Browse content similar to Aubrey De Grey - chief science officer and co-founder of the SENS Foundation. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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buildings. You are up`to`date. Now it is time | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
for HARDtalk. Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Stephen | :00:00. | :00:16. | |
Sackur. Imagine life without ageing. You could live for hundreds of years | :00:17. | :00:19. | |
with the mental and physical attributes of your 25`year`old self. | :00:20. | :00:22. | |
Would you be tempted? My guest today is a scientist and futurologist who | :00:23. | :00:25. | |
believes it is a proposition that 21st century biotechnology will soon | :00:26. | :00:32. | |
be able to deliver. Aubrey de Grey's Californian research foundation is | :00:33. | :00:34. | |
spending millions of dollars in a bid to conquer the ageing process. | :00:35. | :00:43. | |
Is his vision inspiring, daft, or downright dangerous? | :00:44. | :01:10. | |
Aubrey de Grey, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you for having me on the show. | :01:11. | :01:17. | |
I guess I have always instinctively assumed that ageing is natural, that | :01:18. | :01:20. | |
it is part of the evolutionary process. Am I wrong? You're | :01:21. | :01:29. | |
absolutely wrong. First of all, I think it's very important for us all | :01:30. | :01:32. | |
to understand that the word natural must be qualified in its use. All of | :01:33. | :01:36. | |
technology is about humanity manipulating nature for its own | :01:37. | :01:41. | |
ends. Whether it is or the wheel or antibiotics or anything, what we are | :01:42. | :01:44. | |
doing is taking what is natural and saying that is not good enough, and | :01:45. | :01:51. | |
fixing it. It would be unnatural for us not to do that, to leave | :01:52. | :01:54. | |
something that is bad, ill health or old age, and not fix it. And when it | :01:55. | :01:59. | |
comes to that part of the evolutionary process, am I wrong | :02:00. | :02:02. | |
about that as well? You have birth, you go through life, you reproduce, | :02:03. | :02:08. | |
you age, and you die. In a sense, you are wrong about that as well. It | :02:09. | :02:11. | |
turns out that even though originally when people started to | :02:12. | :02:14. | |
think about evolution in the 19th century, they said that maybe ageing | :02:15. | :02:17. | |
exists in order to let natural selection work. People in the 1950s | :02:18. | :02:22. | |
though began to realise that no, that could not be true, because | :02:23. | :02:25. | |
hardly any organisms in the wild live long enough to actually exhibit | :02:26. | :02:28. | |
much of a functional decline during ageing. They get eaten or starve to | :02:29. | :02:33. | |
death, or they freeze to death, before they have any real symptoms | :02:34. | :02:37. | |
of the sort we might see in captivity today. Alright, so let's | :02:38. | :02:44. | |
look at a dictionary definition of disease. Because I am very struck | :02:45. | :02:50. | |
with this word. You have basically for a long time now insisted that | :02:51. | :02:53. | |
ageing should be regarded as a disease. My dictionary says that | :02:54. | :02:56. | |
disease is illness, sickness, ailment, disordered or incorrectly | :02:57. | :02:58. | |
functioning system of the body resulting from genetic or | :02:59. | :03:00. | |
developmental errors, infections, et cetera. That does not seem to meet | :03:01. | :03:10. | |
to fit the ageing idea. They put 'et cetera' in for a reason. I don't | :03:11. | :03:15. | |
like to call ageing disease. That is slightly inaccurate. What I like to | :03:16. | :03:18. | |
say is slightly more generous, and say it is a medical condition. In | :03:19. | :03:23. | |
other words, it is something that has the potential in the end to be | :03:24. | :03:27. | |
treated by, or prevented, or even reversed, by medicine. That even | :03:28. | :03:35. | |
bigger concept, reversed. You are saying that people who have aged can | :03:36. | :03:40. | |
in some way have that reversed. That is an understatement. The real | :03:41. | :03:43. | |
