The Anti-Aging Debate

There's no scientific consensus on the causes of aging and that has led to some spirited debates. We explore the arguments and learn a little something about ourselves in the process.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcomed up Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, what is
this thing that builds our dreams yet slips away from us?

(00:21):
I'm Jonathan Strictlin, I'm Lauren Bocaban, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Today is going to be part two of a two
part series we're doing on anti aging technologies, the reversal
of aging. Can you forestall death for some number of years?
Can you make your tissues seem younger again? In the
last episode, we looked at some technologies and recent advances

(00:44):
and ideas about how long it would be before it
was possible for us to to become younger again, to
achieve true rejuvenation through science and technology. But today we
want to look at some of the philosophy, you might say,
or the ethics surround funding these claims, or the science
in some cases. Yeah, we're looking at how there are

(01:06):
some very strong voices on different sides of this issue
and what they are arguing and what they are claiming
the other side represents um or sides, I should say,
because it's not like it's just two. It's kind of
simpler to think of them as too. And in large
part we're going to be focusing on Aubrey Degray's philosophy

(01:30):
versus people who think that that philosophy is uh, let's
say junk. There are many other words that we could
use that some people would believe are are relevant. And
it's really an interesting way of looking at how the
scientific community handles this sort of stuff, and where you
fall on this issue may depend heavily on your own

(01:52):
personal point of view as well as just your confidence
in the scientific knowledge and ability of whichever camp you
you find yourself. You know, more in support of right,
because it's not just the science community that is talking
about this kind of thing. I mean, I mean we
all talk about aging, we all think about it, we

(02:14):
all purchase products related to it, or at least many
many of us do. Or I mean at least many
of us drink water and eat vegetables that that sometimes
counts a little bit of water. You do, yeah, and
every every month it's nothing but coffee For Jonathan, I mean,
I don't buy the water. Why you just get it

(02:38):
from natural water sources? What? What do you have? Rain? Barrels,
of course I do. Is that legal? Here? Am I
getting you in trouble? Alright? So sorry? Sorry? Yeah, no, no no, no,
it's it's it's a very impassionate subject, is what I'm
trying to say, right, And and it's one that gets
a lot of coverage to right, it's oh yeah, yeah,
for I mean, who would have thought that people want

(02:59):
to read about ways that they could live longer or
be healthier for longer spans of their life. For some reason,
people seem to feel like they have a vested interest
in this j Yeah. So it's not just a conversation
among scientists, are among the general lay population, but also
among the science communication media. Yeah, and I think that's

(03:19):
the source of some of these problems. I mean, one
problem with this topic is that it inherently has the
features and by this topic, I mean research into anti
aging technologies. It inherently has the features of a research
program that lends itself to first sensational reporting and second
something I would call skeptics fatigue. Where there are some

(03:43):
other topics like this, For example, how about an easy,
side effect free solution to weight loss, Whether this is
a drug or technique, A certain new diet, new food,
whatever would I would also argue that a very similar
approach that doesn't have anything to do with health would
be any of new energy or propulsion system. We've seen
these reported multiple times, and there is I often see

(04:08):
that same kind of response to those as well. Well.
I'd say that that's pretty different though, because a lot
of those things claim to violate the known laws of physics.
I'm not talking about perpetual motions some of these articles
proposed to Okay, well, no, I mean what I'd say though,
is that I'd argue, at least there's absolutely nothing in

(04:29):
principle that makes either of these projects either easy side
effect free weight loss, or reversal of aging impossible to
accomplish in principle. I mean, they're they're health engineering issues.
Can you engineer a drug that does this? It's entirely possible.
There's a drug that makes you healthy, successful, dieting easy
that I mean that that could exist. I want this drug.

(04:51):
Where are you keeping these drugs? I'll take your money
in a minute. But and then also, a particular therapy
could make your body effectively twenty years younger without causing cancer.
There's no reason I can see why this wouldn't be
a thing that could happen. But because these projects are
hoping to provide satisfaction of deep desires people have, like

(05:13):
you know, be thin, befit, be healthy, live longer, be
more attractive, live forever. Uh, these are these are desires
that are held widely by people who aren't very involved
with science and don't read about science a whole lot.
They these topics tend to reward sensational journalism and over
hyping of the meaningfulness of new studies. You ever notice

(05:36):
how like every few months there's a new study that
could mean the end of aging or could be the
new solutioned easy weight loss. And you know, it doesn't
help that we live in the age of clickbait, where
headlines are specifically engineered to try and get people to
click on them and may or may not be an
accurate representation of the actual information that is included after

(05:56):
you click. Yeah, but beyond that, they're also bad people, right,
there are bad people out there who want to prey
on these deep desires exactly. I mean, if you are
a person with no scruples, then you could easily identify
a target audience that has a very vulnerable point to

(06:17):
aim at and use that as your means of leveraging
that person so that you can make buckoo's of money
and happens all the time. That's one of the ways
that you wind up getting things like twelve day juice
detoxes being appetised. Yeah wait, those don't actually make you
live to nine hundred, not that I'm personally aware of,
but the math, they sure do move a lot of juice. Yeah,

