Entrepreneur backs research on anti-aging

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...LIVEFOREVER.TMP

A controversial scientist who hopes to help humans live for thousands of years has received a multimillion-dollar grant from a Bay Area entrepreneur.

Peter A. Thiel, co-founder and former chief executive officer of the online payments system PayPal, announced Saturday he is pledging $3.5 million "to support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging."

The recipient will be the Methuselah Foundation, a Springfield, Va., nonprofit started and run by the most colorful scientist in aging research: Aubrey de Grey, a 43-year-old English researcher who says he hopes to "radically postpone aging, giving indefinite life spans."

In short, de Grey's thesis is that there are seven main causes of aging, and that if those can be licked, then people could live indefinitely.

Among aging experts, de Grey's reputation is so widely contested that a headline over an article last year in an MIT-based publication, Technology Review, asked: "He's brilliant, but is he nuts?" In a tongue-in-cheek letter to the magazine in response to the story, top aging authority Richard Miller, of the University of Michigan, wrote that he'd like de Grey to help him solve a similarly complex technological problem: how to make pigs fly.

De Grey told The Chronicle in e-mails and phone conversations last week that he isn't disturbed by scientific critics. Some of them, he noted, argue that death is inevitable because the cells and genes of living organisms inevitably accumulate errors that eventually kill them. But, he pointed out, because of careful upkeep "we have vintage cars driving around that were designed to last 15 years -- and they're 100 years old."

So why should humans be any different?

De Grey, who received a doctorate in biology at Cambridge University in 2000 and worked in the university's genetics department from 1992 until a few months ago, characterized the $3.5 million grant as a "major breakthrough" in his effort to get research on indefinite extension of lifespan "really moving in the laboratory."

"It's "pump-priming," he said. "I need probably $1 billion over 10 years" to achieve that goal."

Advocates of indefinite life extension seem to hope the future will resemble the film "Boynton Beach Club," in which white-haired, super-fit senior citizens party, play and have busy sex lives that would shame a college fraternity. But critics of de Grey-style longevity research fear that if everyone lived indefinitely, Earth would become miserably packed with old, sick people, and nursing homes would be more ubiquitous than Starbucks.

De Grey is confident that humanity will figure out a solution to the crowding dilemma. One possibility: "Maybe people of the future will decide that children are not much fun anyway and will reduce the birth rate," he said.

Aging experts tended to have a strong personal liking for de Grey, and said he had stimulated some interesting thinking in aging research, but believe that in recent years, he has become sensationalistic in his public comments.

"Many of my colleagues are extremely critical of him -- they believe he's a pseudoscientist, that he is out for publicity -- and that he has no redeeming features," said Judith Campisi, a cell and molecular biologist who has joint appointments at the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"I must say I don't agree with that," added Campisi. "I do think he started out sincerely hoping to stimulate interesting research. And I think in his small way he did get people to think. ... But where he seems to have lost his way is he doesn't listen to rational argument anymore."

S. Jay Olshansky, a demographer at the University of Illinois who confronted de Grey on CBS's "60 Minutes" earlier this year, added: "Where I have vehemently disagreed with Aubrey is where he tries to convince people, especially reporters, that we are on the verge of immortality -- that we have people alive today who will live for 1,000 or for 5,000 years."

At present scientists don't even know what causes aging, but "Aubrey seems to think that he does -- that there are seven (causes for aging), that we have to reengineer the body to eliminate them, and that we'll live forever.

"In the world of science," Olshansky said, "you don't make declarative statements (like that) without evidence to support them."

No. 1 on de Grey's list of seven causes of aging to target is the atrophy or degeneration of cells. Others include gene mutations, mutations to the energy-generating mitochondria inside cells, and the unhealthy accumulation of "junk" inside and outside cells such as the amyloid proteins found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

In response to Olshansky's criticism, de Grey told The Chronicle by e-mail that "I have published a lot of papers that provide the scientific basis for my optimism."

Thiel could not be reached for comment.

This post has been edited by Matt: Sep 18 2006, 08:36 AM

Well this is pretty good news [lol]

Is it a research grant, or a prize grant?
Either way ... WOW
If there's one thing we can say abou the .com millionaires; a lot of them are true believers in advancing our species.

Good morning,

This is a grant to further the SENS research and early on will be focused on developing allotopic expression of mitochondrail genes.

Cheers,
Dave

So the timing with the announcement of MitoSENS isn't just a coincidence then, eh?

I just received the following press release from the Methuselah Foundation. It should have been sent to all members of the 300, several of which are members here at ImmInst.

Hey, that just got me to thinking: we should have a page honoring our members who are also 300 members. With a casual pass through the list of the current 100 members of the 300, I counted 16 that I knew for sure were ImmInst members, not including the membership of the Immortality Institute itself. I don't know the real names of many ImmInst members, so I wouldn't be surprised if we had 20 members on that list.

Anyway, back to the press release:

Now Imminst is contributing to the fight against aging in another indirect way. Our member donations all go through Paypal. Thank you Peter Thiel for getting MitoSENS off the ground. Thanks to all the Imminst members who have supported the Mprize and LysoSENS!

This is the exact sizable contribution from a Silicon Valley star needed to make others take notice. It suspect that other similar contribution will come soon. The door has been opened...

Here's a link to a press release that seems to match the one I quoted:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_...lease_id=163952

Peter Thiel is not any typical dot com megamillionaire... he is very intelligent (chess champion) and has been a serious transhumanist for a while. As Hank mentioned, he is also an SIAI donor, as well as an investor in Novamente.

No doubt about it. There may need to be some sort of positive research results (in either LysoSENS or MitoSENS) before the next big donors jump in but I am sure they have noticed.

Whether or not Thiel is a "typical dot com megamillionaire", he has nonetheless willingly attached his name, and significant money, to the SENS program. The next megamillionaire, typical or not, need not fear that he or she is treading into unchartered waters, nor blazing a trail that will be attached to his or her name if things backfire.

Thiel isn't just a megamillionaire, he's well-known, even if only by association: people may not know the name Peter Thiel, but just about everybody who knows anything about the internet knows about PayPal. That he's very intelligent, a chess champion, manages a multi-billion dollar hedge fund, etc., only adds to the credibility that his support is calculated and well-placed, not just wishful thinking.

Kudo's also to whoever aproached Thiel and negotiated this deal - who was it?

I would assume it being Aubrey himself, they are both in the SIAI advisory board

http://www.singinst.org/advisoryboard.html

This is great news for SENS and congratulations to Osiris. The biggest benefit from today's announcement is in raising the profile for serious anti-aging research.

An interesting side note is that Peter Thiel would have to be considered one of the biggest bears on Wall Street and his fund is primarily a short seller. I also know he was one of the first to really get behind oil futures a couple of years ago and he had to do well there. I guess you could maybe argue something good has come of high gas prices.

Marcus

About a year and a half ago (or maybe it was 2 years already), when oil was only 42 dollars a barrel, I made a half-hearted suggestion that Imminst should buy oil futures with some of its funds. I thought it would be our best chance to double our funds within one year. Oil didn't quite double but it did get above 60 within a year and then unltimately topped out at 78 this summer. Realistically, futures markets are too risky to invest in (with Imminst money), even though it seemed like a good bet at the time.

Lately, I am sure a few energy traders lost their shirt with the abrupt drop in oil, gasoline, and natural gas.

In any case I hope Thiel continues to invest wisely....that way there may be more funds for MitoSENS and LysoSENS and other anti-aging projects in the future.

Mind,

Investing in futures is always a risky proposition due to the time horizon contstraints. You might be right in the direction the market is headed, but you also need good timing. More then a few times I've had call options on a stock/index/commodity not pan out because I was a little early and didn't pay up for contracts with far enough away expiration dates. Definitely futures are only for high risk capital. Personally, I think we may be seeing the floor on oil prices as everyone from airlines to trucking industries to entire governments are more inclined to hedge their future energy costs by buying up futures to relatively lock in today's prices.

Back to the main point, however, which is it is great to see someone with Thiel's profile getting behind SENS. There are probably quite a few more high profile people with resources who are at least aware of the science and what it is trying to accomplish thanks to his open involvement.

Marcus

This is great news!

This post has been edited by rombus: Sep 20 2006, 11:54 PM

Additional forum discussion:
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?act...=ST&f=1&t=12489
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?act...ST&f=69&t=12490

Update: Another forum link:
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?act...ST&f=44&t=12496

This post has been edited by jaydfox: Sep 20 2006, 04:09 PM

Maybe Thiel realizes that his efforts to build wealth will turn to ashes in few decades (if not sooner) because of our universal vulnerability to aging and death. Super-wealthy people tend to die pretty much "on schedule" like non-wealthy people in developed societies, whereas none of the supercentenarians I've heard of ever had that much in the way of financial success. Thiel probably wants to start out by buying the biochemical equivalent of the supers' longevity genes to get him to the one-hundred-teens, with the prospect of further advances coming onto the market by then to give him a few more centuries.

Given Thiel's libertarian associations, I wonder if he goes along with the lame Objectivist rationalization that at death you don't "lose" your life, but rather "complete" it. I doubt many Objectivists would consider their personal bankruptcy the "completion" of their hard-earned money.

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