Tag: biology

‘Human, All Too Human’: Will We Become Hostages to Our Own Minds by Implementing Universal AI? – Article by Ariel VA Feinerman

‘Human, All Too Human’: Will We Become Hostages to Our Own Minds by Implementing Universal AI? – Article by Ariel VA Feinerman

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Ariel VA Feinerman

The Sibyl System, Psycho-Pass TV series

What is needed is nothing less than a breakthrough in philosophy, a new epistemological theory that explains how brains create explanations.

~ David Deutsch, British physicist and philosopher

Many scientists and engineers have unreasonably high expectations of artificial intelligence. For some reason, they believe that once thinking machines are created, they will immediately solve many of our problems and lead to a technological Singularity. However, this way of thinking is a misconception.

Note: I deliberately avoid using the word ‘intelligence’ because it usually refers to the ability to analyse problems and make decisions based on patterns, without awareness of the process. In this sense, intelligence is inherent in the Maple programme, which solves complex equations, as well as in bees, which are capable of learning and complex behaviour, and in many other animals. Instead, I will use the word ‘mind’ when referring to human-level thinking process.

Do we even need an artificial mind? Yes, we do. Unfortunately, ‘bare’ intelligence solves only a narrow class of problems, and sometimes quite inefficiently. Furthermore, ‘bare’ intelligence is incapable of formulating the problem itself! Take chess, for example: a machine solves the problem non-creatively, expending considerable resources and using various algorithms programmed into it by engineers, not to mention the enormous size of the training set. A human solves the problem creatively, generating new solutions while using far fewer resources!

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Now, let us return to our problem. It is most likely that the first artificial mind will be be modelled on the human mind. This is because we still do not know how consciousness works, and the only way we currently have of constructing an artificial mind is to copy the human mind. In other words, the thinking machines we create will emulate the human brain. This is a very important circumstance that places serious limitations on our expectations.

The problem is that we are planning to set creative tasks for an artificial mind. We expect it to make breakthroughs in medicine and biology, physics and cosmology, sociology and psychology. Moreover, we believe that it will be capable of writing books, composing music, and painting pictures. In other words, we believe that it will be capable of creating new knowledge (in a broad sense, including art and music). But most healthy, normal adults do not engage in anything like this! They are indeed normal, because the majority determines the norm.

Being created on the basis of the average human, the artificial mind will not differ from it in any way, except for its potentially unlimited resources. It is quite possible that an artificial mind, possessing consciousness, simply will not want to engage in all this creativity that has been imposed on it in advance. After all, modern humans have unlimited resources compared to their Stone Age ancestors. They can access all the information accumulated by humanity in a matter of seconds. However, few people need this information, except for scientists and engineers. Most of the information technology works for entertainment. This has always been the case and will always be so, regardless of the amount of resources available (provided that human nature remains the same).

Therefore, creativity is more of an anomaly than the norm. Of course, consuming information is in itself a creative process that requires a certain amount of creativity, as does life in the modern world. Nevertheless, such everyday creativity is necessary for survival and differs greatly from studying the Universe or writing music.

For example, the advent of computer programmes for making music has made life easier for novice musicians, but it has not increased their numbers. If a person is not interested in music, he or she will not pursue it, no matter how easy the process may be. Similarly, no matter what computing resources a thinking machine may have, it will not solve a problem if it is not interested in it.

However, several ideas have been put forward on how to overcome such challenges. For example, an artificial mind could be programmed to solve specific problems. Nevertheless, until we understand how the human mind works — indeed, how any mind works — and what changes need to be made to the brain at a low level in order to stimulate an interest in music, we will not be able to influence our brains, and consequently their computer models.

Well, opponents would say that, while we cannot yet program the mind directly, but we can nurture the desired personality. This is certainly a more realistic idea, but it is still not feasible within the framework of today’s knowledge. (Moreover, nurturing itself is a form of high-level programming!)

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There is another equally important issue that is rarely discussed, which is unfortunate. The problem lies in human nature. Humans are animals, and it is normal for animals to seek physical pleasure and reproduce. Anyone who spends their life creating new knowledge instead of earning a lot of money with minimal effort and seeking more physical pleasure could be considered ‘insane.’ In psychiatry, it is not considered normal for one idea to occupy a person’s mind for many years. Many talented people are indeed insane or have other mental health issues. Of course, such people enjoy their creative process, but the problem is that it can be dangerous to their mental health or even their lives. This is just as true of creative people themselves, who can sometimes be dangerous to those around them.

Our entire civilisation was built by ‘crazy’ people! Everything around us was created by scientists and engineers, artists and musicians, writers and other creative madmen who devoted themselves to changing the world, sometimes at the expense of their own lives! Yet we have more or less become accustomed to ‘mad geniuses,’ and it is easier to control a vulnerable person than a machine. Would you entrust your life to a powerful artificial mind if you had even the slightest doubt about its sanity?

In the near future, it is quite possible that we will learn how to construct truly creative thinking machines, but will they be as crazy as their human prototypes? And aren’t mental health issues an integral part of any creative process? These are questions to which we do not yet know the answers.

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In other words, an artificial mind will face the same problems as a human mind. How can we avoid them? We need a universal theory of the mind that explains the principles of how any mind — or at least the human mind — works. Only by understanding these principles will we be able to design intelligent machines — not through blind copying or trial and error, but through purposeful, rational design. We will use the human mind as a basis, and either improve upon it or redesign it completely. With the help of such a theory, we can improve our own minds as well.

Compare the first clumsy aeroplanes with today’s civilian airliners or military fighter jets, such as the F-35! Modern aerospace engineering is a perfect example of our good understanding of the laws of physics. Engineers do not copy a bird’s wing; they calculate the necessary parameters using the laws of physics.

Alas, the development of artificial mind is slightly different: we have not yet a universal theory, nor have we attempted to construct one. This means there is still a lot of trial and error ahead, and a long way to go.

Bibliography:

David Deutsch (2012, October 3). Creative blocks. Aeon.

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.

Read more about Ariel VA Feinerman on the THPedia entry about him here.

Ariel VA Feinerman was the guest of honor at the U.S. Transhumanist Party Virtual Enlightenment Salon of  May 10 / December 7, 2025.

Sorry, Dr. Coughlin, “Aging” and “Old Age” Are Real, and They Suck

Sorry, Dr. Coughlin, “Aging” and “Old Age” Are Real, and They Suck

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Daniel C. Elton, Ph.D.

Author’s Note: This article was also posted on my Substack.

Coughlin’s audience spontaneously started clapping when he proclaimed that “old age” is made up in 2021. He repeats this mantra often.

Recently I attended a talk at the Broad Institute by Joseph F. Coughlin, who runs the “AgeLab” at MIT. I was shocked and disturbed by what I heard. In Coughlin’s view of reality, the elderly do not actually become less capable as they age, it’s just that society thinks they do. According to Coughlin, the elderly are unfairly cast out from society, forced to spend the rest of their days cooped up in nursing homes and retirement communities where they are treated as delicate creatures that need to rest. In Coughlin’s view, any talk of problems associated with “old age” perpetuates harmful stereotypes. Aging, Coughlin insists, is not actually a problem.

Coughlin began his talk by claiming that our entire conception of “old age” is based on a faulty theory about “vital energy” that was popularized in the 1800s. According to this theory, people used up “vital energy” by doing things like work and having sex, eventually reaching a “low battery state” where they needed to rest and conserve what little energy they had left. This faulty theory, according to Coughlin, is responsible for the belief that people become more fatigued as they get older, as well as the belief that people should retire so they can rest and conserve what little vital energy they have left.1 According to Coughlin, both of these beliefs are faulty.

Most shockingly, Coughlin boldly proclaimed that “aging is not a problem to be solved”. My jaw literally dropped upon hearing this, in disbelief at the chutzpah and utter disregard for reality on display.

Coughlin’s talk was very disrespectful to millions of people worldwide who are suffering from the ravages of aging. This issue is personal for me. I watched my grandmother struggle with severe dementia for years along with mobility issues and glaucoma. I also watched my grandfather’s quality of life slowly decline due to aging, robbing him of his mobility, quality of life, and dignity.

I challenged Dr. Coughlin on some of his points after his talk, but rather than admitting to some of the realities of aging he doubled down. He re-iterated his view that aging is “not a problem” and is a socially constructed concept. He wouldn’t accept my contention that aging is the underlying driver of all the diseases of old age.

Coughlin might like to pretend that problems of aging don’t actually exist, but biological reality is that people do become more sicker, less energetic, and less capable over time. Aging directly causes cancer, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, muscle loss, frailty, cataracts, macular degeneration, urinary incontinence, hearing loss, decreased libido, loss of taste and smell, weakened voice, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, wrinkly skin, hair loss, mental retardation, memory loss, and a greatly weakened immune system.

While it is true that people are living longer now than decades ago and receiving better medical care, the problem of aging is still very much with us. In fact, aging is a larger problem today since we can keep people alive longer with medical interventions. These interventions (like stents, pacemakers, etc.) keep people alive but they don’t halt aging, so people now experience the horrible ravages of aging for longer than ever before.

