False Overpopulation Objection to Life Extension and Regenerative Medicine

My response to the linkedIn discussion concerning the funding of a federal war on aging in particular a response to one posters comment that brings up the false specter of overpopulation.

I really wish the doomsayers and catastrophists that cry out the tired old overpopulation argument as their default objection to life extension and regenerative medicine technologies--usually as the prelude to suggesting banning these technologies or regulating them into the ground in vain efforts to stop them, often times as a pretext to implement the terribly wrongheaded and ill advised Precautionary Principle (the precautionary principle would lead to absolute stagnation because it's impossible to predict every possible negative outcome of any given science or technology), would please do their damn homework before barking their arrogant and ignorant opinions!

I wasn't going to do your homework for you naysayers but instead entreat you to please search for the arguments against your positions for yourselves however with little effort I found exactly the article that I wanted that correctly covers and debunks all of the overpopulation myth premises.


Please please, take the time to read this article:http://goo.gl/rhAcQ


Here are just a few excerpts to help whet your appetite:
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"The catastrophists have been predicting doom and gloom for centuries. Perhaps the single most amazing thing about this perennial exercise is that the catastrophists seem never to have stopped quite long enough to notice that their predictions have never materialized."


"As any population graph clearly shows, the world has and is experiencing a population explosion that began in the eighteenth century. Population rose sixfold in the next 200 years. But this explosion was accompanied, and in large part made possible, by a productivity explosion, a resource explosion, a food explosion, an information explosion, a communications explosion, a science explosion, and a medical explosion.


The result was that the sixfold increase in world population was dwarfed by the eighty-fold increase in world output. As real incomes rose, people were able to live healthier lives. Infant mortality rates plummeted and life expectancies soared."

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Here the author neglected to say that the common practice of the time was to have 10 children per family because half to two thirds of them would die before the age of five. As more children began to survive this practice became unnecessary and now all developed nations are actually in population replacement decline with dire economic circumstance. This has led to efforts to encourage immigration quota increases causing their own problems. For instance in Europe where Islamic immigrants do not respect the liberal culture of their new host nations are trying to impose their own restrictive culture such as pushing for the adoption of Sharia law. These immigration efforts have been implemented to shore up the economic shortfalls for pension plans such as the equivalent of Social Security. Now on to further prescient quotes from the article.

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"In the United States, for example, millions of acres of good cropland lie unused each year. Many experts believe that even with no advances in science or technology we currently have the capacity to feed adequately, on a sustainable basis, 40 to 50 billion people, or about eight to ten times the current world population."


"Resources. Like food, resources have become more abundant over time. Practically all resources, including energy, are cheaper now than ever before. Relative to wages, natural resource prices in the United States in 1990 were only one-half what they were in 1950, and just one-fifth their price in 1900. Prices outside the United States show similar trends.


But how can resources be getting more abundant? Resources are not things that we find in nature. It is ideas that make things resources. If we don’t know how to use something, it is not a resource. Oil is a perfect example. Prior to the 1840s oil was a liability rather than a resource. There was little use for it and it would often seep to the surface and get into the water supply. It was only with the dawn of the machine age that a use was discovered for this “slimy ooze.” ".


"Living Space. But even if food and resources are becoming more abundant, certainly this can’t be true for living space. After all, the world is a finite place and the more people in it, the less space there is for everyone. In a statistical sense this is true, of course. But it is also irrelevant. For example, if the entire population of the world were placed in the state of Alaska, every individual would receive nearly 3,500 square feet of space, or about one-half the size of the average American family homestead with front and back yards. Alaska is a big state, but it is a mere one percent of the earth’s land mass. Less than one-half of one percent of the world’s ice-free land area is used for human settlements."

One thing missing from this discussion of overpopulation is that catastrophists always seem to assume that living on the Earth is forever our only possible option. Another thing always overlooked is the exponential rate of development of technology and science. Due to this exponential expansion in the development of technology actually in little time at all we will be moving off planet. We will also begin to stop using up wild spaces for agriculture and cities will become to develop upwards instead of outwards. Japan already has designs for complete city towers that are self-sustaining as to energy, food production and internal transportation that are open & airy, would be pleasant to live in and could contain upwards of 100,000 people or more with a footprint small enough to accommodate several towers of this type on a small area of land.

