BERKELEY, California -- The hardest part of immortality is getting good press.
That was the consensus at the Extro 4: Biomedical Futures Conference held this weekend at the University of California.
Read ongoing Med-Tech coverage - - - - - -
The problem is that the "fountain of youth" has been part of the human psyche for so long that many people think of life extension research as science fiction, said Dr. Gregory Stock, the director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA Medical School.
The medical establishment has yet to see life extension as a goal unto itself, said Stock, who spoke at the event that was sponsored by the Extropy Institute -- a nonprofit group seeking to overcome limits on human evolution.
Stock said that several active areas of medical research could open up significant advances in understanding the causes of aging.
But few researchers are focused on using hormone therapy -- or our newfound understanding of the human genome -- to fight death in the long term, rather than just the short term.
"Most of the work being done now is focused on specific diseases," Stock said. "It could happen very quickly if we did it as a war on aging."
Before seriously declaring war on death, researchers would probably need to agree on several goals -- and perhaps even set monetary prizes for solving them.
For example, if researchers could reduce the rate of telomere shortening, they could then determine the extent to which this effect causes aging. Telomere shortening is the process by which cells lose genetic accuracy over time as they divide.
Another milestone would be understanding why some laboratory mice can live up to twice as long with calorie-restricted diets.
But even research prizes seem to be a long way off. Stock said he sent an anti-aging research proposal to the Ellison Medical Fund, an organization funded by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison with US$100 million of his own money.
Not only did the director of the fund reject the proposal, Stock said, but they told him they would make sure Ellison never saw it.