genesis of what the SENS Foundation does was what I realised in 2000. | :03:44. | :03:51. | |
This is your California`based foundation committing millions of | :03:52. | :03:53. | |
research dollars to this idea that ageing can be combated, and as you | :03:54. | :04:01. | |
say, reversed. Correct. So the big genesis for this work was when I | :04:02. | :04:04. | |
realised that actually reversing ageing, taking someone who already | :04:05. | :04:07. | |
has some of the symptoms of old age and genuinely rejuvenating them so | :04:08. | :04:10. | |
their biological age is like young adulthood, that might actually be | :04:11. | :04:12. | |
technologically easier than messing around with the way the body works, | :04:13. | :04:16. | |
so as to slow down ageing, which had been historically the focus of | :04:17. | :04:26. | |
people who tried to stem ageing. Is this a question then of replacing | :04:27. | :04:29. | |
parts? I know there is this analogy used of the car, when you say that | :04:30. | :04:33. | |
frankly, any car can be kept running forever if you constantly replace | :04:34. | :04:40. | |
worn parts and components. Is that what your theory is for the human | :04:41. | :04:43. | |
body? That we simply undertake replacement therapy, as you need to? | :04:44. | :04:46. | |
In a way. We must remember that whether a particular thing is | :04:47. | :04:49. | |
replacement, or whether it is repaired, is kind of a matter of | :04:50. | :04:52. | |
definition with regard to what scale you're looking at. For example, if | :04:53. | :04:58. | |
you replace the engine of a car, then you are repairing a car. If you | :04:59. | :05:03. | |
replace the spark plug, you are repairing the engine. And in the | :05:04. | :05:07. | |
same way, in the human body, we typically deal with replacement at | :05:08. | :05:10. | |
the microscopic level, the cellular, molecular level, which would | :05:11. | :05:19. | |
constitute repair at a higher scale. Regarding the whole body. What is it | :05:20. | :05:24. | |
about where science is today, or has been for the last decade, that makes | :05:25. | :05:27. | |
you, unlike so very many scientists, confident that this notion of | :05:28. | :05:30. | |
reversing the ageing process is now within our reach? There is no single | :05:31. | :05:39. | |
answer to that question. In fact that is precisely why it took so | :05:40. | :05:43. | |
long for anyone to make the realisation that this might be a | :05:44. | :05:46. | |
feasible way to go. What I did in 2000, which has led to all the work | :05:47. | :05:50. | |
we have done since, was to bring together a lot of different strands | :05:51. | :05:53. | |
that had not previously been talking to each other, and in most of which, | :05:54. | :05:57. | |
had not even been developed for the purposes of combating ageing, but | :05:58. | :05:59. | |
rather for other purposes within biology, sometimes not even medical | :06:00. | :06:04. | |
purposes. And I was able to see that by putting all these things | :06:05. | :06:06. | |
together, we could actually develop a comprehensive plan, a | :06:07. | :06:08. | |
comprehensive panel of interventions that should be able to be developed | :06:09. | :06:11. | |
within the foreseeable future, which would cover all the bases of ageing. | :06:12. | :06:20. | |
Should be, you say ` in the end, this is a leap of faith. There is no | :06:21. | :06:24. | |
body of research, no evidence you can point me towards, which shows | :06:25. | :06:27. | |
that your proposition, your fundamental idea, is based in | :06:28. | :06:34. | |
scientific fact. You're making a very good point there, because | :06:35. | :06:37. | |
people often make this mistake of conflating science with technology. | :06:38. | :06:40. | |
All pioneering technology consists of leaps of faith, and so it should. | :06:41. | :06:45. | |
What one is doing is taking what is already known, what we can already | :06:46. | :06:48. | |
do, and putting pieces together to form a new concept that is greater | :06:49. | :06:56. | |
than the sum of its parts. That is what all pioneering technology is | :06:57. | :06:59. | |
about. You say to take what is already known. Let me quote some... | :07:00. | :07:12. | |
I would not pretend to be a fully qualified scientist, or in any way a | :07:13. | :07:15. | |
scientist. But I read what they say, esteemed Stanford scientist Walter | :07:16. | :07:18. | |
Bortz, who you have debated with in the past about the merits of your | :07:19. | :07:21. | |
ideas, quotes very basic scientific law. He says the second law of | :07:22. | :07:25. | |
thermodynamics still rules. It is the basics of energy, matter, and | :07:26. | :07:32. | |
time. There is not and will not be a perpetual motion machine. We and | :07:33. | :07:36. | |
everything else wear out. And physical immortality is nothing but | :07:37. | :07:39. | |
a fantasy. Yes. And this kind of makes my point about scientists | :07:40. | :07:41. | |
thinking they know what they're talking about, when actually they | :07:42. | :07:44. | |
only know part of what they are talking about. Example, he has | :07:45. | :07:47. | |
absolutely no answer to the very simple question, which is as | :07:48. | :07:50. | |
follows: if it is true that the second law of thermodynamics | :07:51. | :07:52. | |
controls things, and essentially unidirectionally increases our | :07:53. | :07:54. | |
disorder, then how can babies be born? I'm struggling with that. The | :07:55. | :08:07. | |
point is that babies come from parents that have accumulated damage | :08:08. | :08:10. | |
of ageing to some extent, and yet they do not have that damage. They | :08:11. | :08:16. | |
have the same level of damage from ageing that their parents had when | :08:17. | :08:21. | |
they were born. Somehow there is a way for life, to put it in | :08:22. | :08:23. | |
thermodynamic terms, to export entropy. And the only reason we live | :08:24. | :08:31. | |
as long as we do is because we are so good at exporting entropy. And | :08:32. | :08:38. | |
further than that, medicine allows us to export entropy even more than | :08:39. | :08:42. | |
we ourselves do. In exactly the same way that a car mechanic can remove | :08:43. | :08:45. | |
entropy from a car and therefore keep it going indefinitely, | :08:46. | :08:47. | |
similarly, we should, with medical technology in the foreseeable | :08:48. | :08:50. | |
future, be able to do the same to the machine that we call the human | :08:51. | :08:54. | |
body. As you have pointed out, everyone gets back to cars, but as | :08:55. | :08:57. | |
you have pointed out, if a car's engine fails, the entire engine can | :08:58. | :09:01. | |
be taken out and a new one put in. If my brain fails, there is no way | :09:02. | :09:05. | |
that I can have a brain transplant and remain Stephen Sackur, and have | :09:06. | :09:11. | |
a new brain, someone else's brain. This brings us back to the | :09:12. | :09:13. | |
distinction between replacement and repair. If an engine fails, it can | :09:14. | :09:19. | |
be repaired in some cases by replacing components of the engine. | :09:20. | :09:21. | |
Similarly as the brain goes downhill, we have the option of | :09:22. | :09:24. | |
replacing individual cells that have gone missing, or removing waste | :09:25. | :09:27. | |
products that accumulate, and so on, without actually replacing the whole | :09:28. | :09:32. | |
brain at all. Which indeed would defeat the object, as you say. Why | :09:33. | :09:37. | |
is it ` you explain these things in pretty straightforward and clear`cut | :09:38. | :09:43. | |
terms. They are straightforward. If they are, why is it that the vast | :09:44. | :09:46. | |
body of scientific opinion is against you? I mean, I could quote | :09:47. | :09:51. | |
you a heap of names who are experts in gerontology and the ageing | :09:52. | :09:54. | |
process, and the medicine behind all of this, who say that you are just | :09:55. | :10:00. | |
plain wrong. First of all, when you find these criticisms, you should | :10:01. | :10:03. | |
always check the dates on them. The criticism of my work was indeed | :10:04. | :10:06. | |
pretty universal back in the mid`2000s or so. Very much more | :10:07. | :10:11. | |
recently, this isn't the case, essentially. The scientific advisory | :10:12. | :10:15. | |
board of our foundation, people who have unambiguously put their names | :10:16. | :10:18. | |