The next step, with the aid of space elevators to bring cost of orbital space engineering down to a reasonable rate per pound, we will begin to develop the Moon for a jumping off point to aid in the mining of asteroids. These will provide the materials for orbiting space stations that can house hundreds of thousands of people. The next step after that is connecting these orbiting space stations into a single orbital ring. From such a ring with technology that will provide strong cables and lightweight building materials we will be able to build hanging cities. These would hang from the orbital ring equidistant from each other so that the gravitational pull upon them would be equal and keep the ring steady in its orbit. For those worried about some ugly structure blocking the sun or obstructing the view of the sky this won't be a problem because meta-materials will make it virtually invisible and pass the sun's light around them.

Eventually we will be terraforming our sister planet Mars and I even have ideas for doing Venus. We will learn to do so by first terraforming the now unproductive deserts of the world. These will provide more open hospitable spaces both wild and agricultural. Imagine the Sahara Desert green again as it was a mere 6000 years ago as science has discovered. This is possible with science and technology that we have today. If we took all of the trash and sewage from the developed nations converted it into fertilizer then combined that and seeds in a biodegradable polymer with an affinity for water such a material could bind the sand preventing the dunes from blowing. If then mixed deeply enough into the sand it would create a fertile loam. The first to grow would be grasses with deep roots to bind the sand in its place and then trees for shade.

There is a technology already developed that passively converts salt water to fresh water, a desalinization plant that requires no added energy. With this and wind and solar powered pumping stations along the route of the pipeline irrigation of desert areas would be possible from desalinated salt water from the sea. This is all doable today if we only had the political will. Eventually just like the Amazon basin this large green area would develop a weather system of its own when evaporation from transpiration of plants and then re-raining down upon the area.

As I said at the outset all too often the naysayers, the doomsday crowd, the catastrophists--especially the sociopathic uber environmentalists that if they could would push humanity back to hunter gatherer days--the Luddites quaking in their boots from future shock and sometimes even the overly pious religious, all fear the extension of the human lifespan and hope in vain to quell this technology... to grind it under their arrogant and ignorant collective heel. Well I've got news for them, there is not a damn thing they can do about! Any attempt to outlaw such technologies only drives them underground. This is bad because then they go on unseen and without oversight. Over-regulation has the same effect. One cannot stop the progress of science and technology, period. Surely history bears out this overriding fact.

As the, "Overpopulation Myth", article points out the more people there are the more ideas are produced. The more people there are the more entrepreneurs and inventors, the more innovators. This has brought us to a time where with so many millions of technologists and scientists working hard every day technology and science are in a double exponential expansion rate. As an example think of how smart phones and sleek thin powerful tablet computers didn't even exist a few years ago except in the imagination of those writing the Star Trek Next Generation TV show. Those of us that have been watching this exponential technology development phenomenon have a word for what this is bringing about, we call it, "The Singularity". This name is borrowed from astrophysics for the description of a Black Hole because as a Black Hole has an event horizon that from beyond which no information can be extracted. So also we are coming to a time which we cannot with any accuracy predict the direction of science and technological development. We can't see beyond the event horizon of our own technological development. My favorite quote applies here: "Quod De Futuris Non Est Determinata Omnino Veritas". Extra brownie points for figuring out who said that and why it's ironic.

The stark implication of this is that the pursuit of what some of us have come to call "Physical Immortality" will continue and will come to be regardless of any efforts to stop it. Now let's not get hung up on the "immortality" word. This is not the magical cannot ever die for any reason "infinite immortality", the type that religions promise. What we mean by this Physical Immortality is indefinite youthful health, indefinite lifespan (I did not say infinite as an lasting forever) and robust fitness. Through various means we will conquer every cause of death for human beings where reasonably possible. One thing being worked upon toward this end is Nanomedicine. Now Nanomedicine comes in various forms but specifically here we refer to nano robotics or as is sometimes referred to as nanites in science fiction.

I don't think I need to explain that science fiction is the new mythos and the predictor of real science. So let's not have the giggle factor overcome us when I mention science fiction please. Imagine trillions of tiny little surgeons inhabiting every cell of your body and correcting little errors in DNA transcription or damaged organelles or improperly manufactured proteins, all of which lead to disease and well aging. It has already been stated by physicists that these nano robots are not beyond the realm of possibility and are not against the laws of physics. Over 50 labs are developing them and this means a lot of money has been placed into it and this would not be done if it were just pie-in-the-sky. Now if one has an army of these keeping every cell in a pristine state then it's going to become damn hard to die. Of course one will not be able to withstand something extremely violent such as an explosion, a conflagration, getting flattened by a large heavy object or falling into a black hole.

