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April 7, 2005
Who Will Benefit From This Project?
One of the most frustrating things about trying to find funding for the Mprize is the number of corporations/foundations that are only interested in funding "service" projects. As I read over the corporate phianthropy guidelines or grant application instructions, they frequently state that they fund only projects in their local area, and they want to know what economic, social, racial or gender group will "benefit" from the efforts.
Uh, everyone?
Trying to communicate that the Mprize is about benefitting *everyone* has been a challenge. I sense that a project doesn't seem real to people unless you can point to the disadvantaged group it might serve. It just goes to show how narrow our vision has become. I don't blame the corporations for wanting to earn goodwill in their own communities by acting locally, but the frustration remains that encouraging scientists to cure aging will help a lot more people than providing services to Alzheimer's patients in Dallas.
It constantly confounds me that people perceive wanting to cure aging as selfish. No one thinks it's selfish to want to cure cancer, even if you're a cancer patient. Yet aging is somehow seen as different. The results are the same: you're just as dead at the end of the process. I wonder if the phrase "anti-aging" is so commonly associated with charlatans and wrinkle creams that people have trouble taking the concept seriously. That's why phrases like "rejuvenative medicine" and "regenerative medicine" seem to go over better... I use those a lot.
If I knew, through genetic testing or some such thing, that I was definitely going to develop a kind of cancer later in my life, and I spent my entire life crusading to find a cure, no one would call that selfish. Those people are heroes. They're lauded as people who face the horrifying truth of their circumstance and choose to do something about it, instead of living in denial or hoping that science will save them without their assistance.
So why is aging different?
Aubrey de Grey often says something to the effect of "It's very ubiquity renders it invisible." Yet when you talk with people about their struggles to take care of aging parents, their frustration with the changes in their own bodies as years pass, and their sadness that they lost their grandparents just as they were growing up enough to see Grandma as something other than a convenient candy dispensnser, you realize that aging is very real in people's lives.
Jay Olshansky, in response to Aubrey's contention that people are so deep in denial about the horror of aging that they seem to be in a trance, said that it's actually Aubrey who is doing the hypnotizing, by saying over and over again, "We can cure aging." Dr. Olshansky also had a clever cartoon representation of a young woman with long hair and a vacant expressing starting at a crystal object of some kind that clearly had some sinister power over her mind. I took that cartoon rather personally, as the woman in the cartoon looked errily like me. There is Jay Olshansky, saying that instead of mobilizing funding to address the causes and cures of aging, we should put our efforts into fighting the global epidemic of obesity. And then he's not in favor of CR! Who is in the trance here? If you don't want to put efforts into biomedical interventions that can *reverse* the damage of aging, and you don't endorse the only thing we have now that *slows* the aging process in every mammal in whom it's been tested, then what precisely do you want to do?
I can hear it now: encourage people to live "healthy" lives. Perhaps I'm biased, but I think our society's idea of "healthy" is so conditioned by the food industry that benefits from people's addictions to fat and sugar that we have no clue what "healthy" is. Olshansky said that CR may have unknown side effects: I'll take that any day over the very well-documented effects of even "healthy" diets: aging, disease, disability and death!
Besides, as MR famously said in the RANT, the knowledge that eating "better" might postpone a heart attack hasn't persuaded the general public to do anything. The problem is getting worse -- Olshansky's charts of the rise of obesity are terrifying. The very weakness of the advice: eat unhealthy foods "in moderation," get "moderate" exercise, avoid stress... try this: EAT FEWER CALORIES. No tricks, no gimmicks, no pandering to people's fear that they can't succeed. Why tell women to accept their bodies as less than how they want them to look and feel when there is a way to feel better, look better, and annoy the hell out of your friends who have gained weight? Why tell people that the best they can hope for is seeing their grandchildren's weddings, when they could live long enough to attend their great-grandchildren's college graduations? Or for those of us who don't want children: think of just how many diapers, over a dramatically extended lifespan, we will *not* have to change!
I may bear some surface resemblance to the cartoon character woman who clearly lost her mind. After all, I am young, female, have long hair, and like sparkly crystal objects. (I actually really, really like sparkly crystal objects. Especially objects that can hang in the window and make pretty patterns on the wall, and crystal jewlery. Does that make me a less serious person?) But here I am, doing everything I can in the here and now to slow my own aging process, and doing everything I can in the meantime to encourage scientists to compete for the real cure.
