anti-aging research – U.S. Transhumanist Party

U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon with Abdelhadi Rebbaa on Senolytics – July 28, 2024

August 15, 2024 U.S. Transhumanist Party Comments 0 Comment

Dr. Abdelhadi Rebbaa
Gennady Stolyarov II
Art Ramon Garcia, Jr.
David Wood
Ben Ballweg

On Sunday, July 28, 2024, the U.S. Transhumanist Party invited Dr. Abdelhadi Rebbaa to discuss his views regarding the potential and limitations for using senolytics to treat aging and go over alternative/complementary approaches to delay senescence onset.

Dr. Abdelhadi Rebbaa received his PhD in Biochemistry from the Université Claude Bernard, Lyon, France. He held research and faculty positions at Northwestern University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia University. Over the course of his career, his research encompassed target and drug discovery and development in the fields of cancer, stem cells, and aging. He served as a Principal Investigator on multiple grants, published over 40 manuscripts, and reviewed manuscripts for several high-impact scientific journals. In his role at Ichor Therapeutics from 2018 to 2021, he oversaw the discovery and preclinical testing of small-molecule senolytics and biomarkers of aging. He then worked for SENS Research Foundation between January 2022 and January 2024, where his role was to conceive, design, and oversee research projects on senescence prevention, senolytics, and partial reprogramming. Now he works as a Project Management Consultant in New Jersey.

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Timestamps

7:25 – Dr. Abdelhadi Rebbaa’s presentation
58:28 – External versus internal/inherent (e.g. age-related) causes of senescent cells
1:01:51 – Senomorphics versus senolytics
1:03:05 – The need to replace senescent cells that have been destroyed
1:04:03 – Whether senescent cells crowd out potentially worse cells
1:04:56 – When reprogramming helps, and when it does not
1:06:06 – Whether donating blood can reduce senescence
1:07:14 – Pros and cons of academia, for-profit, and non-profit sectors
1:08:41 – Whether senescent cells are worse than the holes where the senescent cells were (if the senescent cells cannot be replaced)
1:10:40 – How close we are to senolytics approved for use
1:11:56 – How it is good to donate blood
1:12:50 – Any non-prescription senolytics available
1:14:32 – Revisiting SA-beta-Gal
1:18:10 – Whether a young blood transfusion is comparable to a blood donation (as far as reducing negative blood components)
1:18:59 – Lifespan.io’s Rejuvenation Roadmap
1:20:21 – The relation of mental stress to senescent-cell accumulation
1:23:00 – Balancing the effects of senolytics
1:25:12 – Potentially less toxic alternatives to galactose-conjugated navitoclax
1:28:25 – Potential direction of research into senescence in the next 5-10 years
1:30:42 – Whether the Hallmarks of Aging will change
1:31:51 – How therapies for aging can best be employed
1:33:31 – Potentially the best way to treat senescent cells
1:35:10 – How the application of senescent-cell treatment is challenging because of the variety of lifespans of our various cells
1:36:58 – Where the best senolytics research is happening
1:40:22 – Whether senolytic therapies stop being beneficial for a person at a certain age
1:42:06 – Whether the loss of the ability of the body to remove senescent cells is indicative of a deeper problem
1:43:48 – What we can gain from knowing how mice respond to senolytic therapies
1:47:14 – Just how complex senescent cells and senescence can be
1:49:38 – How rejuvenating senescent cells could be better than destroying them
1:50:30 – Dr. Rebbaa’s closing remarks

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See Dr. Abdelhadi Rebbaa’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdelhadi-rebbaa-32bb9279/

Join the U.S. Transhumanist Party for free, no matter where you reside: https://transhumanist-party.org/membership/

15-Day Exposure Period for Platform Vote #9

January 12, 2024 Gennady Stolyarov II Comments 18 comments

Gennady Stolyarov II

The U.S. Transhumanist Party (USTP) hereby opens a 15-day public exposure period on various Platform proposals intended to catch up on various developments that have occurred in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The USTP’s most recent Platform vote occurred during March 25-28, 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, after which an ongoing cascade of the pandemic’s consequences – including secondary, tertiary, and long-term consequences which continue to manifest pervasively in American and global contexts – prevented the organization of another Platform vote until the present time. However, during that time, various external developments, as well as the continuing course of the pandemic, have necessitated certain updates. The USTP is aware that a variety of other proposals have been submitted in the intervening 3.5 years as well, and it is intended that future Platform votes will be organized to address those proposals. The present Platform vote is structured so as to balance the need to make certain updates to keep provisions of the Platform current and relevant with the need to be reasonably concise in order to encourage widespread participation among the USTP Membership.

A vote will be scheduled on some or all of the items below once they have been exposed for at least 15 days. For each item, a 7-day voting period is expected to be opened at the earliest on Saturday, January 27, 2024.

During the exposure period, please post your comments on this thread. If you post comments intended to be considered in voting and/or amending any of these planks in any other electronic medium, please note that you thereby give your consent to have your comments reproduced with attribution or linked within this discussion thread, in order to direct members’ attention and consideration to them.

After the exposure period, a 7-day electronic voting period will occur. Instructions for electronic voting will be sent to members of the U.S. Transhumanist Party via e-mail at that time. All individuals who are members of the U.S. Transhumanist Party as of the end of the exposure period and who have expressed agreement with its three Core Ideals will be eligible to vote thereafter. You can still vote if you become a member during the exposure period, so please apply here if you are interested. During the 7-day electronic voting period, you will still be able to become a member – but you will only be able to vote in subsequent elections, since we seek for voting on any given issue to be done by those members who have had an opportunity to thoroughly consider that issue and be involved in deliberations regarding it.

Electronic voting will be conducted by a ranked-preference method if more than a single option is presented for the wording of a particular plank or segment of a plank. Members will be able to rank-order their preferred selections on each individual Section. The originally proposed text of each Section will be available for selection, as well as any reasonable amendments proposed by any member. Leadership of the U.S. Transhumanist Party reserves the right to edit any proposed amendment for correctness of spelling and grammar. The status-quo option – either “No Section of this sort” or the previous Section wording will also be a choice, depending on whether the Section in question is new or proposed to be revised. Any Section where a majority of votes favors the status-quo option will be not be adopted. Members will also be able to abstain from voting on any given Section.

The ranked-preference method has the advantage of eliminating a “winner-take-all” or “first-past-the-post” mentality and preventing people from being channeled into voting for sub-optimal choices (in their view) just because they fear an even less palatable alternative prevailing. Within the ranked-preference methodology, if no option obtains a clear majority as voters’ first choice, the option having the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated from consideration, and all those who voted for that option will have their votes assigned to their second-choice options. This process of elimination continues until one particular option has a clear majority of votes.

The U.S. Transhumanist Party encourages all members to participate in this process and for other transhumanists to sign up for membership during the exposure period.

Section E9-A. Defeat of COVID as a Priority

Option E9-A-1. Given that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the world and will not end as long as immunity from vaccination or prior infection can be bypassed by subsequent mutated escape variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the United States Transhumanist Party supports concerted scientific and technological efforts to eliminate COVID-19 as a threat to public health. These efforts may include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following:

Ancillary Provision E9-A-i. Development of a universal vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that would work against all possible variants of the virus and would confer lasting immunity.

Ancillary Provision E9-A-ii. Development of harmless variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that would outcompete the existing variants without damaging any human or other animal host.

Ancillary Provision E9-A-iii. Development of antibodies that are capable of neutralizing any variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Ancillary Provision E9-A-iv. Development of reliable cures for all varieties of Long COVID or Post-COVID Syndrome.

The United States Transhumanist Party considers only scientific and technological solutions to be capable of eliminating COVID-19 as a threat to public health and does not support lockdowns, restrictions on individual liberty or medical choice, or demonization of individuals who make any personal health choices regarding their approach to COVID-19 precautions – including individuals who take extensive, moderate, mild, or no precautions. The United States Transhumanist Party also holds that no individual should be compelled to undertake any behaviors that may expose that individual to greater risk of contracting COVID-19.

Section E9-B. Perception of Artificial Intelligence as an Opportunity

Option E9-B-1. The United States Transhumanist Party supports approaching technologies of artificial intelligence primarily as opportunities rather than as threats. The potential of artificial intelligence, including generative AI, to foster creativity, solve problems, cure diseases, create new opportunities, and facilitate radical abundance far outweighs the risks and dangers of AI. The United States Transhumanist Party recognizes that AI safety and AI alignment are important pursuits to maximize the probability of predominantly beneficial consequences from future AI systems. Furthermore, the United States Transhumanist Party supports restrictions on the ability to use AI systems for intentionally destructive purposes; such restrictions would include a ban on autonomous weapons. However, these efforts should be undertaken in a rational, proportionate, evidence-based manner, avoiding unsubstantiated speculation, alarmist hype, and doomsday pronouncements. Furthermore, the United States Transhumanist Party opposes any efforts to restrict individual liberty or initiate physically aggressive action against other individuals or countries in the name of stopping allegedly dangerous AI development.

Section E9-C. Reversible Cryopreservation Techniques

Option E9-C-1. [Based on Proposal by Vladimir Shakirov] Recognizing that the achievement of reversible cryopreservation techniques could enable the realization of individuals’ right to life (brutally violated by so-called “natural” death) by waiting until future technologies could bring a cryopreserved patient out of the cryopreserved state and achieve cures for diseases and aging, the United States Transhumanist Party emphasizes the urgency of advancing reversible cryopreservation research. Therefore, the United States Transhumanist Party supports the allocation of an annual funding package of $10 billion for reversible cryopreservation research. This funding shall be expeditiously directed to esteemed research institutions with a proven track record of focusing on the development and implementation of reversible cryopreservation techniques.

Section E9-D. Public Money for Public Code

Option E9-D-1. [Based on Proposal by Martin van der Kroon] The United States Transhumanist Party supports the implementation of the ‘Public Money for Public Code’ concept, which holds that public money should, where reasonably possible, come to benefit the public first and foremost, and secondarily might also benefit other parties as well.

Public code is understood as code that is publicly available and more commonly referred to as Open Source, for example code released under the GPLv3 (General Public License version 3). The reasoning of ‘Public Money for Public Code’ is that public money should not be spent on proprietary software that benefits a select group of companies, but rather used to support Open-Source projects that are alternatives to proprietary software. As Open-Source software is available for free to the public, said stimulus of Open-Source software could benefit both the public as well as public institutions. An example here could be an alternative to Microsoft Office, such as LibreOffice.

Many Open-Source projects operate via volunteers contributing to the project’s efforts. Opening up the possibility to receive funding for a project could incentivize more people to contribute to a project, and perhaps even use contribution to Open-Source projects as a means of stable income. This incentivizes citizens to participate, as besides the admirable goal of doing good for the public, it also contributes to the participants’ livelihood, or helps them decide to split their worktime between the roles of an employee and a self-employed contributor.

Likewise, this might incentivize software companies to participate as well, as it can earn them revenue. It would, however, be important to observe that companies do not drown out individual contributors, as this could have a detrimental effect on incentivizing public participation.

The public participation would be an important element of the ‘Public Money for Public Code’ implementation, as it would also be a public showcase to stimulate interest in programming in education and beyond.

Section E9-E. Privacy on Social Media

Option E9-E-1. [Based on Proposal by Martin van der Kroon] The United States Transhumanist Party supports efforts for social media to improve privacy settings, in granularity, usability, as well as awareness of such privacy features, for users. Better control of privacy can minimize the scraping of information, including information that can be used for identifying targets by malicious actors, from websites.