and endorsement on all of this, consists of dignitaries within the | :10:19. | :10:20. | |
scientific community who are every bit as dominant as anyone who has | :10:21. | :10:29. | |
ever criticised the work. That is because, over that period of time, | :10:30. | :10:32. | |
we have gradually succeeded in educating our critics, and people | :10:33. | :10:34. | |
understand that what we're saying is not so crazy as they may | :10:35. | :10:37. | |
instinctively have believed at the beginning. One of the credibility | :10:38. | :10:43. | |
problems that you have is that, correct me if I'm wrong, but I | :10:44. | :10:46. | |
believe that sometime ago said that the first human being who is going | :10:47. | :10:50. | |
to live to be a thousand years old is already amongst us, and indeed | :10:51. | :10:55. | |
already middle`aged. That claim looks frankly incredible right now. | :10:56. | :11:01. | |
Are you sticking with it? I am sticking with it. Let me make a | :11:02. | :11:05. | |
slight correction, I never said that it was certain. But I think there is | :11:06. | :11:10. | |
at least a 50`50 chance it is true. If this person is already | :11:11. | :11:13. | |
middle`aged, and they will live to be a thousand, a lot has happened | :11:14. | :11:16. | |
very quickly. We know that the oldest human being ever on this | :11:17. | :11:21. | |
planet guide just short of 123. And we know that right now it seems | :11:22. | :11:24. | |
there is a so`called wall of death that the human species hits when | :11:25. | :11:28. | |
they get pretty much to be 110 or so, where people just conk out. They | :11:29. | :11:34. | |
die. And that doesn't seem to have changed over a very long period of | :11:35. | :11:39. | |
time. That's correct. But if they were 60 today, and they were | :11:40. | :11:42. | |
naturally going to live to 110 without any further medical | :11:43. | :11:45. | |
progress, that means we have 50 years to sort out what to do. We | :11:46. | :11:55. | |
have maybe 20 or 25 or 30 years to sort out what to do before they even | :11:56. | :11:58. | |
start doing significantly downhill. Because don't forget, people who | :11:59. | :12:01. | |
live to 110 get that way by staying unusually healthy throughout their | :12:02. | :12:04. | |
lives, not by staying alive for a long time in the state of health of | :12:05. | :12:11. | |
a typical 80`year`old. So if we take someone like that, aged 80 or 85, | :12:12. | :12:15. | |
they will be biologically 65 or 70 for average people. They will be the | :12:16. | :12:20. | |
likeliest beneficiaries of this rejuvenation technology, that we | :12:21. | :12:23. | |
think we have at least a 50`50 chance of putting in place within | :12:24. | :12:32. | |
the next 20 or 25 years. Let's get away from the pure science, and just | :12:33. | :12:36. | |
by way of one of your points, Professor Tom Kirkwood, who is | :12:37. | :12:38. | |
another of your leading critics said that your proposition was incredible | :12:39. | :12:41. | |
in scientific terms, given today's scientific knowledge, just last | :12:42. | :12:48. | |
year. So he is not someone who was commenting back in the mid`2000. But | :12:49. | :12:52. | |
let's not get stuck on that, let's talk about the scientific body of | :12:53. | :12:55. | |
opinion which is said that never mind whether Aubrey is right or | :12:56. | :12:58. | |
wrong, he is diverting attention from medical challenges in the here | :12:59. | :13:01. | |
and now which are much more important. For example, just to take | :13:02. | :13:13. | |
one, 1.5 million children every year die of diarrhoea. I don't know how | :13:14. | :13:16. | |
many million die of malaria. But these are treatable problems, which | :13:17. | :13:19. | |
need resources. And you are calling for significant resources to be | :13:20. | :13:21. | |
diverted to the proposition of eternal youth. Actually, I would not | :13:22. | :13:30. | |
say diverted. This is one thing. It often is in healthcare spending. In | :13:31. | :13:33. | |
healthcare spending, yes. But in medical research we are talking | :13:34. | :13:36. | |
about a much smaller amount of money than is spent on medical care. | :13:37. | :13:40. | |
