Fighting Aging from COVID-19 -Ole Mensching, Aubrey de Grey, Sonia Arrison, Reason.mp4

9:07PM May 6, 2020

Speakers:

Keywords:

aging

people

problem

point

disease

reason

pandemic

immune system

health

good

longevity

research

countries

technologies

bit

world

question

policymakers

decision makers

focus

I'm super happy to have like those four incredible people here Sonia, as I already said, she's on four sides board. She has an incredible VC called 100 plus capital who has been sponsoring our life longevity efforts which we're super grateful for. And she's really focusing on a quite like holistic approach to aging in the sense that you know, she cares a lot about like the environmental factors that that may that may can like hamper or may make may extend our ability to to live a long healthy life. And then Ola I'm really happy to have you here I think Neil's I only met him at the previous fossa, longevity investment take of that we had but I'm really happy to see that Europe is going so strong in terms of focusing on actively funding really promising aging, aging companies. with with with with a pretty ambitious I think financial backing So thanks for doing that. And I can't wait to hear from you more about the European side of this. of this, even though you do a ton in the US as well. And then reason, man, I think, you know, I could just get lost on fight aging. It's a fantastic blog. And you really go into, you know, every aspect from the very transhumanist futurist angle into why, why would anyone care about this topic. Apart from that, you also have a fantastic biotech company repair biotech, which you, which you presented at a previous foresight meeting last year, and I linked to all of those talks from the slack. So if you're not on the slack yet, then this is a really good time to join slack and to introduce yourself and then introduction, reason and Ola already on there. I'm hoping more people will join. And yeah, it's really good discussions over there already. And our way of course, I think, you know, you also really don't need an introduction, and I think you've I looked@lifespan.io recently And I think you're on a panel also tomorrow or something on a similar topic, so

I don't have it written down.

Okay. Yes.

Well, here's my reminder to you.

Oh, yeah, you're quite right. Yep. Tomorrow.

Yeah.

Yeah. Every day is the same, isn't it?

Well, it's a good time to be onboarding new people into this, I think. So thank you for joining us today. We had Jim O'Neill from since yesterday here, you know, who was setting the stage quite nicely. And I think even since on your, I think on your homepage, on the forefront, you give a really good introduction into the, the relationship between COVID and aging. So maybe we should kick off there and really start talking about and, you know, I would love to hear from any of you and you know what, it's like, first of all, for anyone who's really not up to speed, what do we mean by fighting aging as a root cause of many diseases and What specifically is the relationship between COVID-19 and aging? Why should we care about this? Why are we talking about this? Right now? Would anyone care to tackle those? Please raise your hand from the panelists. Otherwise, I'll pick on someone?

That's an open question if I heard one question,

okay. Oh, there you go.

Well, so I think really, the main thing is that over the course of the entire history of civilization, we have formed a an incorrect intuition about the relationship between the thing we call aging and the various things that we call diseases. We have seen that there are certain ways in which people's health declines. And some of those things happen early in life and some of them happen later in life, but all of them happen to some people and not to other people. And the specific things that happen, even if they tend to happen late in life, tend to happen at a wide variety, a relatively wide variety of ages. Whereas there are things that feel a little bit more kind of a more first and clearly definable general decline in energy and stuff like that, which seemed to happen at a somewhat narrower window ages. So it kind of has engendered this feeling interest in humanity, that there is this dichotomy between, on the one hand, things that we might be able to actually do something about with medicine because some people don't get them anyway. Well, as opposed to this other thing, which is so universal and so predictable in terms of when it happens, that it kind of feels different, it feels inevitable and it feels like natural and like maybe it's even off limits to medicine. So what we're all about really in this community Is disabusing humanity of that incorrect impression that has built up over thousands of years. And therefore, it's a bit difficult to change people's attitudes about this. But the fact that we know easily enough at this point about the nature of physiological decline both mental and physical, to be able to say unequivocally that there is no such distinction in terms of actual meaningful biological term. So really, you know, I feel that the main problem here is getting people to believe in research. At the moment, there is I think, among most members of society who are not scientists, there is a kind of mixed message that they have in their head with regard to research. On the one hand, they know that everything relies on research in the end, you know, progress happens because of pioneers but they also know that progress in research is extremely unpredictable in terms of how long it's going to take to actually deliver results. And this particular field that we are in is of course one, which precisely because people don't like getting sick, has attracted a lot of people who are willing to be over optimistic and to exaggerate the impact of things that can already be done, or things that they say can be done in the near future. We have to distance ourselves from that while at the same time not becoming fatalistic about looked at the really hard circle the square I think that's really what it all comes down to.

Opera. I think

aging is a little bit like germ theory, you can't see it, right. I mean, nobody, when germ theory for sort of first came along, it took a long time to convince some people that it existed but these things called germs existed, and I think aging is sort of the same way where Like you say, if you don't see it right away, you don't actually you can't see aging happening over time, because it's creeping up so slowly that, you know, it's kind of similar. And so maybe maybe there's some lessons to be learned. How do we, we should go back and see how the germ theorists did it.

Yeah, that's part of it. I agree, Sonia, I think they, I mean, of course, some of the diseases of old age is that most of the chronic conditions of late life are also relatively slow as compared to, for example, your typical early onset infectious disease. So you know, there's a continuum there, but you're totally right. I think the the strategy of going and looking at how paradigm shifts successfully happen, and especially how paradigm shifts happen successfully and relatively rapidly. Those are definitely big lessons we can draw from.

So I mean, what I would like to the second part of the question, what is the relationship between COVID-19 and aging? I mean, if you look at the people who are dying from COVID-19, and you will see that in Italy, and the average age of the people who died was 79.5 years. And Germany, it was even over 81 years, the average age of the after patients would I mean, they are also people dying with 60. So there also have to be people who died at night T or something like that. And I mean, this is clearly because the immune system doesn't work anymore. And I mean, one part of what all of us are doing is that we want to evaluate the immune system. And if you would have two technologies on hand now, or if you would have them already, not so many people would die from COVID-19. Right. And I think this is also a message that you should spread after COVID-19 and you can make a I think we can make a very big point here. So these people, I would say, these people didn't die from the infection. They died because they were old and he didn't care to even get immune system and I think There's something reason I'm can add

because I mean, he's actually doing that this company in New York City, I think there's something north of 90 something percent of hospital admissions for COVID where people with comorbidities which is sort of you know, a Germany is over 99% of the people who died from Cuba give out not only old that one h related disease at least one h related disease, a 50% of them for more h related diseases. Sorry, reason did and we know that quite aside from the immune system falling over and dying horribly, which is actually something that would happen in your 30s if you were unfortunate enough to be one of those people who had your your thymus removed as a child before they figured out that that was a bad idea. You know, it's also the to frail that you don't have resilience. So do you have a higher burden of baseline chronic inflammation and this disease or Apparently murders you by, by excessive immune activation and inflammation, which is probably a more horrid thing to have to undergo when you're at the point where you can't, you can't resist it. So well, you might also look at why sepsis is a disease of all people, primarily many of the same, many of the same underlying problems in both immune failure and lack of resilience at the same time, which of course, if you if you follow the sens view of aging, these all stem from the same forms of underlying damage that spread out in a tree of a tree of dysfunction. I would say that, that I'm here in exile in upstate New York. And as a consequence of that most of the people I know I show it, if not the salt of the earth, shall we say somewhat more salty than this present, Exalted company. And amongst the number most of young and most personally scared COVID-19 for their own health, the fact that old people largely get this the fact that there are old people around that maybe they should be thinking about quarantine. And because of that, no, that's not why they're doing this. They're doing this because the media is trumpeting the few young people that die and to their eyes, it's a threat to them. That's why people are our, you know, people out there in the world who don't have our perspective on things. That's the view of this condition. Aging really isn't isn't it isn't on their agenda, you know, just the same as it's not in their mindset every year when when influenza goes around, because it's just an inconvenience to that.

