One of the main reasons for driving as many supporters as possible together at the movement for indefinite life extension page facebook.com/movementforindefinitelifeextension , is so that we have more potential to act as a larger united front. Doing this in these fragile, early stages of this incredibly important, world paradigmn shifting cause of causes is really essential. Not one single thing in most of your lives is even remotely as dire of a priority as this.
Our growing united show of support here is increasingly eye opening, our growing united voice is jarring more people out of their habit-flows and into paying attention. These products manifest themselves through helping people do things like gaining more confidence in speaking out, finding collaboration potential with various big and small life extension projects, feeling like less of outliers when talking about this stuff, staying informed about the growing complexities that are developing in this exciting movement, and much more. These kinds of effects have a big impact.
One of the most important parts of these processes is that they give us all more of a chance to chip in together, to unite as an army of reform driving activists who push through and do things that we couldn’t otherwise do as smaller pockets and groups. This collective marketplace of life extension muscle and activity is the sort of environment that helps this cause to take action so that it can gain surer traction in picking up the pace. We need you guys, a lot. You are the heartbeat in this machine here that is mowing down obstacles as it rolls toward this universe-door opening goal.
Life extension means that we get to peek further out through that door, into the vast universe and the amazing experiences of life.
Right now, we cannot live without your help on a variety of important trail blazing, mile-marker moving activities.
Examples
-Zoltan Istvan and his crew of dedicated life extensionists, like Roen Horn, are currently driving a wedge-offensive on the political front to work to drive this important message deeper into the heart of politics. http://www.immortalitybus.com/
-Maria Konovalenko is currently moving forward with a Longevity Cookbook, designed in part to help bring the message of life extension to more members of the mainstream audience, and generate a few more funds for her to take other important life extension projects to the next levels. She also has a very promising open-ended big-dollar research crowdfunding platform that needs the participation of many more people, called Lab Cures. https://labcures.com/
-Longecity – Advocacy and Research for Unlimited Life spans, continues its general push toward the goal of healthy life extension. They do it through conferences, research crowdfunding, awareness drives and many other activities. They are most always in need of more team leaders, directors, volunteers and various other positions. http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/54775-longecity-take-action/
-The International Longevity Alliace continues pushing general awareness through initiatives like the growing Longevity Day, held on the International Day of Older Persons, and works with various other projects. https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2015/09/october-1st-is-international-longevity-day-events-are-planned.php
-Hank Pellessier continues hosting a growing series of indirectly and directly related conferences, like Radical Life Extension – are you ready to live 1,000 years?, Transhuman Superpowers and Longevity Conference, and Transhuman Visions, to name a few. These projects hold a lot of promise as they help this cause march up these hills. They are there in part to entice you in. Join up with people like Hank, and the world can change faster.
These are just a few of the many pockets of innitiatives. There are independent researchers pitching and pushing their projects at various times and activists hosting a thriving, presaging volley of activities. There are SENS Research Foundation conferences, Society for Veturism conferences and hosts of others. There is the recruitment of writers and readers for the various life extension and related blogs and websites like Humanity+, the Instititute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Transhumanity.net, Fight Aging and many others. Write for them, read their posts, and most advantageously to this cause, spread their messages far and wide. That last, important point is something that everybody can and needs to do.
There are growing pushes for increasingly larger demonstrations through the work of independent and collaborative life extension activists like Alexey Turchin, through the initiaives of Maria Konovalenko, also Ilia Stambler and the International Longevity Alliance, and directly through activists like Gennady and Wendy Stolyarov, Desiree Duffy, Roen Horn, myself and throngs of supporters at the movement for indefinite life extension.
Research crowdfunding as the activism front-runner
If any of the kinds of the many actitivites being carried out to further the progress of life extension philosophy and research make an easy to engage in, yet big impact – if anything speaks to community ability to unite to drive this cause forward in unambiguous real-time – its life extension research crowdfunding. There are a bunch of us driving the crowdfunding of another important SENS Research Foundation project right now, through a new crowdfunding platform that’s dedicated soley to life extension research projects, called lifespan.io. A lineup of projects from laboratories around the world are already set to be crowdfunded as time goes on.
This SENS research is toward the treatment of mitochondrial mutations. These mutations do increasing damage to our bodies over time. It’s a viable project – researchers have already had success doing similar things with mitochondria, and some of them are employed in working directly on this project with SENS.