(06:43):
I mean, you've probably seen this stuff in banner ads.
One one easy trick to stay skinny forever. One simple
technique to become twenty years younger. You tune into basic
cable either like before six am, you're gonna see these.
Yeah this this mom created a miracle cure. Dentists hate her.
So these phony ads, these phony predatory ads, plus just

(07:06):
maybe well meaning but just not very good. Over hyped
media representation of of research in these areas I think
leads many skeptical people to be inherently reserved about these subjects,
maybe more than they would be if they weren't reacting
to this kind of coverage all the time, if you
know what I mean, Like I often since in the

(07:27):
tone of their reactions that many skeptical science writers feel
compelled to downplay the importance of research in areas like
aging reversal, or even the merits of the whole project
of research itself. You know, and I can understand the
reason for this, but also I think if a therapy
does appear to show promise for reducing symptoms of aging,

(07:49):
that's worth responsibly spreading information about. Oh sure, well, and
I and I do want to put in like I
feel like we're being a little bit harsh on on
both the research end and also on the media. And
and I don't think that majority of people are trying
to trick you. I think that a lot of people
who are creating these types of therapies genuinely believe, perhaps
through misunderstanding of science, that what they're doing is is

(08:12):
good and can help people. And I genuinely believe that
most media. I mean, I know that I've written headlines
where like afterwards someone kind of called me on it.
They were like, that's click baity, and I was like,
oh it is, um, oh well, I mean exactly what
I was just about to say was I think a
lot of the times the research is fine, even the
whole article itself is fine. But an editor put a
headline on it that's like, what, Well, there's there's also

(08:35):
the issue of press releases that are written by someone
who's in pr who doesn't necessarily have an actual understanding
the science behind it, who might be misrepresenting a scientist's work,
and the scientist would never exactly and yet the press
releases what the media picks up. Uh, and the media

(08:57):
may or may not rework that us released to any extent,
which could potentially make it even more cloudy than what
it was before. And you get to this level where
what is being communicated to the public may not reflect reality, again,
not through any kind of malicious intent to misinformed, but
rather through just a human failing, which happens. So so

(09:22):
I think I think along these lines. We kind of
touched on this in the last episode, but I think Joe,
you had a proposal for us. Oh yeah, the easy,
if you will, The easiest way to to bring down
the temperature of these whole conversations is to never again
use the phrase fountain of youth for anything related to science. Yes,

(09:42):
it's all now just spiggot of infancy of health, speak
of health with a teenage waste land. Okay, visiting the
teenage wasteland, so slightly more confusing message. But I understand,
well we should we should transition to talking about that.
There is definitely a camp of thinker is out there
who are not fond of anti aging research for various reasons.

(10:05):
They might think that, uh, this is not actually a
fruitful avenue of research, or they might have philosophical or
ethical objections to the project. And this this was something
that if we had been doing this podcast fifteen years ago,
this conversation would probably focus almost entirely on on the
burgeoning field of stem cell research, because back then, uh,

(10:30):
it was very It's still in some ways it was
a very controversial subject. It's less so now because we
found other means of accessing stem cells. Also, there's a
greater understanding of how stem cell harvesting happens in the
first place, where that's not as big an issue as
it once was. However, there's still other things that that

(10:53):
come into play when people start objecting to this sort
of research. And sometimes it's not even that are they're
objecting to the research, that objecting to the way it's
being framed in such a way that it seems like
the research is uh is trying to justify claims that
have already been made, as opposed to research to find
out if a hypothesis is true. It's more like this

(11:15):
is research to we're gonna cherry pick all the data
that seems to support this this premise that we have
set forward. So part of the issue here, and we
talked about this in our last episode, it's it's a big,
big problem is that we don't have an agreement on
what actually causes the process of aging, or that there
is something so simple as to say this is what

(11:36):
causes aging, and maybe multiple factors that are all kind
of happening at generally the same time in our life.
And so since we don't have that agreement, we don't
have this scientific understanding of that. It makes it very
difficult to have a meaningful conversation if you're coming at
this from two different points, because it may be that
one camp is really focused on one aspect of a

(12:00):
jing and another campus focused on another aspect of aging.
Perhaps they're both right individually, but that the overall picture
is larger and and and incorporates both of them. Yeah. Yeah.
The more that I've been researching this topic over the
past week, or so, I honestly think that none of
the party lines that I've heard about aging could possibly
be totally right or totally wrong. Um, it's just so

(12:21):
ludicrously complicated, and there's so many, so many factors. Yeah, exactly.
So here here's some examples we've got, and we talked
a little bit about this in our last episode two.
You have the genetic hypothesis of aging, which talks about
the genetic code that gives ourselves instructions on how to
behave and what to do. Uh. And and that includes

(12:42):
the instructions that could lead to an organism's death by
by just extreme age. That could be That's where the
secret is. You have to get that in the genetic code.
You have to identify that and rewrite it. Uh. So
we know that cellular death apoptosis, that that has something
to do with the genetic code, that the biological clock

(13:03):
is a thing. With cellular death, it is less clear
leading to a poptosis, Yes, exactly, senescence being the the
the halt of cellular division and then followed by apoptosis,
which is cellular death. Uh, that's clear. It's less clear
on an organism scale. If you know what what factor