You speculate a little bit as to the reasons for that. And I think a recent blog post that he made, you know, could you maybe like, go back to that or, you know, could you just like once and for all like enlighten people like Hey, guys, those are the comorbidities that we're talking about. You know, this is the relationship just to keep it crystal clear.

Um, at any given moment, I mean when somebody says a person has a comorbidity that's really just shorthand for saying they are old and have a chronic disease. It's it's but in the US and some, you know, some other parts of the world now, that can also be shorthand for not so old and morbidly obese. There was a particular news article like a month ago that some of us were talking about where some healthy young woman in in one of the middle states in the US was on the news because she died of COVID-19. And the, the actual description of her was a healthy younger person, and they showed a picture and this this woman was 300 and something pounds if if anything, you know, so it's, it's

it's a problem.

Yeah, yeah. And I think Korean has been banging on about their particular problem, I think and you know, that may even be like more like a behavior shift that we can induce in people rather than you know, just focusing on on age related technology and science as well. Okay, so do you think that you know we've covered everything on what you people? What do you would you take myths that you'd like to pass around COVID-19 and why actually aging is an underlying is an underlying factor to consider there do you think we've covered that all or would you like to like hammer that point in mind

unless anybody wants to talk about specific mechanisms beyond your immune system is aging with those are there's a definitely out there you can go read up on them there

why would people do that?

That's that's actually a good question. Resources are you might search for immune aging on fight aging, and that will give you a good selection of a good selection of reading material. But basically, the thymus invalids, the, your your hematopoietic stem cells that are responsible for creating blood and immune cells go a little weird and stop working quite a while. Your immune system gets cluttered up with gunk, which is the Say malfunctioning, damaged, stressed cells are various sorts that are causing more harm than good. And there's also a side effect of that as you get increasing auto immunity where your cells start to attack you rather than other things as well. And those are the primary ones. There's other little odds and ends around the edge. But if we could deal with those, then things would look a lot better.

I think reason have a good point, too, that the media have really the way that they've been reporting on it has sort of made people not really understand the the crisis the way it actually is. And there's a lot of people who were scared who don't necessarily need to be

Yeah, Yeah, I agree. Um, so why do you think okay, I think that media, that media knowledge is actually like a really good step on into the you know, the next question is also on the doc which is, why do you think that you know, we are so blind to recognizing Aging is a crucial cause for disease. And I think I'll be talked about that a little bit already. But, you know, I think supposedly, right, from a healthcare perspective, there must be huge benefits, you know, for doing health care instead of sick care later, you know, from a financial perspective. Right. So what's going on? I'll be I'm gonna meet you too, because you can't.

I mean, I'm happy to start here, because a lot about this problem. So because I mean, um, so I have a background in tech. Um, so I was a tech entrepreneur for 10 years and was investing in tech companies. And I was just wondering if you see how much money is going into the tech space? I mean, if you use a fraction of that money for our space for the aging space, I think we would already live five, five years longer on average, right. And so I was wondering why there is so little money in that space. And I think it's basically five reasons for that. And so, I mean, people are really denying that it is possible to ebonite people or to slow aging. And some people even get aggressive and you tell them it is possible. And I think it's a psychological thing. First of all, first of all, it's a it's a very young industry. So people are trying for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years to, I mean, to find something that is keeping them young, and they didn't accomplish anything. And only in the lab, I would say only in the last 15 years, we really know what are the root causes of aging and what kind of problems we have to solve to not age anymore. And then we have like accelerating technologies or catalyzing technologies like CRISPR cast, which are coming out in the last years or AI. And I mean, a lot of things they only found recently, for example, I mean, Nobel Prize for the discovery of autophagy was only given 2016. Of course, the research was earlier, but I mean, now it's I mean, it's it's only recently that we know that this is possible. And then a second reason is, which is also a problem for the FDA and the European health administration to get try to prove this If you have a Christian Jewish tradition and in the Western world, and in the Christian Jewish tradition, we are saying aging is coming from God. So that says it's not a disease. So we can't classify it as a disease, which is very hard. I mean, it's changing nervous take trial and the work of Nia, buzzy ly and also others I mean, operate also plays a role here and of course, I'm reason this is blocked. So there are people who are making pressure on the, on the World Health Organization and also on other institutions. And then I think that people are inherently afraid of highly innovative technologies, because they see in them a provocation to God. And I think this is also deeply etched into our conscious culture and consciousness.

So I mean, if you look at

the outer plays from from the Greek, I mean, more or less, all these plays are going about hybris and then the fall. And so what we think when we use highly innovative technologies, you can see that for example, when the first Airplanes came out people thought that we ever, ever laid ourselves to to the fear of God, and that we are punished by God for doing this. And I mean, we still have the strict security rules. When we go into an airplane, which not makes sense, I'm really, but sticking to this rules because we show our business rules, that we are small that we are obedient. And somehow we try to get the mercy of God to be not penalized for really going physically into the face of God. I think this plays a role. And I mean, think about all this catastrophe movies from Hollywood, it's all about hybris. And then for Yeah, because because we try to ever light ourselves to the to the self God, then um, it's also dissonance and theory. And so there's, of course, it's a highly negative associated thing and people don't like to think about it. So it's really easy to get rid of this thoughts by saying, you can't change it. You can't do anything. Here, so it's really easy, then we don't have to think about it. And I mean to solve aging is really one of the hardest problems out there. And but people prefer not to be involved in negative emotions. So because of decision theory, they just and I think there's also reason why some people become aggressive when you tell them that it's actually possible to reunite people or to slow aging, because they don't want to think about that this is negative for them. And so they just want to spell it out. And then it's also a problem kind of a problem after it's our problem described by David Hume so that people think what is natural is good. So, the naturalistic fallacy so I mean, in the in the darkest times of our history, that lead to the to the idea that for example, people who are disabled, less worse even people which are not disabled, and but we also saved because aging is a natural thing. It's it's also ethically or morally good that you die. But of course, this doesn't make sense. Only we as humans decide which what is good and what is wrong. Yeah. And but I think I think these are the reasons why I'm so many people doubt on what we are doing, and saying that it is a bad thing to read innate or slow aging.

