Tuesday night was another lecture in the NYAS’s Science & the City: Provocative Thinkers Series. Full disclosure, I knew I would enjoy the talk even before it started. The speaker was Aubrey de Grey, who has been described as everything from purely genius to absolutely crazy.

Why? Well, de Grey’s research and beliefs would be why, which were aptly summed up by the lecture’s title, “The End of Aging”. His scientific work aims to cure humans of the ailments of aging, prolong healthy life, and therefore extend life expectancy indefinitely, or close to it. I know it sounds crazy, but listening to his rationale, methodology, and answer to every question the audience did and did not ask … it starts not to sound so crazy!

Basically, de Grey has defined aging as the unfortunate deterioration in health which occurs as a consequence of living. Fair enough. According to de Grey, there are seven types of accumulated damage and subsequent pathology that are caused by aging, such as mitochondrial mutations or extracellular junk. He believe, and here is the leap of faith (and science), that all of these seven types of damages can be fixed, restoring health and longevity – and all of this within the next 30-40 years.

What made me smirk was when someone asked him about the ecological consequences (e.g. over-population) that would result from a population that would not die. Aubrey de Grey shrugged it off, yes it would be problem, but we would find a solution as we have for the multitude of other life extending methods (think penicillin).

But don’t take it from me … the well versed, incredibly witty de Grey does himself much more justice. The podcast from the event will be on the NYAS website in a week, and a quick Google search will provide a plethora of other tid bits – such as his SENS Foundation, a Technology Review article (and subsequent debate), TED talk, etc.

Also, you can listen to the podcast of the Science & the City talk from two weeks ago by clinical neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg.