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joining us from cambridge england is doctor audrey degrades of biomedical
gerontologist i'll be thanks for joining us
my pleasure
i've been following your work ever since the sixty minutes peace i think it was
back in two thousand six and i'm pretty interested by and you do a lot of work
about
aging and the idea that aging is basically something that can be
controlled and that doesn't have to happen the way it's basically been
accepted for as long as humans have been on earth
tell me a little bit about how you first got into this line of work
well alive
really no-nonsense smaller yesterday's icon even think how soon that beijing
was in some sense of the earth really something that was preferable obviously
bad press and secondly um...
essentially amenable to medical intervention
and
are a went through my childhood and the eighth and turned into i was about
that's a uh... really not appreciating it sold out there
was an unpopular view
and that actually makes people were much more pragmatic about aging
i had
completely put into a bad biologists the agreed with me that this was that
most important thing to work on and but not all of whom were actually working on
it because one never heard about much progress
i never thought about that you know because averted our problem
uh... level but if we're going to be a fitful and
you know you and talk about that very much
but you don't talk about the current try very much are there so he might not
really a particularly
informative fact so i
i guess liberal
epiphany for me was around the age of thirty one am by virtue of
conversations with my wife through the bio data divide that we have previously
uh...
and with
people are all about it for that matter either
i began to appreciate that actually much borrowed it's still not about aging is
particularly important to agree particularly interesting
and fairer eventually i just bad at all
knit changing their mind about this and decided that there was nothing for it
but to try and get myself and so i switched filled from computer science
which was my written training
so sent to the average person i think the idea that aging can be controlled
than in a in a very straightforward way would be a a new idea
and i know you can't speak for hours about this but to the newcomer to this
type of of line of thought what's the simple explanation that you have as to
how and why eighteen can be controlled is the same
well of course i'm so i'm not saying that it can be controlled two dash
i'm saying that we are within striking distance of developing therapies which
will be able to control in the future
and because as with any new technology of any kind with the medical or other
wise we don't know how soon it's going to be before the ten million are
actually developed
i would say that the fifty percent chance of getting that within the next
twenty five years or so
now waffle technology they were talking about here essentially we can describe
that in just two words it
regenerated medicine
in other words
repairing the various types of molecular and cellular damage that accumulated
throughout life goes
side-effect of normal metabolism of the normal operation of the your money
amplified effect because they came in right
but eventually harmful eventually get in the way of our metabolism and close the
disease and disability of old age
even though until that time
because they're less abundant
where they are eventually harmless what's gonna delivery on sorry interrupt
but what's the needy gritty of what would a treatment like this look like in
other words you going to a medical office presumably
and if you were given a liquid some kind of injection and literally what would be
like
the first thing so enough to that is expo they got kinda lost overtime
because lee actually a member of the federal page if something like a big
revenue refined
initially for example a member of extensive amounts of surgery to replace
all organs and
as time goes on we may be able to eliminate that aspect and do things
purely at the moment scopic cellular and molecular level
uh... however and about him that one can say that it's really not going to be all
that much different from the short of
whereever we
deliver medicine today so intimation injections injected into the big part of
it
in general stem cell therapy to that in the somewhat experimental and limited
formerly already exist
is down mostly by injections by simply preparing so into the right sized and
then introducing them into the circulation
uh... and then i just go to the right thing to do what we want to do
the sign is largely true in the case of gene therapy would impact d_n_a_
typically packaged into engineered viruses
and again we inject leading to blood stream it just goes and dot that faint
celia injections of the biggest part of this but now the whole thing you
mentioned stem cell research in this is interesting because it's something we
talk about on this program quite a bit and in the u_s_ is i'm sure you know
there's a lot of resist political resistance to stem cell research for
reasons typically relating to religion
are we to expect the same type of resistance and it may be different you
know on your side of the atlantic ocean than ours are we do expect similar type
of resistance this to some of the research you're doing
listen to rush in in relation to edging is very different from a situation that
has been some problems in the u_s_ in relation to stem cell research
was going on in the u_s_ in relation to stem cell research is very very
circumscribed very narrowly defined in baseball about embryonic stem cells and
the focus of a dole has been about the way in which those cells offer pat
whether created
namely
the fact that creation of them have involved the destruction of very early
embryos
so if one believes for religious reasons but *** early embryos are already
human beings in a real friend you know with us all in all that sort of things
planned twelve trillion and a little upset about united astronomers embryos
for medical purposes just one would be about destroying an adult
medical practitioners
uh...
and of course whether or not the five day old embryo did what he destroyed in
the preparation of a stem cells
is actually anything that's not something that can be answered by
scientific name so there are certain items of scientific evidence that can be
accepts armed on the were on the side of that argument
uh...
