On Friday, June 27, 2008 from 4:00 PM through 8:00 PM PDT at UCLA, scientists and other anti-aging luminaries will discuss “Aging: the Disease, the Cure, the Implications,” a Methuselah Foundation co-sponsored event. The ADCI event is open to the public and presents an opportunity for you to hear about the current state of radical life extension research. How close are we? What obstacles remain? What particular approaches are being taken?

While the event is free, registration is required. Simply click on the image above to register on the ADCI website. For $30.00, you can also attend a dinner that begins at 8:00 PM.

This free event is followed on Saturday, June 28 and Sunday, June 29 by a paid and technically focused Understanding Aging conference.

• [PDF] International Workshop on Human Longevity: Unraveling the Secrets of Human Longevity
• Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia
• November 26-27, 2007
• Description:
  

  Longevity is the length of a person’s life. Complex mechanisms of genetic dispositions, early life conditions, current lifestyles are important causes in determining individual’s life span. This workshop is intended to provide a broad overview of bio-demographic ideas, models, methods, and findings regarding human aging, mortality and longevity incorporating interdisciplinary approach. The aims are to bridge the gap between biological, mathematical and social sciences as well as nurturing the understanding and collaboration amongst the regional and global human longevity scientists and practitioners. Besides that, it also aims to demonstrate the vital role of understanding the mechanisms of aging and longevity and to extend healthy and productive human lifespan. The workshop will include several sessions and discussions on longevity, demography, genetic factors and others. We cordially invite academicians, researchers, scientists and interested parties to join this event in the serene campus of Bangi, Malaysia. We are also proud to inform you that 2007 is the official Visit Malaysia Year!

• 2007 Calorie Restriction Society Conference
• Sunset Station, San Antonio, TX, USA
• November 7-11, 2007

[Alcor Conference - Table of Contents]

[Recap]

Chris Heward discussed his work on the “Kronos Longitudinal Aging Study (KLAS)” as a measurement of human aging. KRONOS Science Laboratory is a research institution in Phoenix, AZ, USA.

Heward showed a graph of progress in life expectancy at birth and at 65. Life expectancy at birth has experienced obvious improvement, but not so for life expectancy at age 65. Looking at particular biomarkers of again, we follow a peak around age 20 with a downhill degeneration to death. Once measures of life expectancy can be developed, than potential interventions can be tested against these biomarkers for effectiveness.

Data is collect in a database based on a variety of tests. For most Kronos participants, this includes one or two data collection events. Longitudinal studies require repeat testing over many years.

One of the best known biochemical biomarkers Kronos has found for aging is DHEA-SO4. The lower the level, the older the patient. However, although a line has been drawn on a graph to show this, the individual results actually do not cluster very well. Kronos next compared biomarkers with each other, but found little correlation, suggesting aging is not just one underlying problem, but multiple.

Kronos’ approach to aging is to assess and prevent issues earlier than people are usually treated. They focus on the top killers, like cardiovascular disease. They look for oxidative stress, with the goal of providing high levels of protection and reducing damage.

Their latest findings suggest it is difficult to assess a person’s oxidative stress using only one biomarker. Damage is variable over different testing periods.

Kronos has conducted a study related to Alzheimer’s Disease, in an attempt to detect the disease early. Called the KRONOS-TGen AD Project, the experiment included 1000 participants with Alzheimer’s and 1000 participants as controls. They were able to find involved genes, but they believe there are more that remain to be found. This is expected to lead to a genetic test to look for Alzheimer’s susceptibility.

In another experiment, the Kronos Early Estrogen Prevention Study (KEEPS) was meant to follow up on findings that hormonal replacement therapy might provide no cardiovascular protection in women over time as previous studies had indicated and could instead increase the risk of other problems like breast cancer. However, Heward said the study was “botched” because the wrong demographic of women was chosen. Kronos’ new study should correct this problem and seek better information on what is going on.