Therefore it would be trivial to double whole of medical research | :13:41. | :13:43. | |
funding worldwide and have a negative, negligible impact even if | :13:44. | :13:49. | |
it all came out of medicine. It would negligibly reduce the amount | :13:50. | :13:52. | |
of spending in those areas. That is why we need to make a case for each | :13:53. | :13:56. | |
type of research, whether medical or any other, on its face, and not in | :13:57. | :13:59. | |
relative competition with other areas. | :14:00. | :14:15. | |
The demographics are ageing. Soon 40% of the population in Japan will | :14:16. | :14:27. | |
be aged over 65. What are the implications if you ensure that so | :14:28. | :14:31. | |
many of the people who die of ageing in the future no longer die of | :14:32. | :14:34. | |
ageing? The first implication of course is the good news, namely that | :14:35. | :14:37. | |
the problem of so many people being over the age of 65 wouldn't be a | :14:38. | :14:40. | |
problem anymore, because those people will be able to look after | :14:41. | :14:43. | |
themselves because they will be healthy. The whole idea here is to | :14:44. | :14:49. | |
keep people in the youthful state, so that they can continue wealth to | :14:50. | :14:53. | |
society. The only reason we give money to people to do nothing from | :14:54. | :14:57. | |
the age of 65 is because we are very sorry for them. The reason we are | :14:58. | :15:01. | |
sorry is because they're about to get sick and die. All these people | :15:02. | :15:08. | |
will be vital, vigorous, youthful? In your view, not dependent, but | :15:09. | :15:15. | |
working. Where would the jobs come from? This is a mistake that a lot | :15:16. | :15:28. | |
of people make. People look at the distant future and they consider one | :15:29. | :15:30. | |
particular perspective and they evaluated in the context of a | :15:31. | :15:33. | |
completely arbitrary assumption that nothing else is going to change. In | :15:34. | :15:39. | |
this case, what we have to take into account is that far before we see | :15:40. | :15:42. | |
any significant demographic change as a result of the medical control | :15:43. | :15:45. | |
of ageing, we will see the continued role of automation. The reason the | :15:46. | :15:50. | |
services sector exists today is because it can. Because | :15:51. | :15:56. | |
manufacturing and agriculture doesn't need as many people any | :15:57. | :15:58. | |
more. Automation began with the industrial revolution. Today we see | :15:59. | :16:02. | |
a clear trend in the same direction with the service sector. I want to | :16:03. | :16:10. | |
finish. I don't think that we are going to find a third sector. | :16:11. | :16:18. | |
There's only so many people you need in the entertainment industry. I | :16:19. | :16:22. | |
think we're going to end up very soon seriously biting the bullet of | :16:23. | :16:25. | |
redesigning the concept of a career. The concept of the working week and | :16:26. | :16:29. | |
working life, in a manner that will change your question. Let's go even | :16:30. | :16:32. | |
more basic and talk about resources, how to feed this population that is | :16:33. | :16:36. | |
frankly freed from the process of ageing and age`related death. That | :16:37. | :16:38. | |
means, short of wars and suicide and some diseases that are nothing to do | :16:39. | :16:42. | |
with ageing, most people will be living indefinitely. Therefore, the | :16:43. | :16:50. | |
11 billion predicted for the end of the 21st century might be | :16:51. | :16:56. | |
significantly higher than that. How on earth do you believe the planet | :16:57. | :17:03. | |
can sustain all of these people? First of all, it's important to do | :17:04. | :17:06. | |
the actual mathematics and figure out what would be changed without | :17:07. | :17:12. | |
death from ageing. The changes are very little, compared to what might | :17:13. | :17:18. | |
be expected. I will give you a simple statistic. Today, more than | :17:19. | :17:23. | |
twice as many people are born each day as people die. In other words, | :17:24. | :17:31. | |
if we completely eliminated death, all death, today, we could actually | :17:32. | :17:34. | |