To sum up my entire point it would be... let's have some imagination people, let's encourage our politicians to have imagination! Doubling the lifespan of every human being right now would fix every economical woe that we have. It is feared that in the United States that Social Security will become insolvent in a few years to come. Well this wouldn't be a problem if people do not need to retire and therefore did not need Social Security. Another drag on Social Security is the high cost of catastrophic injury care such as for myself a quadriplegic, and trust me I don't receive near enough to actually live on my Social Security Disability Income. Defeating the aging process has also the side benefits of curing many diseases such as the one that afflicts me and millions of other Americans, spinal cord injury and thereby relieving the pressure of the economic drain that the high cost of medical care for disabilities causes.

There is a huge economic cost to the loss of expertise and the knowledge of every person that dies from aging. There is a cost from aging and premature death of human beings that is difficult to calculate. This is the cost of having to relearn generation after generation the wisdom gained from the mistakes of earlier generations. Just as we become comfortable within ourselves comfortable with life, just as we learn how to truly be a decent human being our time is over. Ponder how quickly fighting wars would cease to be a factor to humanity if we were longer lived. Would we so quickly send our youth to die in senseless wars if they had 200, 500, 1000 or maybe even 5000 years of life ahead of them to stupidly lose in a mindless war? Who would risk such a law school would sign up for such a war?

On the subject of imagination I want everyone to imagine how many stars that are in just our galaxy alone. It Is said to be 250 billion. We are now finding exo-planets to be common companions of most stars. Out of all those 250 billion stars out there, there has to be some capable of having planets hosting extraterrestrial life. Out of those there has to be some with intelligent life. Now imagine an extraterrestrial civilization that has had technology for a million years longer than we have. Ask yourself would they not have surely conquered the problem of deterioration and aging if that far ahead of us? What if not 1 million years but merely 10,000, better yet how about just one thousand years ahead of us? In fact I don't even think one hundred years from our current level of technology is necessary to conquer the disease of aging because of the exponential factor of technological development.

One commenter is of the opinion that the problem of aging will never be defined, that it's far too complicated and he wrongly thinks that it's somehow built into our evolution. I suggest that he and others of like opinion please go to this website [http://www.sens.org] and learn what really causes aging and how much easier it is to do something about then is believed by many. My friend and colleague Aubrey de Grey has defined the aging process as being caused by seven processes that are consequences of metabolism in the way our bodies are engineered. A small sample of these would be, one, transcription errors in the replication of DNA, two, the buildup of junk inside and outside cells, and three, damage from free radicals that among other things damages mitochondria of cells causing their death. If you want to learn what aging really is please visit this website [http://www.sens.org].

I see a need to add something about the economics of reversing the aging process. Some wrongly feel that only the rich will have the opportunity to take advantage of it. This is a fallacy, no pharmaceutical company wants to invest billions of dollars to only be able to sell it to a few hundred uber rich. An old adage goes it is easier to get one dollar from 1 million people than it is to get $1 million from one person. As far as the antiaging cream companies comment goes, basically that they won't allow true life extension therapies to cut into their market share, well that comment just leaves me speechless. I guess some need a lesson in simple economics and free enterprise. If a better product comes along people will buy that rather than creams that don't work it's just that simple.

10,000,000 SET TO LIVE TO 100

The following article concerns the UK but it should also have ramifications for the rest of the modern world. However, some of the conclusions rely a bit heavily on old tech and older paradigms for considering these issues. It probably is as a matter of consequence that they could not consider more progressive paradigms. I'll point a few of these issues out below where a newer higher technology considered paradigm changes certain premises considerably. However, I wish to point out that all issues aside I consider this to be enormously welcome good news!

10,000,000 SET TO LIVE TO 100

By Bob Roberts Deputy Political Editor

MORE than one million people now in their 30s could live to be 100, according to the latest official estimates.

The population of centenarians could soar from the current 10,000 to 1.2 million by 2074, the Government Actuary Department said.

People in their 30's could have a one in eight chance of living to be 100, while thousands could live to be 110 or more.

The figures, based on the most optimistic life expectancy trends, have dramatic implications for pensions.

Indeed but what is not considered as the reader will see is that they fail to consider that technology will make it so those aging pension aged individuals will not necessarily need to be decrepit. They might then choose to work beyond the age of retirement and this has bearing on pension expenditures.