Section E9-F. Restraint of Government Agencies’ Efforts to Undermine Private Businesses’ Security Measures

Option E9-F-1. [Based on Proposal by Martin van der Kroon] The United States Transhumanist Party supports efforts to restrain government agencies from efforts to limit, oppose, or undermine security initiatives by companies and businesses. Although their motives might be pure, to uncover criminal activity for example, such efforts can in the process undermine security on a much larger scale. If government agencies can have access, so can malicious actors.

Section E9-G. Security Whistleblower Program

Option E9-G-1. [Based on Proposal by Martin van der Kroon] The US Transhumanist Party supports efforts to create a security whistleblower initiative where a whistleblower can report known security issues that are not being addressed by a company or government institution. This could also aid the whistleblower in the event that they would suffer negative consequences by their employer for addressing security issues.

Proposed Amendments to Existing Sections

Members will be given the option to either retain existing language of a plank or to adopt any of the listed proposed amendments. Ranked-preference voting will be conducted for any Section for which more than one amendment has been proposed. Members will also be able to abstain from each vote.

New language in each amendment is stated in bold, italic blue text. Language proposed to be deleted is stated in red strikethrough text.

1. Amendment to Section XXVII to Align with U.S. Transhumanist Party Support for Ranked-Preference Voting

Current Version of Section XXVII. The United States Transhumanist Party advocates Constitutional reform to abolish the Electoral College in the United States Presidential elections and render the plurality of the popular vote the sole criterion for the election of President.

Amendment XXVII-1. The United States Transhumanist Party advocates Constitutional reform to abolish the Electoral College in the United States Presidential elections and render ~~the plurality of the popular vote the sole criterion for the election of President~~ the criterion for the election of President to be an outcome of the popular vote decided by ranked-preference voting or a similar mechanism that allows voters to select multiple options in a manner that more completely expresses their views.

2. Amendment to Section XXXVI to Provide Exceptions to Taxation for Basic Necessities

Current Version of Section XXXVI. The United States Transhumanist Party supports the elimination of graduated taxation and income taxation more generally. Instead, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates a flat percentage-of-sales tax applicable only to purchases from businesses whose combined nationwide revenues from all affiliates exceed a specified threshold. This tax should be built into the price of goods from such large businesses and should not impede transaction efficiency in any manner. Transactions pertaining to wages, salaries, gifts, donations, barter, employee benefits, and inheritances should remain completely untaxed, as should transactions involving solely individuals and/or small businesses, for whom the establishment of a tax-reporting infrastructure would be onerous. Furthermore, all taxes on land and property should be abolished.

Amendment XXXVI-1. The United States Transhumanist Party supports the elimination of graduated taxation and income taxation more generally. Instead, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates a flat percentage-of-sales tax applicable only to purchases from businesses whose combined nationwide revenues from all affiliates exceed a specified threshold. This tax should be built into the price of goods from such large businesses and should not impede transaction efficiency in any manner. This tax would not be imposed on life necessities, defined as goods that are consumable in the near term and whose primary purpose is to facilitate human survival. Transactions pertaining to wages, salaries, gifts, donations, barter, employee benefits, and inheritances should remain completely untaxed, as should transactions involving solely individuals and/or small businesses, for whom the establishment of a tax-reporting infrastructure would be onerous. Furthermore, all taxes on land and property should be abolished.

3. Amendment to Section LXXIX to Update the Discussion of the Status of Right-to-Try Legislation

Current Version of Section LXXIX: The United States Transhumanist Party supports repealing the current requirement in the United States that drugs or treatments may not be used, even on willing patients, unless approval for such drugs or treatments is received from the Food and Drug Administration. Such requirements are a profound violation of patient sovereignty; a person who is terminally ill is unable to choose to take a risk on an unapproved drug or treatment unless this person is fortunate enough to participate in a clinical trial. Even then, once the clinical trial ends, the treatment must be discontinued, even if it was actually successful at prolonging the person’s life. This is not only profoundly tragic, but morally unconscionable as well. The most critical reform needed is to allow unapproved drugs and treatments to be marketed and consumed. If the FDA wishes to strongly differentiate between approved and unapproved treatments, then a strongly worded warning label could be required for unapproved treatments, and patients could even be required to sign a consent form stating that they have been informed of the risks of an unapproved treatment. This reform to directly extend many lives and to redress a moral travesty should be the top political priority of advocates of indefinite life extension. Over the coming decades, its effect will be to allow cutting-edge treatments to reach a market sooner and thus to enable data about those treatments’ effects to be gathered more quickly and reliably. Because many treatments take 10-15 years to receive FDA approval, this reform could by itself speed up the real-world advent of indefinite life extension by over a decade.

Amendment LXXIX-1. The United States Transhumanist Party supports repealing the current requirement in the United States that, in most cases, drugs or treatments may not be used, even on willing patients, unless approval for such drugs or treatments is received from the Food and Drug Administration. Such requirements are a profound violation of patient sovereignty; a person who is terminally ill is often unable to choose to take a risk on an unapproved drug or treatment unless this person is fortunate enough to participate in a clinical trial. Even then, once the clinical trial ends, the treatment must be is often discontinued, even if it was actually successful at prolonging the person’s life. While the Federal Right-to-Try Act of 2017 and various State-level Right-to-Try Acts have been steps in the right direction, they have seldom been utilized, because of various other regulatory barriers, as well as drug manufacturers’ reluctance to expose themselves to liability and regulatory risk. This is not only profoundly tragic, but morally unconscionable as well. The most critical reform needed is to allow unapproved drugs and treatments to be marketed and consumed. Every effort should be made to allow and encourage the manufacturers and providers of experimental medicines and medical treatments to make them available to willing patients with proper disclosure and informed consent, accompanied by protections against liability and adverse regulatory actions. Currently, most Right-to-Try Acts are limited to terminally ill patients, and should be expanded to model Montana’s Right-to-Try Act and the Best Choice Medicine concept to make the choice to pursue experimental drugs and treatments, including gene therapies, available to all patients. If the FDA wishes to strongly differentiate between approved and unapproved treatments, then a strongly worded warning label could be required for unapproved treatments, and patients could even be required to sign a consent form stating that they have been informed of the risks of an unapproved treatment. This reform to directly extend many lives and to redress a moral travesty should be the top political priority of advocates of indefinite life extension. Over the coming decades, its effect will be to allow cutting-edge treatments to reach a market sooner and thus to enable data about those treatments’ effects to be gathered more quickly and reliably. Because many treatments take 10-15 years to receive FDA approval, this reform could by itself speed up the real-world advent of indefinite life extension by over a decade.

4. Amendment to Section XCIX to Revise Proposal for COVID Universal Basic Income to a Proposal to Indefinitely Cover all Costs of COVID Treatments and Vaccinations

Current Version of Section XCIX: The United States Transhumanist Party supports for an immediate, universal, unconditional basic income of at least $1000 per month to be provided to every United States citizen for the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak and its immediate aftermath, without regard for individuals’ means or other sources of income. The priority for this program should be to prevent massive and irreparable economic disruptions to the lives of Americans in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic.

Amendment XCIX-1: The United States Transhumanist Party supports for n immediate, universal, unconditional basic income of at least $1000 per month to be provided to every United States citizen for the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak and its immediate aftermath, without regard for individuals’ means or other sources of income. advocates for all American residents to continue to receive free health care for the disease of COVID-19, including free testing, vaccination, antiviral medications, and any other services involved in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. The priority for this program should be to prevent massive and irreparable economic and health disruptions to the lives of Americans in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic. Requiring consumers and patients to pay for COVID-related care would increase the number of people who refuse to obtain vaccination or treatment for purely financial reasons, thus amplifying the difficulty of ever defeating COVID-19 – an endeavor that is aided by maximizing the amount of immunity and available health care for the population.

5. Amendment to Section CI to Update the Discussion of Pandemic-Related Travel Delays

Current Version of Section CI: In recognition that the recent screening bottlenecks at United States airports create situations of unacceptable crowding which further contribute to the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates for immediate admittance through security checkpoints of the vast majority of travelers currently waiting at airports in the United States. Such travelers may be required to subsequently undergo health screenings at other facilities within the United States within a certain period of time, as long as such screenings do not involuntarily place the individuals being screened in close physical proximity to one another.

Amendment CI-1: In recognition that the recent screening bottlenecks unprecedented and prolonged patterns of flight delays and cancellations at United States airports create situations of unacceptable crowding which further contribute to the spread of detriments to quality of life and mobility to American passengers and were due directly to the supply-chain disruptions, aircraft shortages, labor shortages, and poor decisions by major airlines to cut staff in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates for immediate admittance through security checkpoints of the vast majority of travelers currently waiting at airports in the United States. Such travelers may be required to subsequently undergo health screenings at other facilities within the United States within a certain period of time, as long as such screenings do not involuntarily place the individuals being screened in close physical proximity to one another. measures to enable airlines which reduced aircraft counts and dismissed staff during the COVID-19 epidemic to purchase or construct sufficient aircraft to replace the reduced capacity, to actively utilize such aircraft and restore prior routes, and to offer to re-hire all staff members who were dismissed as a result of prior responses to the epidemic. In the event that specific individual former staff members do not wish to return to their previous positions, they should be replaced with others who are willing to take on those roles for appropriate compensation and benefits. Sufficient incentives should be offered to airlines to allow pre-COVID flight, maintenance, and staffing levels to continue indefinitely.

6. Amendment to Section CII to Update the Discussion of Recalling United States Overseas Military Personnel

Current Version of Section CII: The United States Transhumanist Party supports the recall of all United States military personnel from overseas stations as soon as possible and their deployment for the purpose of rapid hospital construction in the United States, as well as for providing rapid emergency aid and essential infrastructure improvements. Continued military presence abroad only unnecessarily exposes American troops to the risk of infection, while the expertise of American military personnel in crisis response is urgently needed within American borders.

Amendment CII-1: The United States Transhumanist Party supports the recall of all as many United States military personnel from overseas stations as soon as reasonably possible, with the exception of those specifically needed to defend American assets and American citizens and to carry out specific and limited previously agreed-upon treaty obligations, and their deployment for the purpose of rapid hospital construction in the United States, as well as for providing rapid emergency aid and essential infrastructure improvements. Continued military presence abroad only unnecessarily exposes American troops to the risk of infection, while the expertise of American military personnel in crisis response is urgently needed within American borders. improving domestic defense, infrastructure, and crisis response in providing peaceful assistance to the civilian population in times of major disruptions to everyday life.

7. Amendment to Section CIII to Emphasize the Need to Support Lasting Cures and Vaccines for COVID-19

Current Version of Section CIII: The United States Transhumanist Party supports the rapid research into effective cures and vaccines for COVID-19 and the harnessing of synergies from this research to also develop a cure for the common cold and more effective vaccination against influenza. Such research should proceed with no barriers, subject to the researchers’ expression of ethical intentions, and any regulations or processes that would delay the progress of such research should be immediately waived or repealed. In the effort to accelerate progress in this field, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates for an immediate $100 billion funding package for the rapid development of a COVID-19 vaccine, with all volunteers being accepted into human trials as soon as practicable. The United States Transhumanist Party advocates for government funding and ownership of any cure for COVID-19, to be distributed free of charge to those infected with the virus.

Amendment CIII-1: The United States Transhumanist Party supports the rapid research into effective lasting cures and vaccines for COVID-19, such as antibodies that respond to all variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and vaccines that permanently protect against all such variants, and the harnessing of synergies from this research to also develop a cure for the common cold and more effective vaccination against influenza. Such research should proceed with no barriers, subject to the researchers’ expression of ethical intentions, and any regulations or processes that would delay the progress of such research should be immediately waived or repealed. In the effort to accelerate progress in this field, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates for an immediate $100 billion funding package for the rapid development of a universal COVID-19 vaccine that would be permanently effective against all variants, with all volunteers being accepted into human trials as soon as practicable. The United States Transhumanist Party advocates for government funding and ownership release into the public domain of any cure or future vaccine for COVID-19, to be distributed free of charge to those infected with the virus and to all who wish to prevent such infection.

8. Amendment to Section CIV to Generalize the USTP’s Support for an Annual $100 Billion Funding Package for Anti-Aging Research

Current Version of Section CIV: Because biological aging is the number-one risk factor for mortality and severe complications from COVID-19 infections, as well as infections of virtually every sort, the United States Transhumanist Party emphasizes the importance of reversing biological aging as rapidly as possible and thereby protecting more lives from future pandemics. Accordingly, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates for a permanent, annual $100 billion funding package for anti-aging research, to be immediately distributed to leading research organizations in the field which have in the past specifically identified the defeat and reversal of biological aging as their goals.

Amendment CIV-1 [Proposal by Vladimir Shakirov]: Because biological aging is the number-one risk factor for mortality and disabilities in elderly people, and for severe complications from COVID-19 infections, as well as infections of virtually every sort, and thus brutally violates the fundamental rights of people to life and health, the United States Transhumanist Party emphasizes the importance of reversing biological aging as rapidly as possible and thereby protecting more lives, including from future pandemics. Accordingly, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates for a permanent, annual $100 billion funding package for anti-aging research, to be immediately distributed to leading research organizations in the field which have in the past specifically identified the defeat and reversal of biological aging as their goals.

9. Amendment to Section CX to Reflect Success of USTP’s Recommendation for the Distribution of Diagnostic Test Kits and the Need to Maintain Robust Data on the COVID Pandemic

Current Version of Section CX: The United States Transhumanist Party supports the immediate deployment of as many COVID-19 diagnostic tests as possible to the general population, with the aim of achieving universal testing of every American, even those without symptoms, free of charge. Universal testing is necessary to understand the true prevalence of COVID-19 infections and the proportion of serious cases and fatalities relative to actual total cases, not merely reported cases. This would enable a true understanding of the extent of the epidemic’s spread as well as how the rates of serious complications and death compare to the common cold and influenza. The United States Transhumanist Party supports generous aid to both private and governmental research teams working in parallel on developing effective testing kits and approaches, particularly those which do not require large numbers of people to congregate.

The United States Transhumanist Party also advocates for COVID-19 testing kits to be developed that could result in tests being self-administered by individuals in their own homes and then mailed to laboratories for evaluation. This would minimize the physical contact of individuals being tested with medical practitioners and other patients.

Amendment CX-1: The United States Transhumanist Party supports the immediate ongoing, continuous, and indefinite deployment of as many COVID-19 diagnostic tests as possible to the general population, with the aim of achieving universal testing of every American, even those without symptoms, free of charge. Universal testing is necessary to understand the true prevalence of COVID-19 infections and the proportion of serious cases and fatalities relative to actual total cases, not merely reported cases. This would enable a true understanding of the extent of the epidemic’s spread as well as how the rates of serious complications and death compare to the common cold and influenza. The United States Transhumanist Party supports generous aid to both private and governmental research teams working in parallel on developing effective testing kits and approaches, particularly those which do not require large numbers of people to congregate manufacturers of effective diagnostic tests for COVID-19 that can recognize emerging variants, such that those tests could be manufactured in sufficient quantity to provide a test to every American who wants one.

The United States Transhumanist Party also advocates achieved success in advocating for COVID-19 testing kits to be developed that could result in tests being self-administered by individuals in their own homes and then mailed to laboratories for evaluation. This would minimize has reduced the physical contact of individuals being tested with medical practitioners and other patients. However, the United States Transhumanist Party expresses concern regarding significant lack of data about the ongoing prevalence of COVID-19 within communities in the United States. Such data, which used to be tracked rigorously and published regularly, have now become sparse and have failed to capture all sources of COVID-19 infection. In order to be able to track the spread of new variants of the virus, authorities need to return to the level of data collection and publication that existed during the early pandemic in 2020.

Anti-Aging: The Growing Popularity Of Radical Life Extension – Article by Kimberly Forsythe

January 4, 2021 Kimberly Forsythe Comments 0 Comment

Kimberly Forsythe

There are numerous anti-aging therapies, which are used to slow the aging process in humans. Each of these therapies has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, there are anti-aging processes such as anti-oxidants, anti-aging nutrients, anti-aging exercise programs, anti-aging diets, and anti-aging supplements that are said to extend a person’s lifespan. Aging is said to be a natural process that cannot be slowed or reversed once humans undergo it, and which accelerates greatly after puberty and early adulthood; however, some experts do not agree with this. There are several theories on the subject of aging that have varying outlooks on the actual causes of aging.

What Causes Aging in Humans?

There are various theories that explain the causes of aging, but they do not all agree. While we are making new discoveries all the time, we still do not have definitive answers on what causes aging. Some researchers believe that oxidative damage is what causes aging, and others believe genetics are involved in causing aging.

The evidence for the oxidative damage by sunlight, poor diet, and poor exercising habits is strong. For example, if your parents or grandparents had a shorter lifespan than the average person, it’s possible that part of the reason was that they didn’t have a good diet, they didn’t exercise, or they didn’t avoid the common environmental hazards we encounter today. That certainly makes some sense.

You might think that they all contribute equally, which is certainly plausible. Consider how much impact the food we eat has on our health. If the foods we eat are generally unhealthy, then the oxidative damage done to our cells will be greater, and our lifespan will be shortened. If the foods we eat are rich in antioxidants and are beneficial to health, then we will be healthier, and the oxidative damage we do to our cells will be lessened.

So, one could say that oxidative damage is what causes aging, and the antioxidants are what counteract it. But that’s too simple. Actually, free radicals do more damage to our cells than oxidative damage, so it stands to reason that free radicals add to the damage. In other words, instead of wearing away at the cells in a chemical process, free radicals cause cell death.

However, the evidence for genetics is also strong. When the telomeres within the protective shell of the cell are damaged, they become shorter. As a result, the “RNA” within the telomere becomes too short. The second factor which causes aging is cell senescence, or aging at the cellular level.

There are many different forms of cell senescence, but the main ones are in peripheral tissues such as skin, muscles, and blood vessels. If this continues, then the total number of cells may start to decline. The decline in cell numbers is partly what causes aging in general.

Another factor is called DNA damage, and this is caused by exposure to radiation and to chemicals used during manufacturing. This is a big problem, because DNA is responsible for the repair of cellular damage, and if it gets damaged, it can stop replicating to produce new cells altogether. This would mean that the aging process could not be stopped, and the body will just keep getting older without any real control.

What is Radical Life Extension?

Radical life extension is the process of using anti-aging technology to reverse age-related processes that are already underway. Anti-aging techniques rely on a combination of knowledge and understanding of the aging process, as well as on modern-day scientific breakthroughs. Scientists are only just now beginning to unlock many of the mysteries surrounding the mechanisms of aging.

In theory, we could live forever if we found a way to completely rejuvenate ourselves after we passed the age of sixty. Some people are under the impression that curing or reversing aging is impossible. But at the very least, we might be able to make ourselves better, or at least age gracefully. It is not known how far the search has come, but some of the results so far have been very promising.

When Will Aging be Cured or Reversed?

To cure or reverse aging, it will be necessary to find some way to increase the lifespan of humans. Many questions surround which scientific approach to anti-aging will be the most beneficial to humans. Perhaps we will lengthen lifespans by curing all of the diseases that we are prone to, or perhaps by using genetic engineering to insert new genes into the human genome. For some transhumanists, the ultimate aim would be to live forever. Others, however, wish only to increase the number of healthy years.

There is a great deal of interest in the subject of radical life extension, and there is considerable money involved. Investors are piling in to fund research to unlock more theories about aging and the mysteries that scientists are trying to unravel. There are, unfortunately, many unfounded claims and charlatans out there misleading the public about how we may be able to cure or reverse aging.

Some people have made the mistake of thinking that radical life extension is magic, or of taking a magical pill that will turn you into an immortal. While there is promising research for medications that can reduce biological age, the notion that it will be an immediate and instant cure is likely a distortion of the truth. We need to understand that aging is just one of the processes that occur within us, but there are many ways we can counter these processes. It is possible to extend your life significantly, but this requires an understanding of the aging process as a whole.

Overall, the more resources we put into studying the aging process and search for effective ways of curing or reversing aging, the faster we will find answers to questions that humans have sought after for ages. The “Fountain of Youth” may arrive sooner than we think. It is important that we collectively understand the implications of reversing aging and take steps to address these issues as soon as possible.

An Open Letter to the Transhumanist Community – Article by Arin Vahanian

August 15, 2019 Arin Vahanian Comments 3 comments

Arin Vahanian

During the events that have transpired over the past few weeks, many of which have affected (and not in positive ways, sometimes) the USTP, Humanity+, and other organizations in the Transhumanism movement, I have mostly refrained from sharing my opinions and thoughts. However, I feel it is time now to share something that has been on my mind for a while.

But before I do so, I would like to express my disappointment at the level of discourse I am seeing in our community as a whole. Just a few days ago, the USTP released a statement condemning the vicious, vindictive manner in which someone in the Transhumanist community treated other members, as well as USTP Officers.

Instead of using this as a rallying cry for greater cooperation, an opportunity for increased self-awareness, as well as coordination on our shared goals, we now, yet again, have a candidate attacking another candidate, insulting their intelligence, not to mention their physical appearance.

Such petty, cruel behavior not only reflects negatively upon the person engaging in such behavior, but also reflects negatively on Transhumanism as a whole.

The sad truth of the matter, and what has been on my mind for a long while, but which I have been reluctant to share, is that many of the things that members of the general public dislike about Transhumanism, we have displayed here with great fervor, whether intentionally, or not.

Indeed, in some ways, we ourselves have become our worst enemies, treating each other with disdain, pretending that we are somehow more intelligent than others, disregarding the legitimate objections people have brought forward about the consequences of technology, ignoring how bizarre or unhinged some of our behaviors and actions may appear to the public, and being generally disconnected from the needs of the population as a whole.

However, it is not only a single candidate or person who is responsible for helping to create an environment in which arrogance, narcissism, unstable behavior, a lack of civility, pettiness, and a lack of empathy have persisted.

Sadly, we in the Transhumanist community are all responsible, because we have all allowed this sort of behavior to continue, over many months and many years. To be sure, this sort of behavior has been around long before this current USTP Presidential campaign started, but it continues, nonetheless.

One thing I have been passionate about and dedicated to from day one is to change the public’s perception of Transhumanism. To grow a movement that is small, into a worldwide force that is capable of great positive change, requires us to have a finger on the pulse of the views of the general public.

Vitriol is still vitriol, and venom is still venom, whether we sling it with bows and arrows, or whether we drop it like a bomb. We have no business complaining about the lack of civility in politics, in any country, when we ourselves are guilty of incivility. We should not lament the proliferation of cyberbullying when we ourselves engage in the same behavior.