I have a slightly simpler

way, which is that one, the regulators have the biggest, the biggest microphone. Therefore, everybody is only going to understand aging, in terms of the fact that there's a bunch of diseases that have nothing to do with each other. And everybody's only allowed to talk about that. Secondly, I think that nobody believes that the world changes to a first approximation. And even the people who believe that the world changes in these sorts of select groups, if you ask them to write science fiction, they will write the same science fiction number Other people, right, which is looking the future in this, which is today in just different clothing, we live in a time of immense, rapid, enormous change. And people have already forgotten, they didn't have cell phones 30 years ago. And if you ask them to write a 2050 story, it will be cell phones with different paint jobs. Everybody really believes that the world the world changes at all. They think they live in this era of biotech and, and massive communication, and all these wonderful things happening. And they think they're going to die on the same schedule as the grandparents and they think their life is going to be the same as that. It's very strange. Frankly, it's sort of this cognitive dissonance that people might get,

I think they're also scared of change to it when they when they start thinking about radical change. Humans in general don't like change all that much.

quite true. So there's there's these two things where people think they live in a static world and the and the messengers of the static world. The broadcaster's are basically saying for you You know, they say nothing about aging and they say everything about age related diseases. And because the world does not change, you know, it cancer research. We've always been at war with Oceana, in terms of cancer research, it's not a disease that will ever be cured. ask people about this, do they? Do they believe that there's going to be a cure for cancer? Or is it just that cancer research is a good thing that everybody should give to, and that is the steady state of the world that we're on this journey that will never ever go anywhere? And I think most people think this in their sort of, you know, the sideline of attention they give to the world, and people who think otherwise are rather different.

Yeah, I think the simple answer to the question, the original question, you know, why are we so blind is that there are many different answers different. The number one answer is a different one for different people. But I think it is useful to try to rank them in terms of popularity. And I feel that in my personal experience Anyway, there are probably three that are The biggest ones and the ones that we should focus on. And the ethical and you know, moral aspects do not come in that top three, actually, you know, people definitely will say things along the lines of, Oh, you know, aging is natural and no death gives meaning to life and so on. But they don't really, that doesn't really hold them back. Similarly, that the arguments for aging being a blessing in disguise, you know, like, well, we put all the people and how will we pay the pensions and all these things? It's the specifics and not really the problem. The underlying basis for those specifics, though, is one of the three thing and it is people are terrified of getting their hopes up. Yes, they're terrified that they have a fear of the unknown as well, but they have even more of a fear of, of getting emotionally invested in the idea that medicine is going to come along and stop them from getting sick when they get older. And then it doesn't, was a terribly big one. The second one that I think is huge is that in general preventative medicine is very hard to sell, whether it's for early onset or late onset conditions, simply because people know that medicine in general is basically black magic, and that especially new medicines are experimental and could do more harm than good. And if you're not yet sick, then they could definitely do more harm than good. So people are not very good at, you know, discounting and looking at the impact on one's future health rather than one's present health. And they tend to think that anything that you're supposed to take when you're not yet sick is probably a bad idea. I think that's a huge part of it as well. But the number one most popular one for sure and certain if people just don't think it can be done. This comes back to the thing I mentioned earlier, this incorrect this dichotomy that people have in their head between aging itself and the diseases of old age as they call them, but really the fact that it's a very deep seated belief, and it doesn't matter how authoritative and credential the people are Come and say, Listen, if this could be done even slightly, then the world will be an incomparably better place. We would save this, you know, trillions of dollars a year and so on. Even then, people will say, Well, yeah, sure, but you can't do it, can you because aging is natural, and it's not like to leave and so on. And so they just don't listen, they may be very polite, but they don't listen. So those are the things that we have to deal with. And maybe the only way to deal with it, it's just to plug away and get more and more small steps towards experimental success, even if it only ended libertarian or even in the clinic, so that it becomes more and more impossible to carry on believing that it actually can't be done.

Yeah, I mean, I think at one point, you know, like, I think first of all, the favor of the dragon tyrant by Boston was a good one, I think, because he's kind of like calculating on how much time we're losing by just not opting in. And because I think to some extent, it's a chicken and egg problem, like the more people opt in and believe that it could be possible that fossa we could work on it, and likely it would get on the other hand, you You know, like, people are so scared of opting in, because if they, if they accepted how bad death actually is, and then just fell short just right before actually, you know, being able to extend their own life, that would be like, you know, just I mean, the biggest form of your life, basically, you know, what you'd be opting into there. So think, you know, like that, but there must be kind of like a cutoff point, or a court appointed, which, you know, at least you could tip a few minds, you know, into opting in. And I think it would be really nice if, you know, I think we want to talk about this on a different panel. But like, if we could create something, like, even just like if we could get a lot of established scientists to say, Okay, if x, y, z happens, and we're at quite confident, you know, that people currently alive could you know, leapfrog their way into into longevity, right? And if we had that cutoff point, after which it would be safe for this to happen, then maybe we could get enough investment going to even get to that kind of cutoff point for when people's mental space. It's a little safer for them to open. But yeah, I mean, Maybe this may be too long in the future with the current SP, I think speed at which we're playing away. And but, you know, I think maybe to kind of like switch gears now now that we know, kind of like what's holding us back. And now COVID-19 came along, right. So what changed? What are kind of like different narratives that are available to us now? And what are you know, very specific, kind of like, data points that we can point to and say, guys, this is it, you know, like, it's crystal clear right now, you know, how, how do you think we could change people's minds right now and have you already seen people updating?

Huh? Well, I've been doing a lot of work very recently. Obviously, I'm working on a a restore the immune system and old people type of project. So we went out and looked at how the grant situation was changing because of COVID. And I can tell you that the grant system right now is is panic in the sense of make more masks immediately has some money, it has nothing to do with, with fundamental research per se, it may shake out in that direction eventually, I think we all expect there to be a whole lot more infectious disease research in the future. But that doesn't really necessarily mean that anybody will say anything about focus if if government funding organizations can be trusted on to do anything, it is all of the wrong things. And and to give as much money as possible to whoever is great at lobbying, regardless of what they do. So I think it's, it remains to be seen how that part of it shakes out. I don't know how the others have been seeing they're part of this.

Well, I think part of the, you know, part of COVID I guess one of the silver linings is that it makes everybody realize we're all on the same boat that we're all you know, like, right now, we're all on a pandemic and we're all you know, death seems closer to everybody even though it's not like we talked about this earlier, but that seems closer to everybody. Now, and now everybody is noticing, I mean, most of us go around living our lives without interacting with the healthcare system at all. Which, by the way, I think is also why the healthcare system is so screwed up, because you never ever look at the healthcare system until you actually need it. And by the time you need it, you don't have the energy to be an activist. And that's why there's nobody in there and trying to fix the whole thing. Um, but you know, now we're at this point where we're all kind of noticing that we have a collective health problem. And it's all the same problem. And in the same way, aging is a collective health problem. So I mean, it's a it's a health problem that's further off in the future, at least for young p fall.

But I think this gives us

sort of, Okay, well, aging is the same thing. We all have this problem. We are all aging and we are all going to die from aging. And so maybe maybe that can help

to be honest I'm sorry.

Should I start or? Go ahead? Okay, so, to be honest, um, so I mean, of course, we also seeing a lot of grants that are given out now by the government and institutions. But otherwise, I think that we have to focus on the aftermath though when COVID-19 is over, because So, from my experience, everyone is in emergency mode right now. And they just try to fix the covert problem. And they are not open for new ideas. I think that the real work is coming after the crisis. And then people will listen.

