Transhumanism

The Feb 23 Economist has an article on "the wacky world of anti-senescence therapy". What is that, you ask?

Humans are certainly living longer... Much of this change has been the result of improved nutrition and better medicine. But to experience a healthy old age also involves maintaining physical and mental function. Age-related non-pathological changes in the brain, muscles, joints, immune system, lungs and heart must be minimised. These changes are called “senescence”.

Anti-senescence therapy sounds like magic, right? The Fountain of Youth or something like that. Death is the only thing as certain as taxes. Right?

Not necessarily. Dr. Aubrey de Grey of the University of Cambridge recently presented research at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Economist article notes;

As an engineer, he favours intervening directly to repair the changes in the body that are caused by ageing. This is an approach he dubs “strategies for engineered negligible senescence”.

A simple explanation of this approach is that we have the science and engineering skills to improve our life spans. This goes beyond studies of diet and exercise. Our bodies naturally break down as we age, but to some extent, we have developed the ability to rebuild them. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Sort of. We're getting closer.

So how seriously can we take Dr. de Grey? An article at OpenDemocracy addresses the question:

Within the scientific community, he is regarded with a mix of interest and scepticism. Is he a pioneer or a crank? Naïve or prophetic in his claims that we will soon be able to live for hundreds of years? Nuland's now infamous profile in Technology Review implied that there were major flaws in de Grey's scientific theories, but seemed more concerned that he might pose a threat to society. Noting that "the most likeable of eccentrics are sometimes the most dangerous", Nuland concluded that:
"his clarion call to action is the message neither of a madman nor a bad man, but of a brilliant, beneficent man of goodwill, who wants only for civilisation to fulfil the highest hopes he has for its future. It is a good thing that his grand design will almost certainly not succeed. Were it otherwise, he would surely destroy us in attempting to preserve us."
In the firestorm that followed the Technology Review piece, things got personal. One editorial comment – likening him to a troll – still reverberates in internet discussions.

"Do you care what people say about you?" we ask. "Yes. Deeply", is his instant reply. "I take it very seriously." Yet de Grey says that he's moved beyond the stages of being ignored or laughed at and is now being actively opposed. He seems quite relaxed about this progression.

This sounds like a marvelous bit of research to share with my students, especially as it interacts with the nanotechnology that I am struggling to incorporate into my curriculum. High school students love to discuss ageing and morality, don't they? One question that is sure to come up is the money.

Where does he think this funding might come from? "Public funding tends to be low risk, low gain. And technology funding from venture capital is too short term. What we need is funding that is ambitious and long term. That tends to come when national pride is at stake or when seriously rich people think it's cool."
It's the latter – an elite band of Silicon Valley millionaires and wealthy philanthropists – who are funding much of the research into life extension at the moment.

Hey, that sounds awfully familiar. And that's something I can support - as does Dr. de Grey.

The last paragraph from OpenDemocracy's story is a doozy that I think I will be sharing with all of my classes (not just this year's):

Science isn't a clean, logical endeavour pursued by individuals who interact only through peer-reviewed journals. It's a messy mixture of experimentation, argument and debate. And when it meets politics it becomes messier still. It is every scientist's responsibility to shape and be shaped by what society wants from science, to listen to the public and to take its concerns seriously. Whatever one may feel about his theories, this is something that Aubrey de Grey is doing in a quite unique and valuable way.