(13:25):
genetics plays, but it's an important little point to make.
And then over on the pro anti aging side, so
we have the anti anti aging and the pro anti aging.
You have people like Aubrey de Gray who argues that
aging is really the result of accumulated cellular damage. So

(13:47):
he's really looking at a kind of Some would argue, uh,
a step beyond whatever the root cause of aging is,
this is the the effect of it that then causes
other problem health problems. I don't know if he's updated
his his ideas since then, but I remember the last
time I researched degree, he had seven points right. He

(14:08):
said that there are essentially seven things that happened that
cause aging, and if you can fix these seven problems,
you have stopped aging. Right, And and genetic therapies might
play a part in treating the causes of aging in
this sort of view, but it's not necessarily thought of
as the ultimate stop. It may be that you find
a treatment that stops the damage the cellular damage, or

(14:31):
removes the cellular damage, or repairs the cellular damage, and
that in itself becomes the anti aging treatment. So in
other words, you might even have a treatment that doesn't
address the root cause it just addresses the symptom at
a speed that is sufficient to keep you from going
down that particular route of aging, uh, which would be

(14:54):
the spigot of health approach, I assume health. Now, those
are not the only two hypotheses that attempted to explain
the aging process. There are lots of them, but those
are two big ones, and that's a big part of
the where the problem lies. Right, What what about the
hypothesis that it's just that you've been left out in
the sun too long? Yeah? Oh oh no, I saw

(15:21):
the opportunity and I took it. But anyway, Yeah, this
is where you get these proponents of these different camps
who they might be extremely knowledgeable about their particular discipline,
their particular area of research, and because of that knowledge,
and because of the expertise, and because of the time
they have spent in there, uh, they feel that that

(15:42):
is the most promising or most legitimate way to define aging.
And the and and the other person is completely off base,
whereas that other person is feeling exactly the same way
right well, and especially when you get into the type
of science communicators, you know, not not just researchers, but
science community there's like Aubrey de Gray, who um, who

(16:03):
are personalities unto themselves. You get into an area where
it's definitely easier and it might be more profitable to say, yes,
this thing is definitely the answer, and that other guy
is wrong. And that other guy is a very polite
way of of putting it, because, like I said, when

(16:23):
you start researching this and you start looking into even
the academic papers, there's a level of animosity that is
just barely disguised by civil discourse. Oh yeah, I sort
of feed on it. Actually. You know. One thing that's
interesting to me is that makes me wonder if that

(16:44):
level of color in the in the disagreement is evidence
that this involves the violation of a taboo like that.
It's not just that people are disagreeing about how to
do something, or about whether a certain avenue of research
is fruitful, but about whether people are having there they're

(17:07):
sort of base instincts offended, maybe, I think, And it's
not not can we do it? But should we do it?
What shall we become if we do it? I'm sure
that's well. There are certainly people who question research into
anti aging who fall into that particular line of thinking. Right,
the ones who say that is unnatural and therefore it

(17:27):
is not right, you should not do that. UM. So
there are people who feel that way. I don't know
that that's the underlying cause for a lot of like
like the the the doctors and scientists who disagree with
degrees approach UH. It may may fall closer to the
line of UM. I think of people who have I

(17:49):
hate using this example, but it's the one that comes
to mind anti vaxers, where you have doctors who are
they've seen the benefits of vaccinations, they know the risks
that are involved, and they are very small compared to
the massive benefit that vaccinations provide. But you have a
vocal group of people who have very strong feelings about this,

(18:13):
somewhat based on UH. At least one person's claimed that
it's a scientific attack against vaccination, saying that I have
proof here that these things are bad. I think that UM.
The the that some of Aubrey de Gray's critics, they
probably wouldn't go so far as to say he's on
that level right, but that Aubrey de Gray is at

(18:36):
least in part a kind of almost like a Carnival barker,
Like getting a lot of attention and a lot of
excitement around this thing, which, by the way, leads to
lots of money. We were talking about investment to to
fund the research that Aubrey De Gray does, and that
I think leads a lot of gives a lot of

(18:57):
people a bad taste in their mouth, and that fuels
the skeptical fatigue. Yeah, and in the case of m
I T S Technology Review, a twenty thousand dollars worth
of bad taste in their mouth. Actually, back in two five,
after Aubrey De Gray's TED talk came out, I believe,
was when this happened. Yeah, this is crazy. So when

(19:17):
we're talking about animosity, So M I T S Technology Review,
they ran a piece about, uh, the the claims that
Aubrey De Gray was making after this TED talk, and
it prompted a ton of reader response that they said
was spirited and lively and led to them devising a competition.