Yeah, I think that's very important point. All right. At the moment, it's just not possible to get the real attention of the major decision makers because they're too focused on the near term, and they until they should be, but there will come a time and we must not miss this boat, when decision makers turn their attention to how to be more prepared and more preventative in the future. And that's the point where we absolutely need to get on top of this. Now, actually, related to that, I want Come back to them. And the reason said maybe 20 minutes ago, which alarms me a great deal with regard to what he's seeing in upstate New York with regard to Why? Well, you know, what young people are scared about? I'm, in fact true that young people are, had this on their minds, mainly because they have an exaggerated exaggerated sense of their own vulnerability, then, you know, that's not so good. I was I'm rather hoping but the reason why the lockdown orders around the world have been so widely adhered to. It's not that but rather that people in general are actually caring about each other, and in particular, caring about the elderly. If it turns out that that's actually the case that most populations are doing this largely for altruistic reasons. Then you know, we're a starting point with our discussions with policymakers and decision makers, from what to say, you know, this is the public showing by their action, not just by word or opinion polls or whatever, that the the elderly matter and the health of the elderly matters and therefore that it is something that electorally sensible to actually allocate more money to research to keep people healthy late in life.

I think one would have to do a larger survey than my informal Hey, you why you're not meeting up this week. Survey of upstate younger folk. So the the, you know, I think one of the things we would have to ask ourselves about this whole COVID business is how is this any different from all the things that have failed to wake people up in the past? like cancer or or you know, the the infinite money thrown at heart disease awareness. You know, what is it about this, there's going to be just going to do some Something I mean, both Aubrey and I have been through any number of publicity exercises and, you know, advocacy exercises. And I think I think we both noticed that there's there really doesn't seem to be a great deal of correlation between what you do and success in any way shape or form. You can get you can get on national TV and have nothing happen as a result, right. So it's, it's, it's a very difficult thing to sit here and say, Okay, let's, let's, let's use this to advantage. Because once you get past about, you know, a couple of decades of watching people trying to do this and thinking of past past efforts, such as the nanotechnology horrible experience, from the first decade of the century, and other such things where it all went horribly wrong, in terms of trying to get funding for the right step for the right projects and trying to get people's attention to go to the right areas of forward looking research and failed miserably.

As a tough, tough it's a tough road. I think

Yeah, I mean, I think although you just mentioned like, we cannot miss this boat, like, what does it mean to not miss the boat? You know, in this regard? You know, like, for example, I was thinking, you know, many of the products that, you know, we're coming to focus on aging have now at least pivoted to some extent or spun out a few, let's say code related vaccine projects or something. Is there something the other way round where, you know, things that are currently make sense with COVID could be extended, you know, into more aging related focus. So could we pick up people to where they feel comfortable in the crisis to opt in and then, you know, and then take them along with like, what what does it mean to not miss the boat?

I could say something about that, if you're like I was

I was talking to somebody from Singapore, who reads my blog pinged me, sort of, you know, late last month, because Singapore is having some open calls. Let's do something radical about COVID-19. With through their, through their rather Baroque series of, of government, you know, funding and, and incentive and industrial and research institutions. And as you know, Brian Kennedy is now in Singapore. And Gero collaborates with Brian Kennedy. And they're now in Singapore. So I think the way that that ended up after a little bit of hectic calling around and trying to figure out what the hell to do at the last minute, Gero is is interested in analytics, obviously, because as soon as you do anything, let's say unbiased scans or small molecules, you're gonna end up with analytics, except now we know this analytics. So using analytics against COVID is something that, that that until somebody shows that it's stupid is probably something that all the analytics companies are thinking about a little bit right now. And they are a nascent industry with a bunch of venture backing and the connection to the whole age. thing. So if it turns out that that works, maybe they get some babies because some juice out of that?

Well, and I think, um, you know, as reason mentioned before, or Aubrey, or maybe both of you that we sort of focus on trying to get more research done on the immune system, I think we just don't know enough about the immune system. And we need more funding for various companies like reasons and others that are doing work on, you know, experiments and trying to understand the immune system better. And that's directly related to COVID.

I mean, also the activation of autophagy would would help here, I think. So, I mean, there are some studies that show that activation of a tapa G M has to fight off viruses

and how to make a case for it. You know, what, like, what narrative like what particular opportunities are popping up right now, if any, I mean,

this autophagy company Vf applied for three government grants and that area. So that's, that's how we make use of it.

That's also a little tough given that everybody who's doing that now has to explain. If you're not in the immune space and you're doing autophagy, upregulation, you can at least you know, pretend that restful bio was ritually sacrificed for some unrelated reason that has nothing to do with autophagy. Right. But if you're in the immune space and trying to say, Okay, I'm going to improve the immune system by up regulating autophagy, you now have a phase three trial failure for the most popular approach in that area to explain away which is a little a little tough.

Be you also

Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I mean, well, actually, let me just deal with the rest of the bio thing. So it is, from a technical perspective, actually fairly straightforward to explain away that failure because of the restrictions that existed on the nature of the trial on the on the nature of the endpoint, which do not exist at phase two. But yeah, oh, yeah. Someone else's writing Sebastiani writing the same thing. Well, I don't really agree with Sebastian actually, I think Gabi might not have been such a garbage truck. But yes, the only indication I agree with that. Um, um, so, no, I've completely forgotten the other thing that I was going to say earlier in response to something that Raven said about

what, what does it mean to not miss the boat? Like, you know, what, like, Is there any reason for holding? Are there any kind of like shifts of mine that are happening? Or is there any, you know, like, I remember I just remember, you know, like that, that effort and adding to it, you know, so from the Google Doc, you know, we're trying to have aging classified as a disease, right, that like, kind of went somewhere. But you know, like, what are Are there any opportunities right now that are popping up in which we could just get focused on case?

So I mean, I think recent basically, hit on the main things that we need to make happen. We need to make decision makers policymakers realized that there is progress being made in both the academic sector and the private sector, on improving the music system for the elderly, in as part of, of course, improving the health of the elderly in general. And this work, therefore has the potential right now, to go a lot faster and be a lot ready for the next pandemic, if it is, if it is, if it benefits from a relatively modest allocation of additional funding. Now, this is something that a strong case can be made for. If we tried to make it today people aren't going to listen to it, they're too distracted by the immediate problem. But if we wait too long, other people will jump in and and you know, make these people make their decisions, and they will be and will be too late. So we absolutely need to be engaging the decision makers and policy makers and making sure that we are the people they come to when they do actually want to start planning for the minimization of the human cost of the next pandemic.

Thanks Is that something To be said, you know about not talking to the regulators, policymakers or decision makers and that global sphere but like, you know, perhaps at least investors you know, who may have previously been skeptical could be on boarded quicker now. Have you seen any of this rising or you know, do you think that's john lewis? john lewis is certainly making hay on that front with his with his companies and he was ready to go with something something virus so now it's something something COVID and he's off raising raising money for their there. I wish him luck with that. I think like, it'll be a little a little disingenuous for me to take that, you know, approach when I'm talking about, hey, invest in this preclinical program that really is a next pandemic, sort of a a sort of a sort of a solution for but certainly, yeah, investors have different, different motivations and different rationales for investing and are many ways easier to convince some regulators The more important argument for going after investors I think, is that in a world in which people only believe that the in what exists, you if you want to make change, the only way to make change is to build new technology and prove that it works. And investors are about the only people who are up for doing that regulators certainly aren't interested in fundamental research. And people who invest in public public money are really not interested in fundamental research, either. They want to take fundamental research that has been done and then do something low risk to develop it.

All right. Anyone else want to chime in Sonia?

Well, I agree with what reason just said, I mean, I think investors are, are the people in our society who believe in the possibility of creating a new world, and that's why they're doing what they're doing, because they love doing that. So they are the ones to target in terms of actually just creating something and moving forward. But we can't totally write the regulator's off because unfortunately, they control some of the rules of the game. As to whether or not these products get approved or are allowed to reach the market. So we do need to, to interact with them. I was actually on a call yesterday with the National Academy of Medicine and they, for their, for their longevity initiative. Some of you are probably familiar with that and, and you know, at least that's happening and they're talking about it and they're they're consumed with COVID right now too. But I don't think I don't think we can ignore the people in DC as much as you know, people here I'm in Silicon Valley. I mean, we we'd love to think that we could, but we can't. And history points that out many times.

All right, thank you. We're now at Yeah, I tend to I just want to say as you make your final comments, you know, we always try to kind of like focus on like end on a pretty action specific action specific spot. So what do what two people on this call right now do to to allow us to not miss The board wants to kind of panic about the immediate pandemic is over and people can start maybe worrying about getting ready for the next one, you know, by doing something like preventative care instead. So what are kind of like specific action items for people, you know who were on this call? If you want to kind of like wrap up with that, and then I'll take question.

Did we just converge on the answer to that question being giving, giving money to me and Aubrey? Also,

I think Aubrey should write an op ed about why, why we need the government to spend more of us it's research money on on the immune system and figuring out the immune system.

So I think what's Oh, sorry, are we know you go first.

Sure. Yeah. I'm not sure quite how the unmute thing is working. I would think that whenever I mute myself, I become unable to unmute myself.

Exactly.

But anyway, so um, yeah, I mean, in a way, I'm not the right person here because let's face it, there is still A large section of society who regard me as both crazy and dangerous. And it is therefore, you know, important for people who want to influence people like that, not to demonstrate that they think I'm actually not crazy, you know, I have deliberately avoided getting too involved in the National Academy of Medicine and thanks for exactly that reason. But the point is here, there are lots of people on this call and indeed elsewhere in our community, who have good friendly relations with very powerful people in the corridors of power. I of course, do agree with Sonia and reason that investors are very often more open minded and easier to influence in relation to radical and innovative technologies. However, it cannot be denied that the government has a larger checkbook and that most people anyway because it can literally print money apart from anything else. So you know, any influence that we can have, even if it's a teeny tiny little, little amount of influence in pushing the level of emphasis of this or that thing in the direction we would like, that can make a big, big difference in terms of the actual dollar amount that is available to us. And of course, this early stage work, which is the high risk, most difficult stuff to sell, it is the least expensive, you know, the stuff that actually takes the fewest dollars.

True. True. Anyone else? Yeah. So I mean, I would be

a little bit more radical. I think that we, I mean, that's really the time that we should occupy the entire public dialogue, about aging and about disease.

And I think that we can

stereotype or idol we can take other political movements. And so for example, the student movement in the 60s, which was about discrimination, and they use the framework from Herbert Mark ooza. And what they did is that they first framed the language and also So the way I'm how to talk about minorities, and then they were changing institutions from inside, and I think we can do the same with aging, right? So first of all before, I mean, I'm to make a to make it very clear to make an example. Um, so for example, what we all of us have heard in the last days or weeks is that a lot of people said COVID is not that bad, because I'm only the old diet. And this is the network thing. And what really everyone here on the call can do about it is to say this is discrimination against the old right, and it's not like and that all people have to die. It's more it's not only destiny and doom, right, we can do something about it. And if you don't do something about it, it's a decision. It's a conscious decision not to help these people not to develop this technologies. And I think this is really important that in every discussion, we make the point, no, we can do something about aging, and we have to do something about it. And we need more money and we need policies to make that happen. But it's a consciousness It's not like

that, that we are

our.

And then, of course, through discussion, you should also push the institutions in a direction where they make change, for example, and what we try at Apollo. I mean, we are partly based in Germany and beyond contact with our minister of health. He's interested in this amazing thing. And I mean, at the moment, of course, he can't reach him because he has other problems to solve. But as soon as this crisis is over, of course, we will talk to him. And I mean, we have taught I mean, one of the biggest rhetorical instruments we have is to reputation, right? You have to say it again, again and again. And I mean, everybody in this car can do that. Everybody can make a clear point. All right. Yeah,

go for it. And I'm going to unmute Rachel next for her question.

Learn learn a little about the decay of your own immune system. I'm just going to post a couple of links In the Euro, you can't be properly horrified and incentivized to do something about it unless you know more about what is going on the utter disintegration of your ability to resist infection, and all sorts of other things to do with your immune system with age, I suggest reading up on it put it all at the high level.

It really should

give that to decision makers just like you get personally scared. And that ties in nicely with Rachel's question. I think, Rachel, do you want to go for it?

Sure. Sure. I mean, with this pedal, I have to ask right. And so assuming that each of you has a personal longevity practice, is there a practice or a set of practices you engage in that are maybe less obvious or less popularized? And are you willing to tell

us about them?

Do you mean supplements,

supplements, exercise fasting products? I don't know.

Well, what I used to say was, I don't accept seminar invitations to dangerous countries. I'm not getting any seminar invitation. So that's a little bit nervous at this point. But yeah, you know, I wear a seatbelt even in the backseat, even in countries where it's not required. You know, at the end of the day, for most people avoiding the risks of immediate or near term death are more important, because you know, we're making progress, and the more progress we make the the better. So really just doing what your mother told you to is the best policy right now.

Unless your mother told you to do calorie restriction, I'd say that calorie restriction is, is the thing to do. I'm the I'm the example of where that gets you on the grounds that genetics has nothing to do with the way I look for my age.

Yeah, I try not to eat too much, which is exactly kind of the same thing. Well, not, not quite, but

Well, I would say if you do a calorie restriction, you won't live forever, but it will definitely feel like it, I think, operate in reason not a joke.

It's not unusual. I

got a new job.

So I mean, what I do is intermittent fasting. I met Metformin, Reza tro I sleep enough sleeping is very important. It's a big risk factor for dementia and Alzheimer's.

Try not to travel too much. And reports

and vitamin D. Okay, everyone wants to take vitamin D. But there's no magic to it. I mean, yeah, you can also take aspirin, which gives you a little bit maybe of a longer life, but unless you're overweight. Yeah.

I think one thing that over often says to the question is like,

it doesn't really matter. We won't live long enough to get us there. It's kind of a distraction by thinking that we may actually kind of like, do the whole thing while just taking supplements. No, we need kind of like breakthrough science to actually like, get us all the way And so correct or is it not just the country? Okay, good. And then we have one last question by ideal, who was messaging me earlier with this one idea? I'm gonna unmute you ask a question.

Oh, sure. Can you guys hear me? Yeah. Oh, well, other than the problems you guys have already identified, what see what's a problem or a set of problems to which no solution exists right now and something that keeps you up at night, like a juicy problem? Well, it

depends what you mean by a solution. If you mean, do we have a plan for developing a solution for such a problem, which is, you know, 90% of the way to actually having implemented the plan, then I would say basically, every aspect of aging that happened every type of damage that accumulates in the body throughout life and eventually contributes to ill health. We have a plan for repairing and eliminating that type of damage. But some of those plans are considerably earlier stage than others. The reason why sands Research Foundation remains in its nonprofit form is because some of the things are simply too early stage to be investable, even in the eyes of the very more early stage Angel seed investor types. And of course, in due course that may change. But at the moment that's not true.