succeed in getting a declining population just by halving the | :17:35. | :17:39. | |
birthrate. I'm not say that's going to happen, don't get me wrong, but | :17:40. | :17:43. | |
we have a lot of knobs to twiddle. All of this happens slowly. Remember | :17:44. | :17:46. | |
all of the other technological advances that seem likely to occur. | :17:47. | :17:49. | |
The main difficulty today that comes from overpopulation is climate | :17:50. | :17:54. | |
change. The reason that happens is not because of having seven billion | :17:55. | :17:57. | |
people here but because those people are using a lot of fossil fuels. 50 | :17:58. | :18:02. | |
years from now, with greater use of renewable energy and nuclear fusion, | :18:03. | :18:05. | |
we will be able to increase the capacity of the planet. That keyword | :18:06. | :18:10. | |
you used, whatever, gets to the nub of the problem. You are a | :18:11. | :18:15. | |
futurologist who is coming out with a profound idea about ageing and the | :18:16. | :18:18. | |
ability of the human species to conquer it. You say that of course | :18:19. | :18:25. | |
it will have knock`on ramifications, massive ones, but we will come up | :18:26. | :18:29. | |
with a solution and it's not my responsibility to think about it. It | :18:30. | :18:37. | |
is and that's why I'm here. But the thing is, one has to go much further | :18:38. | :18:41. | |
than to say, oh dear, there might be problems, in order to justify not | :18:42. | :18:47. | |
fixing the problem we have today. The fact is, if we don't know | :18:48. | :18:50. | |
whether the solution to the problem we have today will create | :18:51. | :18:54. | |
insurmountable other problems... You are prepared to admit... I certainly | :18:55. | :19:00. | |
am prepared to admit. But your proposition about ageing could be, | :19:01. | :19:02. | |
frankly, a species destructive notion. I wouldn't go that far but | :19:03. | :19:10. | |
certainly there are problems that will be created. I don't know the | :19:11. | :19:14. | |
future any better than you do, so I can't be absolutely sure that we | :19:15. | :19:17. | |
will solve those problems that we may create as a result of solving | :19:18. | :19:22. | |
the problems we have today. We don't need to know that we might create | :19:23. | :19:36. | |
problems in this way. If we don't know, then maybe we have a moral | :19:37. | :19:39. | |
obligation to develop technologies so that humanity of the future have | :19:40. | :19:43. | |
the option of how to use it. If we say, oh dear, there might be these | :19:44. | :19:46. | |
problems, therefore let's not do this, then humanity of the future | :19:47. | :19:49. | |
won't have that option. If it turns out that they have solved or | :19:50. | :19:52. | |
pre`empted the problems we were worried about, then it would be | :19:53. | :19:55. | |
happy with our decision. I don't want to be guilty with that. You | :19:56. | :19:58. | |
raise such profound issues, based upon your view of where technology | :19:59. | :20:02. | |
is heading. Is it personally driven by a fear of death? It isn't, | :20:03. | :20:08. | |
actually. It's driven by a desire to make a difference, to do | :20:09. | :20:16. | |
humanitarian things. I have a good track record in this department. | :20:17. | :20:19. | |
Before I was a biologist I was a computer scientist and I worked on | :20:20. | :20:21. | |
artificial intelligence research. I think the progress of automation is | :20:22. | :20:25. | |
a good thing, relieving us of the tedium of going down mines and | :20:26. | :20:28. | |
serving hamburgers and so on. Only when I discovered that biologists | :20:29. | :20:30. | |
were scandalously neglecting the problem of ageing is when I moved | :20:31. | :20:34. | |
careers. You've said in the past that if I do get sick I don't want | :20:35. | :20:45. | |
to die. `` don't get sick. Have you thought through what that really | :20:46. | :20:48. | |
means? You just do not want to die? Try to find anybody who is not sick | :20:49. | :20:52. | |
but wants to die in the near term. That's not what you're saying. Your | :20:53. | :20:56. | |
