World Health Organization

This is rather too close to the wire, but hopefully there are still some folk in the community with time to spend tomorrow. I've been up at strange hours and editing over the past month - and this weekend. As some of you know, and as mentioned a little while ago Aubrey and I have been working for some time on a popular book on SENS science. We are coming up on a publisher deadline this Sunday night (tomorrow), or early Monday at the absolute latest, and while our last request "grossed" a lot of volunteers, the "net" (in terms of folks actually in a position to help in the required time frame) was lower, and we now really need a few more hands on board urgently. We really need some folks with the ability to put in some time on at least 1 (and of course preferably more) illustrations for the book in the next 36 hours. Projects range from line drawings and graphs to actual illustrations. Please email main@mprize.org if you can make such a volunteer contribution; it would be greatly appreciated, and acknowledged in the book. Thanks! Nothing quite like that exponential increase in work as the...

Attila Csordás of Partial Immortalization is running a series of interviews with folk in the healthy life extension community, starting with the bloggers. The interview questions are open to anyone to take a stab at: 1. What is the story of your life extension commitment? 2. Is it a commitment for moderate or maximum life extension? 3. What is your favourite argument supporting human life extension? 4. What is the most probable technological draft of human life extension, which technology or discipline has the biggest chance to reach it earliest? (regenerative medicine, nanotechnology, gene therapy, caloric restriction, bionics, hormones, antioxidants, …) 5. When? 6. What can blogs do for LE? My responses were posted a few days ago, should you be interested, but I think that those of Chris Patil of Ouroboros - an actual life scientist, researching the biology of aging, rather than one of us cheerleaders - are far more worthy of your attention. On the ideological side, I just think it’s a waste to have to die. It takes us a long time to figure this “life” thing out, and I find the moving-goalposts aspect of aging and decrepitude very frustrating. Additionally, there are so many things...

A small community of folk gently prod me with each new resveratrol study making its way through the research pipeline. Some of them sell the stuff, some are being helpful news scouts, but the general tenor is often "hey, check this out, best thing since sliced bread." This same behavior applies, with different small communities of folk, to most other better known (or better hyped) products of a similar class in recent years. I believe this all to be more than a touch overenthusiastic. It has to be said that I'm a curmudgeon and rational, all round late adopter when it comes to applying biochemistry to my body. I'm not fundamentally opposed to the use of found or screened chemicals by any means, but metabolic science is hard. Very hard. Scientists don't yet have a good handle on the complexities involved; frankly, they don't even have a good handle on the complexities of using the mountains of information they are generating. As has usually been the case in human history, in the biotechnologies of metabolism, our ability to take action outstrips our ability to predict and control consequences. With that in mind, let me say this: our metabolic biochemistry looks...

As the year winds to a close, folk start to think about where to direct year-end charitable donations. Just prior to embarking upon this post, I finished sealing up a check to the Methuselah Foundation, my favored 501(c)(3) all-volunteer nonprofit dedicated to advancing real, meaningful anti-aging research. By "real, meaningful anti-aging research" I mean the science of identifying and repairing the classes of molecular damage that accumulate with age, distorting and destroying the finely balanced workings of our body. I do not mean slowing aging through tinkering with the workings of our metabolism, and nor do I mean the futile and expensive effort of patching up the end results as best we can. It is an accumulation of damage - detrimental changes at the cellular and biochemical level - which lies at the root of age-related conditions; our body is a complex machine, and like other machines it fails when it becomes worn and clogged. Learning how to repair that damage will mean halting and reversing aging - scientific rejuvenation, in other words. Striking at the root is the best way to obtain results in any field, and here it offers the chance of results within our lifetime. Given that...

Cancer has been prominent on the schedule here of late - rightfully so, as it's a big, bad problem we're going to have to solve if we want to enjoy any healthy life extension brought about by regenerative medicine, immune system repair and the like. One of a number of approaches demonstrating progress of late is the use of viruses to kill cancer cells: The new [therapy] uses a genetically-engineered form of the adenovirus, which normally causes colds. ... When injected into cancerous tumors, the virus quickly multiplies in the cancer cells and kills them, the team said. ... The new adenovirus can target only cancer cells and does not harm normal cells, the team said. ... Following three rounds of injections, more than 90 percent of cancer cells in the brains, liver, lungs and womb of mice disappeared within 60 days, the team said. Clinical tests will be carried out early next year and last 18 months. It's scientific judo: find an existing biological system that does some or most of what you'd like to achieve, and tinker it into shape for the task at hand. Viruses are good at killing cells, are simple enough for modern biotechnology to...