Aubrey de Grey has a new book out about how to "engineer" human immortality. The man, who is apparently a likeable fellow, is as controversial as his proposals, and I think an excellent example of how to promote an idea to media honchos eager to fill up space and time with nutrient-free sawdust to be surrounded by advertising bread.
Here are some facts about Aubrey de Grey, who is 44 years old:
His full name is Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey, which he likes to either use in its full version or likes to write as Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey. I frankly don't understand it. I have a middle name that I threw out a long time ago (with its middle initial) because who needs the excess baggage? But certainly he's entitled to use whatever name he likes to identify himself, five names or fifteen names.
He has a beard almost down to his belt, a full russet bushy beard hanging from a thin face. He's a thin man, six feet tall and 147 pounds. It's not a crime to have a beard, but I admit I have no understanding of the point of it, since a beard that long gets in the way of nearly every move you make. The beard, however, does give de Grey the look of a prophet.
De Grey has a B.A. in computer science from Cambridge University. He has a Ph.D., but it's a degree peculiar to Cambridge, which has a rule that if you're a graduate of that university, you can offer a book you've published as a doctoral dissertation, and if you successfully defend the book as a scholarly contribution they will award you a Ph.D. without your attending any classes or passing any qualifying examinations in anything at all. De Grey offered a controversial book in theoretical cell biology (about mitochondria), a book he published in 1999, and he received his Ph.D. from Cambridge in 2000. Given that most graduate students in science spend four, five, or six years of sweat, toil, aggravation, and general misery in a stinking bench laboratory or coughing up chalk at theoretical blackboards to get a Ph.D., de Grey's feat at Cambridge is an item. I don't know anyone else in modern science who has accomplished this feat at a major university. If you know of anyone, please let me know.
But de Grey doesn't call himself a scientist, he calls himself an engineer. He says the fact that he's not a scientist means he can think differently than scientists and see scientific problems from an engineering perspective.
If you want to see de Grey in action, there exists an interesting video of him presenting his ideas to an audience. There's nothing dull about it: he's a showman, an enthusiast in the way he presents himself.
Like many media-savvy people these days, de Grey has an acronym to label his ideas: SENS.
SENS stands for "Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence." The essentials are that he proposes 7 types of aging damage and he says we need to approach each as an engineering problem, solve each problem and endless life will result:
1. Prevent cancer-causing nuclear mutations and epimutations.
2. Prevent mitochondrial mutations.
3. Get rid of intracellular junk.
4. Get rid of extracellular junk.
5. Stop cell loss.
6. Stop cell senescence.
7. Remove extracellular protein crosslinks that damage function.
All of these are individual objectives that have been familiar to cell and molecular biologists for many decades. What de Grey has done is put them all together and give them a label: SENS.
Thus is created a media phenomenon called "Engineered Negligible Senescence".
De Grey has also apparently accumulated enough money to offer what he calls the "Methuselah Mouse Prize" -- more than $3 million to any researchers who extend the lifespan of mice to unprecedented lengths.
Gold always works, doesn't it?
Unhappily, most biologists, and especially most biologists who do research on the aging of cells and tissues, are firm in saying we're so far away from any of de Grey's objectives that it's all wishful thinking that confuses the public about aging and longevity. No one has yet collected the prize.
Meanwhile, I'm intrigued by de Grey's idea of how to do science - -- his idea of arranging a "strategic" list and labeling it with an acronym. So here I offer my own to advance the science of cosmology:
I call mine SIST: Strategies for Intergalactic Space Travel.
If we complete the engineering of my strategies, we will have what we need to roam the Cosmos. The strategies are as follows:
1. Achieve Complete Human Suspended Animation
2. Design and Achieve Near-C Spacecraft Velocity
3. Engineer an Autonomous Million-Year Nutrient Supply
4. Design and Achieve an Interstellar Debris Shield
5. Engineer Automatic Reversal of Human Suspended Animation
6. Design and Achieve an Error-Free Return Trajectory
7. Perfect Treatment of Post-Intergalactic-Travel Stress Disorder
As de Grey says about his own list, we don't need to complete these objectives all at once: step by step will be fine.
If any philanthropist wants to write a handsome check to start a foundation for SIST, I promise to gladly accept it.
But I cannot promise to be as effective as Aubrey de Grey. I have too many handicaps, one of them the absence of a beard of any kind, color, or length. I also lack a British accent. My accent, unfortunately, still reminds everyone of the Bronx.
Of course, one obvious problem with your SIST analogy is that you don't back it up with a detailed plan, a detailed budget, propositions for working around well-known stumbling blocks, numerous papers proposing experiments to test hypotheses, etc.. Furthermore, lack of space travel isn't killing millions of people each year.
Given your neurology background, I'd be interested in your opinion of a lysosomal enhancement approach to neurodegeneration. Since a scientific paper is more your speed than a book from St. Martin's, maybe you could check out http://www.sens.org/medbioremPP.pdf, starting on page 6, or http://www.sens.org/NBA-PP.pdf, starting on page 4. For example in regard to AD, normally functioning lysosomes likely can degrade A-beta. AD is characterized by structures resembling autophagosomes in dystrophic neurites. Lysosomes apparently aren't fusing with autophagosomes. Therefore, something in Alzheimer's patients impairs lysosomal function. Whether fusion is impaired because of abnormally high lysosomal pH or not, it is likely that intralysosomal toxin is the cause--unless you can suggest something else. As for a solution, several could be tried. Since the neuron is highly oxidative, allotopic expression of mtDNA could significantly reduce the mutant mitochondrial burden on the lysosomes. Delivery of exoenzymes to the lysosome for whatever aggregate impairs fusion is ideal, but even the enzyme being developed by LysoSENS to degrade 7-KC might maintain healthy lysosomal function enough to maintain endosome-lysosome fusion.
There is also the more general question of whether or not it makes sense to work the problem in the first place. This has been the favorite strategy behind Hubert Dreyfus' critiques of artificial intelligence as either (cognitive) science or (knowledge) engineering. Dreyfus' favorite metaphor was that you could not get to the moon by coming up with ways to bounce higher on a trampoline. If de Grey is a tinkerer at all, then his strategy is one of trampoline-tinkering.
Personally, I agree with him that he is not a scientist; but I would not call him an engineer either. He also seems to lack (willfully?) any ecological perspective of both the structures and processes of living systems (probably because the 1000+ pages of James Grier Miller's book on this perspective were too much for him). So I guess he is just another guy who writes stuff and then tries to figure out what to do to get people to pay to read it.
Now, if he would just tackle that energy storage problem with the batteries....*sigh...we'd have heaven on earth...literally.