I would also say we are now at the point where we are coping with technical problems and technical problems get soft at the end.

The end comes is a is another question. I think the I think the thing that keeps keeps most of us who are not yet accepting of our mortality awake at night is that hey, we have we basically have this. We basically have this down, we know where we need to go. It will just take a long time because getting humans to do things takes a long time.

So what really keeps me up at night How do we get more money into the space? This is what keeps.

And if you have the money for finding solutions, definitely Oh, yes.

How much money?

billions.

If not trillions, that's for sure. At this point, the I think I mentioned this earlier, the later stage stuff, which will probably cost, you know, multiple billions of dollars to get to actually get through all the phase three trials in the building and infrastructure and so on. You know, that stuff we don't need to worry about, because by the time the Freedmen's get to that point, they will have been so fully so comprehensively de risked that the getting people to write those checks of that size will be relatively straightforward. It remains the case that the early checks, even though they are smaller, are the hardest one to get people to write because there is so much likelihood of the venture eventually collapsing.

But I mean, just to repeat myself, I mean, if you just look how much money went into companies like Airbnb, we work. Uber. I mean, if you would take this money and apply it to the aging space, I think there we go. Yeah.

Yeah, I think you have to accept that it's only going to turn out after it doesn't make a difference. That's that's the, that's the way of large amounts of money. The it's bootstrapping all the way up until it no longer matters that somebody throws a billion dollars at the problem, which point all of the, all of the big altruists will start putting a billion dollars into it. Because it's no, there's no risk in doing that. And governments will start belatedly supporting, you know, commercialization, etc, etc. But I think one has to expect it's going to be it's going to be tooth and nail bootstrapping, all the way through the stuff that actually matters.

And I'm really sorry that we're over time, but like one thing that popped up in the chat, which is someone mentioned that Bezos mask aren't totally focused on aging. And, you know, I mean, you could make the same case for for for gates in the movie stepping up on different angles. Why do you think that is? And like, what pitch are we, you know, we make to the billionaires.

I think some of the billionaires have the same problem as regular people. I mean, I remember being at a dinner with Bill Gates, and we got my book was just coming out my book 100 plus. And so we started talking about longevity. And Bill Gates got really angry, like aggressively angry, saying that anybody who was trying to stop aging was some sort of immoral person because they just wanted to live forever, and they didn't care about all the people dying in Africa. And that was a and he was just angry, angry, angry, and, and it went on like that for an hour or so. And you know, like so, you know, Bill Gates wasn't me. I think he's changing his tune now that his father has Alzheimer's and he's starting to see the end of the rope coming for him and you know, I think that's what it's taking to change his mind. Unfortunately. Um, you know, I think Jeff Bezos is a bit more enlightened. He he sees that a little earlier. it more of a visionary. But But still he is interested in other things like go into space because it's really cool and it's fun. Well,

everybody knows billionaire is different. Some billionaires, just like Bill Gates. And you know, as Sonia said, just totally, just not knowledgeable enough to understand the, the basic concept that aging cannot be divorced from the disease of old age. One very popular thing which Sonia highlighted is that people are, what concentrates people's minds is the state of health of their loved ones and not a lot else. You know, I met Sergey Brin in 2003. He's never given us a penny. But of course he did. Write a large check to the market next time. About a week after discovering that he had a genetic predisposition to early onset Parkinson's disease. You know, Jeff Bezos, I met at TED in 2005, I think something like that I met him several years thereafter. And every single year, he would take the initiative to come up to me and asked me, What was new what was going on, but he's also never given us a penny. You know, maybe some people don't do it because their wives don't want them to. I know that's true. In some cases. Some people don't do it because they think it's a share price. You know, everyone's got their own reasons, but they're all completely crazy.

I and I think, just circling back to our conversation earlier on, this goes down to what motivates people. And honestly, it's not as much as I would love to think it's because, you know, with Cova, that we're all seeing that everybody cares about the elderly, it really it comes down to personal motives. People are self centered, and they're worried about themselves and to the extent that we can make individual people realize that aging is in fighting aging is in their self interest, then our movement will move quicker.

I think it's enough to remind people that they have parents because I mean, people will think that is okay that all people got died, they are not okay with their parents dying. So there's already a strong argument. And I mean, I mean, this argument so stupid to say, um, these are all people and it's just natural that they die. So, yeah.

All right. Thank you. Well, that's, that's a strong push. And, okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for staying six minutes over time. I really. Yeah. I am very grateful that you joined for the session. I'm hoping that, you know, maybe we can maybe I'll post some things afterwards and bring you up to speed. I actually really like the point about, you know, make it about your personal health, like the point that he's made, you know, read up about, you know, how fucked up is this process and you know, that we could actually do something about it. So getting People to you know, put on their own masks first or to realize their own of like mortality first, and then maybe that that would be a good, kind of like points of them to chip in. Thank you so much for joining. For whoever wants to stay on, we're going to do like more of a participant based sharing of like, your guyses bits of hope, and things that you've taken away from this. And for now, I think the panel is so so much you obviously also working to stop on by I want to be, I want to be very mindful of your time. Thanks a lot. I'll be following up after you sent me things that you want the participants to know. Join the check, Slack channel, please. We're all and reason are already in. Say hi to participants, you know, and yeah, thank you so, so much. It was really a pleasure. And I think you know, fine. Hopefully we just have to keep pushing. Thank you.

Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye, guys.

Thanks. Bye.

All right. And I'm seeing every time here in the chat. Please save the chats at the chat. So with Effie we'd definitely do that too. I do want to keep the chat a little bit more informal. So, Hi, everyone. And I think, you know, I think we already posted the video from yesterday, which a lot of you guys afterwards requested. I think that was yesterday so far was the favorite one for many of you. Um, maybe we could we could talk the one we could talk that with today, so no, but I definitely I already posted that cell from yesterday. But it's cool that we even have Tim here in this chat right now. So maybe to speak with a few participants, please raise your hand if you know you'd like to share your beautiful but what makes it particularly hopeful right now what if you recently realized this could be like an observation, this could be something that you read, or it could be something, you know that you've all that was always on your radar, that actually will emerge a little bit a little bit better and stronger after this crisis than before. Feel free to raise your hand right now. To share them that way. Have some participants in here. Maybe some of you will also want to sneak in another question if you want to, but this is the stage for you guys to share. Please raise your hand right now if you'd like to. And if you'd like to have a go

all right, everyone. Okay, we have a few. Okay, Edward, I'm gonna unmute you for now.

