What constitutes a long-lived, healthy life? What is the ideal age to live to: 80, 90, 100? Assuming you remain in good biological and mental health, why stop at 100?

These numbers are simply manifestations of what modern medicine and improved sanitary conditions and quality of life have allowed for. Maybe “good health” and, by extension, life expectancy is fluid, not bound by any hard and fast expiration dates. In Canada, the current average citizen can expect to live to be approximately 81 years old, up from about 60 in the 1920s. Presumably, one of the main reasons we practice medicine is to reduce disease and suffering, and ultimately to prolong life indefinitely.

Biogerontology is the study of the biological processes — causes, effects and mechanisms — of aging, and Aubrey de Grey believes that settling on any particular age as an ideal is not justified by scientifically sound assumptions. de Grey is a biogerontologist, author of Ending Aging and the founder and chief science officer at Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), whose main mission is to develop a series of therapeutic procedures to minimize, if not eliminate, aging at the cellular level in our lifetimes.

In a video interview on the SENS homepage, de Grey explains the foundation’s rather convoluted name: “‘Negligible senescence’ is a term used for species that exhibit so little evidence of aging in the wild . . . that one cannot actually determine statistically whether they are aging at all. Engineered negligible senescence then is simply the concept whereby one might take a species that does exhibit aging, like the human race and transform them by technology into a species that does not exhibit aging.”

The Manitoban had the opportunity to interview de Grey. Here is a portion of that interview.

Bryce Hoye:
Could you explain the concept of “rejuvenation biotechnologies,” and what this means specifically to the work being carried out at SENS?

Aubrey de Grey:
Rejuvenation biotechnologies are simply regenerative therapies that pre-empt the diseases and disabilities of old age. They consist of molecular, cellular or whole-organ interventions that restore the structure of the target to something like how it was in early adulthood. This includes a variety of stem cell therapies, and also tissue engineering to create artificial organs. At SENS Foundation we don’t work much on those types of therapy, because they’re being very capably pursued elsewhere; rather, we focus on the more neglected but equally vital components of this “divide-and-conquer” approach to combating aging. For example, we have a large project aimed at eliminating “molecular garbage” from cells — indigestible material whose accumulation leads to diseases like atherosclerosis and macular degeneration — by introducing non-human enzymes to augment the body’s natural ability to break down unwanted by-products of metabolism.

BH:
Could you elaborate on the idea mentioned on SENS: that it isn’t necessary to know, from an “engineering” perspective, everything about the degenerative processes that occur at the cellular level in order to treat aging in the way you envision?

AdG:
The basic point we’re making there is to contrast the regenerative approach with the more traditional idea of trying to make metabolism create molecular and cellular damage more slowly. In order to do the latter, we would need to understand our biology massively better than we do at present, so as to avoid creating unforeseen side-effects. By contrast, with the regenerative approach we don’t need to know much about how damage comes about: it’s enough just to characterize the damage itself, so as to figure out ways to repair it. We’re effectively sidestepping our ignorance of metabolism.

BH:
What are the main technological challenges facing biotechnological rejuvenation research — at SENS and elsewhere?

AdG:
When viewed in detail, each of the strands of this technology faces its own challenges. In all cases there is a detailed plan for how to get from where we are today to at least a reasonably comprehensive implementation of the relevant repair therapy — good enough so that, in combination, these therapies can probably give us at least a few decades of extra healthy life.

BH:
SENS has research-collaborators in many places working on this project. Have there been any promising new findings recently, and in what fields?

AdG:
A recent one that was a really big help in enhancing the credibility of a hitherto quite controversial strand of SENS was when a group at the Mayo Clinic created a mouse strain that rapidly accumulates what I call “death-resistant” cells, which are thought to be toxic, and that could be induced to kill off those cells with the administration of a simple drug. This isn’t a solution that would work in genetically unmodified animals (or humans), but it is a terrific proof of the concept that these cells are bad for you and that you can recover really well when they are removed.

BH:
How far away are you from deriving a set of first generation SENS therapies?

AdG:
I reckon we have about a 50 per cent chance of getting to that point within 25 years. I want to stress, however, that such estimates are always very speculative in any technology; I’d say there’s at least a 10 per cent chance that we won’t get there for 100 years. But that’s fine — a 50 per cent chance is quite enough to be worth fighting for.

BH:
Will these therapies be available to the average person, or only to the most affluent? Or is this something that is not of any immediate concern to the research community?

AdG:
Yes, SENS will definitely be available to anyone old enough to need it, because it will be in the nation’s economic interests to make it so, since the alternative of letting people age and treating their diseases is so incredibly expensive.

BH:
Can you provide me with some rebuttals you’d have for the person that would: a) say they don’t want to live forever; b) say that the process of dying is a natural part of life?

AdG:
The main thing I always need to emphasize in response to such statements is that we’re not in this for longevity for longevity’s sake. We work on health. Interventions against aging are no different than any other medicine: they will keep people healthy longer, and thereby, as a side-benefit, they will probably keep people alive longer. The only difference is one of degree, i.e. that once we get really good at treating aging we will be able to extend health (and thereby life) far more than we have been able to do with any medicine so far developed. So people who say that we shouldn’t do this are actually saying no more nor less than that they’re only in favour of medicine if it doesn’t work very well. As for not wanting to live indefinitely, that’s just dumb. Having any opinion at all, positive or negative, about living to any given extreme age (whether it’s 100 or 1,000 or whatever) is like having an opinion about what time you want to go to the bathroom next Sunday. It’s a ridiculous thing to have an opinion about, because you know you’re going to have better information on the topic nearer the time.