Their longevity would have a big impact on the size of the population, with the number of people living in the country growing to 75 million by 2074.

It could soar further, to 90 million, if the highest projections for fertility rates and immigration are included.

This is true in one sense but again fails to take other possibilities into account. A key word here is immigration. If not for immigration the population growth rates for most modern industrialized countries would be negative. People tend to have fewer children as women get reproductive rights in their own hands and as a society becomes more affluant.

The best thing governments can do right now is put billions in funding toward anti aging and Life Extension science as these necessarily ameliorate the decrepitude of aging. Thus all the fears over bankrupt pension funds could be for not. How many people would trade getting feeble and old and waiting to die on a pension for being young for longer and taking no pension as they can still work? Or they could retire on personal funds allowed to accrue over longer periods with compound interest that soon overtake their expense needs. This way people that so choose could live enormusly long lives of leisure and travel or engage in perpetual altruistic pursuits at home or abroad.

Please view the rest of the article here.

New study on humans suggests eating less may delay aging

Well you sure don't need to tell our April Smith at Mprize this news. See her blog here: She's been following a youth extending caloric restriction diet for a while already. Many people have for years simply based on results for other mammals. The Mprize gave one of it's first prizes to a study on mice.

Look it's all good no matter what your goal. Less food means less bulk and more energy. This is because like a light weight race car you need less ummph to push it down the road. So less toxic exhaust in the air, equate that to less junk in your cells helping to age you. So go to it people, eat less, eat right to live better and longer!

Study: eating less may delay human aging

Jan. 15, 2006
Courtesy American College of Cardiology and World Science staff

A new study is the first to associate a low-calorie diet with delayed signs of aging in humans, its authors say.

The hearts of people who follow a low-calorie, yet nutritionally balanced, diet resemble those of younger people when examined by sophisticated ultrasound function tests, the study found. They also tend to have more desirable levels of some markers of inflammation and excessive fibrous tissue, it concluded.

The study appears in the Jan. 17 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

“Eating less, if it is a high-quality diet, will improve your health, delay aging, and increase your chance of living a long, healthy and happy life,” said Luigi Fontana of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri and the Italian National Institute of Health in Rome, Italy.

“This is the first report ever to show that calorie restriction with optimal nutrition may delay primary aging in human beings.”

Please see the original article here.

Maybe The Most Exciting Breakthrough Yet! The Magic Mouse

This is so excitng I'm simply hopping! Here we go people! If this get's developed further and in human beings, well it's almost incalculable the number of good things it will do. Imagine losing a limb to an accident and rather than long and painful rehabilitation and then getting fit for a prosthetic device, even the really cool new bionic limbs in development, you instead have your limb regrown!

Oh don't stop there! Got a bad kidney, a liver rotted to the core, panacreas gave you diabetes? Grow new ones! I'll go so far as to hazard a guess that one could grow the new one along side the old -- how else would it work for certain organs after all that you can't live without-- and if so then maybe to catch up on health one could have two of something. That may be wild speculation but so was even considering this just a few years ago. It might be possible to target areas of an organ and therby rejuvenate the old ones like maybe the heart. Sound good? I can't wait for it myself.

The Sunday Times - Britain

August 28, 2005

'Miracle mouse' can grow back lost limbs

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

SCIENTISTS have created a “miracle mouse” that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.

The experimental animal is unique among mammals in its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail.

The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate.

The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine.

Please visit here for the rest of this excellent article.

I happen to be a quadriplegic and I also just happen to suffer the world's worst case of a very rare bone disease. That disease has totally destroyed my pelvic area, hip joints and heads of my femurs. For that matter both my legs are pretty much shot from this disease. It is called Heterotrophic Ossification where bone material just goes nuts and deposits everywhere randomly but mostly in the joints locking them up solid. My right knee is shot too from it so basically. If there ever is a cure for spinal injury it won't likely immediately help me walk. In fact though I'd want to try it just to get my fingers and hands back and control of certain daily needs, it might actually make the chronic pain I already suffer much worse.

However, maybe one day there'll be a way to regrow all these areas so badly damaged and give me a shot at regaining the life I lost. I can't wait to run pell mell through a field as fast as I can and feel the wind rush past my face once again.