We could say, once again, that the way we conduct ourselves in front of the general public influences greatly their opinions about Transhumanism, but this message has been nearly as ineffective as advocating for peace in the Middle East. We could say, once again, that we are a team, and that the shared goals we have are far more important than our disagreements with each other, but that doesn’t seem to have helped very much. We could say, once again, that humanity could benefit greatly from increased longevity, improved health, and the complete eradication of poverty, but even this, surprisingly, doesn’t seem to register with some people.

So let me put it this way, instead – the next time you think about hurling abuse at someone in our community, the next time you feel like getting even with someone for their past transgressions, consider the fact that in just a few decades, unless we achieve our objectives with anti-aging research and life extension, everyone here will likely be dead.

Dead, as in, they will no longer be able to hold a loved one in their arms. Dead, as in, they’ll never again feel the warm rays of the sun caressing their face on a summer morning. Dead, as in, they’ll never have the pleasure of tasting their favorite food again, or any food, for that matter.

In many ways, the movement has never been stronger. Transhumanism has been garnering more press coverage, thanks to the efforts of people like Zoltan Istvan. USTP membership has grown substantially in recent weeks and months, thanks to the leadership of Gennady Stolyarov. The work that pioneers such as Fereidoun Esfandiary (also known as FM-2030), Aubrey de Grey, Nick Bostrom, and Jose Cordeiro have done over decades has helped built the foundation for what we are able to do now.

Every time we attack each other, we dishonor the legacy the hard-working people in our movement have created. Every time we attack each other, it sets us back from important work we could be doing to help humanity with its greatest challenges.

Contrary to what some people may think, the work that Transhumanists are doing does not only benefit the Transhumanist community; it benefits people who don’t even know about us. It benefits people who are suffering from a rare disease and feel there is no light at the end of the tunnel. It benefits people who are struggling with crippling poverty, having to make a choice between starving to death or being homeless.

The indignation we may feel, righteous or not, at the lack of awareness and acceptance of our movement among the general public, isn’t the general public’s fault. It is simply because we have been unable, thus far, to clearly demonstrate, with a compassionate and unified voice, the many worthy and noble projects we are engaged in, as well as our vision, mission, and purpose. But there is no rule that says that this state of affairs has to continue.

Being able to demonstrate to the world the optimistic, humanitarian, and thoughtful goals of Transhumanism requires us to take a good look in the mirror and decide who we are, and who we want to be. But most importantly, it requires us to be optimistic, humanitarian, and thoughtful, ourselves. How we treat others is an indication, on some level, of how we look at the world as a whole.

Requesting that people be treated with respect, dignity, and kindness is not authoritarianism or fascism. It is called being a better human being. And one of the core tenets of Transhumanism is being a better human being. So let us start today, right now, by being better, not just to ourselves, but also to each other.

Arin Vahanian is Director of Marketing for the U.S. Transhumanist Party / Transhuman Party.

Wealth, Power, and the Prospect of Reversing Aging – Article by Arin Vahanian

May 18, 2019 Arin Vahanian Comments 0 Comment

Arin Vahanian

I often ask myself, “Why do wealthy and/or influential people seem to support spending billions of dollars on weapons and exploring outer space, when, with their massive wealth and resources, they could help reduce human suffering and dramatically improve the quality of life for billions of people?”

And this question takes me back to a discussion I had last year with gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, during which he recounted to me a meeting he had with an ultra high-net-worth (UHNW) individual. The purpose of the meeting was to raise money for aging and life-extension research, and the UHNW individual refused to donate to SENS Research Foundation, or even to get involved, stating something to the effect of, “It won’t happen in my lifetime.”

That response perplexed me. Here we had a very successful and intelligent person, who, rather than help ensure his own children (as well as others’ children) could live a healthier and longer life, refused to do anything, for the simple reason that he did not believe we could make much progress on reversing aging in his lifetime.

While this is indeed a selfish way to look at things, it is by no means uncommon. In fact, I have been racking my brain recently, trying to figure out why the people who are best-equipped to do something about life extension and aging, do not do so (or do not do enough).

To be fair, there are a few wealthy and influential people who support research into aging and life extension, the most notable being entrepreneur Jim Mellon. However, they seem to be the exception rather than the norm.

Indeed, why do people like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk, who possess incredible resources and influence, choose to spend money and time on attempting to colonize hostile, uninhabitable planets hundreds of millions of kilometers away, especially considering that they and their loved ones (if they are lucky to live long enough) will die of aging-related causes such as heart disease, dementia, and cancer?

While I cannot speak for the aforementioned people, I believe there are several reasons why people in a position of power or wealth refuse to do much about supporting research on aging.

The first reason is that aging and death have been considered inevitable. Indeed, even though we have been able to put a human being on the Moon, we have been unable to prevent a single human being from aging. Enormously wealthy and successful people tend to be quite pragmatic, and so I imagine that they would not want to fund an endeavor or be a part of something they believed had no chance of success. However, we have evidence that we are making progress on this front, or at the very least, that reversing aging and implementing life-extension technologies are worthy endeavors.

In fact, in 2005, MIT Technology Review organized a panel of world-renowned experts (including molecular biologists) and offered a $20,000 prize to anyone who could disprove the SENS research program and demonstrate that reversing aging is not worthy of consideration. However, none of the contestants were able to do so. On the other hand, there is no evidence that human life is sustainable on any other planets in our solar system (while human life is perfectly sustainable on Earth), and by most professional estimates, it would take incredible technological advancements and financial resources to even enable people to temporarily stay on a planet such as Mars. We should also consider the fact that there have been no studies performed on the massive changes that would occur to the human body as a result of living on another planet.

Thus, it actually appears more realistic to work on reversing aging than it would be to work on colonizing other planets. But even if we are not able to completely reverse aging, what if we were able to slow aging? Wouldn’t it be desirable to have an additional five to 10 years of healthy life? Any progress we could make on life extension would be worth it, given that it would directly add healthy years to a person’s life. One thing is for certain – doing nothing ensures that very little will change, and that humans will more than likely continue living this average lifespan of 79 or so years (with very modest improvements over time), with much of it in the later years being in sickness and poor health.

Another reason for the refusal to fund aging and life extension research may be a rather pessimistic one. It is entirely possible that billionaires and governments are hedging their bets in the event that climate change or some other scenario causes wide-scale suffering (the likes of which have never been seen before) and a potential destruction of the planet, along with the rapid extinction of the human species. If that were the case, and Earth was about to be destroyed, it would make sense to pour resources into colonizing other planets. However, I think the likelihood of something like this occurring, at least in the near future, is extremely slim. Further, we have much evidence to support the fact that the planet could sustain a larger population and that technological improvements, as well as renewable energy, and seasteading, can prevent such an apocalyptic scenario from occurring. In fact, despite the challenges we are facing in terms of sustainability, we are making good progress, and it seems unreasonable to me to give all of this up, throw in the towel, and chase a pipe dream of living on another planet (when the one we have now is perfectly suited to human life). Also, given that we have the technology to save our planet from being engulfed in chaos and destruction, but do not currently have the technology to live on other planets, wouldn’t it make sense to save Earth first, rather than attempting to embark upon costly journeys to other planets, especially journeys that have little guarantee of success?

Yet another reason may be that many people, including those in a position of power, have bought into the idea of an afterlife. However, if we are completely honest with ourselves, there is no evidence that an afterlife exists, whereas there is evidence that we are making progress with reversing aging, even if that progress is arriving at a pace that is slower than we would have liked. With that being said, I would never want to deny anyone the right to believe in whatever they want. The question is, however, whether it is beneficial to adopt a zero-sum attitude to this matter. The fact is, believing in an afterlife and contributing to aging and life-extension research are not mutually exclusive. One can have any religious beliefs one likes, and subscribe to the idea that there is an afterlife, while also contributing to the beauty of existence here on Earth.

Finally, working on a cause such as reversing aging appears to not be as exciting as the prospect of exploring Mars, which is why people would rather update their LinkedIn (or Tinder) profile with “Entrepreneur” or “Swashbuckling Adventurer” or “Arms Dealer”, even, rather than “Gerontologist”. In all seriousness, though, I have always found the idea of exploring faraway lands, as well as other planets, to be exciting. But if human beings are excited about exploring the unknown, shouldn’t we also be interested in exploring a process as complex as aging, especially given that there is much we still do not know about it? Also, the implications of making advancements in this field are huge. This is because the un-sexy work that gerontologists are doing will lead to us living longer, healthier lives, and so this very important work should not be ignored. In fact, it is a massive waste of resources to try to colonize uninhabitable planets at the expense of ensuring good health and longevity, when all of humanity battles with disease and death. It would even be more noble to focus our efforts on eliminating poverty (something that the Chinese government, for instance, has dedicated its efforts to).

I do not wish to dissuade anyone from exploring outer space, but neither should we avoid doing what needs to be done on our planet. I only wish to ask whether spending billions on space exploration is the best use of resources at our disposal, considering that there is still much work to be done here on Earth.

As mentioned previously, it should not be a zero-sum game. In an ideal world, we could dedicate resources to both aging research and space exploration. However, when the budget for NASA is $21.5 billion and the budget for aging research at the National Institute on Aging is $40 million, one has to start asking questions. Actually, one could argue neither budget is large enough, especially given that the U.S. Department of Defense budget is $686 billion.

Why do we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on missiles and bombs to combat a highly-exaggerated threat, when there is the absolute certainty that billions of people will suffer and then die, many of them prematurely, due to aging-related diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and dementia?

What makes exploring outer space so much more important than ensuring that billions do not die prematurely from aging-related diseases? Will picking up and holding red dust on a hostile, uninhabitable planet be more fulfilling than holding one’s child or loved one in one’s arms?

What does it say about our society when we are content to allow friends and family members to perish in undignified ways, while we dream about stockpiling as many weapons as possible, reliving fictional fantasies inspired by comic books and movies, and ignoring challenges here on Earth?

These are questions we must ask ourselves, and, more importantly, must demand those in power to ask themselves. At the end of the day, if we as a society are comfortable with the tradeoffs and decide en masse that dealing weapons and exploring outer space are more important than working on curing disease, reversing aging, and ensuring that everyone on Earth lives a dignified life, then we can rest assured knowing that we gave this most important of topics much consideration.

However, given the facts, I do not think we have reached that point yet. We have, however, reached a point where there is promise that we are making progress in fighting aging, and it is irresponsible and reckless to ignore these gains while entertaining fantasies of living on other planets. It makes little sense to try to live in a dignified manner on a dangerous, inhospitable, isolated planet that is not suitable for human life, when we are having difficulty living in a dignified manner here on Planet Earth (a planet that is perfectly suited to human life). The solution is not to dream about moving to Mars while leaving the elderly and unhealthy here to die. The solution is also not to increase defense funding, when we already have more weapons than we know what to do with. The solution is to help our brothers and sisters here on Earth live longer, healthier, more fulfilling lives. And thus, this is a call to action for those of you who are in a position of power or wealth and who can dedicate resources to ensuring that your loved ones, and everyone else’s loved ones, can live better.

One thing I would like to ask UHNW individuals and politicians is, what will you do with the great wealth, status, and power you have accumulated? Will you play golf and remark that “it won’t happen in my lifetime”? Or will you actually do something to ensure that your children won’t be doomed to a short life, during which they will suffer from debilitating disease and eventually die?

Arin Vahanian is the Director of Marketing for the U.S. Transhumanist Party / Transhuman Party.

