A prize that surges in value

With the current MPrize, cash donations are sought in order to fund prizes that are awarded according to the life extension achieved. One concept worth exploring is seeking an alternative form of payment, one that also increases in value once a cure for human aging is found.

As a parallel to the cash prize, perhaps there should be an alternate fund that seeks donations in stocks and bonds. Two groups to consider would be:

- Private firms that are struggling to control pension and healthcare costs. General Motors is a good example, they actually make little profit from the sale of vehicles, but rather from the financing of consumer purchases. Once liberated from the burden of aging, their profits and stock value will rise.

- Governments with costly, aging populations, and cannot make up for the costs through immigration or population growth. Japan and Germany are examples. Here government debt bonds would be the instrument of choice.

Perhaps a project could be started, to examine all the investments out there that are vulnerable to aging effects, and to raise donations and commitments in non-cash assets.

With a prize that awards stocks and bonds, the prize winners and contestants would have an additional incentive to work towards finding a cure.

Now that's thinking outside the box! A great way to fund a small struggling prize as well, it would seem. The biggest drawback that I see is that the cure for aging is a long-term problem (on the order of decades, even assuming that we award a mouse that has reached de Grey's goal of having its last year of life tripled), and the subsequent gains to those stocks and debt-bonds would take additional decades to be realized (given the market's propensity toward discounting the future).

However, that's only a technical problem to be overcome. Further diversification could take this into account, and try to target companies that benefit more immediately from a cure or imminent cure for aging. Life insurance companies come to mind.

Their rates are not based solely on the moment, but on their calculation of future risks. Unfortunately, most actuaries use past trends to predict future ones, so predicting which insurance companies will be able to handle future medical advances is a tricky gamble. I foresee several going belly-up. Some will not foresee the decreasing risk, and will keep their prices too high, effectively losing market share. They will be more solvent, but with smaller market share, their stock price will drop nonetheless, profits notwithstanding. Some will overestimate the rate of decrease in mortality rates (due possibly to low availability to longevity treatments), and price themselves too low, going bankrupt. We could try to spread across the life insurance market, but depending on how the industry shakes out in the next four or five decades, that's probably not much better.

great stuff gents. We do indeed accept stocks already, even if they are not currently marketable, and are also prepared to accept distressed bonds. We've also had the notion of "Life Saving Insurance" for awhile, but need to get to a certain size/scale financially and institutionally to be able to offer such a product. My thought has been to connect such a product to an affinity credit card.

cheers,
Dave

Those are great ideas. It makes one wonder what other valuables could be awarded.

What do researchers want?

Access to labs, equipment, information... We could award time in sophisticated research facilities in a given period, if it is possible to find owners of such that would be willing to donate space and time.

Conference tickets, speaker slots, university lectures... We could take donations from various universities and arrangement managers for many kinds of educational purposes.

Access to press journalists, radio/TV air time, magazine pages... We could get publishers and editors to donate space in various news papers, news letters and talk-shows.

What else ?

Speaking of prizes that surge in value, what are the causes behind the recent surge in the MMP? I know there has been a lot of good press in the last month, with the (somewhat silent) awarding of the Reversal Prize, the very public creation and awarding of the Rejuvenation Prize, the Popular Science and BBC articles, the slashdot coverage...

Speaking of which, I don't remember seeing a mention of the Popular Science article at Slashdot.... Hmm, brb...

The cause of the recent surge in the M Prize is successful influence within the calorie restriction community - our advocates there recently hit critical mass. This is much the same as what happened with the transhumanist community right at the start of the prize. I think this surge has a few more months worth of playing out at decreasing levels of gain.

Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme
reason@longevitymeme.org
http://www.longevitymeme.org

Hmm, I haven't noticed much traffic on the CR mailing list related to the MMP... Was it brought up at CRIII? I didn't attend or read the transcripts.

By the way, is the CR community's interest in this related to the fact that the winning intervention for the recently inaugurated Rejuvenation Prize was CR? Given the new structure of the prize, I could see CR and/or CR mimetics allowing another winner in just a couple years, which would definitely boost the CR message to the world at large. A good synergetic (synergistic?) relationship may seem to exist now between the MMP and the CR community, at least until more advanced interventions, such as SENS, start getting serious attention.

Wow, with the CR mimetics, how far away are they from developing something ready for commercial release? Or are there already chemicals available for human use, but now yet advertized to do so?

That's really awesome, having contacts in the CR community. With aging being such a complicated problem it will no doubt require many other specialties and talents working in synch. Have we any people in the government or the health insurance industry here?

Edited by myamashita, 15 December 2004 - 09:55 AM.

lightowl, great ideas there for donations that researchers need. For stuff like advertizing, being a winning contestant is quite a reward in the academic community. For stuff like lab time and lecture circuits, perhaps the MPrize could sent out a email asking for donations of that nature. Also, maybe one for contestants, asking what types of things they need to take their research the next step, if they win what would they need to go even further.

But the press publicity is only starting. I think as more people hear the message, and tell their friends, it can only get better. Just as mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow, so too will the MPrize.

Wow, with the CR mimetics, how far away are they from developing something ready for commercial release? Or are there already chemicals available for human use, but now yet advertized to do so?

Well, as far as commercial release, there are "already" CR-mimetics on the market. However, they are not advertized as such. Resveratrol, found in red wine (or grapes and grape juice for that matter; I'm sure there must be a scientific reason why wine is always mentioned, but never other grape-based products), is one example. There are others.

However, as far as "commercial" products, such as what the pharmaceutical companies and supplement companies might sell, there are a few options. Resveratrol supplements are currently available; however, they have not been adequately studied, so no substantial claims are made about the life extending benefits. Metformin, a currently-available, prescription diabetes drug, has also been found to be a CR-mimetic. If I remember correctly, it alters the genes expression of about 70% of the genes altered by CR (in mice), so that's pretty significant. Mouse studies have shown a significant life extension, something like 20% or so (I don't remember for sure).

CR-mimetics are an exciting field of research, especially if you've never heard of SENS. Of course, as many CR-practitioners would point out, even if you have heard of SENS, the CR-mimetics are still exciting because they're in clinical trials, whereas SENS hasn't even been researched yet in mice. CR-mimetics could be available in 5-10 years, and if they could allow middle-aged people to live an extra five years, that puts actuarial escape velocity within the reach of millions, perhaps even tens of millions of people, depending on how widely used the new drugs are worldwide.

For stuff like lab time and lecture circuits, perhaps the MPrize could sent out a email asking for donations of that nature. Also, maybe one for contestants, asking what types of things they need to take their research the next step, if they win what would they need to go even further.

Two excellent suggestions.

Let's get back to this:

The biggest drawback that I see is that the cure for aging is a long-term problem, and the subsequent gains to those stocks and debt-bonds would take additional decades to be realized

So what we like to do is find companies / institutions that would profit from anti-aging research in the short term. For example, the moment when most people realize that anti-aging will become reality might be close enough. Let's do some more brainstorming. What would everybody rush to buy first, and which firms would profit as a consequence?

I could think of very long term investments for a start, such as buying real estate.

Which companies would stand to gain the most from research grants initiated by the War on Aging? Would those companies be able to translate those grants into stock price increases, perhaps on the merit of nothing more than the fact that they were awarded the grants?

I'm thinking of how companies announce that they've won a major bid, and the stock price spikes for a few days. If the long-term benefit of the deal still looks promising after a few days, the price increase "sticks" in some sense, even though your daily, monthly, annual price fluctuations remain.

I think we should look at the companies that win research money from Prop. 71 in California. Let's do an analysis of how effectively those grants influence the stock prices. If a federal War on Aging suddenly coughed up five or ten times that much money ($1b to $3b a year), we might expect similar or better increases to the companies involved.

Great points there... by monitoring the industry trends caused by Prop 71., it'll be an instructive model on how the anti-aging campaign will go once everyone moves on a larger scale.

In the long-run, one general sector that will benefit highly are the offshore Contract Research Organizations, the ones that specialize in outsourced brain-work. And also there are companies that will supply bulk-materials such as stem-cells and engineered viruses.

Companies like Tata or Infosys in India would be good choices, for two reasons:

1) much of the research will be done outside the West for lower labour costs, but more importantly

2) to avoid many of the legal restrictions we're suffering from here, like on stem-cell research, and having to deal with the bureaucratic burdens, such as university ethics boards.

Although companies like these wouldn't directly be involved in Prop. 71 - style funding (cash has to be spent locally), other firms that will emerge along the way will wish to minimize their costs and free themselves of any restrictions - to be more attractive investments.

Another idea, rather than focus on public companies which will *grow* in the short-term, another area would be those that will lose out once people realize anti-aging is feasible. Rather than the buy-and-hold approach, these companies could be short-sold to generate cash.

Some example are:

-drug companies that make the bulk of their profit selling drugs to deal with aging symptoms like arthritis or heart disease.

-biotech ventures that are heavily entrenched/focused in research for the drug companies above; as short-selling opportunities these would be riskier, but potentially more profitable as they are more volatile and financially vulnerable.

-healthcare providers that operate hospitals and old-age homes

Edited by myamashita, 06 January 2005 - 10:36 PM.

Prop71 excellent thinking, Jayd. So what we will also want to do is check the news history for events that were unquestionably beneficial to regenerative medicine and see which stock prices rose. Then we can do some statistics, discern patterns and rub them under the noses of suitable companies when we need a grant for a specific project.

I am putting this on my list titled "ideas that should be mentioned in the context of the IBG survey debriefing", for which I will be calling for coauthors in the future, I might add. See this also in the context of the billionaires thread.

One could for example check whether public immortalist statements, such as those by Kenyon or Aubrey already had an influence on very sensitive businesses.

I should add a caution on my endorsement of Tata and Infosys, they're large multi-billion dollar companies, so any new contracts from the anti-aging world would probably have a negligible effect on their revenue stream; but outsourcing firms in general are good, smaller companies though would benefit more.