How do you interpret the following situation: we have a life extension technologist whose all endeavors is about pushing this issue to its very limits and making things possible but on the other hand this very life extensionist himself is not driven by actually living as long as he can.
It seems that SENS theorist Aubrey de Grey, who is chronologically 45, (BioBarCampphoto by Ricardo) is taking roughly the above position in a recent interview. Aubrey is a good and wittyinterviewee and of course the interpretation of what he is saying is strongly context dependent so here is the full question and answer:
Question: One hundred years of life can wear you down physically, but it can also wear you down emotionally… perhaps even existentially. For you, is a desire to live long accompanied by a desire to live long in a much-improved human civilization, or is this one satisfactory?
Aubrey de Grey: I’m actually not mainly driven by a desire to live a long time. I accept that when I’m even a hundred years old, let alone older, I may have less enthusiasm for life than I have today. Therefore, what drives me is to put myself (with luck) and others (lots and lots of others) in a position to make that choice, rather than having the choice progressively ripped away from me or them by declining health. Whether the choice to live longer is actually made is not the point for me.
Let’s see 2 possible and extreme interpretations of this answer (neither of them is my own interpretation) and I hope my readers can find fine-tuned arguments in between while thinking a bit about this still rather philosophical topic:
1., Saying that we want the process (a robust healthy lifespan technology) but not necessarily the product (a robust healthy lifespan) of our own business is a disasterRead the rest of this entry »
forwarded, nonpersonal mail from Maya Kennard (you might get that email too):
Resource link/Story suggestion for your website:Title: VADLO - Biomedical Search Engine
Description: Vadlo is a search engine for the biology/biomedical scientists, educators, clinicians and reference librarians. References
Also check the Daily cartoons!
The idea is that we feed them with searches and links and they will grow big enough to give us more and more relevant searches and links. Magic concept: scalability, check the motivation behind the name choice:
Vadlo: (vud-lo) - Vadlo is a large fig tree characterized by aerial roots that eventually become accessory trunks. This allows it to grow horizontally to amazing proportions.
I find the 5 basic search categories amazing and after a short tinkering it can already throw out interesting sources:
From the about page:
Protocols category will let you search for methods, techniques, assays, procedures, reagent recipes, plasmid maps, etc. Online Tools
New 23andMe website animation on human prehistory made by Ariana Killoran. Ariana created all the Genetics 101 films for 23andMe and the narrator was her pa. With these films the company clearly sets a new standard in popular scientific animations and videos.
What do you think, which company launched the first commercial and comprehensive personal genome service (based on a genome-wide SNP scan) on the market and exactly when?
We have 2 candidates here in the ring deCODE Genetics (founded in 1996, Iceland) and 23andMe (founded in 2006, USA), the AmundsenandScott of personal genomics. (please don’t take the analogy too seriously)
The when is important from a historical point of view because that day will be considered as the birthday of this infant industry. The birth month and year is November 2007 for sure. That means we are just approaching the 1 year anniversary of the commercial personal genetics/genomics industry and this sounds like a good timing to think about the achievements so far and the future ahead.
But let’s figure out the exact date first and here I think we should consider the day on which a personal genome service was launched for the first time directly available to costumers and when the first public orders were taken.
I only read 1 piece so far by Erika Check Hayden, who has the exclusive freedom at Nature to always pick the best stories and write on any of them, but being a heavy 23andMe user I was instantly reminded again on the program Promethease with which I can extend the interpretation of my data with an approximately 2 hour run.
According to two commercial gene-testing services — 23andMe and deCODEme — US Army medic Timothy Richard Gall of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, has a higher-than-average risk of basal cell carcinoma, type 2 diabetes and psoriasis. But much more enlightening than these results, which cost Gall more than $1,400, was a free online program called Promethease that he used to further analyse the data. By offering more in-depth information and interpreting of more of his genetic variants, Promethease “gives a much more realistic view of the usefulness of the information”, Gall says.Start-ups and services such as Promethease are now developing ways to improve the limited value of information provided by personal genomics companies for consumers and scientists alike.
A new, completely rewritten, integrated nature.com website blogs.nature.com has been launched by the Natureplex people - informed his Twitter pals Euan Adie:
Also, blogs.nature.com v1 is live! Tequila and donuts all round. Early n’ often release v2 coming on the 18th so get any bug reports in now.
Suggest good science blogs that are not listed on the Nature Blogroll yet.
This is a golden day for 23andMe despite all crisis worries:
Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) October 30, 2008 — TIME Magazine announced today that the Personal Genome Service™ from 23andMe, Inc. has been named 2008’s Invention of the Year. 23andMe was chosen as the year’s most significant invention for its exceptional work in making personal genomics accessible and affordable.
From the industrial point of view what are the components of success here besides the obviously good team:
- mission: big, Google-sized mission: revolution of health care by personal genetic information as the source of upcoming personalized medicine
- biotechnology: based on the highest available technology platforms in microarrays (Illumina) (watch out, next gen sequencing is in the corner!)
- capital investment and network effect: I can only repeat myself: 23andMe is probably the most well-connected and backed startup in the history of Silicon Valley.(photo: happy 23andMe founders and early customers)
- information technology the cool and user-friendly factor of the browser based service is really amazing (in the past couple of weeks I demonstrated it to a bunch of people and even those were able to catch the essence of the available information who are older, web-unsavvy)
- simplicity of service: you just spit 2ml into a tube and FedEx it
- most aggressive marketing strategy based largely on the network effect among the power elite of the USA (and consequently, the world)
From the consumer point of view let me tell you 1 personal example of the lifestyle effect of the service:Read the rest of this entry »
October 14, 2008 is the world’s first Open Access Day and OA itself means free online access to peer-reviewed research articles. Although we have other, slower methods, like personal homepages, emails to authors, institutional repositories to get the same article we were unable to get via closed access journals, OA is the internet-savvy solution that fits our time and science.
