Last week was a big turning point in Longevity: In key centres of academic and scientific endeavour the key players in Longevity aligned.
The three intense days of meetings during Longevity Week London were a key turning point. If you were sceptical about Longevity, or didn’t understand it, the opinions and clarifications delivered by leaders in the sector would have left you in no doubt that the sector is set to address one of the biggest issues and opportunities facing humankind:
Jim Mellon: “If we are going to live to 110-120 the best thing is to invest in the thing that’ll help you get there.”
Dr Aubrey de Grey: “SENS has always been funded through philanthropy to bypass the tyranny of peer review. We don’t work on Longevity, whatever the media may like to tell you. However, we know that our work will increase longevity a lot, I mean really a lot, and yes, we think this is a good side-effect.”
Dmitry Kaminskiy: “Longevity is becoming mainstream among scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, major financial, tech and healthcare corporations, and progressive governments. AI holds unprecedented power to translate research into tangible solutions to extend healthy longevity …”
Dr Nir Barzilai: “Aging is the major risk for heart disease, aging drives diseases. There’s only one thing that we can do and that is target aging which is really the risk for all major diseases.”
Dr Mike West: “Aging is reprogrammable … I think that Washington doesn’t have a clue and I’m sure the public has no idea.”
Richard Siow: AI holds enormous potential to rapidly accelerate the implementation of Longevity R&D … our unique academic-industry focus on preventive and personalised physical, mental and financial health, marking us out from other AI and Ageing centres around the world” said ,
Julia Randell-Khan: “We don’t see long life being a problem, but we have economic systems that are based on life being half as long … People need the answers to questions like, ‘How am I going to afford to retire and how am I going to survive dementia?’ The multi-stage lives that we are now all living means that we need a sense of belonging, sense and worth.”
Otani Soshi, Japan: “We need to redesign the system. If we allowed citizens to work an extra 10 years between the ages of 65 and 75 we could rebalance the social security system to what it was 15 years ago.”
Jim Mellon: “… we’re the first generation on the planet for whom bioengineering is possible but subsequently stem cells, organ and tissue regeneration and then ultimately gene editing are the things which will keep people alive to 110 or 120. We think those technologies are here today but gene editing will be the reason why the first person to be alive to 150 is living amongst us today.”
These are some of the key articles from last week:
