Want to Live Forever?A look at Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence (SENS), its future and possibilities, and how we can prepare for it.

“The first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born” or so claims Aubrey de Grey, a British scientist in the field of aging who has greatly established the field by creating a means by which you and me can essentially live forever. These means are dubbed Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence or SENS, which are methods to reverse the aging of cells; and their development and implementation can have an incredible effect on both you and me.

For example, imagine you wake up one day; and you begin to note the typical age-related issues that we all dread when we hit our middle ages: “thinning skin, clouding eyes, muscles sapped of strength, mental cognitive decline,” and this is just the beginning of the issues we dread of aging. You begin to think to yourself, can I just reverse these things? The answer is, quite surprisingly in the near future, yes.

According to Dr. de Grey’s book, there are seven causes of the process everyone dreads, aging; they are the following with the proposed methods to combat them:

1. Extracellular Junk – using your immune system to clear up extra debris2. Cell Senescence – using your immune system to destroy cells that have aged

or “senesced” too many times and cannot divide anymore3. Extracellular Crosslinking – using enzymes, proteins that help facilitate

reactions in your body, to destroy sugars that tangle with your proteins4. Intracellular Junk – using lysosome enzymes, the enzymes that are your

bodies garbage men, to break down excess protein, fat, and metal5. Mitochondrial Mutations – using a method to move the DNA, or information

about our cells, of the mitochondria which are our cell’s energy-generating factories to a safe place inside the cell

6. Cancer-causing Nuclear Mutations and Epimutations – using a method to prevent mutations in DNA that can cause cancer

7. Cell Loss Leading to Tissue Atrophy – using rejuvenating methods for cells to grow back if too many are lost

With technicalities out of the way, I interviewed Dr. de Grey in regards to these issues as he tackles the ever-growing interest of society and the ethics behind this emerging theoretical technology. I asked along the following questions and compiled a discussion integrated into his responses.

“Who is working on this, and is it simple enough to figure out in a few decades?”

Besides the main researchers at universities such as Rice, Stanford, and Arizona State, there are private sector enterprises such as Google’s own Calico, Luke Elan and Cenexys, “which are pushing forward some of the easier parts of SENS that are complementary to traditional regenerative medicine.”

“Many of the most influential dignitaries in biology are overly convinced that the medical defeat of aging is impossible.” There are important figures in the minority that have yet to be disproven (i.e. there is a MIT Technology Review’s $20,000 prize).

“SENS is really complicated but would lead to reverse aging.” There are seven processes that must be perfected to defeat aging with stem cell therapies “forging ahead”. “The really good news is that even the hardest parts are progressing much faster than they were.”

“Are we ready as a society to tackle the possibilities of immortality?”

“Yes and no.” In terms of overpopulation, technological advances will most likely increase carrying capacity faster than the increase of population caused by this technology. As the technology progresses especially in mice, society will most likely be able how to “reconstruct [itself] accordingly”. There are multiple think tanks such as the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies that are ready to tackle the issue.

This emerging controversial field will become prevalent within our lifetimes, and with it comes many public policy debates that will dictate how this will affect you and me. With it, I prompt you, my readers, to educate yourselves and prepare.

Works Cited

Grey, A. d. (2013, July). Interview with Aubrey de Grey, PhD. Life Extension

Magazine. (B. Best, Interviewer) Life Extension Magazine.

Grey, A. d. (2014, July 26). Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence:

Discoveries, Possibilities, and Ethics. (D. Solis, Interviewer)

Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies. (n.d.). Aubrey de Grey. Retrieved July

26, 2014, from Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies:

http://ieet.org/index.php/ieet/bio/degrey/

SENS Research Foundation. (n.d.). Aging as We've Known It. Retrieved July 26, 2014,

from SENS Research Foundation: http://www.sens.org/research/aging-as-

weve-known-it

TED. (n.d.). Aubrey de Grey: Seeker of immortality. Retrieved July 26, 2014, from TED:

http://www.ted.com/speakers/aubrey_de_grey