Aging is not a slow, gradual decline. Rather, it’s something that picks of pace rapidly after age 65. The incidence of most of the worst diseases caused by aging increases exponentially with age. Age 65 is right around the “knee” or “turning point” of that exponential curve. It makes sense biologically to say those over 65 are entering “old age”. Consider that only 10% of people die between age 1 and age 65, but 20% of people will die in the next 10 years after that. Between 75 to 85, 30% more people will die. Things go downhill quickly after age 65.

Of course we shouldn’t assume any one individual isn’t capable simply because they are over 65. Noam Chomsky is still intellectually engaged at age 94. A few individuals are able to complete triathlons in their 90s. There is clearly significant variation in the rates at which people age due to genetics and other factors. At the same time as we acknowledge this we must not turn a blind eye away from the reality of how aging effects most people. Reality is that most of us are going to suffer from numerous issues as we enter old age. In fact, as much as it pains me to say this, a significant fraction of people reading this are going to die a slow, painful death unless we as a society get serious about treating and reversing aging.

Who is this guy, and how did he become an authority on longevity?

Dr. Coughlin, who has a Ph.D. in transportation engineering, created the MIT Age Lab in 1999. Always in a suit and bowtie, he projects a confident, authoritative presence. He is an energetic and engaging speaker. It’s not hard to see how after 20+ years of giving his traveling roadshow he has become a respected thought leader on longevity, despite having no formal training on the subject.

The core of Coughlin’s message is that aging isn’t a problem and that the elderly are unfairly stigmatized. It’s not hard to see why this message is popular. People don’t want to think about all of the horrible effects of aging they will very likely have to endure later in their life. People prefer to focus on the stories of people who thrive in their 80s and 90s rather than those suffering long drawn-out deaths in hospitals and nursing homes. Talk about “socially constructed categories” sounds intellectually sophisticated as well.

Now to be fair, Coughlin makes a lot of good points in his talks. He often talks about the loss of meaning and purpose many experience after retirement. He talks about how products for the elderly often use drab neutral “healthcare” color schemes like teal and beige. His book The Longevity Economy is about how to market to the growing number of older people, which he says is an often overlooked demographic. He seems to see longevity biotechnology in a positive light.

Coughlin was appointed by President George W. Bush to the White House Advisory Committee on Aging in 2005. More recently he was appointed by Governor Charlie Baker to the Governor’s Council on Aging in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, this is man who continues to wield power and influence over the direction of healthcare policy in the United States. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered writing this post.

It’s not just Coughlin…

Putting Coughlin aside, I’d like to also point out that many doctors today share Coughlin’s view that aging is not a problem. In fact, I spoke to one such doctor at the event. This dismissive attitude is widespread in the medical establishment and requires forceful disruption to change. In Nick Bostrom’s Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, for generations people accept the fact that a tyrannical dragon requires regular human sacrifice. When something is accepted as a “normal fact of life”, nobody even contemplates how things might be different. This is exactly the state of things today with respect to aging.

Many people also worry that talking about “aging as a disease” will reinforce unfair stereotypes.2 For instance Cathal McCrory and Rose Anne Kenny wrote the following in a letter to The Lancet: Diabetes and Endocrinology.

“we feel that labelling ageing as a disease serves to reinforce ageist stereotypes and risks legitimising insidious prejudice and discrimination of older people on the basis of age.”

Of course, “ageism” is a massive and thorny problem, just like sexism and racism, and I admit that more honest talk about the realities of aging could exacerbate this problem. At the same time, more honest talk about the reality of aging could also lead to more compassion towards and better social accommodations for the elderly. Regardless, the best path forward here is not to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that aging doesn’t exist. We must confront both problems (aging and ageism) head on. The ultimate solution towards eliminating ageism would be to cure aging itself.

Appendix: biological reality

At a high level aging is very simple – it is the accumulation of damage over time. Aging is well understood and characterized in terms of specific biological processes. A famous 2013 paper called “The Hallmarks of Aging” identified four “primary hallmarks” that cause damage in the body – genome instability, telomere shortening, epigenetic alterations, and loss of proteostasis. Aubrey de Grey famously broke aging into seven specific damage causing-processes – extracellular aggregates, accumulation of senescent cells, extracellular matrix stiffening, intracellular aggregates, mitochondrial mutations, cancerous cells, and cell loss. Karl Pfleger’s very thorough review identifies 18 causes. There is substantial overlap between these lists.3 To the extent there is controversy about the causes of aging, it is mostly around whether there are any more fundamental processes that drive the different damage-causing processes that have been identified.

Let’s look at some graphs that show the acceleration of aging’s harmful effects after age 65 – 75:

Risk of death vs. age

From Our World in Data

Energy expenditure vs. age

Figure from Scientific American. Adapted from Pontzer et al. Science, vol. 373, no. 6556, Aug. 2021, pp. 808–12.

Cancer incidence vs. age

Figure from the National Cancer Institute.

Musculoskeletal conditions vs. age (back pain, arthritis, etc)

Conditions include low back pain, neck pain, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and others. Source: De Luca et al. Chiropractic & Manual Therapies, vol. 30, no. 1, Dec. 2022, p. 22.

Cognitive ability vs. age

Figure showing data from the Seattle Longitudinal Study.

VO2 max vs. age (a measure of max cardiovascular output)

Figure from www.opportunityfitness.com.au. See also a similar graph in Loe, Henrik, et al. “Aerobic Capacity Reference Data in 3816 Healthy Men and Women 20–90 Years.” PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 5, May 2013, p. e64319.

Grip strength vs. age

Figure from Murabito et al. Aging Cell, vol. 16, no. 4, Aug. 2017, pp. 888–94.

Footnotes

[1] I Google-searched a bit and can’t find any information on the historical “vital force/energy” theory other than Coughlin’s talks and articles. Coughlin writes about it in his book, The Longevity Economy, but he doesn’t cite any sources. The theory sounds plausible, but it’s curious there are no other historical accounts of it online other than Coughlin’s writings. If anyone knows anything further about this theory, please comment below.

[2] This follows a common pattern where someone points out a problem that needs to be solved, but then someone else points out a hypothetical social concern that may arise from trying to solve or solving the problem. People end up talking and arguing ad nauseam about the hypothetical social concern rather than actually trying to solve the problem. The result is that unnecessary suffering is prolongated. Another way of saying this is that people tend to focus on harmful secondary effects that might arise from tackling a problem rather than the massive gains that definitely would occur from tackling the problem. I may do this an article about this at some point, since I can think of several other examples of this phenomena.

[3] See Karl Pfleger’s summary spreadsheet for a comparison of “causes of aging” lists and his discussion here.

Dan Elton, Ph. D., is Director of Scholarship for the U.S. Transhumanist Party.  You can find him on Twitter at @moreisdifferent and on LinkedIN. If you like his content, check out his website and consider subscribing to his newsletter on Substack.

Introduction to “Fight Aging!” – Article by Reason

Introduction to “Fight Aging!” – Article by Reason

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Reason

Nothing is given to man on earth – struggle is built into the nature of life, and conflict is possible – the hero is the man who lets no obstacle prevent him from pursuing the values he has chosen.

-Andrew Bernstein

Editor’s Note: In this introductory article to the “Fight Aging!” blog, the author lays out four of the most basic steps one can take. Any person who claims the title of “Transhumanist” would be foolish not to take these basic actions and principles to heart. A Transhumanist should consider these part of the “struggle” they all face, and that they implicitly choose to either confront or evade.

~ Zach Richardson, Director of Publication, United States Transhumanist Party, December 2021

Aging is an Enemy, So Fight It!

Aging saps our strength and ability to enjoy life, cripples us, and eventually kills us. Tens of millions die from medical conditions caused by aging each and every year, and a staggering amount of money is spent on trying – and failing – to cope with this ongoing disaster. Yet the risk of suffering age-related conditions in later life can be reduced for most people through diet and exercise. Furthermore, serious scientific efforts are presently underway to understand and intervene in the aging process – not just to prevent frailty and disease, but also repair and reverse the root causes of aging.

In future decades researchers will assemble new biotechnologies that can defeat aging, restore the old to health and vigor, and prevent the young from ever suffering the ravages of age. Some of these future therapies are already understood and envisioned in some detail, but remain in comparatively early stages of research. Others are just now starting to make the leap into clinical development. We would like these breakthroughs to happen while we are still alive and in good enough health to benefit from them: we miss out on so much as things stand today, pressed by the lack of time and our increasing frailty with age. Imagine instead a world in which everyone has the option of another tomorrow, and the health and vigor to enjoy it, each and every day. But how can we achieve this goal?

The Limited Means of Today, the Biotechnologies of Tomorrow

Present-day medical technologies are far advanced over those available to our ancestors, and as a result we suffer far less than they did. Yet modern medicine can achieve little in comparison to what scientists know is possible for the future. Despite amazing advances in understanding and treating age-related conditions (such as cancer, heart disease, dementia, diabetes, and many others), and despite the cries of the anti-aging marketplace, it is still the case that, for basically healthy people, no presently available therapy or tool is proven in humans to provide more than a fraction of the long-term benefits to health and life expectancy provided by regular exercise or a calorie-restricted diet.

