Dr. Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey, Ph.D

What is a cool guy? My buddy Miguel has some ideas.

But, I think it takes more than awesome moustaches and Members Only jackets to be a cool guy. I think the idea of working towards a solution for radical life extension and treating aging as a disease is probably a better definition. And, given that criteria, there is nobody better suited to living the dream of being a cool guy then Dr. Aubrey de Grey (see photo). So, if you are thinking it is his beard that makes him cool you are only partially correct.

Apart from being my friend on Facebook and SuperPoking the hell out of me. Aubrey argues that the fundamental knowledge necessary to develop effective anti-aging medicine mostly exists today, and that the science is actually ahead of the funding. He works to identify and promote specific technological approaches to the reversal of various aspects of aging, or as de Grey puts it, "the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us."

As of 2005, de Grey's work centered upon a detailed plan called Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) which is aimed at preventing age-related physical and cognitive decline. So, if you have a few minutes check it out. Who knows? If you end up supporting the effort you may have more than a few minutes.

Researchers of life extension are known as biogerontologists. They seek to understand the nature of aging and they develop treatments to reverse aging processes or to at least slow them down, for the improvement of health and the maintenance of youthful vigor at every stage of life.  Those who take advantage of life extension findings and seek to apply them upon themselves are called "life extensionists" or "longevists". The primary life extension strategy currently is to apply available anti-aging methods in the hope of living long enough to benefit from a complete cure to aging once it is developed, which given the rapidly advancing state of biogenetic and general medical technology, could conceivably occur within the lifetimes of people living today. Most likely around 2020 according to most futurists.

Many biomedical gerontologists and life extensionists believe that future breakthroughs in tissue rejuvenation with stem cells, organs replacement (with artificial organs or xenotransplantations) and molecular repair will eliminate all aging and disease as well as allow for complete rejuvenation to a youthful condition. Whether such breakthroughs can occur within the next few decades is impossible to predict. Many life extensionists arrange to be cryonically preserved upon legal death so that they can await the time when future medicine can eliminate disease, rejuvenate them to a lasting youthful condition and repair damage caused by the cryonics process.

 
Anyway, I think the the work Aubrey is doing makes him one cool guy.

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