well the good thing is vast
it's only a matter of the way in which the seller created in other words if we
develop a new way to create defend himself but without
and it will with a clear sidestepping avoiding the whole issue put let's say
that i think that i i i i i don't know
because very important to remember that this is a very what has happened just a
few years ago now for five years ago
according to plan developed a way straight normal adult film turned them
into cells of the have pretty much exactly like embryonic stem cell level
at all over the world in the same thing that's about holly should have gone away
but i went on to your original question which will cut more directly that could
be lost
aging going to actually go the same way and i think that certainly there is like
to be a whole bunch of opposition
research to control aging has already had in fact from a whole bunch of cause
including religious courses
but it's not going to be the same source of resistant it's going to do this and
based on the consequences of any age
no success in developing new therapies
rather than
based on the methods for actually implementing
i think there will be both because i i want to get to some of the consequences
you're mentioning but i can completely imagine having a sense of the what we
call the religious right here in the u_s_ that they would say
uh... balloting year old person which will get to know we have mentioned that
yet that's not what god wanted and of course there's no way for us to know
what god did i didn't want but i i would by insure that we would hear that now
the consequences your mentioning would be along the lines of the financial
overpopulation ethical questions right and and minders norman
i sent out now
i consider a the creation of any
people about years old at one of the consequences
i'm still talking here about the results all the therapy is not the purpose of
the show
focused and under the orthodox we work on getting sick
when i look on devotee i will competing people healthy stopping them from
getting sick
in other words i'm only focused on the disease and disabilities of old age
if we at truly want to be able to postpone indefinitely voters isn't
disabilities so the people stayed in
uh... truly youthful
health effects
whether mentally or physically
as long as their lives
then it's very likely that the will be a consequence without a fight a fact which
is that people would have a great deal longer well that's a consequence if not
the purpose of this work
you've said in two thousand eight and more recently that you think the first
human who live up to a thousand years is is probably already alive now they may
not be fifty or sixty years old today
can you explain war how you came to that conclusion first of all and am i right
inferring that that suggests within the next twenty years there will be
significant developments along these lines
you've got it exactly i think bribes
v
chances are good perhaps fifty fifty ohm all that within the next uh... take
twenty five years we will develop regenerated medicine to control aging
to a degree
vats i would love to go but decisive
to agree well we are postponing the
on facts of age-related ill health by more than a year play here
in other words we are
keeping people deciding what to expect
from al from major part of our other deployed wanted it
and slow with regard to that point which i think on longevity escape velocity and
we maintain its
way will be of the helping people we will be allowing people to avoid the
help of old age however along with it
now
edges like a thousand com really uh... pretty arbitrary but they come from
copulating how long people would live on average
vay maintains throughout the life of along with it
the same risk of death each year that we see today in the western world beyond a
doubt
if you get the idea of
just eight twenty-six today
then new york times of not going to try seven if you are living in a written
after and by the western world
is very low it's around why the thousand alas
so that means clearly that if you continue to have at risk of death each
year
every year however long you have been on a ridiculous enough for the vice pat
that's just rebel mathematics
of course it is pretty arbitrary the prediction predictions god because
the actual risk of death will depend upon what happened in terms of other
technologies that may influence
uh... risks of death
from causes other than aging things like accidents for example and i think may
very well trained rather rapidly as time goes on and other major rather more
rapidly than risk of death from aging
so actually these numbers are really just completely arbitrary and that's
really why the relaxed talk about them very much the people come from the us
make along with a harlem could we live with the therapies and i have to get
some kind of threat out a cheering at again uh... i think the idea here is
with this fundamentally change our outlook on life because i'm thinking if
i knew that i had the potential to instead of living i don't know
seventy to ninety years
that potentially a kid that i mean forget about a thousand let's just say
four hundred or five hundred years
i'm i'm not going to say you-know-what the risk of getting hit by a car seems
like it would take away a lot more years then that it would look at my not going
to live my life differently
i think was a lot of christened by and indeed the first thing that i a
predicted when i started thinking about all this
which was one of the heavy gun now
was indeed that a good driving would actually outlawed
uh... because it used to the addressee kills people who live in a rather too
often
uh... but actually i have my move forward somewhat in my thinking since
that time
and my belief these days is actually about by a large was just going to throw
money at the problems we're going to make
whiskey activities less risky just by building you know things like
very very sad cause
uh... that's are simply not going to kill people even in the cash flows of a
human error
uh... in everything that we can do already if we could be bothered but we
don't prioritized them because at the moment only a very small minority of
people down lack of cartoons in the first place
be together
absolutely
in the last couple of minutes we have left can you talk a little bit about
the financial aspect in the sense that when these
treatments become available initially
would be just be available to those who have the most money
with baby guinea-pig on people who have the least money how what can we expect
to happen
aren't quite sure they've therapist will devote everybody who don't know it's
made them
very very shortly after medical level to anybody
and the reason for that is triple in economics
alive today is high-tech medicine which simply come you've got a lot of money on
keeping people alive in about ten of help for a little longer than they
otherwise would
and either spend more money on the many whether westward by like that in this
case this nurse is going to pay for itself because it's going to keep people
in a good state of health where they can continue
to contribute it well society roland of concealing what
and of course whereby they are loved ones are not going to have a lot of
productivity by virtue looking up to that trial elderly parents until
so actually going to be economically suicidal for any country not to make the
staff is available free
uh...
irrespective of the others to patty to anyone who don't have to make them even
interactive s played by the u_s_ etc you can think of
but i think education is a good president for
this guy was going to work
it's fascinating work doctor obvi did raise the chief science officer at the
sends foundation
uh... thanks so much for joining us and i look forward to speaking to you again
my pleasure