While it is true that no existing medical technology is proven to improve on these lifestyle choices here and now, today, in humans, this state of affairs will not remain true for many more years. If you look to the laboratories, you will see that some researchers can greatly extend the healthy lives of many species, while others put forward clear plans to either slow aging through the manipulation of human metabolism or reverse aging by repairing the cell and tissue damage that causes age-related degeneration. Technology demonstrations for some of these approaches have been carried out in mice in recent years, producing benefits to health and extended healthy life spans. Treatments based on clearance of senescent cells have been demonstrated to reverse the progression of many currently untreatable age-related conditions in mice, for example. The first formal human clinical trials of therapies anticipated to either modestly slow aging or produce limited degrees of rejuvenation started up in 2017, and some of these trials have produced positive results.

A future in which aging becomes a treatable condition awaits us, as time ticks away and, for now, we continue to age just like our ancestors did. This is an era of rapid progress in biotechnology and medicine. As the years pass, the remaining span of healthy life that you and I will likely live to enjoy is ever more determined by the ability of clinical medicine to revert and repair the causes of aging, and ever less determined by lifestyle choices. Thus when we reach for longer, healthier lives, it is vital that we lend our support to the research and clinical development of therapies capable of treating the causes of aging. We must ensure that the public is educated, the fundamental longevity science is funded, the clinical applications of that research fully developed, and the resulting rejuvenation biotechnologies made available – and all this as soon as possible. The clock is ticking, after all, and this is the only approach that will allow us live for significantly longer than our ancestors.

Four Steps Toward Longevity

The following four steps outline a starting point for living longer, a sketch of a framework for thinking about healthy life extension:

Step 1: Stop Damaging Your Health

At its most basic level, aging is nothing more than an accumulation of damage; breakages in the molecular machinery of your cells, a build-up of metabolic waste products that your body cannot break down, the flailing of biological systems that are increasingly unable to cope. Ask yourself this: are you damaging yourself more rapidly than you might otherwise be, perhaps more than you realize? Do you smoke? Do recreational drugs occupy a central position in your life? Do you eat nothing but junk food or are overweight? Do you exercise little or not at all? Do you have a poor relationship with your physician, or haven’t seen a doctor in years? If so, you have a clear starting point. These things can hurt you far more than any presently available strategy for healthy living can help. There is little point in insulating the windows if the door is jammed open.

Find a physician you can trust and talk to about improving your health. You might be surprised at how easy, low-cost, and downright pleasant it is to lead a healthier and thereby longer life.

Step 2: Adopt a Better Diet and Lifestyle

The body is a complex, resilient machine. Unlike our cars, however, we can’t replace it when it breaks down. Given that, it’s scandalous that most people know more about the long-term care of a car than they do about the long-term care of the human body. Fortunately, it’s neither difficult nor expensive to use diet and lifestyle to raise the odds of living a longer and healthier life.

Firstly: adopt some form of calorie-restricted diet, whether straight calorie restriction or some form of intermittent fasting. Calorie restriction and some implementations of intermittent fasting, such as alternate-day fasting, are currently the most robustly, repeatedly proven way of extending healthy life in mammals. While the present scientific consensus is that these practices will not extend life in humans to anywhere near the same degree as in mice, calorie restriction and intermittent fasting have been shown in human studies to provide a range of other beneficial effects on health, such as a greatly lowered risk of suffering all common age-related medical conditions – and these approaches to diet are highly praised by practitioners. You can learn more about calorie restriction at the CR Society website, and here at Fight Aging! you’ll find introduction to calorie restriction that provides helpful guidelines to getting started.

Secondly: exercise as recommended by your physician. The benefits of maintaining a modest regular level of exercise for most people are well-known and well-proven by many scientific studies. As is also true of calorie restriction, these benefits include a greatly reduced risk of suffering almost all of the common age-related diseases.

Thirdly: take a modest amount of supplements appropriate to your age and health. There is a wealth of supplement information available, but much of it is worthless, propagated by irresponsible sellers. This is perhaps the hardest topic to research, and in the end you will have to make a number of decisions yourself based on incomplete or contradictory scientific evidence. The bottom line here, however, is that no presently available supplement or combination of supplements has been shown to provide even a fraction of the benefits of either calorie restriction or exercise, for all that they are widely supposed to be beneficial.

Step 3: Support Progress in Rejuvenation Research

Speaking out in favor of medical research aimed at extending the healthy human life span is just as important as taking care of your health today – even the best of present-day practices will make only a comparatively small difference to your expected future life span. Most age-related conditions are still incurable, and no matter how well you live your life, you will become frail with old age and eventually die from the damage that is accumulating within your body. The aging process causes great suffering for hundreds of millions worldwide each and every day, and absent scientific breakthroughs you will be one of them. Yet that said, we are living in an era of rapid, seething progress in medicine, the life sciences, and biotechnology, far more so than at any time in the past – and we can envisage how aging should be repaired and reversed. Aging will one day be cured, just like any other medical condition, and our job is to ensure that this day arrives soon enough to matter.

A revolution in biotechnology is presently underway, a longevity-focused industry of biotech companies is forming, and the medicine of the near future holds great promise – see, for example, the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) coordinated by the SENS Research Foundation and other scientific groups. This promise is not a guarantee, however. It can only be realized if research and clinical development are fully funded and widely supported. The still-young field of rejuvenation research remains for the most part poorly funded, and while there is a great deal more discussion of the prospect of treating aging as a medical condition than was the case even as recently as a decade ago, most of the public still neither understands nor appreciates the possibilities offered by this research. Further, many politicians, funding institutions, and bioethicists continue to speak out in opposition to the development of medicine to enhance healthy longevity.

If we do not stand up in support of rejuvenation biotechnology – the key to our future health and extended longevity – then research and investment will decline. Without vocal public support and understanding, scientists are reluctant to go out on a limb and fight for the funding needed to create new ways to intervene in the aging process. Without philanthropy for the academic sciences, much of this fundamental research will not be funded. By failing to prevent legislation that slows or criminalizes vital medical research, such as happened for stem-cell research for many years, we only hurt ourselves. Do you want to live a much longer, much healthier life? Do you want your friends, parents, and children to live long and in vigor? Do you want to see the development of biotechnology that can reverse the course of aging and frailty? Then you have to support this research, and be vocal about it! There are many ways to make your voice heard on important issues relating to the future of human health and longevity. A good starting point to learn more on this topic is to become a regular reader of Fight Aging!, explore the site, and sign up for the newsletter.

Step 4: Investigate Early Access to the First Rejuvenation Therapies

New medical technologies do not arrive all at once, fully formed from day one. Early forms of therapy become available in limited ways, or existing drugs are found to have an effect on the mechanism of interest large enough to merit use in animal studies or human trials. So it is for the first rejuvenation treatments to have a large enough impact on aging in animal studies to care about, and that are also producing benefits in their first human trials. As of 2019, the most obvious of these are senolytic therapies that selectively destroy the senescent cells that accumulate to cause considerable harm in old tissues. The existing generic drugs and supplements newly discovered to be senolytic, and shown to work well in numerous animal studies, are being tested in humans.

The informed decision that each of us must make for ourselves is whether to wait for more data from human trials, to wait for the most likely better senolytic therapies presently under development, or to strike out to obtain and try existing senolytic therapies. If the latter, there in turn lies further personal research, learning, and informed decisions. Where to find a physician to prescribe the relevant drugs, for example, or whether to forge ahead as a self-experimenter, with all of the responsibility and accountability that this implies. However it is accomplished, it is almost always possible for informed and proactive individuals to obtain earlier access to new therapies than waiting for the world to move on to the point at which general physicians begin recommending these treatments to patients. Whether or not to choose to do so is a personal decision on risk and benefit, and this same calculus applies to any new medical technology as it arrives, not just senolytic rejuvenation therapies.

Final Thoughts

So there you go: four quick steps that provide a solid starting point for learning more about living longer and the near future of rejuvenation biotechnology. Fifteen years ago, when the longevity science community was smaller and less organized, and the first rejuvenation therapies had yet to even be seriously tested in laboratory animals, it required years of discussion and research to make the leap to understand the existence and importance of step 3 – the necessity of supporting research into human longevity, and the fact that there is legitimate research aimed at human rejuvenation to be supported in the first place. Back in the day, information on longevity science was harder to find, drowned out by irresponsible voices in the anti-aging marketplace, and only rarely discussed in public by scientists in the field.

The core of the Fight Aging! mindset is to recognize that step 3 exists, and that your future largely depends on the pace of progress in medical research aimed at producing human rejuvenation. Don’t get seduced by the noise surrounding step 2, produced by the vast industry associated with lifestyle choices, diet, supplements, and exercise, because it is largely smoke and mirrors. You can’t eat and exercise your way into a healthy life that is decades longer than it would otherwise be, and you can’t eat and exercise your way to a certainty of reaching 100 years of age. Three quarters of the healthiest among us die before reaching 90 even supported by today’s medicine, and most of what is sold to the lost and the gullible under the “anti-aging” banner is useless junk. Only new medical technologies produced by the research community can provide the option of living in good health for far longer than your great-grandparents did, and that can only happen if these technologies are funded and developed rapidly enough.