What's so crazy about that?
Posted by april at April 7, 2005 7:21 AM
Comments
Our society is sadly and dangerously out of balance. We only focus on short term benefits and are now totally unable to think long term. People used to think long term more often. Business schools teach short term thinking.
Health needs more long term solutions. Wellness is all about long term. We can't continue to hypnotize people into eating unhealthy food so we can sell them expensive medicines to cure conditions caused by the food - making sure our quarterly earnings are up, up, up.
Just think about how differently we would be acting if our approach to solving terrorism was to achieve independence from foreign oil. How beneficial this would be to the economy? It might even solve the Social Security "crisis".
Longevity would change everything. It would become a long term thinking world. If you could live 200 years, you might plan ahead a little better.
Posted by: Mary at April 7, 2005 1:40 PM
Hi April,
Very interesting question you raise. It seems to me that, while no one likes the idea of getting older and all the deterioration that entails, people accept it as inevitable.
In fact, a great many cultures the world over are built upon the notion that we as humans are mortal beings. To challenge that notion is to challenge cherished beliefs.
If we really can cure aging, and people can all of a sudden live indefinitely long lives, what purpose would religion serve? Would we need doctors, hospitals, and drug companies anymore?
Also, not to get all Tranhumanist on you, but what about our brains? Even if brain cells were to remain as good as new, would we run out of space for our memories? Would we have to store our memory outside of our own body?
These kinds of issues may have little consequence if our technology grows in leaps and bounds, but, without the right mindset and motivation, it all can sound extraordinarily "pie in the sky," if not downright scary.
While I personally see the nobility in wanting to cure aging, it wouldn't surprise me if many people, especially those with wealth and power, would find the notion radical or even threatening.
Nevertheless, I suspect there are plenty of exceptions out there, and I wish you all the best in finding them.
-Dan
Posted by: Dan at April 7, 2005 2:33 PM
Hey April,
Not that I'm a cynic (!) but my impression has always been that corporate philanthropy is motivated, at least in part, by "intangible" returns (image enhancement). The wealthy benefit from the appearance of benevolence, no?
But anyway, regarding your expressed frustrations finding potential donors. I wonder how your complaint might be perceived as a knee-jerk or "back-lash" strategy? You could hurt your image and thus jeapordize your fund-raising endeavors if others incorrectly perceive you as reactionary, or somehow seeking to "steal" resources from the needy.
Also, if the anti-aging campaign receives the kind of PR it probably needs in order to alter public opinion and make donors more favorable to your cause, you'd better get used to being lampooned. It's a tradition, I believe, satirizing true-believers. As a woman, and a pretty woman, which I gather from reading your blog, you are an apt target. A target which might be very useful to the science-guys involved in anti-aging, as you might deflect ridicule away from them, toward yourself. What?? How dare I say this? It's not an accusation, nor an assertion of my opinion. Just an example of one thing people might say. Whatever the truth about your life is, people will draw all sorts of conclusions about you, based not just on the details you share about your life in your blog, but from your very decision to advertise your life publically as you do. Of course, even negative publicity is publicity. I suspect you are shrewd enough to have figured all of this out already though.
And another possible outcome finds most people just continuing to ignore life-extentionists.
Best of luck to you,
Christina
Posted by: Christina at April 7, 2005 6:48 PM
Hello April,
First of all, I hope you feel better and get over your cold pretty quickly. Colds are never fun !!
Secondly, I just have a quick ? for you. I think you may have touched on it briefly, but just wondering if you had any ideas::
So, I have been doing CR for about 2 years now. I was rather small to begin with, and went from 120 to currently about 107-108. I did it slow (2years) but have also exercised along with cutting calories. I usually average 1200-1300 per day, and exercise abt an hour a day maybe 5-6 days a week. (I do think I eat more then the 1200-1300 esp on the weekends, but the exercise brings the averages down)..
So, my ? is --- I have just recently started to not get my 'friend' each month. My gyno thinks that it could be due to CR and over-exercising. Has this happened to you at all? Or any other females that you know practicing CR? I feel good, but he states that my estrogen levels are low, and thinks that may be the reason.. Any ideas or thoughts??
I'm 32, abt 5'2" and between 107-108 (which is a normal healthy weight at my height), but do you think it could be low body fat causing this??
Any ideas would be appreciated :)
Thank you
Steph..
Posted by: Stephanie at April 8, 2005 5:28 AM