Exciting Yet Cautious Hope For Parkinson's Sufferers

We are beginning to see the very first attempts at gene manipulation therapies for curing dieases. It this therapy for Parkinson's a retro virus, sort of an intelligent nanoscopic pair of scissors, find's it's way into the exact correct spot to alter a gene. Let's hope it works. Parkinson's is an age related disease but can affect the young. Michael Jay Fox is widely known to suffer from the disease.

Gene-Therapy Tried for Parkinson's

BY LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer

4 hours ago

WASHINGTON - Mike Castle lay motionless as surgeons drilled two holes into his skull and injected a virus deep into his brain. The virus carries a gene and a tantalizing hope: that just maybe it could stall the Parkinson's disease slowly crippling him.

The Illinois man is among a few dozen patients enrolling in the first attempts at gene therapy for Parkinson's, a milestone in the quest to better treat the degenerative brain disease.

It's a time of mixed excitement and caution: These first three studies are to see if gene therapy is safe to try, not to prove whether it works. Yet studies in monkeys suggest at least one of the approaches has the potential to finally target the underlying disease, not merely tame its symptoms.

"It's this delicate balance between giving (patients) hope but making it clear to them, and to the world, that this is still highly experimental," says Dr. William J. Marks Jr. of the University of California, San Francisco, who is leading the most closely watched approach _ using a nerve growth factor to rescue dying brain cells.

"It's a gamble," agrees Dr. Leo Verhagen of Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, a co-researcher in the project who treated Castle.

"This is the first trial that, if it works, could slow down the disease's progression," he explains.

Yet to stress the experiment's unknowns, he bluntly told Castle, "We are happy if we don't make you worse."

Parkinson's disease gradually destroys brain cells that produce dopamine, a chemical crucial for the cellular communication that controls muscle movement. As dopamine levels drop, symptoms increase: tremors in the arms, legs and face; periodically stiff or frozen limbs; slow movement; impaired balance and coordination. It afflicts about 1.5 million Americans.

Please visit here for the rest of the original article.


Gene therapies remain controversial and may for quite some time. It's partly from misunderstanding the science and partly from personal differences held regarding what is ethical to do in changing genes that could possibly affect future generations. This is not that kind of therapy as I understand it. Hopefully people will reserve judgment until some positive results may be witnessed spread large and wide. Perhaps then people will calm down some and consider the fact that there but for the grace of chance or whatever, they too could need such a radical intervention. It's always easy to pontificate while one is young or healthy and the bad things only happen to others.

Old news is good news and come around again

I've reported in Rejuvenation Engineering News a couple of times before, once for heart attack victims and once for children, about the benefits of cold for preserving the brain and other tissues. It halts damage and increases the span of the "Golden Hour" spoken of for trauma victims that best recover if dealt with promptly within the first hour from injury.

Minn. Hospitals Chill Heart Attack Victims

Wed Jan 4, 10:14 AM ET

MINNEAPOLIS - A handful of Minnesota hospitals are now chilling some heart attack patients in an effort partly to protect their brains, a therapy that has produced results one doctor called "breathtaking."

Take the case of Robert Kempenich, 52, of Little Falls. On Dec. 5, he collapsed at a SuperAmerica store and was rushed to a St. Cloud hospital where he was hooked up to a machine that lowered his body temperature to 92 degrees.

Under normal circumstances, only about 5 percent of patients who collapse after a sudden heart attack survive. Even if emergency workers get the heart started again, the brain damage is often permanent.

Yet two days after Kempenich collapsed he awoke from a coma and gave the "thumbs up" sign. His wife, Mary, was there. The sign meant, "He knows," she said. "He knows what he's doing."

Less than a week later, Kempenich went home from the hospital. He was back at work at the SuperAmerica last week. His doctors say there are no signs of lasting brain damage. (cont.)

It is wonderful to see a good idea spreading across the country. Hopefully soon every hospital will get on the bandwagon and be better prepared for cool measures that save clever brains and their owners. See the rest of the article here.

Unlocked mysteries of premature-aging syndrome may provide clues to aging

Some exciting news for a few precious little tikes around the world that deserve it very much and so much more. It might also be exciting for the rest of us as well!

Mysteries of early-aging syndrome unlocked, researchers say

Dec. 13, 2005

Courtesy American Society for Cell Biology and World Science staff

Scientists say they are unraveling a longstanding mystery of how a rare syndrome causes its victims to die in their early teens, apparently of old age.

The answer could do more than help those children, researchers say. It could also lead to a better understanding of how normal aging happens, and what if anything one could do to stop it.