Fight Aging! is here as a resource. Make good use of it, but always remember that the bottom line is this: a tremendous opportunity exists in the research and development of rejuvenation biotechnology, far beyond anything that can be obtained through diet, exercise, and supplements. Don’t squander that opportunity by ignoring it.

Reason is the founder of The Longevity Meme (now Fight Aging!). He saw the need for The Longevity Meme in late 2000, after spending a number of years searching for the most useful contribution he could make to the future of healthy life extension. When not advancing Fight Aging!, Reason works as a technologist in a variety of industries.
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This work is reproduced here in accord with a Creative Commons Attribution license. It was originally published on FightAging.org.
Evolution Won’t Stop Aging Any Time Soon, but Medicine Might – Article by Sedeer el-Showk

Evolution Won’t Stop Aging Any Time Soon, but Medicine Might – Article by Sedeer el-Showk

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Sedeer el-Showk

Editor’s Note: The U.S. Transhumanist Party publishes this article by Sedeer el-Showk, originally featured by our allies at Lifespan.io, in order to highlight the fallacious nature of many media outlets’ responses to a recent study about the “invariant rate of aging”. As Mr. el-Showk eloquently explains, this study does not refute or undermine the possibility of pursuing the reversal of biological aging, but simply suggests that this needs to be done through medical and technological means, and that without such means, overcoming the limitations of the current maximum human lifespan would not be feasible. Many of us in the longevity advocacy community have known this for a long time already, but it is important to spread accurate information to prevent an unjustified decline in public confidence in the feasibility of radical life extension.

~ Gennady Stolyarov II, Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party, July 25, 2021

Aging is not unstoppable, despite misinterpretations of the new study.

A new study [1] about the ‘invariant rate of ageing’ has led to reports that aging is unstoppable and that we cannot cheat death. However, this reporting is based on a misunderstanding of what the study actually says.

The misinterpretations

The study shows that “immortality and everlasting youth are the stuff of myths,” according to The Guardian. The article goes on to say that “an unprecedented study has now confirmed that we probably cannot slow the rate at which we get older because of biological constraints.” Other outlets published similar conclusions, with Futurism saying that the study shows “an ‘invariant rate of aging’ that won’t slow down”.

These reporters seem to have gotten tripped up on the idea of an ‘invariant rate’, which has the key implication that biological constraints determine the rate of human aging. This led to the conclusion that aging is fixed, inevitable, and immutable, but that’s not at all what the study shows, as the paper itself directly says.

What the study actually says

The study aimed to investigate the ‘invariant rate of ageing’ hypothesis, which proposes that the rate of aging is fixed within a species. The idea is that aging has evolved in concert with a suite of other traits, such as birth rate and metabolic rate, and this concerted evolution has led to the rate of aging being relatively fixed within a species.

In this context, ‘fixed’ is used as the opposite of ‘plastic’. It doesn’t mean ‘set in stone’. It means there’s relatively limited variation in this trait within a species because biological factors have a stronger effect on it than environmental factors. A good example might be the number of digits on a limb – environmental factors don’t really affect it, and there’s very little (but some) variation.

To test this hypothesis, the researchers created a statistical model of the age-specific risk of death in species from seven primate genera. They used data from various studies to set the parameters of their model, which is how they tested the amount of variation.

The model included parameters for infant and juvenile mortality, age-independent mortality, and senescent mortality. Variation in the biological rate of aging would be reflected in the senescent mortality parameter, since it captures what we normally think of as ‘aging’, while the infant and juvenile morality parameter reflects the misfortune of dying young.

The study’s first finding is that most of the gain in human lifespan so far has come from reducing mortality at younger ages. There’s also variation in the infant and juvenile mortality parameter, both between societies and at different times.

This also shows up in the relationship between life expectancy and lifespan equality. Media reports generally got this part of the study right, and you can look at the report on SciTechDaily to get more details about these findings.

Unlike the infant and juvenile mortality parameter, the senescent mortality parameter varied very little within each species. In fact, changing this parameter in their model shifted the mortality and demographic data of one species to look like another.

Changing the other parameters led to minor shifts in age distribution, but changing senescent mortality made it look like data from a different species. What this means is that within a given species, biological factors are the ultimate determinants of longevity.

Changing the environment to reduce mortality at younger ages (as we have in most parts of the world) affects demographics, increasing life expectancy and lifespan equality. However, accomplishing more than that will require tackling the evolved biological constraints on lifespan.

This study, therefore, doesn’t show that the rate of aging cannot be changed; it shows that there’s a limit to how much change can be realized without biological interventions, which is precisely the challenge that longevity research aims to overcome.

The paper itself closes on that note, though you wouldn’t know it from the way it’s been covered: “It remains to be seen if future advances in medicine can overcome the biological constraints that we have identified here, and achieve what evolution has not.”

Abstract

Is it possible to slow the rate of ageing, or do biological constraints limit its plasticity? We test the ‘invariant rate of ageing’ hypothesis, which posits that the rate of ageing is relatively fixed within species, with a collection of 39 human and nonhuman primate datasets across seven genera. We first recapitulate, in nonhuman primates, the highly regular relationship between life expectancy and lifespan equality seen in humans. We next demonstrate that variation in the rate of ageing within genera is orders of magnitude smaller than variation in pre-adult and age-independent mortality. Finally, we demonstrate that changes in the rate of ageing, but not other mortality parameters, produce striking, species-atypical changes in mortality patterns. Our results support the invariant rate of ageing hypothesis, implying biological constraints on how much the human rate of ageing can be slowed.

Conclusion

Ultimately, this wasn’t a study about longevity or the inevitability of aging. It was research to understand what affects the rate of aging – how much it results from evolved biological processes versus the effects of the environment. That’s important science not only for longevity research but also for evolutionary biology. It’s undoubtedly valuable, but unfortunately, its message has been misconstrued.

Far from showing that aging is inevitable, this research instead demonstrates that, ultimately, we’ll run out of environmental improvements and will have to turn to biological interventions to affect aging.

Literature

[1] Colchero, F. et al. The long lives of primates and the ‘invariant rate of ageing’ hypothesis. Nature Communications (2021), doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23894-3

Sedeer el-Showk became a professional science writer after finishing a degree in biology. He also writes poetry and science fiction and fantasy, and somehow juggles an ever-growing list of hobbies from programming to knitting to gardening. Eternal curiosity and good fortune have taken him to many parts of the world, but he’s settled in Helsinki, Finland for the moment. He hopes he’ll never stop learning new things.

The Unnatural Objection to Life Extension – Article by Arin Vahanian

The Unnatural Objection to Life Extension – Article by Arin Vahanian

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Arin Vahanian

Of all the objections to life extension, perhaps the most banal one yet is the argument that it is not natural for humans to want to live longer and healthier than they currently do. Of course, not only does this actually go against human nature itself, but it is also an insult to the immense progress we have made in improving the human condition throughout the course of history. In fact, this opposition to life extension also flies in the face of the entire medical industry, which is focused on keeping people alive, and any other industry that contributes to the betterment of the human condition, of which there are many. The fact is, opposing life extension is what is unnatural, because it is a natural human desire to want to survive, and to continue living in a healthy manner.

And let me be clear – just because something is natural does not make it good. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that getting poisoned by a plant, mauled by a wild animal, drowned by a tsunami, or crushed by a landslide are scenarios that are to be avoided at all costs. That these sorts of events are now relatively rare speaks volumes about the progress we have made in battling the destructive forces of nature.

Similarly, cancer, heart attacks, and strokes are natural too, yet no one would say that these conditions are desirable or good. In fact, many billions of dollars and resources are spent on finding a cure for these diseases, and for good reason – these diseases are deadly and contribute to massive suffering and pain.

To be sure, the environment is precious and should be protected. After all, to be able to walk through a forest and appreciate the flora and fauna is refreshing. Being able to visit a beach and feel the cool ocean breeze on one’s skin on a late summer afternoon is lovely. However, we should also be very wary of romanticizing nature, mostly because nature is entirely indifferent to the human condition. Indeed, nature does not care one bit about our happiness or fulfillment. Earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis and hurricanes are part of nature, but no sane person would argue that these events are positive or that we should experience more of them.

Just because something exists in nature does not make it desirable or good. Conversely, just because something was developed outside of nature does not make it undesirable or bad. In fact, more often than not, science and technology have contributed to massively improving the quality of life for human beings. Imagine how much worse life would be without electricity, life-saving medicines, medical procedures, and computer technology.

How many people now would say that the tuberculosis vaccine, stents, or pacemakers are bad and should be abolished? Of course, all these discoveries were “unnatural,” but no sane person would wish to be inflicted with a deadly infectious disease or suffer a heart attack.

