There are many groups working toward indefinite life extension. They put in a lot of work and lead the way down the paths toward the goal. All of them have one thing in common: they are part of the overall Movement for Indefinite Life Extension.The movement belongs to and is led by each of them. MILE lists many of the most important, central organizations in the information sections of its page.

1.) Fight Aging – http://www.fightaging.org/

2.) LongeCity – http://www.longecity.org/

3.) SENS Research Foundation – http://www.sens.org/

4.) Methuselah Foundation – http://www.mfoundation.org/

5.) Maximum Life Foundation – http://www.maxlife.org/

6.) Lifeboat Foundation – http://www.lifeboat.com/

7.) Singularity Hub – http://www.singularityhub.com/

8.) Foresight Institute – http://www.foresight.org/

9.) Cryonics Overview by LongeCity – http://www.longecity.org/cryonics

10.) Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) – http://www.ieet.org/

11.) 2045 Initiative – http://www.2045.com/

12.) Longevity Alliance – http://www.longevityalliance.org/

13.) Calico – http://www.calicolabs.com/

14.) Eternal Life Fan Club – http://eternallifefanclub.com/

15.) Life Extension Advocacy Foundation – LEAF – http://www.lifeextensionadvocacyfoundation.org/

16.) Transhumanist Party – http://www.transhumanistparty.org/

 

They all have the common factor of needing to gain world awareness as soon as possible.

 

 

We agree with Alex McGuire’s article, “Aubrey de Grey’s Quest to Determine How to Stay Young Forever”: “Inspiring that movement is his [and everybody’s] most difficult job. He considers the world to be in a ‘pro-aging trance’ – people are happy to accept aging as an inevitability rather than a medical problem that science can solve.”

 

That is why the only current goal of the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension (MILE) as a collaborative effort is to gain a world-scale number of people who are aware of it and make the cause of life extension mainstream. This way, all life-extension organizations can have the chance to benefit from the power of world support.

 

This is important because one person can do one year’s worth of work in one year, but one million people, for instance, can do one million years’ worth of work in that same year. Ten thousand supporters for one organization, and 560,000 people who are aware of another organization would all be important, but the goal of indefinite life extension gets here in proportion to the collective speed at which the world goes to get there. Only the movement, which this coalition is – whether “MILE” exists in name or not – brings awareness and support to them all, but MILE adds the goal of focusing on and expediting this process.

 

We must support MILE, or we cannot have indefinite life extension materialize as rapidly as it can. Help us drive numbers here: https://www.facebook.com/movementforindefinitelifeextension/. If you don’t do this, then your probability of eventual death due to senescence and disease will rise. If you do this, then you will have the greatest chance of living that you can have.

 

A movement is an expedited process, a large, uninstitutionalized, organized coalition of like minds that comes together to promote awareness of taking advantage of a unique opportunity to advance an urgently needed improved human condition. When people get together and stick through adversity, then great things materialize; movements can win.

 

 

The times are ripe, and movements abound for good reason. Our continuously improving, unique modern luxuries make movements an ever more common phenomenon, from South Africa’s dissolution of Apartheid, to the rise of organized labor, to the women’s rights movement, the Earth movement, the countless democratic movements sweeping through the Middle East, and more.

 

As the Fight Aging website, renowned in the life-extension community, reminds us,

 

Activist groups were well aware of the possibilities that future research could bring. They worked long and hard, and raised a great noise to the heavens. Lo and behold, the flow of resources to AIDS research increased dramatically. Today, AIDS in Western countries is almost a manageable, chronic condition rather than a death sentence – and this happened in only 20 years. When political and economic barriers are overcome, AIDS patients elsewhere in the world will enjoy the same benefits.

 

Something like this could – and indeed should – happen for the degenerations of aging. We need to organize, speak up and make ourselves heard.

 

Very often, the answer to when life extension will get here is, when the first breakthrough or two happens, or when the first rich person gives the cause a bunch of money. Waiting on a hero is not futile; it could happen – but why would we wait on Excalibur when our sharp, tempered, family swords and the rest of our arms can do it? We already have an entire, growing army of heroes capable of getting this job done.

 

As researcher and activist Maria Konovalenko writes of data collected in an insightful life-extension survey, “Half of the respondents considers [it] a good idea to focus on persuading the billionaires. We don’t think so. First of all, we have to become something as a movement.”

 

Besides, I think Transhumanist Party Presidential hopeful Zoltan Istvan may already be hiding Excalibur on his Immortality Bus somewhere, probably waiting to pull it out in the last run of the election cycle.

 

 

Zoltan is currently raising money for a coffin-shaped tour bus to go around the country lecturing about life extension and the future, as part of his burgeoning Presidential campaign. A tour in a gimmicky bus like this is an important strategy in jarring people into awareness of these topics, and into the discussion. We need more people to start arguing with us now. We will win. And the supporters we stir up along the way will add unstoppable strength. Donate to this crucial campaign if you can.

