The combination of the scientific method and free exchange have led us nearly to that promised land. And if we can continue with the same pace and focus as a species as we have for the last 200 years, we will eventually get there. Well, at least according to some of the leading people in the business.
Although you may not have heard much about these characters yet, you’ll certain will do if they succeed. They envision a world in which death is no more. So who are they?
Aubrey de Grey
Aubrey de Grey is a researcher and spokesperson for the SENS Foundation in California. de Grey wants to solve the problem of aging entirely. And he believes that the first treatments will be available, if the organisation gets funding, in only a few years.
de Grey’s argument differs from that of most people looking to cure disease. He says that we’re never going to defeat diseases like heart disease and cancer unless we deal with aging itself. After all, these are mainly age-related disease. It’s not millions of young people dying each year from heart attacks; it’s millions of old.
Rather than trying to push back the tide by focusing on individual diseases, de Grey wants a grander fix. The human body needs to be periodically maintained, he says, and restored to full functionality. No amount of slowing the aging process will do. It has to be repaired and restored from the inside out.
Top entrepreneurs find de Grey convincing. And some, like Peter Thiel, have given the foundations millions of dollars in support.
Ray Kurzweil
Google’s director of engineering doesn’t want to die. He is in love with technology and relationships. And he wants to live forever so that he can see the technological singularity.
Kurzweil is famous for taking over a hundred supplements each day. That includes human growth hormone, the truth about which you can find at Eternal HGH.
Strangely, he doesn’t do this because he thinks it will help him live forever. Rather, it’s just a way of buying himself a little time. He wants to live long enough to enjoy the therapies being developed by de Grey and his team. Given that he is approaching 70, he might not have an awful lot of time left.
David Sinclair
Sinclair is one of the big names in anti-aging science. This is the man who first discovered what genes need to be switched off to extend lifespan.
No, he didn’t do it in humans. He did it in yeast. But in biology, genes are often conserved across species. In fact, humans have the very same gene that he suppressed in yeast. And that’s why his research is so exciting.
He might not have the blueprint that will allow us to live forever. But he does have an insight that might buy us all a little more time.