Finally, Rejuvenation is a Thing! – Fresh Interview with Aubrey de Grey by Ariel VA Feinerman

April 15, 2019 Ariel VA Feinerman Comments 1 comment

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Ariel VA Feinerman
Aubrey de Grey

This interview was originally published here.

Preface

What is ageing? We can define ageing as a process of accumulation of the damage which is just a side-effect of normal metabolism. While researchers still poorly understand how metabolic processes cause damage accumulation, and how accumulated damage causes pathology, the damage itself — the structural difference between old tissue and young tissue — is categorized and understood pretty well. By repairing damage and restoring the previous undamaged — young — state of an organism, we can really rejuvenate it! It sounds very promising, and so it is. And for some types of damage (for example, for senescent cells) it is already proved to work!

Today in our virtual studio, somewhere between cold, rainy Saint-Petersburg and warm, sunny Mountain View, we meet Aubrey de Grey, again! For those of you who are not familiar with him, here is a brief introduction.

Dr Aubrey de Grey is the biomedical gerontologist who researched the idea for and founded SENS Research Foundation. He received his BA in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Cambridge in 1985 and 2000, respectively. Dr. de Grey is Editor-in-Chief of Rejuvenation Research, is a Fellow of both the Gerontological Society of America and the American Aging Association, and sits on the editorial and scientific advisory boards of numerous journals and organizations. In 2011, de Grey inherited roughly $16.5 million on the death of his mother. Of this he assigned $13 million to fund SENS research.

Note: If you have not read “Ending Aging” yet I suggest you to do it as soon as possible, and to be more comfortable with the ideas we are discussing below I highly recommend you to read short introduction to SENS research on their web page. Also if you are interested in recent news and up-to-date reviews about [anti]ageing and rejuvenation research the best place to look for is Fight Aging! blog. Finally, if you are an investor or just curious, I highly encourage you to take a look at Jim Mellon’s book “Juvenescence”.

Interview

Ariel Feinerman: Hello, Dr Aubrey de Grey!

Aubrey de Grey: Hello Ariel — thanks for the interview.

Ariel Feinerman: How do you feel 2018 year? Can you compare 2018 to 2017 or early years? What is changing?

Aubrey de Grey: 2018 was a fantastic year for rejuvenation biotechnology. The main thing that made it special was the explosive growth of the private-sector side of the field — the number of start-up companies, the number of investors, and the scale of investment. Two companies, AgeX Therapeutics and Unity Biotechnology, went public with nine-digit valuations, and a bunch of others are not far behind. Of course this has only been possible because of all the great progress that has been made in the actual science, but one can never predict when that slow, steady progress will reach “critical mass”.

Ariel Feinerman: In 2017 SENS RF have received about $7 million. What has been accomplished in 2018?

Aubrey de Grey: We received almost all of that money right around the end of 2017, in the form of four cryptocurrency donations of $1 million or more, totalling about $6.5 million. We of course realised that this was a one-off windfall, so we didn’t spend it all at once! The main things we have done are to start a major new project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, focused on stem cell therapy for Alzheimer’s, and to broaden our education initiative to include more senior people. See our website and newsletters for details.

Ariel Feinerman: What breakthroughs of 2018 can you name as the most important by your choice?

Aubrey de Grey: On the science side, well, regarding our funded work I guess I would choose our progress in getting mitochondrial genes to work when relocated to the nucleus. We published a groundbreaking progress report at the end of 2016, but to be honest I was not at all sure that we would be able to build quickly on it. I’m delighted to say that my caution was misplaced, and that we’ve continued to make great advances. The details will be submitted for publication very soon.

Ariel Feinerman: You say that many of rejuvenating therapies will work in clinical trials within five years. Giving that many of them are already working in clinical trials or even in the clinic (like immunotherapies, cell and gene therapies) do you mean the first — maybe incomplete — rejuvenation panel, when you speak of early 2020?

Aubrey de Grey: Yes, basically. SENS is a divide-and-conquer approach, so we can view it in three overlapping phases. The first phase is to get the basic concept accepted and moving. The second phase is to get the most challenging components moving. And the third phase is to combine the components. Phase 1 is pretty much done, as you say. Phase 2 is beginning, but it’s at an early stage. Phase 3 will probably not even properly begin for a few more years. That’s why I still think we only have about a 50% chance of getting to longevity escape velocity by 2035 or so.

Ariel Feinerman: Even now many investors are fearful of real regenerative medicine approaches. For example pharmacological companies which use small molecules, like Unity Biotechnology, received more than $300 million, in much more favour than real bioengineering companies like Oisin Biotechnologies, received less than $4 million, even though the biological approach is much more powerful, cheap, effective and safe! Why is this so in your opinion, and when can we see the shift?

Aubrey de Grey: I don’t see a problem there. The big change in mindset that was needed has already occurred: rejuvenation is a thing. It’s natural that small-molecule approaches to rejuvenation will lead the way, because that’s what pharma already knows how to do. Often, that approach will in due course be overtaken by more sophisticated approaches. Sometimes the small molecules will actually work well! It’s all good.

Ariel Feinerman: Do you agree that the small-molecule approach is generally the wrong way in the future rejuvenation therapies? Because they have many flaws — especially their main mechanism via interference with human metabolism. Unlike them SENS bioengineering therapies are designed to be metabolically inert — because they just eliminate the key damage, they do not need to interfere with metabolism, so it is much easier than usual to avoid side effects and interactions with other therapies. They just eliminate the key damage, which means they are easier to develop and test — and much safer.

Aubrey de Grey: Ah, no, that’s too simplistic. It’s not true that small molecules always just “mess with metabolism” whereas genetic and enzymatic approaches eliminate damage. Small molecules that selectively kill senescent cells are absolutely an example of SENS-esque damage repair; the only thing against them is that it may be more difficult to eliminate side-effects, but that’s not because of their mode of action, it’s because of an additional action.

Ariel Feinerman: In recent years many countries gave the green light for regenerative medicine. Fast-track approval in Japan, for example, allows for emerging treatments to be used so long as they have been proven safe. The similar approach works in Russia. What about the EU or USA?

Aubrey de Grey: There’s definitely a long way to go, but the regulatory situation in the West is moving in the right direction. The TAME trial has led the way in articulating an approvable endpoint for clinical trials that is ageing in all but name, and the WHO has found a very well-judged way to incorporate ageing into its classification.

Ariel Feinerman: Do you think of working with USA Army? As far as we know they conduct research on regeneration and are very interested in keeping soldiers healthier for longer. And they have much money!

Aubrey de Grey: The Department of Defense in the USA has certainly funded a lot of high-impact regenerative medicine research for many years. I’m sure they will continue to do so.

Ariel Feinerman: Is any progress in the OncoSENS programme? Have you found any ALT genes? Is any ongoing research in WILT?

Aubrey de Grey: No — in the end that program was not successful enough to continue with, so we stopped it. There is now more interest in ALT in other labs than there was, though, so I’m hopeful that progress will be made. But also, one reason why I felt that it was OK to stop was that cancer immunotherapy is doing so well now. I think there is a significant chance that we won’t need WILT after all, because we will really truly defeat cancer using the immune system.

Ariel Feinerman: Spiegel Lab has recently published an abstract where they say they have found 3 enzymes capable of breaking glucosepane. Very exiting info! When can we hear more on their research? Revel LLC is a very secretive company.

Aubrey de Grey: They aren’t really being secretive, they are just setting up.

Ariel Feinerman: When can we see the first clinical trial of glucosepane breaker therapy?

Aubrey de Grey: I think two years is a reasonable estimate, but that’s a guess.

Ariel Feinerman: What do you think of the Open Source approach in rejuvenation biotechnology? The computer revolution in the early 2000s has taken place only because Open Source caused an explosion in software engineering!

We have many examples when Big Pharma buys a small company which has patents on technology and then cancels all research. In the Open Source approach you cannot “close” any technology, while everyone can contribute, making protocol better and everyone can use that without any licence fee! Anyway, there are countries where you cannot protect your patents. Maybe it will be better to make technology open from the beginning?

Famous biohacker Josiah Zayner said: “In the gene therapy world most treatments are easy to replicate or pirate because you can reverse engineer the DNA from scientific papers or patents. Same exact treatment, same purity and quality I could give to someone rejected from the clinical trial. The cost? Hundreds or a few thousand dollars at most. Same deal with immunotherapy.”

Aubrey de Grey: I think you’ve pretty much answered your own question with that quote. The technologies that will drive rejuvenation are not so easy to suppress.

Ariel Feinerman: Is the SENS RF going to begin new research programmes in 2019?

Aubrey de Grey: Sure! But we are still deciding which ones. We expect that our conference in Berlin (Undoing Aging, March 28–30) will bring some new opportunities to our attention.

Ariel Feinerman: What are your plans for 2019?

Aubrey de Grey: I’d like to say less travelling, but that doesn’t seem very likely at this point. Really my goal is just to keep on keeping on — to do all I can to maintain the growth of the field and the emerging industry.

Ariel Feinerman: Thank you very much for your answers, hope to see you again!

Aubrey de Grey: My pleasure!

Ariel VA Feinerman is a researcher, author, and photographer, who believes that people should not die from diseases and ageing, and whose main goal is to improve human health and achieve immortality. If you like Ariel’s work, any help would be appreciated via PayPal: arielfeinerman@gmail.com.

2019 New Year’s Message – A Call for Medical Progress and Preservation of the Good – Article by Victor Bjoerk

January 1, 2019 Victor Bjoerk Comments 1 comment

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Victor Bjoerk

I celebrated the end of 2018 like normally with neuroscientist Anders Sandberg and several other “transhumanists” or “technoprogressive people” in Stockholm!

Why am I in that place to start with? Well, I’m quite frustrated with the human condition in the first place; I’ve always questioned everything from social norms and different kinds of problems in the world, and there’s still so much misery around that we need to unite and fix. (I know it sounds cliché, but it’s true!)

As people reading this know, the vast majority of human misery worldwide today occurs due to our bodies damaging themselves with the passage of time, the biological process we call aging. This occurs because evolution has no goals and our ancestors died at the age of 30-40 prehistorically, and therefore there was no pressure for evolution to create humans that could repair themselves molecularly to live thousands of years. The closest we get among Eukaryotes/Vertebrates are Greenland sharks, which can live to 500+ years; that is easy to understand since they have no predators and just have to open their mouths to get their daily food. On the opposite side we have as a prominent example the mouse, with a very poor molecular repair system and subsequent 2.5-year lifespan, easy to understand when you realize how dangerous life is in the wild if having a mouse body.

Thanks to our technology, we have created the “paradise Greenland shark scenario” for humans during the past century essentially, creating very comfortable existences where nearly everyone survives.

So if you’re 25 years old, life is really great nowadays in Western countries (unless you like to complain about everything!); the existential risks are so low in the absence of aging that you would live many thousands of years just by being a young person living in Sweden.

So I’ve worked a lot in nursing homes both before and during my studies in molecular biology, and what those people have to endure would be strictly illegal in most countries if we knew how to change it. Imagine if, for example, Saudi Arabia allowed its citizens to age while the Western world had abolished it; wouldn’t Amnesty International intervene?

But what can be done with the human body? Well, I assume quite a lot! We are seeing so many people who can’t stand the medical monopoly and the 17-year bench-to-bedside status quo, which isn’t an abstract academic complaint but which impact their daily lives, so they start self-experimenting with, for example, senolytic medicines to kill their senescent cells, making themselves “younger” in certain aspects, which is pretty cool!

However I’m not someone who constantly calls for change and “progress”; I mean, if something is nice, then why not keep it? As far as I’m concerned, for example, the beautiful architecture from the past can continue to stand for thousands more years. These buildings fulfill their purpose and look nice; I’m quite conservative on those points – but please accelerate the medical research, and it is crucial to spot the techniques that actually do work and to not waste resources on hype!

2018 has brought me many good things, those which one can call “achievements” and those which are not visible. The Eurosymposium on Healthy Aging in Brussels became a success! (And there will be some events during 2019 that I am also announcing for everyone who enjoyed it!)

I’ve been learning a lot about CRISPR and many other techniques both practically and theoretically, though I have not exactly used them to change the world. Medical progress takes forever to achieve, and it’s not exactly helped by a massive web of bureaucracy/hierarchies/prestige/laws, all contributing to slowing down progress for people in need. What can really be done? One needs to focus on the positive and go where the biotech companies can succeed!

So if things are working out for me as I hope now in 2019, I hope being able to really work full time to impact the longevity industry, I really feel like an overripe fruit that needs to get things done, because implementing stuff is what matters and not becoming some passive “longevity encyclopedia”. I’ll keep everyone as usually updated!

So happy new 2019 everyone! And make sure to take good care of yourselves!

Victor Bjoerk has worked for the Gerontology Research Group, the Longevity Reporter, and the Fraunhofer-Institut für Zelltherapie und Immunologie. He has promoted awareness throughout Europe of emerging biomedical research and the efforts to reverse biological aging.

The Case for Life Extension – Article by Arin Vahanian

July 19, 2018 Arin Vahanian Comments 0 Comment

Arin Vahanian

“I wish I could live 10 to 20 years less,” said no one ever. In fact, I have never met anyone who didn’t want to live at least a few more years of a healthy, active life. Yet, incredibly, there appears to be some controversy about the topic of life extension. Specifically, there seems to be some pushback from critics, who have attacked life extension as “irresponsible” and “harmful,” cite overpopulation and resource constraints, and in turn paint doomsday scenarios that would occur if human beings were to live longer lives.

With this article, I hope to begin a discussion to eventually lay this controversy to rest, as well as assuage any concerns the general public may have about the growing life-extension movement. For the desire to live longer and healthier is not only natural to the human condition, but I believe it is one of the noblest goals for human beings to strive for.

There are many good reasons to support life extension, but here I shall provide a few reasons why, just to get the conversation started. Firstly, many people already support life extension. Anti-aging products as well as hormone replacement products and therapy generated about $50 billion of revenue in 2009 in the United States alone, according to the American Medical Association. If this isn’t an indication that people are very interested in life extension, I don’t know what is. While the efficacy of some such products and therapies has come into question, that in itself would be a good reason to develop this field so that more efficacious and better products could be developed. This would ensure that we adequately address the enormous demand for life-extension products and therapies.

Not only are many people already interested in life extension, but extending the human lifespan is something we have been working on for quite a while. In fact, the global average life expectancy has more than doubled since the year 1900. This necessarily raises the question,”Why should we stop now?” It seems illogical, unreasonable, and, in fact, inhumane to me to stop working on something so crucial – increasing life expectancy so that more people can have more of what is the most beautiful experience on Earth, the human experience. Therefore, why not dedicate more resources and funding to something that most people are already interested in, consider to be a huge priority in their lives, and which we have already been working on for a very long time?

Also, as I pointed out in a previous article on aging, there are practical reasons why we would want to support life extension. Making progress in life extension means each of us will have additional time with which to do things that are important to us. Imagine if you had an additional 10 to 20 young years of life. Think about all that could be accomplished during this time. The additional time you have in your life might help you come up with a cure for cancer, help eliminate poverty, or fulfill some other important accomplishment that humanity would benefit greatly from. As I mentioned in my article on aging, extending the human lifespan would result in us being able to work on other things that are important to the human race, thereby creating a virtuous cycle of improvement and progress. Imagine the number of world-changing ideas and products that never came to fruition because someone passed away. Let’s make sure that humanity is never robbed again of something it needs, just because of the untimely end of people who could have made a positive contribution.

In addition to logical and practical reasons why we should support life extension, it turns out that concerns about overpopulation and resource scarcity have been overblown. According to biologist Dr. Aubrey de Grey, life-extension therapy could postpone or eliminate menopause, thereby allowing women to space out their pregnancies over more years. What this would do is decrease the yearly population growth rate.

Further, according to Dr. Max More, CEO of Alcor, not to mention numerous other reputable sources, including The World Bank and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the worldwide population growth rate is slowing down and is projected to eventually stabilize and begin falling. Nowhere is this more apparent than in countries such as Germany, Italy, Spain, China, Russia, and even the United States, where birth rates are below the 2.1 live births per woman required to just maintain population equilibrium. Additionally, even countries such as India, which used to have a very high birth rate, have seen huge declines in birth rates in recent years.

In terms of resource scarcity, according to the World Food Programme, while it is true that an estimated 124 million people in 51 countries are facing food insecurity, this is due to reasons such as conflict and political instability, rather than food shortages. In fact, according to a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, the problem of malnourishment is a distribution problem, rather than a production one. Indeed, India actually has a food surplus, but wastes an extraordinary amount of food, leading to a large number of undernourished people. Therefore, the problem is a supply-chain and political problem, rather than a resource problem, and we are not running out of food, as some people have claimed.

Finally, according to the World Health Organization, worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. No matter where you might live, taking a quick glance around you will likely reveal that this is indeed the case. While there are a litany of causes of obesity, lack of food is not one of them. Thus, we actually have too much food around the world, rather than not enough. Indeed, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations demonstrated, in a landmark study, that per capita food availability for the world as a whole has risen in recent decades, and the number of chronically undernourished people has been cut by more than 50 percent in just a few decades. Therefore, we have more than enough food to feed everyone.

The same exaggerated fears have been stoked about other resources, such as energy, water, and land, and all have been overcome or handled over the course of human history. It turns out that human beings have been remarkably successful at coming up with solutions to these challenges over the years, and I do not think that we will, all of a sudden, lose this resourcefulness, dedication, and ability to master our environment.

Naturally, over the last few decades, not to mention centuries, doomsday prognostications by people such as cleric and scholar Thomas Malthus, biologist Paul Ehrlich, and economist Stephen Leeb, have not come true, and in fact, in many cases, have been utterly debunked.

Finally, on a moral, ethical, and indeed, human level, it seems cruel to inhibit human beings to living a certain amount of time, and no more. To this end, I have a simple question for those who are opposed to life extension based on the idea that there is a predetermined amount of time that all humans are supposed to live.

Would you tell a parent being ravaged by stage 4 cancer or a sibling suffering from cystic fibrosis that they do not deserve to live any longer because their time is up and that this is the “natural order of things”? Everyone deserves to live a dignified, healthy, and fulfilling life, and it is cruel for us to appoint ourselves judge, jury, and executioner.

So I ask people who are vehemently against life extension, “Do you believe that we are qualified to decide how long others should live?” Further, if you support cancer treatment that would prolong the life of a loved one by a few months or few years, why would you not support treatment that would prolong their healthy life for a few more years?

Since the beginning of time, humans have always strived to improve their lot in life, to seek growth in many aspects of the human experience, and to overcome challenges and hardships. Just as it would be absurd for someone to say that they want to regress, devolve, and live a shorter life, it would be equally absurd for us to say we would not want to live longer, healthier lives. Thus, it is natural for humans to support life extension, if not for themselves, then at least for others who desire it, because to reject it would be equivalent to rejecting life, and rejecting the experience of being human.

Anyone who truly cherishes life and how valuable it is, should at least consider the vast number of possibilities that life extension would bring. Of course, it is up to each person to decide for themselves whether they would want to live healthier and longer lives, and we are not the decision-makers for everyone else. This is a personal decision that must be explored by each individual. I am confident that the more we communicate our message that life extension is natural as well as desirable for the development of human beings and the planet, the more people will be on board with something that is frankly very obvious: life extension is a noble cause, and one that is very much worth exploring.

Arin Vahanian is Director of Marketing for the U.S. Transhumanist Party.

Why Toyota Is a Transhumanist Company – Article by Arin Vahanian

July 5, 2018 Arin Vahanian Comments 0 Comment

Arin Vahanian

When people think about the company that most embodies Transhumanism, Google certainly comes to mind. With subsidiaries such as its R&D facility Google X (dedicated to launching ambitious technologies that aim to make the world a better place), and its biotech company Calico (dedicated to combating aging and associated diseases), not to mention other projects it is involved in, Google seems to be well-poised to carry the Transhumanist torch.

However, one company that I believe has been flying under the radar in this regard, but also embodies Transhumanism, is Toyota. While it might not be the first organization many people think of when they think about Transhumanism, and while its products are not nearly as revolutionary as Google’s, it would be unfair to not also include Toyota among the firms most responsible for spreading the values of Transhumanism.

The main reason why I believe this to be the case is related to the Japanese art and science of continuous improvement, called Kaizen. As I wrote in my book Kaizen for Men, the philosophy of Kaizen assumes that our way of life, which includes our work life, social life, and home life, should be constantly improved. We do this by taking small steps toward improving processes, products, services, habits, and actions. In essence, the spirit of Kaizen is that there should be some sort of improvement every day.

There are many ways in which Toyota uses Kaizen, but here I shall specify a few ways the firm approaches continuous improvement, and then relate it to the philosophy of Transhumanism.

First, the Toyota Production System is dedicated not only to improving products and processes, but also to eliminating waste and inefficiencies in an organization. Just as Toyota uses PDCA, an improvement cycle methodology to solve problems found on the shop floor, and just as Toyota seeks to eliminate different types of waste in its manufacturing process (such as defect correction, inventory, and overproduction), Transhumanists seek to find ways every day to improve the human condition, and to eliminate waste and inefficiency from our lives. An example of this would be the Transhumanist pledge to improving the quality of life through increased funding for science and technology, as well as support for inventions such as bionic prostheses, which now allow people who previously lost limbs, to live more productive lives, and to better function as members of society.

Next, Toyota’s dedication to finding the root cause of problems (through tools such as the 5 Whys method and the Cause and Effect diagram), rather than just addressing the symptoms, is similar to the way Transhumanists are addressing the challenges brought forth by aging, cancer, and rare diseases. The hope is that by finding the root cause of these issues, as opposed to just prescribing medication and hoping for the best, that we can eradicate illnesses that have been plaguing humanity for centuries.

Further, at Toyota, the practice of Hansei, or self-reflection, involves acknowledging one’s own mistakes and pledging improvement. For instance, at Toyota, even if a task is completed successfully, teams hold a self-reflection meeting, whereby team members help identify failures experienced along the way and create a plan for future efforts. This insistence on acknowledging current limitations and stressing improvement in order to build a better future is exactly what Transhumanists have been dedicated to since the very founding of the movement.

Finally, Toyota is not just Transhumanist in the way that it builds products or helps its employees improve. It is also Transhumanist in the way that it communicates its values and markets its products. The slogan for Lexus, Toyota’s luxury line of automobiles, is “The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection.” What could be more Transhumanist than this? When most people think of Toyota, they think of high-quality, reliable, well-designed products sold at a reasonable price. For better or worse, the automobile has become a staple of modern living for many decades now, and few things seem as normal to us now as getting into a car and driving away to some destination, be it our workplace, a friend’s house, or a vacation destination.

Therefore, just as the automobile has become commonplace in our lives, and just as Toyota has become known as a reputable company releasing quality products that meet the needs of many people, so Transhumanism must become the most popular philosophy when it comes to improvement and self-actualization. Transhumanism isn’t a fringe movement, it’s the human movement.