 

Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey has already picked up Thor’s hammer. He’s out there somewhere, doing battle with it right now. People like Art Levinson, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin have already found a map to the holy grail written on cotton-linen paper, and have brought along partners like AbbVie and the aging-research-pioneering Buck Institute to help them read it. Somebody might end up finding a genie in a bottle that can take us there, but until then, we take the sure route: we march the army through and get this job done bit by bit. We stock enough supplies and arms to get us through, tear down the castle walls of death, destroy its army, set up shop, and make things right. Just like Caesar’s legions put their lives and fortunes on the line to pry open the doors of civilization, we do so with ours to pry open the doors of life. We don’t know if we can, but – Grim Reaper damn us – we fight with the spirit of victory for the sake of this marvelous life.

 

As Howard Zinn said, “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

 

The movement is picking up on multiple fronts. Besides the increasing research and investment, there are actions like increasing numbers of writers, fundraisers, street preachers, and many more. The movement is even helping to revive what many think is the dying field of philosophy. (I don’t think it was ever dying to begin with. We live in times where intellectual curiosity seems to be waning a bit overall, but it will come back. It always does. The philosophers’ blood still courses through the hearts of the people of this world.)

 

The writers can be found all over the internet and in various magazines and publications. People like Roen Horn take the message of life to the streets in segments like this one: <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/TZBxQMeFGss” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

There have been many film production crews that have done important activism for this movement, creating films from Exploring Life Extension – www.youtube.com/watch?v=567XHO0-1qQ – to Do You Want to Live Forever – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtHgIJ6kalk – to The Last Generation to Die http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3505560/ – and many others, including countless television and news appearances.

 

 

About a recent example, The Immortalists – http://theimmortalists.com/ – Graham Templeton of Geek.com writes that it

 

sets out to show you the life extension movement and two of its most successful exponents. … There’s a definite Occupy vibe to much of the life extension crowd

 

The life extension movement […] doesn’t just believe that we could end death by aging, but that we most assuredly will. […] the scientific principles underlying it have been getting increasingly solid. Google’s bet big on life extension with its Calico project, and more and more general electronics manufacturers are getting into biomedical technology too; even if you don’t plan on directly extending human life, you can still make the tools needed to administer the treatments.

 

The number of demonstrations and rallies designed to drive awareness of the cause have been increasing. These brave and vital showings of leadership are pivotal in reaching the next levels of awareness and willingness to step forward for this cause. Because of these people, more around the world find the courage to take their first steps in support of this cause. To find a hero in this cause, you need not look far; there are whole groups of them, and you can take your pick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are the two live segments from the March 2015 Demonstration for Indefinite Life Extension:

 

Segment 1 –

Segment 2 –

 

Crowdfunded research and projects are bringing even more of the power to the everyday supporters of life extension. All of the following are examples of firsts of which I’m proud to say I was a major part of.

 

• Part of the goal of this community-crowdfunded mitochondrial uncoupling research fundraiser was to see if chemical uncoupling could be used to significantly reduce mitochondrial ROS production in vivo, helping to slow mitochondrial mutations’ role in the aging process. (Mitochondrial mutations constitute one of the only seven known forms of damage that cause aging.)

 

 

• Part of the goal of this community-crowdfunded microglial stem-cell therapy research fundraiser was to replace non-functional microglia with new and young cells. This project had the potential of breaking open big doors slowing the rate of the brain’s aging. The contributors to these early crowdfunded life-extension research projects were important in showing the viability of this strategy and in helping to lead the way for many more that have come through since.

 

 

• This 2014 crowdfunded life-extension marketing project was also a first of its kind. Research is a tremendous part of this cause, but for as much as it is worth, spreading the word as far and wide as we can is worth that much more.

 

 

These are all examples of some of the things that more everyday foot soldier activists and “Centurions” for the cause, like us, can do to help take us there. If you can’t lead or march, for example, then build a munitions factory. If you can’t build a munitions factory, then be a distributor or driver. Everybody can and has to get busy doing something in order to secure life in time.

 

We don’t want to die. Sitting it out and letting others handle it will get us all killed. Time is ticking. This isn’t about seeing if we can reach a goal; this is about having it within us to understand that we can achieve this in time for us and the people we know. Achieving indefinitely healthy longevity is about the expedition of this goal as a movement. As I wrote back in 2011,

 

A few extra healthy years is not the goal of the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension in and of itself in the same way that getting the ‘No Coloreds Allowed’ signs removed wasn’t the goal of the Civil Rights Movement, or performing 50 more space launches to orbit Earth wasn’t the goal in getting to the Moon. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., said, it is no time for gradualism; justice too long delayed is justice denied.

 

We had to keep this movement coming together, and all of us – the combination of people, projects, and organizations – did it. Whether the whole was ever referred to as MILE in name or not, the movement is here. All that MILE is, is the temporary application of one goal to the whole, working to make sure that at least 8 million people are reached about all of these activities, and all of this work that is going into the cause, within five years.

