Research on Aging: Well-Being and Aging

What is well-being and how is it measured? How can we increase our happiness and fulfillment in life especially as we age? Well-being is now a field of serious scientific inquiry. Join expert Colin Depp, PhD, as he sheds light on this topic that impacts us all. Series: Sam and Rose Stein Institute for Research on Aging



Cambridge researcher Aubrey de Grey argues that aging is merely a disease -- and a curable one at that. Humans age in seven basic ways, he says, all of which can be averted.



Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer, SENS Foundation, speaks about the future of regenerative medicine and human longevity. Filmed during the 2009 Graduate Summer Program at Singularity University.

Aubrey de Grey, British researcher on aging, claims he has drawn a roadmap to defeat biological aging. He provocatively proposes that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born.

A true maverick, Aubrey de Grey challenges the most basic assumption underlying the human condition -- that aging is inevitable. He argues instead that aging is a disease -- one that can be cured if it's approached as "an engineering problem." His plan calls for identifying all the components that cause human tissue to age, and designing remedies for each of them — forestalling disease and eventually pushing back death. He calls the approach Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS).

With his astonishingly long beard, wiry frame and penchant for bold and cutting proclamations, de Grey is a magnet for controversy. A computer scientist, self-taught biogerontologist and researcher, he has co-authored journal articles with some of the most respected scientists in the field.

But the scientific community doesn't know what to make of him. In July 2005, the MIT Technology Review challenged scientists to disprove de Grey's claims, offering a $20,000 prize (half the prize money was put up by de Grey's Methuselah Foundation) to any molecular biologist who could demonstrate that "SENS is so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate."

The challenge remains open; the judging panel includes TEDsters Craig Venter and Nathan Myhrvold. It seems that "SENS exists in a middle ground of yet-to-be-tested ideas that some people may find intriguing but which others are free to doubt," MIT's judges wrote. And while they "don't compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists," they're also "not demonstrably wrong."

"Aubrey de Grey is a man of ideas, and he has set himself toward the goal of transforming the basis of what it means to be human."
-- MIT Technology Review

See also:
Aging of the Other Genome: A Decisive but Ambitious Solution
Aubrey de Grey says we can avoid aging
SENS Foundation
Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs that Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime


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