Let me briefly answer question 4 of the synchroblogging initiative: What do you do to support Open Access, and what can others do?
I did a lot of beta testingfor free for the upcoming Google Research Datasets in this summer which will host terabytes of scientific raw data that should be in the public domain or have to have a Creative Commons license. I really liked this work.
We live in a world where people expect instant, relevant information in the top 20 hits from a Google search and that expectation is transferring to science too. I don’t care how prestigious you think your journal is, or whether you see yourself as some kind of “guardian of knowledge”. I want information, I want it now and if you can’t deliver, I’m going somewhere else.
The 2009 AAAS Science Dance Contest is for hidden artists disguised as scientists, nerds and shameless self promoters who are tempted to dance their PhDs, upload it to YouTube and enjoy microcelebrity. A real thesis live, non-profit but for fun and a one and only chance to make a fool out of you.
This is a perfect match for John Bohannon, The Gonzo Scientist (whom I introduced you back in 2007) who is an organizer, chronicler and participator of the contest and I must say I liked the rather-theatrical-performance-than-simple-dance version of his thesis, entitled The role of the WSS operon in the adaptive evolution of experimental populations of Pseudomonas flurescens SBW25 (here).
But what to think of the performance of a professor with a thesis title: “Analysis of thymic nurse cells in the chicken”? Artist, nerd, self promoter, did I miss something?
Here are the details of how to enter the contest and don’t miss to read about the prizes too (guests at the 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago):
The contest is open to anyone who has (or is pursuing) a Ph.D. in any scientific field,
Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is something really familiar for many biologists, now it will be familiar for the whole world for a period via the Chemistry Nobel Prize:
The remarkable brightly glowing green fluorescent protein, GFP, was first observed in the beautiful jellyfish, Aequorea victoria in 1962. Since then, this protein has become one of the most important tools used in contemporary bioscience. With the aid of GFP, researchers have developed ways to watch processes that were previously invisible, such as the development of nerve cells in the brain or how cancer cells spread.
The Google Tech Talks channel on YouTube slowly but irresistibly became my private university in current tech trends. Here is a recent talk on the amazing HealthMap by its developers John Brownstein, Clark Freifeld, Mikaela Keller. According to the about page:
HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health.
It’s Nobel time! Hands up: how many of you have checked so far the official website of the Nobel Foundation called Nobelprize.org? And please try to recall how you usually found out who won the particular Nobel prizes in the past years.
This year the first announcement, for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, will be made on 6 October, that is tomorrow. The folks at Nobelprize.org created a list of cool alerts around the Prize Announcements this year and here’s what my inbox detected out of this:
RSS Feed. Sign up to the 2008 Nobel Prize RSS feed and receive breaking news of the Nobel Prize Announcements and links to exclusive content, such as interviews with the new Nobel Laureates and summaries of the Nobel Prizes, as it appears on Nobelprize.org.
News Widget. With the news widget , you can discover the names of the 2008 Nobel Prize Laureates on your website, blog or social network. Get the easy-to-add code that will allow you to host the 2008 Nobel Prizes widget.
Live Web Casts. All announcements will be broadcast live on Nobelprize.org (except for Peace which is announced in Oslo and for which the video footage will be available after a short delay).
Finally 23andMe, my first personal genetics service provider, is on Twitter which could mean that from now on first-hand company information will flow even more continuously compared to what the regularly/daily updated eminentcorporate blog can offer. Microblogging is always quicker blogging! Based on the first 4 tweets (on the photo) the guys will not just simply link to the posts but communicate with other Twitterers and give informal & brand new info.
I ordered my first commercial genetic profile from 23andMe on the 9th of September online, FedExed my 2 ml saliva from Budapest to 23andMe, Mountain View on the 12th of September. I got the results today. That said within 3 weeks since the birth of the idea I purchased more than 500 000 SNPs of mine analyzed, evaluated and ready to be browsed. With this step I finally and quickly entered into the age of personalized genetics no matter how embryonic it is.
After a superficial first scan of my results I can say that it is a really interesting thing that instantly pushes me towards accumulating more knowledge on the personalized genetics field concerning specific traits, stats, risks and studies.
Here is a first look on what my Y chromosome SNPs are saying on my paternal haplogroup:
I learned for instance that based only on my genotype and not any environmental factors involved I have a lower than average riskRead the rest of this entry »
The Institute for the Future’s X2 project is all about tracing future trends in science and technology As the steward of the Biomedical Sciences and Biotechnology Group I collect signals in these fields on which some forecasts can be based later on. Here are some issues I found future sensitive enough recently:
I had problems with my handwriting since elementary schools, or at least my teachers had continuous problems with it. Even during my university years I was asked sometimes to read out loud my essays, papers to them otherwise risking bad grades. Maybe it’s because I am a hidden right-handed using my left hand for writing or maybe I am just too impatient over the slow pace of handwriting (needless to say computers mostly solved this problem).
On this George Dysonphoto here you can see the SciFoo schedule in progress and I think you can easily pick the one with the ugliest handwriting on Aging and Life Extension:
How do you interpret the following situation: we have a life extension technologist whose all endeavors is about pushing this issue to its very limits and making things possible but on the other hand this very life extensionist himself is not driven by actually living as long as he can.
