Hughes and de Grey featured in Hartford Advocate

Thanks to writer Adam Bulger for a thoughtful piece on life extension and transhumanism.

Want to Live Forever?
The human-life-extension movement sees a glorious future for us all

Thursday, August 07, 2008

By Adam Bulger

...James Hughes, an administrator and instructor at Trinity College in Hartford, is a leading transhumanist theorist. The executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, which he co-founded when he was the executive director of the World Transhumanist Association, Hughes has written several books on transhumanist ideas, including Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future.

It would appear that Hughes, a buttoned-down professor-type with a close-cropped goatee, is dealing with ideas better suited to science fiction than the real world. However, he traces transhumanist history back to old, earth-bound traditions.

“It goes back to the enlightenment, about 400 years or so,” Hughes said. “And when you go back to those original ideas, you see a number of things emerging, among them the notion that science and tech can be applied to human affairs, and things can be engineered and improved upon."…





Slowing body degeneration is a modest goal, and doesn’t go far enough for some national anti-aging researchers. Aubrey de Grey, an energetic Englishman with a ZZ Top-length beard, is the chief researcher and evangelist for an anti-aging movement that views aging as a disease that can be cured, and cured soon.

“I think we have a 50 percent chance of getting there in around 25 years, so long as the early proof-of-concept work in mice is well-enough funded for the next 10 years or so,” de Grey said via e-mail.

Since 2003, de Grey’s organization, the Methuselah Foundation (named for the Biblical figure who supposedly lived 900 years), has offered a Methuselah Mouse Prize for researchers who extend the lives of mice. And the cash award is at $4.5 million.