An estimated one in 8 million children are born with the condition, called Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome. They start life in apparent good health but by six to 18 months develop signs of premature aging, including hair loss, stiff joints, osteoporosis and atherosclerosis. Typically, they die by 13, finished by heart attacks or strokes.

No effective treatments are known, although scientists reported last September that a drug currently being tested against cancer might help the patients.

The cause of the condition, too, remains unknown. But researchers reported one breakthrough in 2003. They traced the condition to a spontaneous mutation in a gene encoding a component of the cell nucleus, the compartment of a cell that stores our genes.

Megan Nighbor, 5, a progeria patient. Her family, which has been appointed as the U.S. Progeria Research Foundation's Ambassador Family for progeria outreach, describes her as a bundle of energy who loves horses. (Photo courtesy of the Markesan Regional Reporter and the Progeria Research Foundation)

See the rest of the story continued here.

Progeria is a despicable disease. I would have to say that in fact it exceeds normal aging in loathsomeness. It robs beautiful children of their lives and time to enjoy life as much as they deserve. Their inner beauty always out-shining their outer, if you've ever had occasion to become familiar with them -- perhaps through a Discovery Channel documentary, they sparkle with joy and hope and love of life, what little of it this terrible disease affords them. We could all take lessons from them on how to appreciate the magical thing that mere existence is.

Let's hope this disease is soon to meet the dustbin of history and along with it that other thief of life that unfortunately plagues everyone plain-old every day aging itself. For even for these precious children, if they were to be cured of their premature aging, that old Dragon-Tyrant awaits them still.

This just in -- U.S. Life Expectancy Hits All-Time High

In one respect this is very good news indeed, but stay tuned.

U.S. Life Expectancy Hits All-Time High

By MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA - U.S. life expectancy has hit another all-time high _ 77.6 years _ and deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke continue to drop, the government reported Thursday.

To put this in the shortest and sweetest terms, this is exactly the result of Rejuvenation Engineering. However, due to human nature there is a catch.

Still, the march of medical progress has taken a worrisome turn: Half of Americans in the 55-to-64 age group _ including the oldest of the baby boomers _ have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese. That means they are in worse shape in some respects than Americans born a decade earlier were when they were that age.

The health of this large group of the near-elderly is of major concern to American taxpayers, because they are now becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security.

"What happens to this group is very important because it's going to affect every other group," said Amy Bernstein of the National Center for Health Statistics, which put out the new report.

As I alluded to above human nature disrupts a very good thing. So the way I see it what must be done is to kick this horse in the flanks with sharper spurs than have been used in the past. By sharper spurs I mean of course a lot more money. All the effort to raise the life expectancy until now has been a happy accident. I mean it is the result of blind efforts to simply fight disease, repair injury and improve the human condition.

As many are catching onto it's time now to take the more direct approach and actively fund research efforts toward the ends of curing aging. Along the way many of these problems spoke of in this article will be addressed directly because different remedies for aging will cross apply. The problems caused by lazy human nature such as obesity and lack of care for optimum health are in part caused by apathy toward life that until now has been seen as short and aging inevitable. These will be addressed by a change in public attitude toward living longer, a change that will come when they realize the goal is possible when it is accomplished in a an animal model such as promoted by the Mprize. When this happens the general public will come onboard in droves.

Please read the original report available here. It goes on to talk about differences in generations ten years apart, those born in the 30's compared to those born in the 40's, the so called baby boomers. The inference in the entire report is that Social Security and Medicare will be strained by people living longer so efforts are being made to encourage better health to assuage the cost.

As those in the Life Extension movement know quite well, the best answer to fixing the woes of Social Security and Medicare are to cure aging, period. For one, people won't need to retire if they are youthful for longer or rejuvenated to restored youthful health. They will then have the time and mental maturity to better handle finances and place themselves in positions of safer long term compound interest investment that allow them to not need government or even industry retirement pension plans.

If you like these ideas and like the possibility to live to see many generations of grand children and the wonders that a vastly more technical and connected world may offer in the future, then please by all means possible step up and help us fund the effort to first garner wider public support for Life Extension via the animal model I spoke of above. Currently the Methuselah Mouse Prize is in my mind the best prospect for this. You may click the mouse logo in the upper right of my blog to go directly to the donation page. Do consider a long term commitment that cost merely the same as a cup of coffee a day, consider joining The Three Hundred a group of highly motivated forward thinking smart people pioneering a brighter path for us all.