Last year, I wrote Will Homo Sapiens Evolve to Bionics? originally for IEEE (that version requires subscription). It was very popular and was well received in the community. I have written in 2008 as a PhD student Neuromorphs: Replaceable human organs of the future? which shaped my research in creating a bio-processor. But in all these instances, nothing could compare to what I saw in Amsterdam last year on my way to the United Nations Summit in Freetown. TEDxAmsterdam had invited me – all expense paid. I met a man I had watched since I read a Time Magazine article about aging in 2006. Aubrey de Grey gave me few seconds in a dinner (the photo). Honestly, seeing him alone will convince you that man can live eternally young.
He spoke on aging and defeating it. Please enjoy his talk courtesy of TEDxAmsterdam
“Aging is very messy and chaotic and complicated and horrible,” says Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation. “It really is a case of prevention being better than cure.”
De Grey says the only reasons that the diseases of old age are the diseases of old age is because they are the end of processes that start when we are young. Two-thirds of the 150,000 people who die each day die of old age, when we take that definition to cover all age-related diseases. The SENS Foundation is interested in maintaining people’s health properly so that people are not just healthy for their age, they’re just healthy. One side effect of their work is long life, however de Grey emphasizes that the driving force behind his work is not to help people live forever, but to give them a longer period of life where they are healthy.. preventing diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.
“Human bodies are basically just machines,” he says. “Let’s go in and regularly repair the damage so that we can postpone the time at which the damage is so extensive” that it ends life. Regularly scheduled maintenance works for cars, why not for humans? De Grey believes there’s a very good chance we’re only about 25 years away from adding 30 years of healthy life to the middle-aged. Sounds ok, no?
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