(19:41):
And in that competition, M I T put up ten
thousand dollars and Aubrey De Gray put up the other
ten thousand dollars twenty thousand dollar prize to any molecular
biologists who could prove that Degray and the SENS Research
Foundation which de Gray founded was quote so wrong that
it was unworthy of learned debate in quote and Sends,

(20:05):
by the way, stands for strategies for engineered negligible senescence.
I think we mentioned that in our previous episode, but
just in case you were wondering. So it was essentially saying,
we will pay you twenty thou dollars if you can
write up a piece that proves that the Sends argument,
that their approach is uh so far into the realm

(20:25):
of fantasy that it cannot be considered uh scientifically valid,
and we shouldn't even like perpetual motion, we shouldn't even
bother talking about it. So they got some judges that
included biologists and computer scientists. Actually it's interesting if you
look at the list of judges, uh, and they received
five submissions to evaluate, but out of those five, only

(20:47):
three actually met the terms of the challenge, so down
to three. And then at that point de Gray was
allowed to read each of the challenges to write a rebuttal,
and then the people who wrote those pieces were able
to read Degrad's rebuttal and respond to it. That entire
piece would be taken into account when the judges were

(21:09):
reading and reviewing the information, so in the end it
was a stalemate. Essentially. The judges said that none of
the three submissions that actually met the requirements proved that
the sense approach was fundamentally flawed. But they also said
that Degray failed to defend Sends properly and that his

(21:30):
ideas were largely fanciful. So, in other words, no one
came out of this looking great, although to be fair,
they actually said that some of the pieces that were
submitted were very well written. They just didn't succeed in
convincing anyone that the sense approach was beyond doubt. Yeah,

(21:51):
so some of the judges expressed personal doubts that sends
as a valid approach, but granted that without scientific evidence
to prove or disprove the hypotheses that sent represents, it's
impossible to say that for certain. And they used the
term quote sensational a lot to describe the sens agenda,
which I think it works. It's sins sation. Uh. The

(22:12):
judges did award ten thousand dollars. This came straight from
m I T. They didn't touch Degray's money, So the
ten dollars the m I T put up went to
one submission, which they said the judges said was particularly
well written, but didn't actually prove that SINS was beyond
scientific merit. That piece was written by a collection of scholars,
with Dr Preston w is Step the third as the

(22:34):
chief author. The pieces available to read for free online.
I recommend reading it. It is entertaining. The group argued
that the SENS approach fit the definition of pseudo science,
which is, in scientific terms, a sick burn so um.
In that piece, e step at al. Wrote that these

(22:55):
objections they listed objections earlier, they actually listed along I
think like whinny item long list of things to identify
whether this claim was pseudo scientific or not, and the
first three or what they were focusing on. Those three
objections highlight the fact that human aging is not well
understood and any prospective therapy or cure must be regarded

(23:16):
as pure speculation. This is in fact the crux of
this list, and any claim of a cure for human
aging prior to evidence of therapeutic efficacy or prior to
a scientifically supported mechanistic model of human aging must be
pseudo science. Which is pretty harsh words, but in a

(23:37):
way you can understand exactly where they're coming from there, saying,
if you don't understand the cause of a problem, you
can't hope to solve the problem. You can, you can
address the effects of the problem, but you're not solving
the problem. And Degray, they were arguing, is making a
case for solving a problem. And so that's that's where

(23:58):
we're having an issue because what he's claiming, in our view,
is impossible at this stage of our understanding. Uh. They
objected to de grace seven pathologies, claiming that they are
at least partially arbitrary, and that Degray purposefully excluded some
pathologies unscientifically. So, in other words, he was identifying these
seven keys to aging. But they said, there there are

(24:21):
more that Degray, for reasons we don't understand, chose not
to include. They don't fall into one of the other
categories he had identified, and he does not address why
he chose not to look into these others. So therefore
this isn't scientific at all. Uh. They said that sends
amounts to a little more than quote, a collection of

(24:44):
prospective therapies, some simple and mundane, for example, exercise, and
some best described as fantasy and quote, yeah, so not
the only time that Degray and his work would be criticized.
It happened to in in two thousand nine. I read
this paper as well. It's a paper titled Science Fact

(25:05):
and the sins agenda, Now that I would argue already
has some loaded language agenda. The word agenda suggests that
to me anyway, to me seems to be nobody ever
says agenda and a positive But the word agenda has
an agenda. Yeah, there's an implication there that that there

(25:25):
is a purposeful To me, it implies that they think
they're purposefully misleading folks. People use it to describe what
they think of as a nefarious political faction opposed right.
It's similarly similar to objections to the term conspiracy theory,
because by calling it a conspiracy theory, you're already kind
of degrading it to right, Yeah, because that could be

(25:49):
a perfectly apt description of a thing. Though, if you
are if you have a theory about how parties conspired
to do something, well under those circumstances, I think it's accepted,
but under but but if if you're talking about conspiracy
theory when it's in fact just a fringe theory, that
fringe theory is the preferred term. Okay, yeah, I have
a couple of they all involved costuming. Uh this two

(26:13):
nine papers. Sorry yes. The science fact and the Sin's
Agenda was published in the National Institute of Health Library
of Medicine, and a group of researchers and doctors posted
an objection to the anti aging camps, again focusing primarily
on Degray and sins. So the general consistent consensus in
the group was that Degray was oversimplifying the causes of

