanism, which states that people need to talk about a more moderate view of prevention of age-related diseases and healthy aging, and then most people will agree to help. In my view, this agreement is not worth anything, because for one it has not yet gained any great success, but more importantly it does not lead to scientific experiments aimed at radical life extension. I believe that you first need to attract people who want to live a long time, who want to live come what may. Then you deliver the motivation, a way to wake up such a man. You have the most wonderful news for him that ever he heard: "You have a chance not to die!"

Those who regularly write on the topic of aging research and longevity science are a diverse bunch, but not yet a large enough group to find any two who completely agree with one another on all points. Pick any of those I link to or quote on a regular basis here at Fight Aging!, and I doubt that we overlap on even a majority of positions when it comes to the details.