Convincing Insights
From the project description given by SENS at the crowdfunding page,
“In our novel system, the mRNA from an engineered mitochondrial gene is guided back to the mitochondrial surface, where it is then translated into a protein by the organelle’s co-translational import system”
“Our prior research indicates that our system of tagging yields a significantly higher efficiency of import to mitochondria than any previously published research.” http://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/sens-mitochondrial-repair-project/
An example from a 2008 PubMed paper , including the authorship of allotopic-expression pioneering researcher Dr. Marisol Corral-Debrinski, states that,
“Optimized Allotopic Expression of the Human Mitochondrial ND4 Prevents Blindness in a Rat Model of Mitochondrial Dysfunction
A subsequent electroporation with wild-type ND4 prevented both RGC loss and the impairment of visual function. Hence, these data provide the proof-of-principle that optimized allotopic expression can be an effective treatment for LHON, and they open the way to clinical studies on other devastating mitochondrial disorders.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2556433/
And another example led by the same author, from a 2015 PubMed paper,
“Nuclear expression of mitochondrial ND4 leads to the protein assembling in complex I and prevents optic atrophy and visual loss.
After ocular administration to adult rats of a recombinant adeno-associated viral vector containing the human ND4 gene, we demonstrated that: (i) the sustained expression of human ND4 did not lead to harmful effects, instead the human protein is efficiently imported inside the mitochondria and assembled in respiratory chain complex I; (ii) the presence of the human protein in the experimental model of Leber hereditary optic neuropathy significantly prevents retinal ganglion cell degeneration and preserves both complex I function in optic nerves and visual function. Hence, the use of optimized allotopic expression is relevant for treating mitochondrial disorders due to mutations in the organelle genome.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26029714
The following is a bit about the work of the researcher who learned from Dr. Corral-Debrinski, and who is conducting the research through SENS that we’re crowdfunding today.
“Research Funded by SENS Research Foundation – Current Intramural Research
In September 2010, Dr. Matthew “Oki” O’Connor joined the Research Center to head up a new drive to achieve allotopic expression of all 13 mitochondrially-encoded genes in isolated cells. Having mastered Dr. Corral-Debrinski’s techniques, RC scientists are now working to extend these advances to all 13 proteins encoded by the mitochondrial genome. We have created and produced systems that “weld” copies of 5 mitochondrial genes into the nuclear DNA, and are performing experiments to confirm our results in an additional lines of mouse cells, and in cell lines from patients with mutant versions of two of these genes, so as to see if the new genes will restore these cells’ normal mitochondrial function. We are now confirming the localization and function of the allotopically-expressed proteins in these cells.” http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/mitochondrial-mutations
We know that mitochondrial mutation is one in a category of seven biological culprits that cause aging
SENS has, importantly, made clear to the world that the only forms of damage that age us to death have probably all already been found by science over the years, and there are probably only 7 – mitochondrial mutations is one of them.
I try to make it clear, in another article, that these seven forms of damage are the only ones, http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/schulke20140203 quote,
“As de Grey explains, and as anyone is dared to refute, there seem to be only those seven forms of damage that age us to death by accumulating in and around our cells. These forms of damage have been discovered by science over the years, the last one being found in the 1980s. De Grey reminds us that science and technology have come a long ways since the 1980s, and no new forms of damage that directly contribute to aging people to death have been found.
It’s not ‘seven plus all the ones we can’t get a grip on or figure out yet.’ It’s not ‘seven just because these are Aubrey’s or some group’s favorite seven’, […] This isn’t a widely disputed list of items. It has accumulated and been independently peer-reviewed through all of science over time.”
Table from: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020187
I also summarize in that article that the top minds in the world were challenged to disprove, in part, the seven forms of aging damage, with a $20,000 reward on the line, and none of them did.
Conclusions
So, this crowdfunding project is big news for the world, for science and you supporters. For you, it means another great chance to pick up your bat and show the world what it means to hate the grim reaper.
Many people who want things to happen never get chances like this. Many Kingdoms across time have been demolished, not for lack of wanting to mount an opposition to stop invaders, but for failure to do so, for failure to give their citizens the opportunities to make it happen.
Here you go, another easy opportunity to make a huge impact, hand delivered to you – now please let us work together to not only ensure that this happens, but to do it in a convincing manner. Let’s fight like we mean it, with the blood of our ancestors in our eyes and victory in our spirits.
The project is nearly 2/3rd’s funded now with a deadline of October 25th. There is currently $8,500 from 12 backers of $500 or more and over $9,500 from 185 backers of $150 or less. It’s over 61% funded after only 20% of the time.
Donate and share it like you think tomorrow’s are important: http://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/sens-mitochondrial-repair-project/
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