After all, I imagine that almost all people would consider improvement to be quite positive, and would consider actualizing oneself to be one of the most rewarding and valuable goals in the human condition.

This is the promise of Transhumanism. Just as Toyota seeks to be better every day, and to release better products every day, so we must all decide to be better every day, and to seek continuous improvement. This is why I believe that Kaizen and Transhumanism are linked at the core. Because just as we must take steps every day toward releasing better products and services, we must work every day toward being better human beings and building a future our children would want to live in.

Arin Vahanian is Director of Marketing for the U.S. Transhumanist Party.

The Case for Reversing Aging – Article by Arin Vahanian

June 29, 2018 Arin Vahanian Comments 2 comments

Arin Vahanian

As incredulous as it may seem, I have had numerous people ask me why I support research and funding for reversing the aging process.

The usual arguments against stopping or slowing aging are that there is some sort of natural process or natural order of things, and that human beings shouldn’t be “playing God.”

In this short article, I would like to present my personal views on aging and why I believe it is perfectly natural, and in fact, desirable, for human beings to want to overcome this limitation, or at least, slow it down.

We humans have a very peculiar relationship with aging and death. On the one hand, people spend rather large sums of money on products or services that help them look and feel younger and healthier. In essence, what these people are communicating through their spending habits is that they have a desire to slow down the aging process. Yet any talk of actually reversing the aging process is met with puzzled looks or even dismissal by the very same people. On the other hand, most people dread the condition of death but have resigned themselves to the idea that there is nothing we can do about it. So while we tend to believe that death is unavoidable, we somehow also think that it won’t happen to us for a while longer, and so we put these very important topics on the back burner and refuse to think further about them or consider how to overcome them.

My personal viewpoint is that nothing gets solved without there being some sort of action toward solving it. Problems do not normally resolve themselves.

To those who ask why we should spend money, time, and effort on reversing aging, I shall present three reasons why I believe it is beneficial for us to do so.

Firstly, human beings have always wanted to improve, to grow, and to overcome hardships and challenges. Saying that there is some natural order of things is not a valid argument against reversing the aging process.

Imagine if we had, in the past, accepted a shortened lifespan as the natural order of things. It’s good that we didn’t, because global average life expectancy has more than doubled since the year 1900.

Imagine if we had, in the past, accepted a chaotic, uncomfortable, and dangerous life as the natural order of things. It’s good that we didn’t, because we came up with inventions such as electricity, the Internet, the X-ray, indoor plumbing, heating, and so forth.

Imagine if we had, in the past, accepted our young sons and daughters having their precious lives cut short by illness as the natural order of things. It’s good that we didn’t, because we now have cures for dysentery, malaria, and tuberculosis.

The fact is that the human condition involves us progressing, overcoming limitations, and being better human beings. Hence, it is natural for human beings to want to overcome undesirable situations, and I would imagine that most people would state that poverty, disease, and aging are undesirable.

Next, reversing the process of aging will give each one of us additional time that we need in order to accomplish other lofty goals. Imagine if you had an additional 10 or 20 young years of life. How much more could you accomplish during that time? We could spend more time on goals such as eliminating poverty, coming up with a cure for cancer, working toward world peace, and so forth. I find it hard to imagine that someone could argue against having more time in life to work on their personal purpose, vision, and mission. Therefore, reversing the process of aging would result in us being able to work on other things that are important to the human race, thereby creating a virtuous cycle of improvement and progress.

Finally, perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the human condition is having a human experience. The human experience includes things such as building relationships with other people, enjoying the splendors of a warm summer afternoon with friends or family, and partaking in any number of stimulating and rewarding activities, such as reading, exercising, and doing charity work.

To those of you who are in a romantic relationship, I ask, wouldn’t you want more time and more opportunities to be with your spouse or partner? Imagine never hearing your partner whisper sweetly in your ear again, or forever losing the overwhelming pleasure of making love to them, or no longer experiencing the rewarding growth you’ve experienced with them since you became a couple.

To those of you who are parents, I ask, wouldn’t you want to ensure that your children live long, happy, and productive lives? Imagine if your son or daughter could have more time and more opportunities to become the person who will finally find a cure for depression, or start a movement that helps brings us closer to world peace, or become a source of inspiration for many people around the world through starting an organization, but they won’t, because we have accepted a “natural order of things.”

To those of you who are actively involved in an ambitious project or important cause that means a lot to you, I ask, wouldn’t you want more time and more energy to work on these things that are meaningful to you? Imagine never being able to work on fulfilling your purpose or vision in life.

There are many more reasons why I believe we should focus on reversing aging, but the three reasons above are a good starting point for us to more seriously consider this most important of issues.

Let’s even assume for a moment that implausible scenarios such as reincarnation and life after death are real. Why wouldn’t we want to live this current life better? I do not believe it is mutually exclusive to believe in life after death and also want to live our current lives better. Throwing up our hands in defeat and accepting things as they currently are does not lead to progress and growth; it leads to atrophy.

So before we give up the good fight and resign ourselves to an old and decrepit future, we must ask ourselves what we are living for.

If I had to give just one reason for wanting to reverse aging, it would be pretty simple: I love life too damn much.

What’s your reason?

Arin Vahanian is Director of Marketing for the U.S. Transhumanist Party.

The Rise of Oisin Biotechnologies – Interview with Gary Hudson, CEO of Oisin Biotechnologies, by Ariel VA Feinerman

April 2, 2018 Ariel VA Feinerman Comments 1 comment

Ariel VA Feinerman
Gary Hudson

Gary Hudson

Preface

What is ageing? We can define ageing as a process of accumulation of the damage which is just a side-effect of normal metabolism. While researchers still poorly understand how metabolic processes cause damage accumulation, and how accumulated damage cause pathology, the damage itself — the structural difference between old tissue and young tissue — is categorized and understood pretty well. By repairing damage and restoring the previous undamaged — young — state of an organism, we can really rejuvenate it! Sounds very promising, and so it is. And for some types of damage (for example, for senescent cells) it is already proved to work!

Today in our virtual studio somewhere between cold rainy Saint-Petersburg and warm rainy Seattle, we meet Gary Hudson!

He has been involved in private space flight development for over 40 years. Hudson is best known as the founder of Rotary Rocket Company, which in spending ~$30 Million attempted to build a unique single stage to orbit launch vehicle known as the Roton. He helped found Transformational Space T/Space in 2004 and AirLaunch LLC which was awarded the DARPA/USAF FALCON project in 2003.

Previous projects included designs of the Phoenix SSTO, the Percheron, and other rockets, founder of Pacific American Launch Systems, and various consulting projects. Currently, he is the President and CEO of the Space Studies Institute.

Now Hudson brings his excellent engineering skills into rejuvenation biotechnology! He is a founding partner of Oisin Biotechnologies, who are developing a liposomally delivered DNA therapy for the removal of senescent cells from the body. Hudson provided an initial seed donation to help fund the creation of the Methuselah Foundation and SENS Research Foundation.

Interview

Feinerman: Hello, Mr Gary Hudson!

Hudson: Thanks for inviting us to this interview!

Feinerman: You have recently visited an amazing Undoing Aging 2018 conference, which took place in Berlin, 15–17 March, where your colleague, Matthew Scholz, was a speaker. What is your impression?

Hudson: It was a great conference with several important presentations. It put me in mind of the early SENS conferences in Cambridge, UK, which I helped to sponsor. I understand it will now become an annual event. Our CSO Dr. John Lewis also gave an important summary of our work to date.

Feinerman: Will Oisin’s presentations from conference be available for general public?

Hudson: I believe that the SENS Foundation will be posting them but I don’t have details about the timing.

Feinerman: Your last interview was in July 2017, more than half a year ago. What has been accomplished?

Hudson: We have conducted many pre-clinical mouse experiments on both cancer and senescent cell removal. All have been successful and produce very remarkable results. We’ve also conducted a pilot toxicity and safety trial on non-human primates. The results of that trial were also successful and encourage us to proceed to human safety trials as soon as regulatory authorities approve them. We have also spun-out a cancer-focused company, Oisin Oncology, and raised a seed round for that venture.

Feinerman: Great to hear! However, when can we see some papers? People usually trust papers more than mere interviews or press releases. Of course, papers need many efforts not related to research but they will allow you attract more attention from general public, researchers, and investors.

Hudson: Papers are being prepared now for submission to major journals, but that process takes time, especially the peer review. For the moment, most of our data is only available to investors and partners in pharma and the biotech industry.

Feinerman: You planned human clinical trials, have you carried them out?

Hudson: It takes quite some time to organize a human trial and to get it approved. Before one can be conducted, we have to set up so-called “GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) manufacture of our therapeutic, and then we have to conduct “GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) Tox” studies in two different species. Once that is all completed later this year, then we can begin a human safety trial, or a “Phase 1” trial. All this takes time, but we hope that first safety trials in oncology indications might begin this year, or in early 2019.

Feinerman: Does that mean we have a race between Unity Biotechnology and Oisin and you have all chances to win the race?

Hudson: I don’t see it as a race or a competition. I believe that future anti-aging treatment will require multiple complimentary approaches.

Feinerman: When we can expect your therapy available in the clinic?

Hudson: It’s very difficult to predict. I believe that our cancer treatment will make it to the clinic first, and that could happen in less than five years. Since the FDA doesn’t regard ageing as an indication, it may take longer for our SENSOlytic™ treatment to reach the public, since the regulatory environment will need to change.

Feinerman: As Michael Rae has said, we need not to wait when ageing will be recognised as a disease. You can mark your senolytics as a therapy for specific ageing pathology like fibrosis or chronic inflammation in the same way as Unity does.

Hudson: This is certainly true and is part of our strategy, but many of those endpoints are more difficult to ascertain than oncology endpoints. Additionally, going after oncology approvals can be faster and easier to get to clinic. But we will push forward on several fronts as funding permits.

Feinerman: In your previous interview you have said that you make some tweaks to both the promoter side and the effector side of the constructs that will provide even more interesting and useful extensions to the basic capability, but you can’t discuss those for IP reasons. Can you now say about them?

Hudson: I still can’t say too much about them, but we have conducted animal trials on some of these “tweaks” and they work quite well. The downside to the matter is that every “tweak” requires new trials, and our goal is to get something to the clinic as soon as possible, so many of the improvements will have to wait. Progress is limited based on available funds and personnel resources, of course, but we will move as quickly as we can.

Feinerman: Do you use any CAD software to design your constructs? Are you going to make them public so independent engineers will be able to help you identify new useful pairs of promoters and effectors? Your technology is so powerful that Open Source approach would be very helpful!

Hudson: No, the design of the current constructs are very straightforward and simple. As our patents are issued, their design will become public. If people wish to design their own constructs for particular applications they may contact us for collaboration, though we do have several collaborations active at the moment so we may already be working on similar ideas.

Feinerman: What do you think on targeting your machinery on cells with abnormal telomerase activity to kill cancer? Can you use several conditions — like in programming — several promoters to be more specific?

Hudson: If we targeted telomerase we’d also kill stem cells, just like the side effects of much of conventional chemotherapy. That’s probably not a good idea. But multiple promoters, or synthetic promoters, might be used to achieve the aims of killing only cancer cells. Our initial therapeutic will likely just employ p53 promoter targeting, since we have good data that works.