(26:33):
aging and as proposed solutions had never been shown to
extend the lifespan of any organism, let alone a human.
De Gray, by the way, responded to this and said yep,
but essentially was saying that that doesn't mean that it
won't ever be shown to be efficacious. It's just not
that way yet. Um. They didn't go so far as
to say we never find ways to counteract aging. Rather,

(26:56):
they argued that the Gray's approach was incredibly optimist stick
perhaps in the realm of pure fantasy if you might
be sensing a theme here, and that actual scientific evidence
is needed to support any of the claims he was making.
They did assert that it is unrealistic to believe that
we will find an approach within our lifetimes to reverse
the process of aging. Specifically, the paper reads, quote the

(27:18):
idea that a research program organized around the SENS agenda
will not only retard aging but also reverse it, creating
young people from old ones and do so within our
lifetime is so far from plausible that commands no respect
at all within the informed scientific community end quote. So
essentially they were arguing that m I T S should

(27:42):
probably go to them. So, so this was two thousand nine.
I wonder what these same authors would think now. I mean,
part of the issue here is that they're directing, uh,
their directing their critique at SINS specifically. But then so
this is partially like the model Degray has approaching the
aging problem as an engineering problem. And yet as we've established,

(28:04):
there other ways of trying to reverse your counteract aging. Yeah,
these were these were specifically critics of degrees approach and
not necessarily of reblems of research into aging and gen
But you can see it in the language there that
there's some spill over, like there's some contamination in a
way of one's attitude towards a guy they specifically have

(28:25):
a problem with two. The whole project. It definitely feels
like some of them are teetering between that fine line
between being a skeptic and being a denier right like
and and to be fair again, that was two thousand nine. Well, yeah,
but the whole reason I brought this up was I
was wondering why I wonder if these people would still
say the same thing. I mean, some of the research

(28:47):
we've talked about from recent years, and and is there
skepticism about about that type of research coming from people
other than Degray and and the sent Institute. Yeah, I think.
I think that Degray is such a polarizing figure that
it made it easy for certain people to make statements

(29:08):
that perhaps are more wide than they had intended. Um
because I know that a lot of these doctors and
scientists were in the realms of researching aging in the
first place. And it's not like they don't think their
work doesn't have merit or won't have some sort of
applicable therapy that could be used to treat at least
some part of aspect of aging. But one thing these

(29:31):
critics definitely do have, right is that pretty much all
the stuff that's out on the market today, because there
is such stuff that's all bonk. You know this stuff
people are selling today, like, yeah, become young again with
this one simple pill. Yeah. The Back in two thousand two,
a group of scientists and doctors published a paper in
the Journal of Gerontology titled Position Statement on Human Aging,

(29:55):
which sounds incredibly like that's a clickable title, and their
positions to e been on human Aging were against it.
So really what they were saying was that there's a
growing anti aging industry. And again this is back in
two thousand two, and they said it isn't based off
of scientific knowledge, but rather is predatory and nature It

(30:15):
aims at that vulnerable spot for a lot of people
that fear of aging and dying. And the paper went
so far as to say the products being sold have
no scientifically demonstrated efficacy. In some cases, they may be harmful,
and those selling them often misrepresent the science upon which
they are based. In the position statement that follows fifty

(30:36):
two researchers in the field of aging have collaborated to
inform the public of the distinction between the pseudo scientific
anti aging industry and the genuine science of aging that
has progressed rapidly in recent years. Yeah, so I mean,
that seems kind of hard to argue with even today.
That was two thousand two, but I'd say still my
position today would be keep a skeptical open mind about

(30:58):
what's possible in terms of anti aging research, but don't
buy any products yet. Right. And it's funny because I
didn't put this. I meant to put this in the notes,
but and I mentioned it to both of you beforehand.
About I came across the study last week that was
looking into the media portrayal of aging anti aging treatments.

(31:19):
Because just as both camps tend to yell at one
another about whether the anti aging research has any validity
or if the claims are overreaching, mostly that the claims
are overreaching or not. Uh, that argument has spilled over
to debating on how both camps are portrayed within the media.

(31:41):
And there was a study that went through to find out,
like does the media favor the anti aging camps more
than the skeptics, because both both groups argued that the
other was being unfairly championed and that they were being
demonized in the media as like that always the way.
I mean, if you ask a liberal, the media has

(32:02):
a conservative bias. If you ask a conservative the media
has a liberal bias. Yeah, I've had the same thing
happen on tech stuff like just a technology like nothing,
not even a judgment on the technology. And I will
have half the people argue that, uh that, you know,
you should have really gone after them on this other
thing this. Another half are saying you're being so unfair

(32:23):
to this. Say, it just goes to show that the
study actually showed that as well. In fact, the study
showed that there was a slight preference towards the anti
aging industry, which isn't a terror, not really surprising. Yeah,
but it wasn't overwhelming. It wasn't like a remarkably huge
I mean the media, that's a bias. That makes sense.

