Ep 36: Aubrey de Grey & Radical Life Extension

The Christian Transhumanist Podcast

See Aubrey de Grey live at the first ever Christian Transhumanist Conference on August 25th, 2018—in Nashville, TN!

Aubrey de Grey pioneers anti-aging research, answers your questions about the future this is leading to, and explains why not working to defeat aging would be a sin.

Bio:

Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist, the founder & Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation, editor-in-chief of Rejuvenation Research, and author of the book Ending Aging.

Relevant Links:

• Aubrey's book: Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
• Stay-up-date on news and research, and contribute to the anti-aging effort at the SENS Research Foundation.
• Other efforts discussed: Google's Calico Labs, Humanity Longevity Inc

Important thoughts:

• Aging causes more suffering than almost anything in the world
• 90% of the medical budget of the western world is spent on costs associated with old age
• The cure for Heart Disease and Cancer is being held back by the reluctance to deal with aging itself
• Aging & Medicine
• Aging isn't “programmed in”: much of our body's machinery is dedicated to fighting aging
• Ending aging is continuous with current medical practice
• Ending aging will never look like a “magic pill”—it will necessarily be an ongoing cooperative process of society.
• World impact
• The UN predicts that human population will peak, and start to decline, sometime this century
• Out of pure economic necessity, world governments will pay for universal anti-aging therapy
• Repairing damage to our bodies can correlate with repairing damage to the planet
• The clash between science and engineering: understanding a problem, vs solving a problem
• It would be a sin not to work on ending aging

How might this interact with religion?

• The biblical vision of optimal human life is living multiple centuries, and having children much later. For example, Isaiah 65 looks forward to a time of radically extended lifespans.
• All religions insist that we are not supposed to hasten death, and command us to work against it
• Christians should support radical life extension

Pull-Quotes:

“Ageing is, simply and clearly, the accumulation of damage in the body. That's all that ageing is.” <-- click to tweet

“If changing our world is playing God, it is just one more way in which God made us in His image.” <-- click to tweet