Feinerman: Yeah, the same issue as when we remove or break telomerase gene: there would be nice to do this only in compromised tissue, but as researchers say it is very difficult to make the removal selective. However, it is not a problem with ALT genes, which cause 15–20% of cancers. Are you going to collaborate with the OncoSENS lab? Also killing cells actively expressing telomerase will be very useful in WILT implementation.

Hudson: We’ve had conversations with the SENS Foundation about OncoSENS and cooperated in a preliminary fashion, but I don’t believe it is currently a research priority for them. We already have enough projects to keep us busy for some time, too!

Feinerman: Now you use only suicide gene as an effector, do you plan to use other genes? For example to enhance the cells, give them ability to produce new enzymes, or temporarily shut down telomerase to help anti-cancer therapy to be more effective.

Hudson: We believe we can express any gene under the control of any promoter we wish to use, so the possibilities are almost endless.

Feinerman: Now we know that epigenetic changes (shift) play a huge role in ageing. Even though there is no consensus among researchers whether they are a cause or a consequence of ageing, experiments show that temporal expression of OSKM transcription factors may have some health benefits by restoring “young” epigenetic profiles. You can remember the Belmonte work, for example. However, the problem in their work is that they used transgenic mice and express OSKM in every their cell. If you temporarily express OSKM in an “old” cell, that is OK, you can “rejuvenate” such a cell. While if you express OSKM in a stem cell which is already biologically “young”, you can force the cell into iPSC, which is a way to cancer. Using your machinery we can target only cells which have “old” expression profiles, and involving normal mice! Such a work will be much “cleaner” and safer than Belmonte’s work.

Hudson: With respect to your comments about reprogramming, Oisin is currently working with a university group on exactly this approach, but I can’t say more at this time. We also believe that first you have to clear existing senescent cells, then you can reprogram successfully.

Feinerman: How many resources, finances, and personnel do you need to move as quickly as possible? Do you have open positions? Maybe, some of our readers have enough finances or experience.

Hudson: We could effectively spend tens of millions or dollar or more, very easily, but it isn’t realistic to assume we could raise that amount — and if we did, we’d lose control of Oisin’s ageing focus, since investors would most likely want us to aim at quick returns. We are always interested in talking with “mission minded” investors, however. As for hiring, we have to do that slowly and judiciously, since labour is one of the biggest costs to a start-up company, and over-hiring can sink a project quickly. We already have more potential hires than we can bring on-board.

Feinerman: Now cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies allow completely new and efficient ways for investments. We can see this as various no-name companies easily rise tens of millions dollars via ICOs for clearly doubtful projects. Would you like to make an ICO? Oisin shows real progress and can easily rise big sums! People say that they will be glad to buy your tokens if you issue them. You have said that you prefer to work with “mission minded” investors. There are thousands people out there who can invest from $1,000 to $100,000 in cryptocurrencies and who believe that radical extension of healthy life is possible!

If you are worried about legal issues, you can use various cryptocurrency investment funds who act like proxies between holders of cryptocurrencies and companies.

Hudson: We have investigated several of these financing options, but we are not expert in this area, so we have been reluctant to move too quickly. But we continue to have conversations with relevant parties. There is a lot of regulatory uncertainty surrounding ICOs, however, so we must move cautiously.

Feinerman: Now we know enough about ageing to defeat our main enemy. Do you agree that first comprehensive rejuvenation panel is not a scientific problem and even not an engineering problem, but a problem of engineering management?

Hudson: I wouldn’t say that there is no science left to do, but as an engineer myself I naturally agree that proper engineering management and program management skills must be brought to bear on the problem of ageing.

Feinerman: One person has said, we get what we ask for. Can we now aim high and publicly claim that our main goal is not additional five years of life but LEV — Longevity Escape Velocity and finally unlimited healthy life?

Hudson: This is a difficult “public relations” problem. Most investors, the scientific community, and the public are not yet ready to embrace the notion of longevity escape velocity. Thus at Oisin we do pitch health span as a primary goal. But personally I don’t believe that you can obtain health span improvements without making significant progress towards LEV. So in the end, I think we get LEV by targeting health span, and we reduce the controversy by doing so.

Feinerman: Some people ask me how to buy your stocks or invest in Oisin. What can you say?

Hudson: We do have a number of private investors (angel investors) who are “mission minded” or “mission focused” and we welcome discussions with qualified investors and firms who share our vision for dealing with ageing and cancer. Accredited investor candidates may contact us at info@oisinbio.com

Feinerman: David Gobel claims that “By advancing tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, we want to create a world where 90-year olds can be as healthy as 50-year olds by 2030.” And I secretly hope that 40 will become new 30 or even 20 by 2030! Can we achieve that — in principle?

Hudson: I certainly hope so! In 2030 I’ll be 80, so I’m looking forward to feeling like I’m 40…

Feinerman: Thank you very much for your amazing answers! That was a real pleasure to talk with such a great man like you. I hope we all will succeed in our goal and will have hundreds, thousands, and — who knows? — maybe even millions years of healthy life!

Hudson: It is kind of you to say so, but I only consider myself fortunate to be working with the really great men and women in the anti-aging community who are doing the real work. I’m only trying to facilitate their efforts and get treatments to the clinic as fast as possible. I don’t know what will be possible in the long term, but anything will be better than letting nature run its course, producing sickness and declining functional health.

Ariel VA Feinerman is a researcher, author, and photographer, who believes that people should not die from diseases and ageing, and whose main goal is to improve human health and achieve immortality.

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New FDA Regenerative Medicine Framework is Win-Win for Gene Therapies – Article by Keith Comito and Elena Milova

March 4, 2018 Elena Milova and Keith Comito Comments 0 Comment

Elena Milova
Keith Comito

Editor’s Note: In this article, Keith Comito and Elena Milova positively discuss new a FDA regulatory framework on RMAT (regenerative medicine advanced therapies) and on how it benefits the healthy-life-extension community. This article was originally published by the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF).

~ Kenneth Alum, Director of Publication, U.S. Transhumanist Party, March 3, 2018

Back in November 2017, the FDA announced a comprehensive policy framework for the development and oversight of regenerative medicine products, including novel cellular therapies. Both draft guidance documents had 90-day comment periods, and we at LEAF joined forces with the Niskanen Center to submit comments to the FDA to ensure that the voice of the community for healthy life extension was heard. These new regulations could have considerable implications for the therapies and technologies being developed as part of the biomedical gerontology field.

The first draft guidance addresses how the FDA intends to optimize its regulatory requirements for devices used in the recovery, isolation, and delivery of RMATs (regenerative medicine advanced therapies), including combination products.

The second document explains what expedited programs may be available to sponsors of regenerative medicine therapies and describes what therapies may be eligible for RMAT designation.

According to new FDA regulations, a drug is eligible for designation as an RMAT if:

The drug is a regenerative medicine therapy, which is defined as a cell therapy, therapeutic tissue engineering product, human cell and tissue product, or any combination product using such therapies or products, except for those regulated solely under Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act and part 1271 of Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations;
The drug is intended to treat, modify, reverse, or cure a serious or life-threatening disease or condition; and
Preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the drug has the potential to address unmet medical needs for such disease or condition

We hope that this joint project will support the improvement of US regulations that concern these innovative treatments and will make the overall regulatory landscape more friendly. Below, we cite the most important notes from our resulting paper.

Last week, the Niskanen Center joined with the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation in filing comments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), offering our support for the agency’s new regenerative medicine advanced therapy (RMAT) designation draft guidance for industry.

Although there are opportunities for marginal improvements to the guidance, and FDA approval processes more generally, we are happy to see that the agency chose to include gene therapies in its interpretation of what qualifies as a regenerative medicine therapy.

Under section 3033 of the 21st Century Cures Act, the FDA was tasked with developing an accelerated approval process for regenerative advanced therapies. Such therapies would qualify for expedited review and approval so long as the drug (a) met the definition of a regenerative medicine therapy, (b) was “intended to treat, modify, reverse, or cure a serious condition,” and (c) “has the potential to address unmet medical needs” for a serious disease or condition. Unfortunately, the bill’s definition of a regenerative medicine advanced therapy was unclear on whether gene therapies, in particular, would qualify. Luckily, the FDA clarified this point. As the RMAT guidance document notes:

gene therapies, including genetically modified cells, that lead to a durable modification of cells or tissues may meet the definition of a regenerative medicine therapy. Additionally, a combination product (biologic-device, biologic-drug, or biologic-device-drug) can be eligible for RMAT designation when the biological product component provides the greatest contribution to the overall intended therapeutic effects of the combination product.

This is an excellent development and one that portends immense benefits for future gene therapy applications submitted for FDA approval. According to the guidance, the new RMAT designation, unlike other fast-track approval and review processes, “does not require evidence to indicate that the drug may offer a substantial improvement over available therapies.” Liberalizing the threshold standards of evidence for RMAT designation ensures that future gene therapies will encounter fewer unnecessary roadblocks in delivering more effective and innovative treatments for individuals suffering from debilitating diseases.

As we note in our concluding remarks:

Overall, we consider the RMAT guidance to be a stellar improvement over other expedited programs, especially in its qualifying criteria. However, greater clarity is needed in order to capture the benefits of more advanced cell therapies that can help contribute to the healthy aging and well-being of American citizens. As FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently noted: “The benefits of [gene therapy] science—and the products that become available—are likely to accelerate. How we define the modern framework for safely advancing these opportunities will determine whether we’re able to fully realize the benefits that these new technologies can offer.”

We agree wholeheartedly. Developing a regulatory framework that accommodates safety and innovation will be a key determinant of how quickly the benefits of regenerative medicine, gene therapy, and anti-aging research revolutionize the lives of Americans. This guidance is an important and promising step in the right direction. With the right modifications, it can help usher in a new age of healthcare improvement for individuals from all walks of life.

Read the full comments submitted to the FDA here.

Source: Niskanen Center

About Elena Milova

As a devoted advocate of rejuvenation technologies since 2013, Elena is providing the community with a systemic vision how aging is affecting our society. Her research interests include global and local policies on aging, demographic changes, public perception of the application of rejuvenation technologies to prevent age-related diseases and extend life, and related public concerns. Elena is a co-author of the book “Aging prevention for all” (in Russian, 2015) and the organizer of multiple educational events helping the general public adopt the idea of eventually bringing aging under medical control.

About Keith Comito

Keith Comito is President of LEAF / Lifespan.io and a long-time advocate of longevity research. He is also a computer programmer, mathematician, musician, lover of life and perhaps a man with too many hobbies. He earned a B.S. in Mathematics, B.S. in Computer science, and M.S. in Applied Mathematics at Hofstra University, where his work included analysis of the LMNA protein.

About LIFE EXTENSION ADVOCACY FOUNDATION (LEAF)

In 2014, the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation was established as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting increased healthy human lifespan through fiscally sponsoring longevity research projects and raising awareness regarding the societal benefits of life extension. In 2015 they launched Lifespan.io, the first nonprofit crowdfunding platform focused on the biomedical research of aging.

They believe that this will enable the general public to influence the pace of research directly. To date they have successfully supported four research projects aimed at investigating different processes of aging and developing therapies to treat age-related diseases.

The LEAF team organizes educational events, takes part in different public and scientific conferences, and actively engages with the public on social media in order to help disseminate this crucial information. They initiate public dialogue aimed at regulatory improvement in the fields related to rejuvenation biotechnology.

U.S. Transhumanist Party – Official Website

U.S. Transhumanist Party – PUTTING SCIENCE, HEALTH, & TECHNOLOGY AT THE FOREFRONT OF AMERICAN POLITICS

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