Finally, Heward provided nutrition and health advice. He suggested being fit, but not too lean. He also suggested fish oil, especially for Americans, as an important supplement for decreasing cardiovascular risk. Exercise is also important, but there appears to be a wall around 80 years of age, in which exercise appears to have no further benefit.

[Alcor Conference - Table of Contents]

Christine Peterson presented “Good News, Bad News, Surprising News” about life extension. She now spends about half time studying life extension as an enthusiast.

She began by stating that terminology matters. Which terms are best: life extension, health extension, anti-aging, longevity, immortality, or permanent health?

Since we are made out of meat, we enjoy the pleasures of life, but we end up aging and dying. Life extension enthusiasts want a pill to extend life, but nothing like that exists now. Medical doctors, researchers, and the FDA are not interested in life extension, in addition to the overall challenges of the biology of aging and possible research into ways to extend healthy lifespan.

She surveyed quickly those for and against life extension, including Leon Kass, Bill Clinton, Aubrey de Grey, and others. There are soft and hard approaches to the problem, including SENS and nanotechnology, and eventually nanomedicine.

A list of things that will help to buy some time until radical life extension technologies are available:

• stress reduction
• physical risk reduction
• mood improvement
• sleep, in a very dark room,
• Sex (quantity M, quality F)
• Laughter
• Biomarker testing
• Calorie Restriction
  • 35 few calories than normal
• Reducing inflammaging
  • decreasing inflammation by reducing visceral fat
  • dieting does not work
  • Slow way - we eat for pleasure
  • Treat value = yumminess x amount
  • Pleasure = qulaity x quantity
  • Keep treat value high
  • Increase yumminess - healthy treats all the time (nuts, cheese, fruit, chocolate, cheese popcord every day. Then I can be good with other foods
  • 100 cal/day for one lb/month loss; these tweaks are easy to find.
  • The bizarre way
  • Shangri-La Diet - not a diet
  • Flavorless calories before a meal
  • Trick to feel full. Alientation from food
  • Be gradual
• Supplements
  • Supplements can do damage
  • You can create conflicts and overdo it
  • Therefore more testing is required
• Movement: require fun
  • Math and science teachers in charge of gym class, to get rid of evil coaches
  • Don’t look at calorie/minute displays on exercise machines
  • 10,000 steps per day
  • Spend money on a personal trainer
• Uploading - more radical and possible further into the future.
• Biostasis (cryonics) - conserving structure - many of us will run out of time, so this is the backup plan.

Finally, Peterson noted that it is important to get life insurance, even if you are not planning to sign up for cryonics until later. Death can be unexpected, and cryonics remains a last option if other current life extension efforts do not work out.

[Alcor Conference - Table of Contents]

[Recap]

Does Aubrey de Grey really need an introduction at this point? His public proposal for repairing and reversing the damage of aging, SENS, and his public admission of being an Alcor member were the topics he discussed in “Is it Politically Safe for a Biologist to Support Cryonics Publicly?”

According to de Grey it is an important decision for a scientist to admit to supporting cryonics. A public acknowledgment of their support can affect their professional work. One of the dangers of being a leader in admitting to support is the lessened ability to procure funding. Funding peer review can be more difficult than publication peer review.

A cryonics leader provides public outreach and information. As other speakers have emphasized, legal death is only a convenience that needs constant review as technologies advance. Some people who are legally dead have in fact been revived, and this is something de Grey suggests the public be reminded of. Brain death is itself a complicated concept. Not only can a person be legally dead, they can be legally alive but functionally brain dead, via dementia, for example.

Cryonics supports can also provide ethical leadership. Cryonics supports can help demystify death and cryonics, promote cryonics as life saving, and provide facts for a useful ethical debate. Some people find cryonics “yucky” but a straightforward approach by scientists, rather than anger or ridicule, could be especially effective in demystifying the technology.

Science politics will also be affected by leadership. While mainstream cryobiologists support organ preservation, they do not generally embrace brain preservation. Leaders can point out this apparent discrepancy.