All right. Am I unmuted? Yep. Ah, good. Yes. Hi. Hello, everyone. The one one thing that I get some optimism from is that I'm in the Washington DC area worked for various private think tanks. And over the last three years, especially I've really been pushing for Food and Drug Administration reform, which in 1992, the FDA was kind of forced to create a parallel track for AIDS patients to get early access to medications that had passed the phase one test and we're still in efficacy test because people suffering from a Didn't have years and years to wait. And it turned out to probably have saved at least 12,000 lives. And we've been pushing for this kind of reform for the last three years, it various congressional offices and so on, so forth, kind of getting a fairly positive reaction. And now with what's going on with the virus, we're expecting that afterwards, we're going to get an even bigger reaction when we say, look, we have to try to do something about this somewhat antiquated system and come up with ways of testing and so forth. It's appropriate for the 21st century. Now, Aubrey, you mentioned about the problems when you get to phase three, right, and about the endpoints and that's one of the things we've discussed kind of that nobody ever reads about in the Washington Post, The New York Times, I think those sort of issues are going to be on the national debt. I want to mention one other thing that kind of came up in this discussion about how to sell ideas and get ideas popular. I've been getting giving talks and I know some of the folks on here might have been in some of them to be there and so forth. I've given talks to college kids in the DC area here and in Baltimore. And to like the republican women's clubs in the area, which are, let's say, older people about you can live to 200. And I go over some of these stuffs, I've read stuff and so forth. And from both audiences, I get, Wow, I didn't know that was possible. I didn't know this kind of research was going on. Can you give us more information about it? So I find the fact that you can go to young people in college and a bunch of old, very nice republican women in the suburbs of Baltimore, and so forth. It's very promising for the future and about how we raise this issue to a higher level after the virus starts to subside and people start to say, hey, look, wow, this is this is really possible and now that we've had this death scare, hopefully not too many more people by I see this as a great opportunity to put this On the national agenda,

I'll be wanting to comment. Otherwise, I'll take the next participant.

Yeah, I basically agree. Let's get going.

Great. jannetty you're unmuted now.

Thank you. So my bit of hope is that I do believe, right now, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be possible to persuade policymakers, at least in some countries in some parts of the world to declare aging a disease. In fact, the US transhumanist party is spearheading an initiative to do that in Argentina, and this initiative has made some headway our foreign ambassador in Argentina, Dr. Christian, Manou had a successful meeting with the Undersecretary for public health in white Osiris and it is going to be escalated to higher levels of the Argentine government. Both In the city of Buenos Iris and in the Argentine Congress. So I think there's a potential right now for a domino effect of sorts to occur. If there's even one country anywhere in the world that declares aging, a disease that will turn heads and other governments of other nations are going to ask, Well, what is this all about? Why are they doing this? What is the relationship to COVID-19? Can we do something similar? Can we attract research and investment? Can we leapfrog ahead of these ossified established Western countries and become the next mecca for scientific research, especially in the field of longevity, so that could be a way to go and I would encourage everyone on this call to add your names to the statement. I'll link to it once again. Because this is something anyone can sign. We've had nearly a Hundred signatories already and some of them have been leading researchers as well as thinkers in the transhumanism and longevity fields. Uh,

yeah. So, um, you know, um, so yeah, I can only thank you for this. I haven't actually read the declaration yet. And I, I'm going to do so today. I mean, I think it's important in any such initiative to recognize that we need to generate global momentum here. So I would very much hope that the declaration has some kind of recognition of the progress that's been made elsewhere, especially in the US with the Tang trial. And with the FDA recognition of a of the legitimacy of a clinical endpoint that is a combination endpoint, which kind of encapsulates the interaction and the relationship between aging The so called diseases of old age, because that really is the number one thing that needs to happen in terms of a definition. What what needs to happen in terms of action, I would say, it really grows from that. It is that people need to be thinking of the entire ecosystem of health problems late in life as a medical problem that can be addressed in a manner that's not just one disease at a time. And if the declaration can encourage people to think in this more holistic in a more holistic terms, not to not to go all the way to thinking of aging as a single unitary phenomenon, but nevertheless, definitely to recognizing the practicality of interventions that can address multiple age related conditions simultaneously. Of course, this can draw on a bunch of things that are already happening not just in the laboratory but also in the clinic. And because it's still early day, especially in terms of clinical interventions, there's a lot of people who haven't heard it. So yes, this message can definitely make a difference.

So I was thinking that like, that's actually like, I think an interesting point, especially like the global focus, right, like, given the fact that like after COVID-19 documents are somewhat in a competition to who's, who seems to who appears to be better prep for the next pandemic. But it's interesting because in a previous vlog, we talked about the fact that how can we avoid the mistake of just prepping for the next pandemic, right? Rather, we should become generally more anti fragile as a civilization against a variety of different risks, not just the next pandemic, but here we even talking about the fact that, you know, just the fact that people will be gearing up to at least look like they're doing something to be better prepared for the next pandemic, right. And that could be a really good point in kind of creating some types like very new regulatory competition across different countries, and to be opting into those more longevity focused Longer focused interventions, if that's the case, which countries or which nations do you think, you know, could be perhaps, like more promising to target? And after an effort, I mean, generally you mentioned Argentina but other any other countries right now apart from the acid, you know, that would gain a lot by seeming like they're really prepared for the next one,

small countries. I think that we are definitely seeing an opportunity for micro nations to exert a lot of influence because micro nations have a lot more political influence than their size would imply. I'm talking about, well, let's say in Europe, you know, countries like Monaco, Alicia's down cellar, and it turns out that such country First of all, they tend to have an unusually old population. These countries tend to have been hit the hardest by COVID-19. You know, I think San Marino is actually the country with the highest per capita death rate in the world. And the countries can exert that diplomatic influence if they want to punch way above their weights, and they listen to people and they make decisions much more quickly than live countries with large bureaucracy. So I think there should be a lot more emphasis there. There is, this is actually happening already. Liechtenstein is a country that has taken an initiative at a very high level, convening a couple of roundtables to advise it on what to do, Monaco and San Marino, I've been in contact with senior civil servants, like health ministers and so on. But this country you could never get to in Germany or the UK or anywhere. So yeah, that's a big possibility.

All right, thank you so much. Then we had another question here in the chat.

Okay, Vince vices. okay for me to then you can ask the question yourself. I'm amazing. You right now.

Hi. Yeah, so my question was basically in the direction of if there is maybe the need for a better public narrative around longevity one example for where, for example, friends of mine came to me to longevity was on Netflix on explained that a series on aging, but it was like very short one which is more on the

documentary side but also kind of like, like a media narrative

in direction of space movies for what space movies helped achieve for space colonization.

I would love to see science fiction work better in this regard. It's many people have noted and it's very true that there are hardly any science fiction movies or books these days but represent a post ageing world in a positive light. There used to be found, of course in the 50s and 60s. But you know, disturbing dystopia seems to sell. And that has become a real problem. I, you know, I thought of a couple of plot themes that could be used in science fiction to change this. Nobody's picked up on them yet.

And you say to them, like, do you have them written down?

Oh, okay, my favorite one. I think we should have a movie in which the witch which begins by looking at a post aging world that has existed for a while and everything's working fine. And the dramatic element in the movie and, you know, all the plus consists of near the beginning of the movie, aging comes back, you know, some infection comes along that re the cause of the reemergence of the chronic progressive conditions that we're familiar with today. And of course, because people have become comfortable familiar with a post aging world, they don't have a problem regarding this as a medical issue. And a lot of desperate, you know, humanity mobilizes itself against this problem and and eventually prevails again and they didn't go away again. So that's the kind of plot that I would like.

What do you think about just turning the favour the favor of the dragon tyrant or something into a movie?

I wouldn't say no, but I don't think it has enough to it. I think that it only addresses one component of the issue. Namely, it's two. It focuses people on their own irrationality about aging. I think what we want to do is focus people on their rationality about the consequences of not aging, the the excuses that people make for making aging a blessing in disguise, which are largely at the social level. I mean, it's no accident that the The erroneous assumptions that are introduced at the beginning of the typical dystopic movie about about post aging world. So political ones like you know, we've got too many people, we have to shoot everybody at the age of 30 or something like that. You know, these are ultimately not ethical, you know, they're not philosophical. They're sociological. And I don't really think the dragon tyrants story wonderful, though it is directly addresses though. So it may not be the most ideal, most effective way of combating counteracting the problem we have today.