 

 

Then, crucially, and only then, can more of them join, and more of them will. We know that people are smart enough to understand this common-sense cause once we give them the chance to think it through.

 

 

We are already on our way. Now it’s just a matter of working hard and completing the jobs.

 

As David Mattin of The National wrote in “Live to 1,000? Long life gets radical”,

 

Whatever your position, the radical life extension movement is not going away: Google’s vast cash reserves and technical expertise will see to that. How will it end? Let’s reconvene in 2913 and discuss.

 

Let’s also reconvene in July of 2017 and see if we’ve reached or surpassed the MILE goal.

 

 

This movement has been chomping at its bits to get through the gates of limitations to begin for a long time. The need for it has now met up with the resources. Actions toward progress are currently igniting and forming through the sparks of hard workers around the world, who continue driving forward day and night, hammering out the solutions needed to make indefinite life extension happen. It needs the complex, intricate goals of its inner workings, and it needs its basic goals to help keep it moving uphill quickly.

 

 

As Franco Cortese tells us at H+ Magazine, there is a “long history of seminal thinkers who have contemplated the notion of human biological immortality, the historical antecedents of the contemporary life-extension movement” and, people have been thinking “about the scientific abolition of involuntary death for hundreds of years at least.”

 

William Howard Taft, member of the early Life Extension Institute (though, we don’t support their eugenics ideas), quotes Benjamin Disraeli as saying,

 

Public Health is the foundation on which reposes the happiness of the people and the power of a country. The care of the public health is the first duty of a statesman.

 

President Taft goes on to state that

 

It may well be claimed that the care of individual and family health is the first and most patriotic duty of a citizen. These are the considerations that have influenced me to co-operate with the life extension movement.

 

People like Max More, Natasha Vita-More, David Pizer, Michael Perry, and Robert Ettinger put in a lot of work to kick up the initial sparks of our modern-day activities. As the Mores put forth back in 2006, at the closing of the pioneering Extropy Institute, their mission was to

 

bring great minds together to incubate ideas about emerging technologies, life extension and the future. [… including] develop a culture for activists, energized and devoted to bringing these ideas to the public.

 

Which they confirm, and we concur, that they did.

 

 

Around 2006-2007, ex-legislator and indefinite-life-extension leader, Tom Mooney, wrote that the cause was “a nascent movement that was a mere blip on the political radar screen”. He was right. Support was beginning to be tangible, but was a lot scarcer around that time. 

 

If we had asked what Andrew Saul asked, “I beg the reader’s indulgence for a bit of futurology about what things may look like if the life extension movement continues to develop”, then we might have wanted something like this to happen, which did happen. Here is a short cross-sectional view of my big-picture account of the past decade and a half.

 

 

For a few years, around 1999, I worked hard to find – but could not – a single other committed supporter of extending lifespans long into the future. Around 2004, I found a few and a few found me, and I then set out looking for one or more among them that had a list of things that people could do to help accelerate the cause. I found a few, scarce, limited options. Around 2008, I became one of the people who did that, and started scouting for volunteers for teams and projects. It was really hard-going for the few people that there were like me at that time. Most people didn’t stay long, but over the next few years I worked with over 100 volunteers. It was part of a good start to this budding movement. These days, there are more recruiters, project leaders, volunteer coordinators, and people like us, than the number of volunteers I knew then. That trajectory is part of success.

 

 

This is backed up in general by Lawrence R. Samuel, who wrote the ollowing in Psychology Today in 2013:

 

Is man’s ultimate dream within reach? A growing contingent of ‘radical life extension’ supporters declares it is. Since the late 1990s, a number of scientists and entrepreneurs have openly stated that dramatic life extension is both feasible and desirable,

 

it was clear that immortality was in the air as we turned the century and millennium.

 

Over the next decade, the radical life extension and immortality movement picked up steam […]

 

We can see this reflected in polls like these three from 2012 and 2013. Writer, philosopher, and businessman Anatoly Karlin points out, from an examination of them, that

 

63% of Americans agree that ‘medical advances that prolong life are generally good’; there is no identifiable line that separates those advances from radical life extension itself. 45% of Russians would support a social movement advocating for radical life extension, whereas only 33% wouldn’t.

 

 

The 2013 PEW poll also shows that 41% of US adults think that radical life extension would be a good thing.

 

 

Writer and futurist bioethicist George Dvorsky writes that

 

As many readers of io9 are well aware, the radical life extension movement is in full swing.

 

 

People want life extension. This is a no-brainer. Your window in time to help make this happen is brief. Let’s capitalize. We need “likes” here at the Movement for Indefinite Life Extension page, or we’ll die. Don’t wait or argue. Just do it, for life’s sake.

 

Let’s keep moving. Add your voice and your “likes” of support at https://www.facebook.com/movementforindefinitelifeextension.

 

 

 

 

grim reaper vs astronaut by Ekaterinya Vladinakova