(32:44):
The media would rather have news to report than report
on something to say, nothing all that interesting here? Yeah, yeah,
well right right A. You want a reason for writing
your article and be like it's it's that mighty ducks
kind of thing, you know, like like at a certain
point you're going like, oh, but I want to believe
in that underdog, like I want them to succeed. You
don't wanna you don't want to write the headline that

(33:04):
said you're still going to get old and die or
you're still going to get old probably and die definitely.
That would that's not a headline you want to write.
I don't know. I want to can we can we
talk to Allison? Can we? I think let's do it
the title where you're still going to get old probably
and die definitely. Uh So let's talk about the pro

(33:24):
anti aging side a little bit. So the SINS response
to those criticisms is varied, but a frequent argument is
that the critics of SINS, they say, the people are
criticizing us are creating a straw man argument. I know
one thing I have encountered in seeing some of the
pro SINS people as they say, uh, our critics are
sort of treating it as if we are making claims

(33:48):
that we haven't made yet. You know, they might say that,
you know, we're simply saying these avenues of research should
be open and people should consider them legitimate, whereas our
opponent dents treat us is if we say we found
the cure for aging to be fair. Though Degray has
been pretty adamant about these are avenues are the things

(34:08):
that are going to lead us to anti aging? Like
it's not well again it's the headline. Yeah, but but
it's making a claim. That's the problem. You're saying, like, yeah,
he's got so he's got seven engineering problems that he
thinks should be addressed, right, and his argument is that
once we address these, we will have defeated aging. And
that's that's some of the critics, at least are saying

(34:30):
that fundamental premises flawed and setism. Degray has often said
that critics are arguing that would be difficult, if not impossible,
to treat all the effects of aging because we don't
fully understand him. But they reject this argument. One of
the arguments tends to be at least Degray has projected
this as being an argument against him. I'm not sure

(34:50):
where he pulled it up from, but uh, one of
the things I've seen him say is that a lot
of people say, hey, for millions of years, animals have
aged and and grown more frail over time, and eventually,
if nothing else kills them, have died as a result
of this. Uh, that's evolution that's happened for millions of years.

(35:13):
It's gonna take time to counteract that. In his responses, no,
I won't so because because he says like, well, look
at look at how gene therapy, for example, could potentially
counteract something that has been in development for millions of years.
And he says that that shows that this that's really
a non factor, that if somebody made that argument, they'd

(35:35):
be wrong. Yeah, okay, that's but the question is that
really the argument that's being made against him or is
that just an argument he can win and therefore his
counterpoint um on the on there's a site called fight Aging,
which I went and read quite a few pieces on.
I guess you can guess. I wouldn't say belligerent, it

(35:57):
was definitely definitely pro on the on the degree in
sense side of fight club. You know, they want you
to talk about it first, it's your first time there.
You have to stop aging. So a post from two
thousand and eight argues that quote the causes of aging
are not the pathologies of aging. Pathologies are end results

(36:18):
end quote, which seemed really confusing to me at first,
because pathology is defined as the science of the causes
and effects of diseases. So saying that the cause of
aging is not the pathology of aging seems like you're
kind of being the causes of aging are not the
causes of aging. Right. Yeah, that sounds like maybe what
they meant to say is the causes of aging are
not the effects of aging. Yeah, that's what I'm when

(36:41):
when he's saying pathologies of aging, I think he's talking
about the pathologies of age related illnesses and conditions as
opposed to aging itself. So the post appears to argue
that these pathologies and questions are those various diseases and
conditions that are result of aging, and that by addressing
aging itself, rather than treating the diseases, we could slow
or even reverse the age process. So, in other words, uh,

(37:02):
you know, arguing the big argument here is saying, yes,
the effects of aging are complicated, right, These diseases that
are a result of the aging process are hard to understand,
they will be difficult to treat. I'm not suggesting you
do that, instead of suggesting you go back a step
further up the chain and address the underlying conditions that

(37:26):
lead to these diseases. And therefore you never have to
treat the diseases anyway, because you've stopped the dominoes before
they can, you know, tilt over and cause everything to
fall down. Sure, I mean I I do. I do
hypothetically agree that the best way to prevent dominoes from
falling is to never have dominoes in in the first place. Yeah,
I'm much more of a pizza hut guy myself. I

(37:46):
think the real solution to aging is never be born.
Thank you? All right. Well, that same piece goes on
to argue that there are comparatively few types of biochemical
damage that can lead to the various age related disease
is Now, this is the argument that is being presented
in Fight Aging, and that by addressing the root cause
of the biochemical damage, the diseases could be prevented in

(38:08):
the first place. And you don't need to have any
further understanding of the diseases. Whether or not we have
the true understanding of that biochemical damage is another question. Well, yeah,
and that's the sticking point. Yeah, I agree that you
don't You don't need to understand how a disease happens
in order to prevent it. But yeah, you gotta at

(38:32):
least have identified the thing that sets everything off. Like
if if I don't know, if I if I have
a big meal, here's a great example. If I have
a big meal and then on two hours later, I
have a massive allergic reaction. I don't necessarily know what
element of that big meal was the thing that set
it off, So without further experimentation and study, Uh, I

(38:56):
could either just completely ignore everything that I ate and
just never have it again. Or I could go another
route and try and identify that thing so that I
still enjoy all the others. And you don't need to
know how an allergic reaction works in order to prevent
it in the future, like, as long as you can
identify that yeah, yeah, or the shrimp, and as the