Oh, but like, I mean, what, what the, the one that you mentioned, I think was doing it's like, it makes you barely see that at least the societal like, carrying capacity of the earth and data, whatnot that could be overcome, you know, that there's no problem there. But it still doesn't tackle I think the thing that you thought was most important, and your reasons for Why we're making progress, which is the the hope. So the fear of having your expectation or your expectations be a lot smarter by not being able to do it. And that's what the fable of the dragon time immediately does. You know, like, very

Yeah, you make a good point out and I thought you know, I mean we definitely need both. Someone on the chat has just written then it will be good to have an animation short film about the dragon town that's actually being done. There is an animation I forget. I don't have a link to it myself, but

it's on YouTube. It's on YouTube. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I love that sentence. Do you have another sci fi plotline?

Uh, not as coherently articulated.

Okay, well, this is amazing. Like, and you even have this catastrophic element of aging and comes back. And okay, that's, that's lovely. Um, let's see, was there any other question? One thing I think that you and I discussed once army was trying to do something, not being like in a cyber way, but more something Similar for policymakers where, you know, wouldn't be specifically fiction, but like, giving them easy ways in which they could see that actually, a future in a post aging world is a really positive one, and that all of the collateral kind of like problems that people are worried about, like carrying capacity and so on I solvable I.

Yeah, I mean, I think the emergence of the private sector in this space matters a lot for that. Because at the end of the day, you know, the moat, the maybe we're talking about when we talk about policymakers, our elected representatives. We all know that electric representatives have exactly one priority in their lives, which is to get reelected. And they also know that the way to get reelected is to make people feel wealthier, you know, the aphorism that makes the economy stupid, if that's true, that's true everywhere. That was when Clinton said it. So that means that when people who want to make money Invest, in other words, start to take a new idea and a new field really seriously, policymakers listen a great deal more than they listen when people like, you know, for philanthropist or even, you know, scientists get up on stage and on camera. So I think we need to leverage that we need to get people to understand that the fact that the emergence of this industry is a kind of a real signal that there are going to be votes in this very soon.

All right, thanks. All right. And then we have George, you had your hand up, I'm gonna unmute you now.

Thank you. I wanted to check and see who is doing the best work on the environment and human health, the health of the environment, and the health of the human and how both can thrive and live as long as possible.

Do you have a suggestion? Josh? I think that's your focus area, right? Yes, I

work with the Buckminster Fuller Institute and with the Walter Munk foundation for the oceans. And we're seeing how these systems are interrelated. And I was just wondering if that was looked at. Maybe Aubrey, you have an idea of who is working on environmental health human health interface? Um, well.

Okay, there's a couple of answers to your question. First of all, yes, a lot of people do take the environment seriously as a contributor to the rate of aging. But in general, this is a bit of a distraction. I mean, I'm not saying it's 100% of distraction, but the impact of the environment on the rate at which the body accumulates molecular and cellular damage is really small. In most environments. Of course, there are extreme examples, outlying situations where there's a high toxicity, but the amount of damage that you do to yourself By choices of what environment you surround yourself with is a tiny fraction of the rate at that rate at which you damage yourself by breathing. Breathing is by far the most, the worst thing you're doing for your health right now. And, you know, it's rather non negotiable. So, um, you know, that we shouldn't we need always to have a sense of proportion about it. However, you know, in the context of the discussion we've been having over the past 10 or 15 minutes, I think it's very important to recognize that a lot of people when they want to find some excuse for aging, some reason why aging is a blessing in disguise, they will talk about the environment. They'll say, Oh, dear, we've already got too many people, this will be terrible. And so one does have to combat that head on, one can't just sidestep it and say, Oh, don't worry, we're all going to Mars or whatever. We've got to say, look, actually, the technologies that are also being developed right now, whether it be artificial meat, or you know, renewable energy, or desalination or whatever these technologies are going To be addressing of existing environmental problems, but they're going to be more than addressing what we have today, they're going to be going further. In other words, increasing the carrying capacity of the planet far more rapidly than the population will increase as a result of eliminating aging.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, I'm posting to everyone. I'm posting a link right now to our technical competitions. And those we tackle we always try to bridge to scientific silos to make progress on official and official future in a positive future of humanity. We focus on planetary health and human health. And so you know, we haven't tackled them together yet, but there's definitely atomic precision for for for human longevity and human health span. But then we also had a technique competition last year, which I encourage you to check out on, on the same on the same feature with Oh, Hello, can you hear me I don't My video right now, but I think you can hear me. Oh my god, man, I'm definitely picking up. But we had one as well on human health. And we had one last year with tonchi from Google X. I'm planning on, on atomic precision for leveraging attenti health. So encourage you to check to check out that paper and we have proposals there. I do want to say that, you know, I think one thing that all we often mentioned, and I think that's a really practical thing to think about it is that, you know, we have talked so much about self interest today, right. And if people realize that they could live longer, they would also care about longer time horizons, and longer time horizons, the first thing that hits you right in the face is time to just civilization, right? It's not something that would have to be on future generations, something that will bite us in the face, if we are lucky enough to live long enough that it becomes a problem. I mean, it's already a problem now just distributed. But I think it's a really good way to make people have skin in the game to care about those long term issues, which are very, very time related. So I think it's a good segment. All right, cool. We had to talk 29 this is it from from our end. Thank you so so much for Johnny today for staying on for so long. Again, obvious well to you, um, that I reminded you about the talk that you have tomorrow, so you will miss it. And and maybe people can join that one too. Maybe I'll find a link to it and post it. And thank you so much. Tomorrow, we're going to talk about content tracing technologies. So we're going to take a little different type of tech and how that could be expanded outward to actually allow people to coordinate much more richer in decentralized way then we may have to get around just to do content tracing and privacy preserving ways. So we're going to focus on a different angle there, but I welcome all of you to join the slack discussion. If you if you want to the link to join the slack is right on the top of this chat. And it's already Video discussion over there, please join. And please help me collect action items. You know, when I'm moderating, I find it sometimes hard to keep track and jot down specific action items. So I'm asking, I asked in the hive mind, weekly to discussion on Slack, if people could help me keep track of action items, just post them there. And I think someone made a Slack channel right now on and unfolding questions for the next for the next for the next discussion tomorrow. So I'm going to check in that one to find out thank you so much for joining. And thank you all for joining again today. Again, if you, you know, if you're interested in supporting the work that we do at foresight about kind of like pushing on a variety of different angles, about different future facing technologies, because you know, they are all like one thing that I think that we generate, that we realize a faucet really well is that, you know it doesn't require one particular thing. You know, that the future kind of is a really large pace, and a lot of different things have to go right and a lot of different ways. can interact in mutually beneficial ways with each other, right? That's why we do those technical competitions at the intersection of different technologies. If you're interested in supporting this kind of effort, right, it's a large coordination game that we play. We definitely read a lot of different topic. But I think they they ultimately all depend on each other. If you're interested in supporting that, please go on our website. There's different membership levels associated with different benefits. Please feel free to donate and we really appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for joining today. And I hope to see many of you tomorrow. Thank you so much, all of you for sticking it out for us along with us. All right. Bye, guys. Have a lovely day.