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SENS roundtable 2: Biological, social and political implications of ENS
Roundtable meeting, Los Angeles, August 12th 2001
Article Details/Photos
On August 12th 2001, a small roundtable meeting was held at UCLA,
Los Angeles, to discuss a wide range of issues surrounding the possibility
that, within a few decades, biotechnology might be developed that
would enable us to reverse all the key lifespan-limiting components
of human aging. The meeting was a sequel to one held in Oakland
in October 2000 entitled "Strategies for Engineered Negligible
Senescence" (SENS), so the UCLA meeting was entitled "SENS
2". Full funding was generously provided by the Maximum
Life Foundation (see http://www.maxlife.org/).
The October meeting, SENS 1, gave rise to a highly controversial and
provocative article, "Time to Talk SENS: Critiquing the Immutability
of Human Aging", which was published in the Annals of the
New York Academy of Sciences as part of the Proceedings of the 9th
Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology.
(More details of that meeting, including a transcript,
are here.) The
central conclusion of that article was that there is a substantial
possibility that, within about ten years, we could take a mouse aged
about two years (i.e., with a remaining life expectancy of six months
or so) and restore it to sufficiently youthful physiology that it
would live a year longer than otherwise. Given that such technology
-- were it developed in mice -- might potentially be translated to
humans, SENS 2 was convened with the goal of discussing the social,
political and ethical implications of this possibility, as well as
several aspects of the biology of aging that were inadequately covered
in SENS 1 or the resulting paper.
The participants in SENS 2 comprised three SENS 1 participants (Aubrey
de Grey, Gregory Stock and Chris Heward) and seven others: John Baynes,
David Berd, David Gems, Leonard Hayflick, Richard Miller, Huber Warner
and John Wilmoth. The expertise of the group thus ranged over
many pertinent areas, including glycation, immunosenescence, immunotherapy
for cancer, bioethics of life extension, demography of human aging
and public and philanthropic funding of anti-aging research.
In addition, Steven Coles, David Kekich and Kat Cotter attended as
observers. As at SENS 1, each participant gave an informal overview
of their area which was followed by extensive discussion.
In contrast to SENS 1, there was neither any intention nor expectation
of reaching unanimous consensus on all issues discussed. Issues
that divided the participants included the feasibility of the proximate
goal set out in SENS 1 (the mouse rejuvenation project), the desirability
of public optimism regarding the likelihood of progress, the reasons
for the low level of funding of basic biogerontology research and
the social advantages or disadvantages of controlling human aging.
All these topics were, however, addressed with great care and cordiality
and many important new arguments were presented. All participants
left the meeting with much to think about. A manuscript arising
from the deliberations appeared shortly thereafter.
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