entire thesis is that, in the end, short of war or being bashed on the | :20:57. | :20:59. | |
head at the end of the street, that we will only die if we choose to | :21:00. | :21:03. | |
die. Pretty much. Of course there will be... There are other ways we | :21:04. | :21:06. | |
could die without wanting to, like asteroid impact. There are plenty of | :21:07. | :21:20. | |
risks. But my feeling is that at the moment I'm healthy and mysteriously | :21:21. | :21:23. | |
I don't want to die any time soon. I don't think that there's a factor in | :21:24. | :21:27. | |
that position that comes from how long ago... Do you have children? I | :21:28. | :21:31. | |
don't. Would it be different if you did? If one imagines how human | :21:32. | :21:35. | |
societies work, if we, our generation, is to live forever | :21:36. | :21:38. | |
youthful, vigorous, vital, what on earth is the future for our children | :21:39. | :21:41. | |
and how does human society make sense when everybody remains forever | :21:42. | :21:47. | |
young? That's like saying how does human society make sense now, when | :21:48. | :21:50. | |
it's so different to how things were 300 years ago, when 40% of infants | :21:51. | :22:00. | |
die before the age of one. It's a different world now and it still | :22:01. | :22:08. | |
makes sense. I just wonder, is there a part of you that's a provocateur? | :22:09. | :22:25. | |
You love to stir up controversy. You have stirred up a hornets nest of | :22:26. | :22:28. | |
scientific controversy and also ethical controversy. Is that what | :22:29. | :22:31. | |
you are about? George Bernard Shaw said it best. He said "the | :22:32. | :22:34. | |
reasonable man adapts to his circumstances and the unreasonable | :22:35. | :22:37. | |
man adapts circumstances to his will, so all progress depends on the | :22:38. | :22:40. | |
unreasonable man". Are you playing God? I come back to my first and is | :22:41. | :22:47. | |
up. All technology is playing God. There's no difference between what | :22:48. | :22:50. | |
we do and any other type medical research. I think there is. Most | :22:51. | :22:53. | |
people watching this programme would decide that there is because you're | :22:54. | :22:56. | |
challenging something which lies at the heart of our philosophy, our | :22:57. | :22:59. | |
culture, our society. That is, the notion of ageing and death. I am | :23:00. | :23:02. | |
challenging the notion that we need to get sick when we get older. I | :23:03. | :23:09. | |
don't work on longevity. Any aspect of increased longevity that may | :23:10. | :23:12. | |
happen as a result of the work that I am doing is a side`effect. All I | :23:13. | :23:19. | |
work on is health. Final question and a very strange one. Do you think | :23:20. | :23:25. | |
you will live beyond what currently is regarded as a reasonable natural | :23:26. | :23:31. | |
lifespan? When do you think you will die? I'm 51 and I'm doing pretty | :23:32. | :23:37. | |
well for 51. I come out biologically as younger than that. I think I have | :23:38. | :23:44. | |
a 50`50 chance of being around in a good set of health when these | :23:45. | :23:46. | |
technologies come along, which means I can't add to this question. `` | :23:47. | :23:53. | |
can't answer. If the technology takes longer, I won't make it. If it | :23:54. | :23:59. | |
is quicker, I will. Right now, when you look at the work your foundation | :24:00. | :24:02. | |
is producing, how confident can you be of longer life going into the | :24:03. | :24:06. | |
centuries? For me it is around 50`50 and I don't really care. I'm not | :24:07. | :24:09. | |
doing it for myself, I'm doing it for humanity. Aubrey De Grey, thank | :24:10. | :24:12. | |
you for being on HARDtalk. Thank you. | :24:13. | :24:32. | |
We have been promising rain for bank holiday Monday for quite some time | :24:33. | :24:37. | |
and the forecast remains unchanged. It will be wet, just not for | :24:38. | :24:42. | |
everybody. But where the rain does fall, it will be windy as well and | :24:43. | :24:47. | |
quite cool. This is where the clouds are coming from, streaming out from | :24:48. | :24:50. | |
the Atlantic in an area of low pressure | :24:51. | :24:51. |