MedWorm provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest medical blog items that have been tagged with 'extension'. Sat, 03 Sep 2011 02:02:10 +0100 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5130684&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F08%2Fsens-foundation-is-hiring-a-part-time-it-resource.php For those of you who herd servers, sling code, and live the freelance life of many concurrent clients, I see that the SENS Foundation is looking for a part time IT resource: SENS Foundation, a Californian non-profit, seeks an IT manager to work as part of its expanding team. The position is 2.5 days per week. About SENS Foundation: SENS Foundation is a non-profit, life sciences organization with a mission to develop, promote and ensure widespread access to rejuvenation biotechnologies which comprehensively address the disabilities and diseases of aging. Our Research Center in Mountain View, California is the hub for a growing team of researchers, and outreach and executive staff. Several members of staff are located outside California, in the USA or Europe. In addition, we award grants t... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5130684 Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5130684 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5096133&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F08%2Fa-profile-of-sierra-sciences-and-their-work-on-telomeres.php A recent long Popular Science article looks at Sierra Sciences and its founder, a group that has been working on telomere biology and its role in aging for some years. Alongside a number of other research groups, the Sierra crowd believe that telomeres are a lynchpin portion of our biochemistry and manipulating them might significantly extend life. Make poor lifestyle choices, and you're likely to die of heart disease or cancer or something well before your telomeres would otherwise become life-threateningly short. But for the aerobicized Andrews, for anyone who takes reasonable care of himself, a drug that activates telomerase might slow down the baseline rate at which the body falls apart. Andrews likens the underlying causes of aging, free radicals and the rest, to sticks of dynamite,... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5096133 Wed, 03 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5096133 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5050481&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F07%2Fa-little-cryonics-history.php To my eyes, Chronosphere is chiefly important as an insider's personal view of the 40-year history of modern cryonics movements. For decades, people have been working on the indefinite low temperature storage of the deceased, aiming to preserve the fine structure of the brain that encodes the mind's data. There is, to my eyes, still far from enough of a recounting of that history, the lessons learned, and efforts made - the more memoirs and personal accounts presented online the better. So here are pointers to a couple of recent Chronosphere posts on what went on, back in the day, when cryonics was a younger initiative, both of which are liberally scattered with photographs: In Camera Historia: Cryonics Institute Facility, 1978 On 21 March, 1978 the Cryonics Institute (CI) acquired their... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5050481 Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5050481 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5050484&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F07%2Fa-question-and-answer-session-with-aubrey-de-grey.php Over at h+ Magazine you'll find a question and answer session with Aubrey de Grey that covers some old ground and some new ground. The SENS Foundation, which de Grey cofounded, is presently deploying a modest million-dollar yearly budget to work on the biotechnologies needed to repair the cellular and molecular damage that causes aging. A great deal of that budget presently goes towards the first of the Foundation's programs, an effort focused on using bacterial enzymes to break down harmful waste chemicals that build up in our cells and contribute to a range of age-related diseases and degenerations. I should mention that SENS Foundation funding is due entirely to philanthropic donations - including those of a few high net worth individuals - and I know that many of the readers here are ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5050484 Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5050484 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5050487&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F07%2Fto-learn-how-cryopreservation-works-in-practice-start-by-reading-the-case-summaries.php Cryonics, as I'm sure you're all aware, has for decades been the best and only shot at a long life in the future for people who die before the advent of rejuvenation biotechnologies capable of reversing the damage of aging. That is a massive number of people, possibly including you and I unless we get our act together - and sadly, all too few will choose to be cryopreserved, even though they have the opportunity and the means. Cryonics is, in essence, a form of indefinite low temperature storage of the body and brain immediately following death. It is carried out with the reasonable expectation, based on present scientific knowledge, that it preserves the fine structure of the brain that stores the information of the mind - you might not be running, but all your data is backed up. We can... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5050487 Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5050487 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5008364&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FEmrAndHipaa%2F%7E3%2FxQq6eLbUOGU%2F When I learned that HITECH included funds setting up the regional extension center system to support small medical practices in implementing EHRs, I thought, well, that sounds OK. I wasn’t thrilled, mind you, as I wasn’t optimistic that a government-sponsored organization would produce the quick EHR adoption process HITECH demands, but it wasn’t a bad thing. Since then, I’ve gone from mildly interested to downright irritated.  