Leaders in this situation may be one of those lucky few who do not have to worry about dangers to their careers, funding, etc. De Grey believes he was lucky to have entered this field and “make trouble” without destroying his career. These lucky few should be able to help each other, until there is a tipping point toward broader support of cryonics.

De Grey believes he made the right decision to go public about his support of cryonics and Alcor membership.

[Commentary]

Leaders are important to any movement, and technologies themselves can be movements when tied to ideas like radical life extension. Cryonics support can be positively affected by people standing up and admitting they support the idea.

But what will be sacrificed when one stands up and stands behind such ideas? How does one talk about cryonics? These are important questions, and I think a review of other movements and how they address their own topics may be helpful.

[Alcor Conference - Table of Contents]

[Recap]

Another approach to recovery of cryonics patients, or patients prior to requiring cryonics, is regenerative medicine, that is, the ability to use stem cells to rebuild tissues. Michael West from Advanced Cell Technology discussed “Immortal Cells: The Prospect of Regenerative Medicine.”

The biology of aging remains a mystery, and West provided a history of thoughts on aging, including a reference to August Weismann in 1891 who predicted that cell division in somatic cells is finite. His research, however, was ignored. Researchers have since determined the finiteness caused by a “clock” in somatic cells, through telomere shortening on the tips of DNA over multiple cell divisions. The germline maintains telomere length. West and his research team tried to take this ability in germline cells and apply them to somatic cells. According to West “it worked!”

A reservoir of “immortal cells’ turned out to be human embryonic stem cells. These cells, even in the laboratory, will differentiate into a wide-range of tissues. According to West, nuclear transfer does reset the “aging clock,” despite the common belief that research showed this was not to be the case, with Dolly the cloned sheep commonly believed to have been “born old.”

Where is the field of stem cell research currently at? West and his company are working on technology to sort stem cell precursors to various mature tissues.

[Commentary]

Recent research into the environment of stem cells, as opposed to stem cells themselves, suggested you cannot simply inject stem cells into the body, especially an older body, and hope they regenerate and rebuild the necessary tissues. Particular factors in the environment of these stem cells appear to be important for letting the stem cells do what they need to do, according to researchers like Irina Conboy. West said that there are definitely unanswered questions, but so many promising avenues of research that something good will come from this activity.

• 2007 Nathan Shock Center Conference on Aging - “Age-Related Muscle Atrophy: Causes and Mechanisms”
• Mayan Ranch, Bandera, TX, USA
• October 25-28, 2007

• American Aging Association 2008 Annual Meeting - “The Role of Genes, Environment and Chance in Determining Aging”
• Millennium Harvest House, Boulder, CO, USA
• May 30 - June 2, 2008

I waddled into the Anchor Pub and there was Aubrey with a beer. He asked what I was drinking and I said “One of those” and pointed at his beer and soon had one because he brought me one and I was very tired and very merry and surrounded by excellent comrades.

I had my first conversation with Michael Rae. We talked about Christopher Sykes‘ recently-widely-net-viewed documentary “Do you want to live forever?“, which focuses on Aubrey. Michael had said in a Methuselah Foundation forum post that he intensely dislikes it. I wanted to know why.

I thought its excellent production values and on-balance pro-Aubreyness overcame its cartoonishness, contrived melodrama, shallowness, and emphasis on sex and sentiment. Combining heads with Michael I’m not sure whether or not its existence is a net favor.

I think what Joe Layboy takes away from the film is “there’s this weirdo genius dude who thinks he can make us live forever and what’s next on the telly?” Vastly preferable would be to make Joe Layboy incredibly mad that we’re all going to die and only 1 in 1,234,567 people are doing anything about it.

Our best minds haven’t yet succeeded in inciting riots. The first great documentarian of our movement might figure out how. Perhaps Christopher Sykes has lubricated the path a little, but pro-cures bloggers and writers have squeezed out a lot more lubricant collectively. They just haven’t made documentaries with non-crap production values yet.

Next post: more hanging out at the Anchor Pub, the day before the conference.