Is radical lifespan extension foreseeable? No one can answer that question with certainty. But there are certainly enough tantalizing clues suggesting that aging is sufficiently malleable to warrant the allocation of very substantial resources.
Support the message of the Declaration to add your signature, using the form below, and to urge others to do the same. The sign is in blue link sign in the middle just below the top black title banner.
Demonstrating both expert consensus and broad public support for the extension of healthy lifespans will have the greatest impact in swaying policymakers and institutions to acknowledge and align with the paradigm shift now taking root across medical science.
Sign your support to Immediately Expand Research on Extending Healthy Human Lifespans.
Some Emerging Strategies and Questions:
Combinatorial approaches – Can multiple systems be targeted simultaneously and will that yield synergistic outcomes?
Novel classes of small molecules – We have only explored a narrow subset of the small-molecule space for longevity outcomes. Will larger-scale screens or even novel screening approaches result in enhanced lifespan extension?
Cellular reprogramming – Can we reprogram somatic cells in our tissues to a state to promote replacement of damaged cells and restoration of youthful tissue function?
Approaches based on species longevity – Can we utilize adaptations of long-lived species to achieve human longevity comparable to nature’s greatest successes, exceeding the modest changes delivered by existing interventions?
Gene and cell therapy – Long promised, both gene therapy and cell therapy have become feasible. Can they be employed to target aging or age-related conditions?
Novel targets – for example, gene therapies derived from multi-omics studies. Can they delay or reverse aging processes?
Emerging strategies to reverse age-related deterioration of the epigenome – There is good evidence that this deterioration reduces our control of endogenous parasites such as retrotransposons and retroviruses and increases age-related inflammation. Can it be repaired?
Personalizing aging interventions – While general events are likely to drive aging, their relative impacts in each individual are likely to vary, therefore understanding how to optimize interventions to the individual will likely have higher yields.
Over the horizon – Often regarded as science fiction, strategies such as cryopreservation, brain mapping and ex vivo organ generation may ultimately be feasible. We should keep open the possibility that dramatic lifespan extension may involve technologies that we haven’t fully imagined yet.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
can’t see any form.
The sign is in blue link sign in the middle just below the top black title banner
https://dublinlongevitydeclaration.org/
While there is no mutual exclusivity, I think it is far more important that we learn a lot more about human nutrition and how to make processed food healthy. I think Advanced Glycation End-products are what is making our food unhealthy, but there could be more to it. And I am not giving all additives a pass. We definitely need regulations to limit the creation of AGEs in our food. We certainly have not done enough research on the effects of insecticides and other -cides put on crops. We likely need to ban a number of these, and have standards for cleaning the crops before they are used in food. We also have to ensure that the nutrients that are supposed to be in produce and grains are actually there. Farmers can’t be permitted to just replace the minerals that make crops larger, they must add the minerals that make the food nutritious. Strains of produce that no longer take up what they should, or don’t make the vitamins they should, need to be banned, regardless of whether they were modified. We can’t continue to allow heavy metals in our food, either. If some farms are tainted, then they should not be growing food. Maybe cotton, or other fibers, or ethanol.
We also must find cures for the dozens of latent infections we accumulate over the decades of our lives. And we need technology to control the colonies of microbes, in our guts, on our skin, in our lungs and sinuses, and anywhere else in our bodies. We want only the good bacteria. And we need to know which are which.
With excellent nutrition, air, and water, and less exposure to toxins and pathogens, I think we would naturally live much longer. Though, exercise, and stress management are also important.
And if all these things are blocked by farm States in the Senate, we need to rethink our government structure. Food and our health is too important.
While I am for anti-aging research, one line in that is suspicious: “…ameliorate the demographic challenges that are happening in the first half of this century.” Is this some racist bit? What is this? What “demographic challenges” are they talking about?
I am also tired of government funding something but giving the rights to some company, and allowing their greedy bean counters to set prices. Often, high prices government is then required to pay. That is just ludicrous.
Anytime there is gouging, patents need to be cut short. A patent is not a right. And any existing medical intervention where the government funded a substantial amount of the research, the patents should be limited to 5 years past approval or less, in the US.
NextBigFuture posts a lot about the demographic challenges. They have nothing to do with race, but with MOST countries in the world having reducing populations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility
Non-issue. The world population is growing. People must not like the people who are growing for some reason. What might that be?
Global births this year so far: 102.4 million
Deaths this year so far: 46.3 million
Net: 56.1 million
Last I checked, it is still the first half of the century.
If you don’t like the “quality,” work toward quality prenatal nutrition, the prevention of prenatal neurotoxin exposure, and the eradication of vertically transmitted infections (that is where 80% of IQ is decided), clean air, clean water, protein, minerals, and vitamins and educational opportunities.
And we need to stop shipping waste, and toxins to the Third World. First world countries are still making lead paint and selling it to these countries. Ships full of asbestos, lead, and many other toxins are taken to Third World scrapping yards, where little if any protection is afforded workers.
