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Ask Aubrey de Grey About Longevity Research on Slashdot

7 points by troystribling 18y ago

biohacker42 18y ago
Aubrey de Grey reminds me of the cold fusion people. Chairman and chief science officer of The Methuselah Foundation - cute but BS. Biogerontologist - BS. He is a very smart guy, why doesn't he go ahead and get himself an MD? There's no way to prolong aging without curing all age related diseases. If you live long enough the cancer incidence is 100% So the world is working on curing aging, it always has. There's just still a VERY long way to go, don't hold your breath. Unless you are < 10 and reading this. What exactly de Grey wants, that's not already being done in the regular effort to cure people, is beyond me?
- troystribling 18y ago
  Cold fusion turned out to be true, from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion "By 1991, 92 groups of researchers from 10 different countries had reported excess heat, tritium, helium4, neutrons or other nuclear effects.[36] Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals." "In February 2002, a laboratory within the United States Navy released a report[42][43] that came to the conclusion that the cold fusion phenomenon was in fact real and deserved an official funding source for research.[44] Navy researchers have now published more than 40 papers on cold fusion.[45]" It is also interesting that there was an effort at suppressing positive results and generation of fraudulent data to discredit the initial findings. "The late Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger (1918 - 1994) also stated in 1991 that he had experienced "the pressure for conformity in editor's rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous reviewers," "In 1991, Dr. Eugene Mallove stated that the negative report issued by the MIT Plasma Fusion Center in 1989, which was highly influential in the controversy, was fraudulent because data was shifted without explanation, obscuring a possible positive excess heat result at MIT." People often use Cold Fusion as an example of pseudoscience when it is actually an example of suppression of a new idea. The accusations of fraud were widely publicized and remembered but vindication of initial claims is hardly known.
- stcredzero 18y ago
  "There's no way to prolong aging without curing all age related diseases." This statement betrays that you don't understand Aubrey de Grey's position. He doesn't want to cure all age related diseases. (Except 1) Because there's so few kinds of metabolic damage (just 7) it now seems possible for us to find a way to ameliorate all of them, thus preventing age related diseases from appearing in the first place. And yes, he's done lots of thinking about cancer and the 100% likeliness of getting it if you live long enough. I suggest that you actually read what he was to say before labeling him. (You are not alone. From what I've read on the Slashdot entry, most of the people there only have the foggiest idea of what his position is.)
comatose_kid 18y ago
If a person could live forever, I wonder if they would do anything useful with their lives - after all, they could always put it off to tomorrow. "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life." ... "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement speech
- stcredzero 18y ago
  Lots of people will still die, no matter what we discover.
jwesley 18y ago
I'll have some snake oil with that, Doctor...

7 points by troystribling 18y ago

Aubrey de Grey reminds me of the cold fusion people. Chairman and chief science officer of The Methuselah Foundation - cute but BS. Biogerontologist - BS. He is a very smart guy, why doesn't he go ahead and get himself an MD? There's no way to prolong aging without curing all age related diseases. If you live long enough the cancer incidence is 100% So the world is working on curing aging, it always has. There's just still a VERY long way to go, don't hold your breath. Unless you are < 10 and reading this. What exactly de Grey wants, that's not already being done in the regular effort to cure people, is beyond me?

troystribling 18y ago
Cold fusion turned out to be true, from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion "By 1991, 92 groups of researchers from 10 different countries had reported excess heat, tritium, helium4, neutrons or other nuclear effects.[36] Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals." "In February 2002, a laboratory within the United States Navy released a report[42][43] that came to the conclusion that the cold fusion phenomenon was in fact real and deserved an official funding source for research.[44] Navy researchers have now published more than 40 papers on cold fusion.[45]" It is also interesting that there was an effort at suppressing positive results and generation of fraudulent data to discredit the initial findings. "The late Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger (1918 - 1994) also stated in 1991 that he had experienced "the pressure for conformity in editor's rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous reviewers," "In 1991, Dr. Eugene Mallove stated that the negative report issued by the MIT Plasma Fusion Center in 1989, which was highly influential in the controversy, was fraudulent because data was shifted without explanation, obscuring a possible positive excess heat result at MIT." People often use Cold Fusion as an example of pseudoscience when it is actually an example of suppression of a new idea. The accusations of fraud were widely publicized and remembered but vindication of initial claims is hardly known.
stcredzero 18y ago
"There's no way to prolong aging without curing all age related diseases." This statement betrays that you don't understand Aubrey de Grey's position. He doesn't want to cure all age related diseases. (Except 1) Because there's so few kinds of metabolic damage (just 7) it now seems possible for us to find a way to ameliorate all of them, thus preventing age related diseases from appearing in the first place. And yes, he's done lots of thinking about cancer and the 100% likeliness of getting it if you live long enough. I suggest that you actually read what he was to say before labeling him. (You are not alone. From what I've read on the Slashdot entry, most of the people there only have the foggiest idea of what his position is.)

comatose_kid 18y ago

If a person could live forever, I wonder if they would do anything useful with their lives - after all, they could always put it off to tomorrow. "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life." ... "No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new." Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement speech

stcredzero 18y ago
Lots of people will still die, no matter what we discover.

jwesley 18y ago

I'll have some snake oil with that, Doctor...