You May Never Die
- Posted by: Andrew Price
- on September 21, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist and chairman of the Methuselah Foundation (and, apparently, president of the Methuselah lookalike club). He gets covered in the news every once in a while because his beard is so visually engaging and also because he’s looking for a “cure for aging.”
He thinks we’ll make advances in age-reversing therapies in the next few decades that will allow people currently alive to live for hundreds of years. Maybe forever. He sits right on cusp of revolutionary and kook.
His new essay, “Bootstrapping Our Way to an Ageless Future” has the details.
The prospect of living much, much longer is fascinating. It would fundamentally change what it means to be human. But is quality more important than quantity? And what about overpopulation and the strain on our resources? If de Grey is right about the timing, we’ll live forever before Richard Branson can ferry us to new colonies on other planets.