But going back to talking about the environment, climate change is a very real threat to planet Earth and humanity, and we should do all we can to protect our planet, the human race, and members of the animal kingdom. However, the solution to climate change is not going to arrive automatically as part of a natural process. Neither is the answer to stop evolving as a species or to stop all technological innovation and progress and revert to the Dark Ages, and in turn have humanity experience economic collapse and widespread suffering. In fact, humanity’s best hope for battling climate change will likely come from science and technology.

Further, attempting to control nature is what has allowed us to come up with inventions such as indoor plumbing, safe and comfortable shelter, and weather forecasts, all of which have improved the quality of life dramatically. Suppose that we had just let nature run its course in these scenarios. I don’t think I need to spell out what would have happened to humans had we allowed that to happen.

But even after we have thoroughly debunked this ridiculous objection to life extension, critics may then move on to other objections, such as the idea that a human life is already long enough, or that we may become bored if we were to live longer, or that the Earth will become overpopulated. Fortunately, we have answers to these objections as well. And what about the argument that sickness and death are inevitable and that we should just accept things the way they are? This topic deserves its own discussion, but for the moment we can respond by saying that catching an infectious disease and dying at the age of 20 or 30 was once the way things used to be, but it is fortunately no longer the case.

The fact is that it is entirely natural for humans to want to live longer and healthier. Indeed, it is what we have been trying to do since the dawn of time. It is human nature to want to survive and thrive. For the first time in human history, we have the potential to overcome nature itself. Limiting ourselves to what is natural means we deny ourselves the opportunity to be better and to do better. Dying at 20 years of age due to cholera, measles, or malaria wasn’t our destiny as human beings, and therefore we overcame infectious illnesses and significantly increased our life expectancy. Now, we are at a crossroads where we get to decide if we wish to continue suffering for years and then dying due to aging-related illnesses such as dementia, heart disease, and cancer, or, whether we will dedicate this next stage of human development to overcoming these horrific illnesses.

Of course, even after admitting that aging-related illnesses and natural disasters are devastating and should be avoided at all costs, opponents of life extension may still argue that they are entitled to oppose life extension. Of course, they are entitled to their beliefs, no matter how faulty their reasoning and logic may be, but we supporters of life extension are also entitled to advocate for the defeat of aging-related illnesses and to improve the human condition through advancements in science and technology, even if these advancements are not part of nature.

I would urge those who oppose life extension technologies because they are unnatural to revisit their stance after burying a loved one who dies from cancer, or after witnessing a calamitous natural disaster that destroys entire towns and kills thousands of people.

If nature held all the solutions to life, then we would not need to build earthquake-resistant buildings, we would not need to develop anti-cancer drugs, and we would not need spend money, time, and resources on reducing human suffering and improving the human condition.

Nature is how we started as human beings, but nature is not where we need to end.

Arin Vahanian is Vice-Chairman of the U.S. Transhumanist Party. 

The Overpopulation Myth – Article by Arin Vahanian

The Overpopulation Myth – Article by Arin Vahanian

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Arin Vahanian

Of all the objections to life extension, one of the most pernicious is that there are too many people on Earth. Indeed, this objection in particular is rather harmful not just because it appears to advocate for suffering and death, but also because it appears to be a valid objection on a surface level.

Visions of mass starvation, billions of people living in deplorable conditions, and wars over resources, help fuel the popularity of this objection. However fascinating these sorts of overly dramatic, sensational Hollywood scenarios may seem to some people, believing in the inevitability of these scenarios would be ignoring the countless ways that science and technology have allowed us, time and again, to exceed our limitations, improve health outcomes, and create a better environment for humanity to thrive in.

There are many reasons why these dreadful scenarios continue to exist in peoples’ minds. One of the reasons why doomsday thinking has managed to remain a part of our zeitgeist is because the entertainment industry is addicted to it, constantly proliferating nightmarish scenarios of technology being a destructive force hell-bent on the devastation of humanity and the world. A less obvious reason is also because some well-meaning influential people have been fabulously wrong and have continued to double-down on being wrong over the years.

Biologist Paul Ehrlich famously said in 1968 that “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

Looking at this statement more than 50 years later, Paul Ehrlich wasn’t just wrong, he was completely wrong. None of his Malthusian predictions even came close to being true. I suppose that supporters of this sort of doomsday thinking will say in response that even though Ehrlich has been wrong for decades, he will one day be right. Even if a broken clock is right twice a day, we shouldn’t base the future of humanity on such faulty thinking. While it is possible for these horrific scenarios to come true, it does not mean that these scenarios are destiny. Humanity has weathered challenges and difficulties en route to coming up with amazing technological and medical innovations that have improved the quality of life for billions of people. And while challenges such as climate change should be taken very seriously, the fact that these challenges exist does not mean that humanity is doomed. It simply means that we need to make adjustments and to utilize science and technology to their fullest in order to resolve these threats.

Further, rather than extrapolate wildly and bring forth doomsday scenarios, we should bring forth data and facts to support our arguments. As I mentioned in a previous article, according to 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. Finally, according to a study published in the Lancet, the global population is expected to peak at 9.73 billion in 2064, before dropping to 8.79 billion in 2100. As a result, more than 23 countries are likely to see their populations halve by the end of this century. This includes countries such as Spain, Italy, Ukraine, and China.

Even if the above trends were somehow reversed, and human beings suddenly began reproducing more, we would be able to accommodate the increased population through solutions such as seasteading, vertical farming, 3D printing, and nanotechnology. Indeed, these technologies, and more, are among the many that would allow us to overcome limitations and alleviate potential threats resulting from an increased population. And I have not even begun speaking about space exploration.

The simple fact is that there is no fixed number of people who should be living on Earth at any given moment. In fact, we should rightfully be laughed out of the room if we asked the question, “What should the world’s population be?” We may as well ask how long a piece of string is. How many people is too many people? Further, how does one decide how many people is too many? Do you see how absurd this sort of thinking is? Even if we were to run detailed calculations on how many people the Earth could accommodate at any given point in time, what is true right now may not be true later, as planet Earth is dynamic, human beings are dynamic, and the forces of physics are dynamic. More importantly, we would be ignoring the awesome power of technology to allow us to do more, with less.

Therefore, let us move away from the pessimism, the doomsday scenarios, and the lack of vision, and move toward data, facts, science, and technological innovations that have allowed us, and will continue to allow us, to accommodate the needs of humanity. This does not mean that we should ignore challenges and perils and hope that everything will work out in the end. It does mean, however, that we should recognize the threats humanity is facing, and then take swift, concerted action toward eliminating those threats by using advancements in science, technology, and modern medicine.

But to go back to the topic, and frame the argument in a simpler way, one might want to ask proponents of the overpopulation myth whether they would have wanted their own parents to hold the same views about there being too many people on Earth. Of course, such critics of life extension would never want this to be the case, because it would mean that they themselves would not exist.

I would urge those who are critical of life extension to refrain from trying to decide how many people should be living on Earth. Indeed, rather than playing judge, jury, and executioner, I would recommend them to take a look in the mirror and appreciate the tremendous gift they were given – the gift of life. Had their parents held the faulty belief that there are too many people on Earth, these critics wouldn’t be able to offer their criticisms now. I am not suggesting that people should not offer valid criticisms of life extension. Nor am I suggesting that we gloss over the present and future challenges the Earth is facing. I am suggesting, however, that critics provide data, facts, and valid arguments to support their conclusions, rather than paint doomsday scenarios and claim that there are “too many people already.”  Indeed, the next time you hold a loved one in your arms, think about how you would feel if this person had never been born, or if this person was mercilessly ripped away from you.

So far, the likes of Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich have been completely wrong with their predictions, though it is possible for them and others like them, to be right someday. However, we should not take pleasure in being right, we should take pleasure in being better people. Being right is not what is important – being able to actualize oneself, improve the human condition, and make the world a better place to live, is what is important. And we cannot do that if we extrapolate wildly, spread fear, and insist that humanity is doomed. The truth is that humanity’s future hasn’t even been written yet. But when we do write it, we should do so utilizing the best that science and technology have to offer, in order to improve the human condition.  Overpopulation, calamity, and starvation are not destiny – but human improvement is, and has been, since the dawn of time.

Arin Vahanian is the Vice-Chairman of the U.S. Transhumanist Party. 

Meet the Naked Mole-Rat: Impervious to Pain and Cancer, and Lives Ten Times Longer Than It Should – Article by Ewan St. John Smith

Meet the Naked Mole-Rat: Impervious to Pain and Cancer, and Lives Ten Times Longer Than It Should – Article by Ewan St. John Smith

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Ewan St. John Smith

Smithsonian’s National Zoo/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Ewan St. John Smith, University of Cambridge

The naked mole-rat is perhaps one of the most bizarre beasts on the planet. At first glance, it looks like little more than a cocktail sausage with legs and teeth. But beneath its wrinkly pink skin, this creature’s strange and beautiful biology has me fascinated – so much so that I set up a whole research group devoted to studying them. Largely immune to cancer, impervious to some forms of pain, and seemingly blessed with the elixir of life, you may well owe your life to them one day.

As the name might suggest, naked mole-rats buck the mammalian trend by almost completely lacking hair or fur. Living underground in complex networks of tunnels in East Africa, their thermally stable environment means that a few orientation-aiding bodily hairs and facial whiskers are all they need. Lacking evolutionary pressure to regulate their body temperature, they’re also the only known cold-blooded mammal on the planet.

