Living Long on the Emerald Isle

Thoughts on the Dublin Longevity Conference 2023

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Coming up soon: True Transhumanism.

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From August 17 to 20, I participated in the Dublin Longevity Conference. Biostasis is part of the life extension project and movement. Despite that, it has rarely been included in the program of major life extension conferences. One of the rare exceptions was my talk “Cryonic Life Extension” at the SENS5 conference in Cambridge, England in September of 2011. It was therefore both an honor and a pleasure to be invited to the Dublin Longevity Summit.

My perspective on the conference and the content of my talk were informed by my 40+ years of following and participating in the longevity/life extension movement. It’s more like 45 years – although I’m only in my 60^th year, I started consciously studying and practicing life extension in my early/mid-teens.

This was a great opportunity to present my Biostasis as Plan A material to hundreds of potentially interested people. (It was also, surprisingly, my first trip to Ireland.) The longevity field is heating up. Companies are spawning. Non-profit organizations are proliferating. Research is exploring new areas. The talks reflected the expanding range of prolongevity activity. Sessions covered:

• Novel approaches to regeneration

• Longevity clocks and clinics

• Advances in machine learning

• The elusive concept of biological age

• Financing rejuvenation

• Delivering macromolecules and larger things, in vivo

• Novel approaches to defeating cancer

• New funding sources for longevity

• Next-level mouse longevity studies

• Strengthening outreach

• Studying aging in humans

• The promise of low-temperature medicine

• Educating laypeople about rejuvenation biotech

Two cryo-related talks before mine covered accelerated cooling by persufflation (Tanya Jones) and a new cryo research organization and the potential for cryopreserved organs (Joao Pedro Magalhaes). Pedro emphasized the vital nature of research into human organ cryopreservation. Every year, 50,000 people join the queue to receive a donated organ and 778 thousand die from end-stage organ disease.

In my talk, “Biostasis as Life Extension Plan A”, I framed personal efforts to extend our lives as like a portfolio in financial planning. Cryonics (or biostasis) is like your emergency fund – it’s the first measure to take. I noted that most people in the world are too pessimistic about the potential for extending the healthy maximum human life span. Either they don’t believe it’s possible, it’s far in the future, or it’s undesirable. Conversely, I have the impression that most people attending life extension conferences may be too optimistic, especially if they are relatively young. Having been involved in life extension for over 40 years, I have seen the coming and going of numerous theories of aging and treatments.

Decades ago, I saw the same optimism. I shared it. And yet, the maximum life span has not moved in decades and life expectancy improvements have slowed. This is why we must aggressively continue research in fields relevant to life extension and why people who want much longer lives should make their biostasis arrangements a priority.

Curiously, while I see the longevity community – especially the younger part of it – as excessively optimistic, it may be too pessimistic about the gains already made. Speaker Andrew Steele asked everyone to stand. He then asked: “How long do people globally live? Sit down if you think less than the number I say.” He then went through the ages 40, 50, 60, 65, 70, 75. The great majority had sat down before he got to 70. I was one of maybe a dozen or fewer people remaining. I sat down for 75. (The correct answer is a bit over 72.)

I reinforced my message of caution against excessive optimism – and against not bothering with biostasis arrangements – by pointing to the long history of theories of aging and associated interventions. You can go back as far as the Ancient Chinese alchemists who poisoned generations of leaders with arsenic and other toxic substances. As Michael Rose recently pointed out to me, you can go even farther back to my favorite ancient philosopher, Aristotle in his works, On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death, and On Length and Shortness of Life.  

Some people at the event (and elsewhere) apparently believe that the prolongevity movement started with Aubrey de Grey and the SENS program he outlined 23 years ago. Aubrey has done marvelous work in raising awareness of and interest in longevity but he comes after a long line of researchers and proponents. My point was that numerous times in the past people were optimistic that the solution to aging was near. Each time it turned out to be a bust. Right now, I’m reading one of the classics: Bernard Strehler’s 1962 book, Time, Cells, and Aging. I plan to write a detailed account of the history of anti-aging thought and research to put today’s endeavors in context.

This conference – the first conference by the new LEV (longevity escape velocity) Foundation – was packed with speakers and something like 300 participants. Speakers included Steve Austad, Nir Barzilai, Evelyne Bischof, George Church, Stephanie Dainow, Yuri Deigin, Aubrey de Grey, Mark Hamalainen, Steve Horvath, Bryan Johnson, Brian Kennedy, Kelsey Moody, Andrew Scott, David Sinclair, Eric Verdin, and others.

Steve Horvath is the inventor of several aging clocks, such as DNAm GrimAge. This methylation aging clock allows us to predict lifespan and healthspan, and to test potential interventions that may slow or perhaps even reverse biological aging. I had a pleasant chat with Steve who had analyzed my blood along with that of about ten others who participated in the TRIIM trial, whose purpose was to attempt to regenerate the thymus gland.

Not only did the trial succeed – scanning at Stanford Medical Center showed that the thymus’s cortex had regenerated – but it turned out that we gained more than one year of life span during the one-year trial. This trial is the most dramatic measure I’ve taken to extend my life expectancy. If finances allowed, I would do it again to see if the aging clock reversal was sustained and to see if it could be further extended.

As always at conferences, one of the best parts was the people I got to meet or to know better. Everyone was friendly and pleasant. (Life is not Twitter.) I even enjoyed being interviewed by Marek Piotrowski and his son for a longevity documentary, and by the stylish and lovely Briar Prestige.

The responses I heard to my talk were all positive. Seriously, nothing negative at all, which is amazing!

The other big part of the weekend for me was the Sunday evening biostasis gathering at a nearby bar. You can find my report on that here.