(39:17):
case may be. So in February two sixteen, there was
a debate titled Lifespans are long Enough. That was the
premise of the debate. So you had the pro side
the argument. So that's the group that says, yes, lifespans
are long enough, we don't need to extend them anymore. Uh.
They had Ian Ground of the University of Newcastle and

(39:37):
Paul route Wolp from the Emery Center for Ethics on
the against side, as in, no, lifespans are not long enough. Uh.
They had Aubrey de Gray and Brian Kennedy, who is
the CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on aging.
So before the debate, twent the audience believed lifespans are
long enought, six percent disagreed and said no, they're not,

(40:00):
and thirty two percent said I don't know. So then
after the debate believed lifespans are long enough, forty nine
percent said no, they totally are not an eleven percent
were like, I still don't know. Um, So the online
Bowl version was different. The Online Bowl was dramatically in
favor of Degray's side, with eight nine percent agreeing with

(40:23):
the against position and only eleven agreeing on the four position.
So it makes sense, I mean people, I think people
are way more eager to beg for more life when
they're anonymous or people when somebody knows who you are,
you want to have the bravado of saying like, yeah,
I'll die whenever, but then once nobody knows who you are,
it's like, oh god no. It's also a question of like,

(40:47):
would there have been more of the Grace supporters on
the internet because of a A an emotional buy in
on the part of the of his position, which on
A I don't know the answers, well, I mean I'm
not uh super swayed by audience opinions in any case
on this because obviously there's there could quite easily be

(41:10):
some motivated reasoning going on. Actually, I would say on
both sides, and I brought so the obvious side is
that people want to live longer. I mean, you have
some motivation to say, yes, this is possible because you
want it. But then again, I brought up earlier how
there might be a taboo on this subject, and I
don't think that's an unfair assumption. I think there may

(41:30):
very well be a taboo people have about the idea
of monkeying too much with how long people live. Isn't
it just supposed to be this way? Yeah? I think
that even even if it's not something that anyone is
is thinking of presently in the front of their mind
while they're making these types of arguments and having these
types of debates, it's probably it is probably something that's

(41:51):
lurking in in their psyche somewhere seems unnatural. Now. One
thing that I think did help Degray's argument quite a bit,
and we can talk about this a bit more. Did
he give them candy then a nod to my knowledge, uh,
maybe gave him now and later and said, hey, if
you want. If you want to be able to enjoy
this now and later to the full extent, you won't

(42:12):
have an extended lifespan, so you can enjoy some now
and some later. He gave them one marshmallow and said,
if you can wait five hundred years to eat this marshmallow,
you'll get to I like, I like our references to
various psychological studies. Know. What he said was that the
research into trying to defeat aging will also lead to

(42:35):
treatments and therapies for age related diseases, and so there
could be benefits even if for some reason the Sins
approach were to never actually uh bear fruit as far
as defeating aging or reversing aging, or or increasing the
health span that we would uh experience. He argued that

(42:59):
they might learn more about ways to treat diseases like Alzheimer's. Well,
I mean, I think, in my non scientists opinion, that's
very possibly true. Yeah. So, I mean that's and and
you know you can't understate that, right, that's a very
valuable aspect. Oh sure, Well, and and that's again I
think we mentioned this in the last episode, but that's
the thing that we talked about on the show all
the time is that the the value of doing scientific

(43:21):
research isn't always necessarily the thing that you set out
to discover. It could very well be a wonderful side
effect like X rays, yeah, or or finding a new
treatment for for Alzheimer's disease would be phenomenal, or Parkinson's
or anything along those lines where your your initial uh,

(43:43):
your initial research might have been in a related field.
It might have been something that was trying to find
a specific aspect of aging and perhaps you never were
able to nail that down, but you might have learned
something along the way of dealing with like a neurological
illness or anything along those lines. You know, I wonder

(44:04):
if there's any reason you can think of why we
shouldn't do this. Why, you know, let's say we could
discover a path to healthy aging that would extend human
lifespan by a long long time. It is there an
argument you could make that that's not okay, that that's

(44:24):
the thing we shouldn't allow ourselves to do wellically and morally.
I think sure there's some there's like, for one, for instance,
there's the argument that has been made that when you
start increasing lifespans that you may also see a decrease
in offspring. In other words, you might end up seeing

(44:46):
a a an increasingly ageless population that's never changing, it's
not getting any um circulation. There there that that there's
a decrease in the number of children being and that
it could therefore become stagnant. That to me sounds almost
like you're taking this idea and and projecting it using

(45:08):
almost like a science fiction sort of approach without necessarily
having the scientific evidence to back up that claim. But
it's something I've seen a lot of yeah and and
um on. On the flip side of that, what if
what if the population growth rate doesn't slow? What what
if you have the population growing and overpopulating it's such
an incredible rate. You know, we already have many problems

(45:29):
with overpopulation and get getting resources to where they need
to be to support that population. Is it would it
be responsible to allow people to live longer? Or I
would have access to it. Because it's only the people
who make a certain amount of money then you have,
uh not the one per centers become not just the