The way naked mole-rats mate and socially organise is more akin to certain insect species than to mammals. Like some species of bees and ants, naked mole-rats are eusocial, living in 100-strong groups headed by a sole breeding female, the queen. But while insects command their colonies with pheromones, the naked mole-rat queen uses physical aggression to keep their groups digging tunnels, foraging, and defending entrances.

No, this isn’t Star Wars – it’s a naked mole-rat defending a tunnel.
Neil Bromhall/Shutterstock

A key tool for both digging and combat is their teeth. Their incisors are exterior to their lips, so that when they bite through hard soil they don’t get a mouthful of earth each time. Naked mole-rats can also move their lower incisors to manipulate objects, and have a large sensory area of their brains dedicated to their teeth in the same way that hands have dedicated brain space in humans.

The peculiarities of naked mole-rat behaviour are captivating in themselves. However, to most scientists, what makes them really exciting is the potential some of their incredible biology holds for making biomedical breakthroughs.

The naked mole rat’s resistance to cancer, diagnosed in humans every two minutes in the UK alone, is a particular area of focus for researchers. In studying why there are just a few documented cases worldwide in naked mole-rats, scientists are hoping to identify new ways to prevent or treat the deadly disease.

As yet, we’re not exactly sure what gives them their resistance. Some evidence suggests that a key difference in one of the meshwork of substances providing structural and nutritional support to cells prevents them from reproducing uncontrollably. However, others have observed different results, so further investigation is needed.

Not content with just being immune to cancer, naked mole-rats are also impervious to some normally agonising chemical stimuli, such as capsaicin (the substance that makes chilli peppers taste hot) and acid (what gives lemon juice and vinegar their kick). For their acid-insensitivity, researchers are clearer about why. A subtle difference in one particular molecule of the animal’s pain-sensing nerves turns acid into an anaesthetic. That is, rather than stimulating pain-sensing nerves, it actually numbs them – just like an anaesthetic that your dentist administers before the drilling starts. Sadly, this superpower only works with specific chemical stimuli – heat and pressure are just as damaging to them as us.

Scientists are now further studying the naked mole-rat to see whether we might be able to make the human pain system similarly impervious to acid pain. This could be extremely useful for cancer and arthritis sufferers, for whom build-ups of acid in body tissue can be a major contributor to chronic pain. The molecule responsible for insensitivity to acid in mole-rats also plays a role in human genetic conditions that drastically alter pain perception, and as a result of this convergent research, potential painkillers targeting this molecule have made it into clinical trials in humans.

Naked mole-rats are also highly resilient to low oxygen conditions. Their nerve cells can function for almost one hour in the complete absence of oxygen, by instead using fructose to power energy production. In studying this remarkable ability, my lab and others are hoping to uncover novel treatments to prevent brain damage in stroke patients.

Naked mole-rats are also renowned for their longevity. Broadly speaking, a larger body equals longer life in mammals. Standard lab mice weigh around 35 grams, and usually live a maximum of two to three years. Naked mole-rats can be up to twice as heavy, so might be expected to live four to six years, but can actually survive for more than 30 years in captivity. That’s longer than the lifespan of polar bears and giraffes. And while humans experience from many ageing-associated health problems (for example, osteoarthritis), naked mole-rats appear to age without issue. Research into the ageing processes of naked mole-rats is only in its infancy, but could have multiple implications for treating ageing-related conditions in humans.

Newborn naked mole-rats weigh as little as two grams.
belizar/Shutterstock

Naked mole-rats may look comical, but their magical biology is no laughing matter. Studying their hidden powers will not always result in preventions, cures and treatments for human ailments because of fundamental differences between the species. However, every new insight has the potential to lead to a breakthrough – as animal research has continually done throughout recent history. By unlocking the secrets held within their cells in a responsible manner, we may one day improve countless human lives.The Conversation

Ewan St. John Smith, University Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Cambridge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Third Enlightenment Salon – Gennady Stolyarov II, Bill Andrews, Bobby Ridge, and Mihoko Sekido Discuss Science-Based Advocacy of Transhumanism and Healthy Living

Third Enlightenment Salon – Gennady Stolyarov II, Bill Andrews, Bobby Ridge, and Mihoko Sekido Discuss Science-Based Advocacy of Transhumanism and Healthy Living

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Gennady Stolyarov II
Bill Andrews
Bobby Ridge
Mihoko Sekido

The Third Enlightenment Salon, hosted by Gennady Stolyarov II on May 27, 2018, featured excellent conversations on the rise in public awareness of transhumanism and life extension and what can be done to further increase support for life-extending medical research. Dr. Bill Andrews, Bobby Ridge (a.k.a. Robert Ridge), and Mihoko Sekido shared insights on medical science, promotion of health, and methods of communicating the forthcoming convergence of advances in a wide array of technological fields. Importantly, we addressed how anyone can get involved in the transhumanist movement and improve public acceptance of the emerging technological future.

The following were some interesting areas of discussion:

– The new Telomere Coin, which will help fund Dr. Andrews’s research efforts – http://defytime.group/
– Bobby Ridge’s forthcoming new video channel – Science-Based Species
– Aspects of online videos that help increase their reach
– Factors that contribute to longer lifespans among Okinawans
– Motivators for leading a healthier lifestyle and its relation to the recognition of the possibility of indefinite life extension in our lifetimes
– Some potential health effects of metformin and the importance of the ongoing TAME clinical trials
– What anyone can do to promote life extension and other emerging technological fields – including joining the U.S. Transhumanist Party for free on this page.

This video also contains some excerpts from the remaining conversations at the Third Enlightenment Salon, including discussions of science-based medicine, promotion of transhumanism, autonomous vehicles, and responses to the prospect of longevity escape velocity.

Along with the recorded segment, there was much discussion about future directions of transhumanist initiatives, reasonably healthy food in a refined atmosphere, and previews of excellent video compilations that will become publicly available later this year. Mr. Stolyarov looks forward to hosting more Enlightenment Salons to bring together individuals in various fields of expertise and enable them to synthesize their insights into ways of comprehensively improving the human condition.

Longevity Industry Systematized for First Time – Press Release by Biogerontology Research Foundation

Longevity Industry Systematized for First Time – Press Release by Biogerontology Research Foundation

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Biogerontology Research Foundation

 

CREDIT: The Biogerontology Research Foundation, Deep Knowledge Life Sciences, Aging Analytics Agency and Longevity.International platform

Editor’s Note: Below is a press release by the Biogerontology Research Foundation on the longevity industry, which has been systematized for the first time in the report entitled The Science of Longevity. This press release was originally published here.

~ Dinorah Delfin, Director of  Recruitment, U.S. Transhumanist Party, February 5, 2018

Friday, Feb. 2, 2017, London, UK: The Biogerontology Research Foundation has embarked on a year-long mission to summarise in a single document the various emerging technologies and industries which can be brought to bear on aging, healthy longevity, and everything in between, as part of a joint project between The Global Longevity Consortium, consisting of the Biogerontology Research Foundation, Deep Knowledge Life Sciences, Aging Analytics Agency and Longevity.International platform.

For scientists, policy makers, regulators, government officials, investors and other stakeholders, a consensus understanding of the field of human longevity remains fragmented, and has yet to be systematized by any coherent framework, and has not yet been the subject of a comprehensive report profiling the field and industry as a whole by any analytical agency to date. The consortium behind this series of reports hope that they will come to be used as a sort of Encyclopedia Britannica and specialized Wikipedia of the emerging longevity industry, with the aim of serving as the foundation upon which the first global framework of the industry will be built, given the significant industry growth projected over the coming years.

Experts on the subject of human longevity, who tend arrive at the subject from disparate fields, have failed even to agree on a likely order of magnitude for future human lifespan. Those who foresee a 100-year average in the near future are considered extreme optimists by some, while others have even mooted the possibility of indefinite life extension through comprehensive repair and maintenance. As such the longevity industry has often defied real understanding and has proved a complex and abstract topic in the minds of many, investors and governments in particular.

The first of these landmark reports, entitled ‘The Science of Longevity‘, standing at almost 800 pages in length, seeks to rectify this.

Part 1 of the report ties together the progress threads of the constituent industries into a coherent narrative, mapping the intersection of biomedical gerontology, regenerative medicine, precision medicine, artificial intelligence, offering a brief history and snapshot of each. Part 2 lists and individually profiles 650 longevity-focused entities, including research hubs, non-profit organizations, leading scientists, conferences, databases, books and journals. Infographics are used to illustrate where research institutions stand in relation to each other with regard to their disruptive potential: companies and institutions specialising in palliative technologies are placed at the periphery of circular diagrams, whereas those involved with more comprehensive, preventative interventions, such as rejuvenation biotechnologies and gene therapies, are depicted as central.