Obama put his foot down on lead smelters recycling lead acid batteries, because standards could not be met. But as usual, there was no regard for consequences. Now many Mexicans near the boarder with the US are being exposed to far worse lead pollution because all the lead smelting was moved right over the boarder. Populations, many of which will come over here and become US citizens, are being exposed to this toxin, prenatally. No, if lead-acid batteries are a problem, ban them and use something better like lithium. We need to stop buying things made in ways that damage the environment, regardless of where that damage happens. If we need things, figure out how to do it in environmentally less damaging ways, replace with something better, or engineer away the need entirely.
So most of the world can have shrinking populations, but as long as one part of the world is projected to have positive fertility for a few more decades, then it’s okay?
Or is it only okay because that part of the world is your favored color?
I think that if we adopt a more planetary expansionist view for humanity, where we actively go out and settle more planets and have a surplus of available property per person, we’re likely to see cheaper anti-aging products or possibly a cheap way to keep aging at bay and rejuvenate back to an age we find suitable for ourselves.
EITHER we solve anti aging, or we solve fertility rates.
You always post about one of the other Brian.
I haven’t seen any post of yours considering both at the same time. Fertility rates above replacement level, people living in a healthy manner till 200 (or more… after all, singularity), world create a huge increase in population that you can’t solve even with the more optimistic predictions of maximum population Earth can support.
Not true. It’s unlikely more than a billion people will ever avail themselves of extended lifespan technology unless it is cheaper than drinking coffee every day from Starbucks.
And, not to be elitist, but the countries where too many births are still a problem are not the ones that are going to be able to buy it in bulk. With some exceptions, for example, China and Russia desperately need it to extend the working lives of their collapsing populations. But they are extremely unlikely to be able to afford it except for CCP members, party officials, oligarchs, and a few others.
I don’t think it’s so much that they won’t be able to ‘afford’ it, exactly. Small molecule drugs and biologics don’t cost that much to make when scaled up, and patents expire.
But… it will take a lot of different parts. If you aren’t consistent about getting all of it, or if your drug was made in a facility with poor inspection standards, or you don’t get the correct diagnosis to time when you need to begin this or that part of the therapy, there will be a problem. People, especially the less affluent, are also in challenging environments with various contaminants, or have poor diets, and rejuvenation drugs won’t be a miracle cure-all for everything.
The people who right now can get enough consistent quality healthcare to live to 80 will probably be the same people who can avoid aging. The people who tend to die in their 60’s or before might see their lifespans improve with cheap generic longevity drugs, but something will fall short and that will catch up to them eventually. Or at least, that’s what would happen in today’s world.
everything gets cheaper. We are not talking about COVID treatment for next year. We are talking about mostly drugs, that will cost X now and X/10 in 20 years and X/100 in 50 years.
And as people live more and more… time is not a problem.
Plus, countries will break the patents if really needed to impeach demographic collapse. Generic drugs will be made. Etc.
Countries with free public health systems will start to provide the drugs to the entire population for a fraction of the cost of the treament for aging diseases.
Brazil spends 4 billion a year with FREE cancer treatment. If anti aging serves to prevent cancer, it will be 4 billion taken from cancer to 4 billion in anti-aging drugs to distribute among some 100 million people as other 100 million will pay for the drugs (and have access to latest, or better, or more drugs).
So you will have a situation where you WILL have poorer population getting anti-aging, not the best, but enough to make them live LONG ENOUGH so the best drugs get cheaper and then they can extend their lives even more. All the while the richer people will already be extending their own lives even more with better drugs.
The maximum human population the Earth can support is malleable…if even a viable concept. It is our technology and regulations that set our limit. The Earth is just a location, we can provide for ourselves with minimal net draw from the biosphere. We will have to enforce limits on hunting and fishing…perhaps even a complete ban, at some point. If population was in the trillions, it would only take a small percentage to wreck the environment. So Draconian protection might be required. That said, there is no reason all of that could not be virtually enjoyed. Communications tech will continue to progress allowing better virtual shopping, visiting and working…greatly reducing the need for travel.
Water can be recycled. Human waste reprocessed into fertilizer (biochar). Nuclear, and renewables, especially new geothermal, could easily power our civilization. Automated mining can leave a much smaller footprint. Mines don’t have to be safe for humans, ventilation is not required. Even much of the ore possessing can be done in the mines, rather than hauled in large trucks to a processing area. Food can be grown in vats, and/or chemically synthesized. Even greenhouses and hydroponics can multiply the amount of food produced. We can build with things with other than wood, and furniture can be made from printed wood. We have barely touched what we can achieve with efficiency. Even the human body can be reengineered to require very little. Going cold-blooded can both extend life dramatically and cut energy requirements 80-90%. Not a simple thing to do. But, you get both right there. More supportable population and greater lifespan.