(45:51):
people who hold most of the wealth, they're the ones
who will live long after you're gone. And that's just
not fair I think a lot of these things that
we bring up play on the idea of unfairness. You know,
there seems like that there could be situations of unfairness,
but it seems in those cases that the unfairness would

(46:12):
be to the people who don't get access to the procedure.
And I'm wondering if is the answer then that nobody
should have it? Uh Like, is it better to make
everybody be punished? And and that's sort of a that's
that's sort of I mean, I I certainly can't speak philosophically,
morally ethically to this, but but I would assume that

(46:34):
there is a point of view out there that that
that kind of tinkering with human life goes against the
purpose of humans, like like whatever creator purpose exists for us. Yeah,
I'm sure a lot of people would have various religious
objections and so forth. One weird unfairness that comes to

(46:55):
my mind is like, uh, back projected historical fairness. There's
nothing to do about this, But I have this thought
of like, well, what if we did have the ability
to live to five hundred, that would be so unfair
to all the people who died before we had that. Again, right,

(47:15):
don't anyone consider. There's actually a great Mitchell and webscite
about this where where David Mitchell gets and irrationally angry
that the generation after him will be the first generation
to live forever and he is so angry that it's
not his generation. But but yeah, then again, is this

(47:37):
a reason we should like punish the people who exist today? Well,
according to David Mitchell, it absolutely is. But again that
was a comedy sketch. But I I think that that's
just sort of a weird intuition. But yeah, it does
seem like, man, it sucks for like the last person
dying in a hospital bed of old age before this
becomes available. Yeah, I mean I'm that I'm ad at

(48:00):
the the last person to get through a light before
it turns red. Like I'm going to be furious at
people who get to live longer than in Atlanta. Come on,
three people can go through that red light. So now,
I was going to say that that I think a
lot of the people who object to the anti aging
you know approach, the sins approach specifically, don't object to

(48:22):
the research or the lines of inquiry or any of that.
What they object to is the presentation the fact that
it is being presented in an ostentatious manner, as if
the conclusion has already the conclusion has proven, we're just
waiting for the results to have the formalities addressed. That

(48:44):
I think is where a lot of people have The
real objection is that that this guy claims to have
the answers already. He now he's looking for the scientific
backing to prove that the answers he has are all
are are all valid answers, And that's not the way
science is supposed to work. And I think that's the

(49:05):
major objections some of them have said, Hey, may turn
out that some of the things he's claimed are absolutely correct,
but we have no way of knowing that, and he
has no way of knowing that. So I could just
as easily claim the color blue is what causes aging.
Give me money. Yeah, So that that, I think is
where the major objection is not so much that we
should not look into ways to treat or halt or

(49:30):
reverse aging and possible right right. Rather, we can't just
make a claim and then hope that we can back
it up. That I think is where most of the
objections I've seen come from. Sure, it's I don't know,
like and I and I do get it, you know,
watching and if you guys out there have not ever
watched Aubrey to Grace speak, I totally recommend checking it

(49:51):
out because he's a very entertaining speaker if nothing else.
And he has a beard so epic. Uh yeah, maybe
he's using all the research money to just to just
a steize his beard all going to beard oil. That's terrible.
I'm sorry, no, no, no, so um he is the
resputent of gerontology. Yeah. We we have made this assertion before,

(50:12):
we will make it again. No, no, no, no. What
I was what I was trying to what I was
trying to get into say, is that even even if
you disagree with sens and with Aubrey de Gray's personal ideas, UM,
I think it's I think it's wonderful that he is
encouraging this kind of discussion, um, and and that he
is promoting the concept of of doing this research. I mean, yeah,

(50:37):
I don't necessarily agree with the the methodology, but it
certainly has and I think one of the reasons I
don't agree with the methodology is I think that because
he has created such a reactionary response that it shared
somewhat delays any results we might see otherwise, but at

(50:58):
least there's a convert station happening and that is good.
And whether or not we as members of the media
are helping or hindering that kind of is still up
for debate, I guess, depending upon what side of the
argument you fall on. But it is absolutely fascinating and
of course this is something that affects all of us.

(51:21):
So yeah, yeah, and you know we shouldn't. We shouldn't
let degrees style of optimism overpower are our reasoning, but
we also also shouldn't let our reasoning overpower our optimism.
Iah No, I agree. I've always said that optimism to
me includes acknowledging the challenges that are in the way,
but not allowing those challenges to to prevent us from

(51:45):
trying right. We need there needs to be that balance there.
You need to be able to say, this is what
I'm setting out to do. I know they're going to
be road bumps on the way. I am willing and
able to overcome those as they as I encounter them,
And that to me is that's kind of the human story.
In many ways, UM hasn't always been a pleasant one.

(52:06):
But it's always it's been throughout the ages, really inspiring
to see what people can do, particularly when they don't
know that something is impossible, because it turns out they
push back that definition of what impossible actually is. So
this was kind of cool. It was interesting, and again
a more philosophical discussion than what we sometimes will talk
about here on the show. If you guys have suggestions

(52:28):
for future episodes of Forward Thinking, let us know, or
if you have thoughts about this whole topic, I want
to hear what you have to say. Send us an email.
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