In this report great care was taken to visualize the complex and interconnected landscape of this field via state of the art infographics so as to distill the many players, scientific subsectors and technologies within the field of geroscience into common understanding. Their hope was to create a comprehensive yet readily-understandable view of the entire field and its many players, to serve a similar function that Mendeleev’s periodic table did for the field of chemistry. While these are static infographics in the reports, their creators plan to create complimentary online versions that are interactive and filterable, and to convene a series of experts to analyze these infographics and continually update them as the geroscience landscapes shifts. Similar strategies are employed in Volume II to illustrate the many companies and investors within the longevity industry.

These reports currently profile the top 100 entities in each of the categories, but in producing them, analysts found that the majority of these categories have significantly more than 100 entities associated with them. One of their main conclusions upon finishing the report is that the longevity industry is indeed of substantial size, with many industry and academic players, but that it remains relatively fragmented, lacking a sufficient degree of inter-organization collaboration and industry-academic partnerships. The group plans to expand these lists in follow-up volumes so as to give a more comprehensive overview of the individual companies, investors, books, journals, conferences and scientists that serve as the foundation of this emerging industry.

Since these reports are being spearheaded by the UK’s oldest biomedical charity focused on healthspan extension, the Biogerontology Research Foundation is publishing them online, freely available to the public. While the main focus of this series of reports is an analytical report on the emerging longevity industry, the reports still delve deeply into the science of longevity, and Volume I is dedicated exclusively to an overview of the history, present and future state of ageing research from a scientific perspective.

The consortium of organizations behind these reports anticipate them to be the first comprehensive analytical report on the emerging longevity industry to date, and hope to increase awareness and interest from investors, scientists, medical personnel, regulators, policy makers, government officials and the public-at-large in both the longevity industry as well as geroscience proper by providing a report that simultaneously distills the complex network of knowledge underlying the industry and field into easily and intuitively comprehensible infographics, while at the same time providing a comprehensive backbone of chapters and profiles on the various companies, investors, organizations, labs, institutions, books, journals and conferences for those inclined for a deeper dive into the vast foundation of the longevity industry and the field of geroscience.

It is hoped that this report will assist others in visualising the present longevity landscape and elucidate the various industry players and components. Volume 2, The Business of Longevity, which at approximately 500 pages in length aims to be as comprehensive as Volume 1, is set to be published shortly thereafter, and will focus on the companies and investors working in the field of precision preventive medicine with a focus on healthy longevity, which will be necessary in growing the industry fast enough to avert the impending crisis of global aging demographics.

These reports will be followed up throughout the coming year with Volume 3 (“Special Case Studies”), featuring 10 special case studies on specific longevity industry sectors, such as cell therapies, gene therapies, AI for biomarkers of aging, and more, Volume 4 (“Novel Longevity Financial System”), profiling how various corporations, pension funds, investment funds and governments will cooperate within the next decade to avoid the crisis of demographic aging, and Volume 5 (“Region Case Studies”), profiling the longevity industry in specific geographic regions.

These reports are, however, only the beginning, and ultimately will serve as a launching pad for an even more ambitious project: Longevity.International, an online platform that will house these reports, and also serve as a virtual ecosystem for uniting and incentivizing the many fragmented stakeholders of the longevity industry, including scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers, regulators and government officials to unite in the common goal of healthspan extension and aversion of the looping demographic aging and Silver Tsunami crisis. The platform will use knowledge crowdsourcing of top tier experts to unite scientists with entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs to investors, and investors to policy-makers and regulators, where all stakeholders can aggregate and integrate intelligence and expertise from each other using modern IT technologies for these types of knowledge platforms, and all stakeholders can be rewarded for their services.

 

The consortium behind these reports is interested in collaboration with interested contributors, institutional partners, and scientific reviewers to assist with the ongoing production of these reports, to enhance their outreach capabilities and ultimately to enhance the overall impact of these reports upon the scientific and business communities operating within the longevity industry, and can be reached at info@longevity.international

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About the Biogerontology Research Foundation:

The Biogerontology Research Foundation is a UK non-profit research foundation and public policy center seeking to fill a gap within the research community, whereby the current scientific understanding of the ageing process is not yet being sufficiently exploited to produce effective medical interventions. The BGRF funds and conducts research which, building on the body of knowledge about how ageing happens, aims to develop biotechnological interventions to remediate the molecular and cellular deficits which accumulate with age and which underlie the ill-health of old age. Addressing ageing damage at this most fundamental level will provide an important opportunity to produce the effective, lasting treatments for the diseases and disabilities of ageing, required to improve quality of life in the elderly. The BGRF seeks to use the entire scope of modern biotechnology to attack the changes that take place in the course of ageing, and to address not just the symptoms of age-related diseases but also the mechanisms of those diseases.

 

New Year’s Message and Prospects for Anti-Aging Biomedical Research in 2018 – Article by Victor Bjoerk

New Year’s Message and Prospects for Anti-Aging Biomedical Research in 2018 – Article by Victor Bjoerk

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Victor Bjoerk

Happy new 2018, a new year and new opportunities to do things! Setting aside the arbitrary fact of how we measure time, it is nevertheless important to reflect back on the past year!

During 2017 over 40 million people died world-wide of causes that would not have happened to them if they had been biologically less than 40 years old. I think it’s completely superfluous to add that this is unethical on all levels and will eventually go down in history books like the Black Death.

There are widespread worries about global risks in everything from politics to environment, however let’s look at the statistics as I like to point out: If you are a young person in your 20s or 30s living in the western world, and you don’t age but just carry out your normal daily life with all the normal risks, you are approximately expected to live 3000-5000 years, depending on country. Also there is a lot of improvement in living standards in the rest of the world, so most countries are heading for the same demographic problem.

So the world is a very safe place to be if you are biologically young!

During 2018 I will continue to follow the biomedical research that is ongoing, and I am co-organizing the Eurosymposium on Healthy Aging in Brussels in November of this year, to bring together researchers, investors, and other goal-oriented people active in the field of aging research.

Before that, in only 2.5 months, we have the Undoing Aging conference in Berlin, which is rapidly approaching starting on the 15th of March this year.

Now there are many other interesting conferences also, but these are at least the major ones I have in mind right now when writing, since I’m not in a position to attend everything (I wish I could).

During the upcoming years, we will see a vast market flourishing to try to repair aging damage in people and extend life; some will be purposeful deceits, other things will work great in mice but not in humans; moreover, there are therapies that will work but will have unacceptable side effects. Some discoveries will make great headlines and increase our understanding, perhaps even lead to a Nobel Prize, but be useless when it comes to any reasonably short-term applications. Media will continue to publish a lot of unspecific articles about “how you will live to 150” – simplifying science and creating hype and cult of personality. Some scientists will continue to pop up in media and spread false pessimism that nothing can be done about aging. But eventually what is going to happen is that translational medicine will continue to grow and generate an incremental improvement, what has been popularized as a “longevity escape velocity”, because here we have a complex problem which no single intervention will fix. 

The question it all boils down to is, “How soon?” What can YOU do to have an impact here? How do we run clinical trials on the elderly while avoiding pitfalls that can easily hurt the field?

And here’s the thing I personally care about: there are a lot of scientists working on things that can be of use to combat pathologies and extend lifespan in the elderly, but they are themselves unaware of these applications! I’ve seen it so many times to my surprise. Is it due to archaic academic structures or a lack of transdisciplinary thinking? Nevertheless it’s an observation.

What 2018 brings remains unknown at this moment of writing, but I wish all of my friends to really make the best of it!

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 Good Sides of Aging? – Article by Nicola Bagalà

The Good Sides of Aging? – Article by Nicola Bagalà

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Nicola Bagalà

Editor’s Note: Nicola Bagalà in this guest article elaborates upon aging as a topic distinguished in terms of Chronological Aging and Biological Aging. This article was originally published by the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF).

~ Kenneth Alum, Director of Publication, U.S. Transhumanist Party, October 17, 2017

Sometimes, and especially in articles aimed at mitigating people’s fear of aging, it is said that aging doesn’t come just with downsides, such as frailty and diseases, but also with upsides — for example, wisdom and a long life experience.

It is often subtly implied that these two very different aspects are two sides of the same coin, that you can’t have one without the other, and perhaps even that the ill health of old age is a fair price to pay for the benefits that also come with it.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Setting the record straight

There are plenty of good reasons to be afraid of aging, because the diseases and disabilities it causes are very real and far from being observed only in exceptional cases. It would be foolish not to fear cancer, for example, because it is an extremely serious and often fatal condition; in the same way, and for the same reasons, it is foolish not to fear aging; perhaps, an even stronger fear is justified, because aging can and does give rise to many diseases, including cancer itself.

There’s nothing wrong with fearing aging, because it may help us steer clear from its inherent dangers, just like the fear of any other harmful thing keeps us away from it. This is true so long as by ‘aging’ we mean biological aging, which is not at all the same as chronological aging. It is very important to draw a line between the two so that we don’t end up accepting the downsides of the former, which are neither necessary nor sufficient to enjoy the benefits of the latter.

What’s the difference?

Chronological aging is a rather fancy term to indicate a very mundane thing, namely the passing of time. For as long as time will keep passing, everything will age chronologically. This is obviously a good thing because if time did not pass, the universe would stand still and nothing at all, including ourselves, would ever happen.

