The Myth of Aging – Aubrey de Grey, PhD, Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of SENS Research Foundation – Debunking the Myth That Nothing Can Be Done About Aging, Through Scientific Research and Development

Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D., Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of SENS Research Foundation, delivers an overview of aging and the many health problems that develop in our advanced years. Dr. de Grey is a respected member of the science community; he is the noted biomedical gerontologist who devised the innovative SENS platform and co-founded the SENS Research Foundation to further it. Dr. de Grey has written about his work and as an established researcher, he has been appointed to the editorial and scientific advisory boards of many journals, organizations, etc. Dr. de Grey is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America as well as the American Aging Association. He holds a BA in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Biology from the prestigious University of Cambridge.  Dr. de Grey discusses his research in aging and the motivations for tackling the career. As he states, aging is the number one medical problem as it causes more suffering. He was motivated to research in this area because he found that not enough was being done to focus on aging and the myriad of problems that come with it. He talks about the many excuses that are given as reasons to simply accept aging as it is, or not focus on it at all, such as “it’s inevitable…everything ages,” or the philosophical—“death gives meaning to life,” or social—“maybe we could do this, but it would create new problems worse than the problem we are solving.” And as the Ph.D. states, none of these excuses stand up to even the faintest scrutiny, however, they still remain quite popular.  Dr. de Grey explains that ‘why’ and ‘how’ we age are fairly well understood, but it is the understanding of what we already know that is important, to take the information we know to be true and utilize that to design and implement therapies that will prevent the health problems of old age. And this is the core of what Dr. de Grey’s foundation, SENS Research, seeks to accomplish. SENS Research Foundation works to create, promote, and provide wide-ranging access to all kinds of therapies that can cure and prevent the diseases and detrimental disabilities of aging by essentially repairing the damage that builds up within our bodies over long periods of time. SENS Research seeks to change the way the world researches and thus cares for age-related ill health. The Ph.D. discusses stem cell therapy and its ability to repair the damage, loss of cells, etc. As he explains, stem cells can be injected that target areas within the body and repair damage, replace lost cells, and thus keep the body area, organ, etc. functioning in a healthier state. He explains in detail how cells function and the processes used to make genetic modifications. Additionally, Dr. de Grey expounds upon the kinds of complex research they engage in at his foundation, and the types of conditions that they seek to bring more understanding to in order to combat them.