However, it is easy to see how chronological and biological aging are not the same thing by means of a simple observation: Although time runs essentially uniformly everywhere on Earth, different life forms have different health- and lifespans. If time passes at the same rate for me and for a cat, and yet I’m (biologically) old at age 80 while a cat is (biologically) old already at age 15, clearly there must be something else than just the passing of time that accounts for this discrepancy.

This ‘something else’ is metabolism—the intricate set of chemical reactions the bodies of living creatures perform on a daily basis for the very purpose of staying alive. As we have discussed in other articles, what we call biological aging is really just a process of damage accumulation; this damage, which eventually leads to pathologies, is caused by metabolism itself, and therefore a faster metabolism means faster aging. Different species have different metabolic rates; as a rule of thumb, the smaller the species, the faster its metabolism and thus its aging, leading to shorter health- and lifespan. This is, in a nutshell, why a cat ages faster than I do.

As a confirmation of this fact, one may observe that species in a regimen of caloric restriction tend to live longer (sometimes much longer) than their normal lifespan, and the insurgence of age-related diseases is delayed accordingly: A lower caloric intake causes metabolism to slow down; consequently, the aging process follows suit.

Interestingly, some lucky species, the so-called negligibly senescent organisms, don’t show any signs of biological aging at all with the passing of time.

At this point, you don’t have to be clairvoyant to see that biological aging implies chronological aging, but not vice-versa. No chronological aging means no time passing, and no time passing means nothing takes place, metabolism included. However, since different creatures age differently (or not at all) despite time passing at the same rate for all of them, chronological aging doesn’t imply biological aging. Quite simply, they’re not the same thing.

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s

Having cleared the difference between chronological and biological aging, we must now correctly attribute the aforementioned pros and cons of old age to each of them.

From the very definition of biological aging above, it’s clear that it is the culprit responsible for the cons—the diseases of old age.

Speaking of the pros, all possible benefits of old age—life experience, wisdom, sense of accomplishment—certainly do not come from the damage that metabolism has wrecked throughout your body over the years. Clearly, they depend on the events of your life, and thus they’re not at all granted to happen, no matter how long you live. If you spent your life in isolation doing nothing, avoiding new experiences, and not learning anything new, your wisdom as an eighty-year-old would hardly compare to that of a well-traveled, seasoned scientist or philosopher of the same age, for example. Ultimately, the benefits traditionally attributed to old age obviously depend on the passing of time (i.e., chronological aging), and most of all on the use you made of your time. Just because you’re old, you’re not automatically wise, accomplished, or well-learned.

What’s more, the debilitation that comes with biological aging makes it harder for you to relish and expand the wisdom and experience you’ve accrued over the years. So, not only does biological aging bring no benefits; it is a hindrance as well.

In conclusion, the pros and cons of old age are due to different causes, and, as such, they aren’t interdependent. The diseases of old age are not a currency you can use to buy yourself the wisdom of the aged, and thanks to the emergence of rejuvenation biotechnologies, you might relatively soon be able to enjoy the pros of old age without having to pay any undue and unfair tolls.

 

About Nicola Bagalà

Nicola Bagalà has been an enthusiastic supporter and advocate of rejuvenation science since 2011. Although his preferred approach to treating age-related diseases is Aubrey de Grey’s suggested SENS platform, he is very interested in any other potential approach as well. In 2015, he launched the blog Rejuvenaction to advocate for rejuvenation and to answer common concerns that generally come with the prospect of vastly extended healthy lifespans. Originally a mathematician graduated from Helsinki University, his scientific interests range from cosmology to AI, from drawing and writing to music, and he always complains he doesn’t have enough time to dedicate to all of them—which is one of the reasons he’s into life extension. He’s also a computer programmer and web developer. All the years spent learning about the science of rejuvenation have sparked his interest in biology, in which he’s planning to get a university degree.

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.

Bioquark, Inc., and Lakmus LLC Announce Research Collaboration to Study Novel Biopharmaceuticals for Healthy Longevity Enhancement – Press Release by Ira Pastor

Bioquark, Inc., and Lakmus LLC Announce Research Collaboration to Study Novel Biopharmaceuticals for Healthy Longevity Enhancement – Press Release by Ira Pastor

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Ira Pastor

Bioquark, Inc., and Lakmus LLC, announce a multi-disciplinary research collaboration to study age-reversal / longevity-enhancing bio-pharmaceutical development with the FSBI Zakusov Institute of Pharmacology, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Bioquark, Inc., (http://www.bioquark.com) a life sciences company focused on the development of novel bio-products for regeneration, disease reversion, and healthy aging, and Moscow-based Lakmus LLC, a diversified investment company with business interests in pharmacies, restaurants, and real estate, announced a multi-disciplinary research collaboration with the FSBI Zakusov Institute of Pharmacology, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (http://www.academpharm.ru/), and the Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (http://www.infran.ru/), to jointly study the pharmacotherapeutic longevity-enhancement properties of its combinatorial regenerative biologic candidates.

“We are very excited about this continued collaboration with Lakmus,” said Ira S. Pastor, CEO, Bioquark Inc. “The disciplined development of our combinatorial biologic candidates (Bioquantines) for healthy longevity enhancement, represents another important step in our continued evolution as a company focused on a broad range of therapeutic products and services in the regenerative healthcare space.”

Throughout the 20th century, natural products formed the basis for a majority of all pharmaceuticals, biologics, and consumer healthcare products used by patients around the globe, generating trillions of dollars of wealth. However, many scientists believe we have only touched the surface with what the natural world, and its range of organisms, which from a health and wellness perspective are much further advanced than human beings, has to teach us.

The integration of a complex set of newer research disciplines, including interkingdom signaling, semiochemical communication, and evolutionary biology, as well as significant recent activity in the areas of the microbiome, are highlighting a myriad of new ways that non-human bio-products can affect the human genome for positive transitions in health and wellness dynamics.

“Bioquark has spent several years studying the natural ability of many species to turn back biological time in order to maintain health, fitness, and survival, developing a broad understanding of the combinatorial biochemical approaches they use to control nested hierarchies of disease (i.e., gene, cell, tissue, organism, environment),” said Dr. Sergei Paylian, Founder, CSO, and President, Bioquark Inc. “This research initiative is one more step in the path in allowing humans to recapture these capabilities to effectively counter our unfortunate progression into aging, disease, and degeneration.”

About Bioquark, Inc.

Bioquark Inc. is focused on the development of natural biologic based products, services, and technologies, with the goal of curing a wide range of diseases, as well as effecting complex regeneration. Bioquark is developing both biological pharmaceutical candidates, as well as products for the global consumer health and wellness market segments.

Read about Mr. Ira S. Pastor here.

LEAF Interview with Dr. Aubrey de Grey: Controlling the Main Aging Damages

LEAF Interview with Dr. Aubrey de Grey: Controlling the Main Aging Damages

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Aubrey de Grey and Life Extension Advocacy Foundation

The U.S. Transhumanist Party is pleased to feature this interview of Dr. Aubrey de Grey, the Transhumanist Party’s Anti-Aging Advisor, conducted by Elena Milova of the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation (LEAF), one of the Transhumanist Party’s most active Allied Organizations. You can also see this interview on YouTube here.

Description by LEAF: Please enjoy this interview with Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of SENS Research Foundation — one of the most successful advocacy and fundraising initiatives supporting breakthrough research on the main mechanisms of aging and age-related diseases.

In this video Dr. de Grey speaks about the progress in developing interventions to tackle age-related damages identified by SENS as the main ones.

Interviewer – LEAF/Lifespan.io Board member Elena Milova.

Dr. de Grey received his BA in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Cambridge in 1985 and 2000, respectively. He 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.

Subscribe to Lifespan.io’s YouTube channel for more.

This interview is presented by LEAF. Please support its work by becoming a “Lifespan Hero“.

Transhumanist Party Activism Project: Contributing Computing Power to The Longevity Meme Folding@home Team

Transhumanist Party Activism Project: Contributing Computing Power to The Longevity Meme Folding@home Team

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Gennady Stolyarov II

The Transhumanist Party is pleased to announce the revitalization of an ongoing official activism project – one that all members, irrespective of geographical location, can easily join. This is a project that utilizes our favored approach of direct, individually attainable action toward the creation of a brighter future.

You can personally help advance the fight against a multitude of diseases – such as Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and many cancers.

The Longevity Meme Folding@home team – a group of volunteers who donate their computing power to perform protein-folding simulations that could one day result in cures for major diseases and the lengthening of human lifespans – has been operating for years, contributing otherwise idle computer resources to actual meaningful biological research.

To take part in this effort, just download the client for the Folding@home project at http://folding.stanford.edu/. Then join The Longevity Meme team here, and your computer will do the rest over time. I have personally been engaged in this effort for over six years.

If you would like a digital reward for contributing to this project, I am able to give five levels of digital Open Badges via Credly. Here is a page describing the various tiers of badges.  Once you have reached the requisite number of Folding@home points to claim each badge, just contact me via e-mail here with a message that includes your user name and an e-mail address.