While I wasn’t expecting the RECs to blaze a path to glory, I thought it would be nice if they produced great educational materials and sessions, made themselves highly accessible to physicians and offered clear guidance on vendor selection. As far as I can tell, we’re largely zero for three. Yes, as a recent a recent study notes,... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5008364 Thu, 07 Jul 2011 02:59:47 +0100 5008364 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4992640&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F07%2Ftwo-months-left-until-the-sens5-conference.php The fifth Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Conference, SENS5, draws closer. It will be held from 31st August to 4th September at Queens' College in Cambridge - so there's still time to register. The purpose of the SENS conference series, like all the SENS initiatives (such as the journal Rejuvenation Research), is to expedite the development of truly effective therapies to postpone and treat human aging by tackling it as an engineering problem: not seeking elusive and probably illusory magic bullets, but instead enumerating the accumulating molecular and cellular changes that eventually kill us and identifying ways to repair - to reverse - those changes, rather than merely to slow down their further accumulation. This broadly defined regenerative medicine - which inc... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4992640 Thu, 30 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4992640 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4953060&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=38236&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.healthcareitnews.com%2Fblog%2Fready-meaningful-use-attestation When the clock struck midnight on April 18, 2011, Jennifer Brull, MD, was ready. She had already registered for the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Program. She had her certified EHR system firmly in place, and working with the Kansas Foundation for Medical Care, the Regional Extension Center for Kansas, she had confirmation that her practice met meaningful use criteria. Dr. read more (Source: Healthcare IT News Blog) Healthcare IT News Blog blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4953060 Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:27:59 +0100 4953060 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4960012&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F06%2Fthe-already-forgotten-past-and-the-nascent-future.php Modern advocacy for engineered longevity and methods of preventing permanent death (such as cryonics) began in earnest in the 1970s, give or take, and has thus been around for long enough to establish a distinct and fascinating cultural past that most younger people are unaware of. The last decades of the last century are being buried rapidly indeed. The more thoughtful older folk who lived through that past there are sponsoring a growing range of initiatives to help ensure the continuation and growth of this present community of advocates, supporters, writers, and researchers. It is in everyone's interest for there to be more people working on human life extension, talking about it, and advocating for longer, healthier lives. In this sense, the future is something that is constructed, n... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4960012 Mon, 20 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4960012 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4952745&cid=t_116790_86_f&fid=38272&url=http%3A%2F%2Flaikaspoetnik.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F06%2F18%2Fsilly-saturday-40-explore-examine-discover-using-googles-search-by-image%2F This week Google launched “Search by Image”. Google already offered the possibility to search for certain characteristics like color, size, faces, or license-free images. See for instance this fabulous search of  “sea stars” limited to pink (never knew such sea stars exist). But now Google also allows search by image. If you found an image [...] (Source: Laika's MedLibLog) Laika's MedLibLog blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4952745 Sat, 18 Jun 2011 08:48:42 +0100 4952745 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4934053&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F06%2Fan-interview-with-david-gobel-methuselah-foundation-ceo.php Today I noticed a fairly long interview with David Gobel of the Methuselah Foundation - a lot of interesting detail in there as to the Foundation's goals and arrangements. For example: Q: What collaborations, partnerships, or other types of relationships does Methuselah Foundation have with other longevity funding organizations, if any. One example would be the Ellison Foundation. A: Ellison has been a donor to the Methuselah Foundation. We've had many organizations that have been supporters such as the Thiel Foundation, the Ellison Foundation, The Paul Glenn Foundation. Q: Are there any other collaborations with any funding or research-focused organizations? A: We are, I suppose closest to SENS foundation, we do many things together. We also co-founded the Super Centenarian Foundation... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4934053 Wed, 15 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4934053 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4934059&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F06%2Fshould-we-treat-aging.php "Should we treat aging?" is a rhetorical question here, but sadly it remains a straightforward open question for much of the world - when it is asked, they are quite serious in asking it. People expect there to be good reasons as to why aging should be left as it is, the cause of death for more than 100,000 people each and every day, and scientists restrained from working on therapies of rejuvenation. This is one of the uphill struggles taking place in the patient advocacy community for aging research, that most people don't consider themselves patients exhibiting the symptoms of degenerative aging, have little inclination to do anything about it, and are in fact initially hostile to the whole idea. Here's an American Scientist article from researcher David Gems that asks the rhetorical q... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4934059 Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4934059 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4934062&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F06%2Freplying-to-a-critique-of-sens.php SENS, the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, is detailed plan for development of the biotechnologies needed to reverse the effects of aging - to repair the biological damage that causes age-related degeneration and disease, and thereby eliminate the frailty and increasing risk of death that comes with it. Strangely, SENS has gone from valid but fringe idea rejected by the mainstream of aging research to an accepted and supported, albeit small, research program over a handful of years without much in the way of widely published and debated critiques. There was the SENS challenge, a couple of scientific op-ed exchanges in the journals (some of which were quite entertaining), and that was pretty much that. In the early days, no-one would take the time to engage, and the switch f... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4934062 Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4934062 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4921363&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F06%2Fa-conversation-with-aubrey-de-grey-on-aging-and-ai.php A good interview can be found at h+ Magazine, in which Aubrey de Grey and Ben Goertzel discuss a range of topics. Goertzel is an artificial intelligence researcher who strongly supports the goal of achieving radical life extension, so the interaction between the two fields is one of his interests: Ben: On a different note - I wonder how much do you think progress toward ending aging would be accelerated if we had an AGI system that was, let's say, roughly as generally intelligent as a great human scientist, but also had the capability to ingest the totality of biological datasets into its working memory and analyze them using a combination of human-like creative thought and statistical and machine learning algorithms? Do you think with this sort of mind working on the problem, we could r... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4921363 Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4921363 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4883541&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F05%2Fexamining-a-few-legal-aspects-of-organizing-your-own-cryopreservation.php As I've noted in the past, one of the challenges that faces present day cryonics as an industry is that it requires a measure of proactive organization and ongoing effort on the part of customers. You can't just sign up for cryopreservation, pay your monthly dues, and let matters coast along unattended - not if you want things to go smoothly when the service is needed. All sorts of obstacles, both organizational and bureaucratic, can rear their ugly heads: arranging your own cryopreservation is less a matter of agreeing to go to a party than it is a matter of agreeing to be the host and organizer of a party. This, of course, greatly reduces the range of people who are willing to sign up for cryonics - no-one likes inconvenience, and there's a certain irrationality when it comes to using (... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4883541 Sun, 29 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4883541 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4862447&cid=t_116790_83_f&fid=34856&url=http%3A%2F%2Finsidesurgery.com%2F2011%2F05%2Fextensor-hallucis-longus%2F The extensor hallucis longus is one of the muscles in the anterior leg that is used to extend the great toe. The proximal attachment (origin) is the fibula and interosseus membrane. The distal attachment (insertion) is the distal phalanx of the great toe. The nerve supply to the muscle is the deep fibular nerve. (Source: Inside Surgery) Inside Surgery blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4862447 Tue, 24 May 2011 06:00:16 +0100 4862447 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4841400&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F05%2Fforesight-institute-25th-anniversary-reunion-conference.php I was reminded today that the Foresight Institute is holding an event next month, on June 25th-26th in the Bay Area, California. Some of the speakers and topics are relevant to those of us interested in longevity science, such as William Andregg of Halcyon Molecular, a fellow who has no problems in speaking his mind when it comes to achieving radical extension of the healthy human life span. The conference reminder came with a $50 discount to the conference registration price for Fight Aging! readers - just enter FIGHTAGING when registering. Join friends old and new this summer at Google's Mountain View headquarters in Silicon Valley as we explore the future of nanotech with a rockstar lineup of nanotech experts and entrepreneurs. Want to understand the science behind the dream? Find out... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4841400 Tue, 17 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4841400 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4820786&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F05%2Fthe-documentary-how-to-live-forever.php Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey is one of the figures appearing in the documentary film "How to Live Forever." It's played straight but isn't a serious piece, as this review notes: It's a huge subject, vital to every living person in the world - what it means to grow old and how one can cheat or at least postpone mortality. Fortunately, Mark S. Wexler eschews ponderousness in favor of a wry, observant, open-minded approach in his most informative and often quite funny documentary How to Live Forever. ... The film opens May 13 in New York followed by a national expansion May 22. Still, there you have Aubrey de Grey in theater distribution (again) - and the more folk to hear his message, the better. It's still the case that the vast majority of people are not aware of the state of ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4820786 Thu, 12 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4820786 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4813227&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F05%2Fsens-foundation-year-end-report-for-2010-now-available.php Following on from the release of their 2010 research report, the SENS Foundation folk have issued their 2010 year-end report. Just as for the earlier research report, it is an interesting and closer look at the finances and research activities of the organization - one of the very few groups in the world whose leaders have the right idea when it comes to aging, longevity, and biotechnology. In 2009 we launched SENS Foundation. We did it to drive biomedical research towards a functional and cost-effective approach to extending individual health. We did it to raise awareness for an alternative to an increasingly complex and problematic pathology chase in medicine; to redefine regenerative medicine as applied to aging; to enable doctors to think about fixing patients before they were sick. ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4813227 Mon, 09 May 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4813227 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4709177&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F04%2Fcritiquing-the-practice-of-cryonics.php Over at Chronosphere you'll find a weighty set of posts that aim to provide a foundation for critiquing cryonics at the organizational level of achieving consistently good cryopreservations, and the development of professional organizational cultures and processes - such as record-keeping - required to support that goal. All industries require ongoing initiatives that provide solid, constructive critiques of present practice, for otherwise how are the participants to progress and improve themselves? You be the Judge: Understanding and Evaluating the Quality of Human Cryopreservations from Cryonics Organization Literature and Case Report Data, Part 1: The goal of this series of articles is to equip the reader with the tools necessary to make an accurate assessment of the quality of care c... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4709177 Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4709177 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4622214&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F03%2Ffrom-the-sens-foundation-2010-research-report-and-sens5-news.php The SENS Foundation will be hosting the SENS5 conference in Cambridge, England at the end of August. Registration is open, and this note arrived in my in-box today: I am writing to inform you that June 15th is the deadline for discounted registration and abstract submission for the fifth Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) conference ... The conference program features 33 confirmed speakers so far, all of them world leaders in their field. As with previous SENS conferences, the emphasis of this meeting is on "applied gerontology" - the design and implementation of biomedical interventions that may, jointly, constitute a comprehensive panel of rejuvenation therapies, sufficient to restore middle-aged or older laboratory animals (and, in due course, humans) to the physica... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4622214 Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4622214 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4600504&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F03%2Fthe-global-forum-for-longevity.php is an industry-sponsored forum taking place later this month; fairly mainstream, no talk of radical life extension or other forms of futurism that might lead to intellectual discomfort for some. I mention it because it is a symptom of the growing interest in biogerontology on the part of the vast insurance industries of the world - which should not be a surprising phenomenon. To find people likely to pay close attention to the future of longevity science, you want to look amongst the folk who stand to gain or lose a great deal of money due to changes in human life spans. Life insurance, pensions, and other forms of making money through managing statistical risks on life expectancy data are, taken together, a very big business indeed. So here an insurance conglomerate is, as many of them ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4600504 Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4600504 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4565872&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F03%2Faubrey-de-grey-at-the-ilabs-singularity-summit-in-milan.php The iLabs Singularity Summit was held this past weekend in Milan, Italy - it's always good to see more of this sort of event happening on that side of the Atlantic. There was a strong focus on longevity science: Biological ageing is a progressive, degenerative process. As a side-effect of the everyday metabolic activities, cells in our body are damaged: year after year, the cumulative effect of this micro-damages considerably diminishes the overall efficiency of the system, leading eventually to death. ... We die mainly because of ignorance: we do not know how to measure our health, we do not understand completely the side-effects of our therapies and we can't explain the complex interplay between mind and body. Doing something about these technological and scientific inadequacies should... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4565872 Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4565872 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4517146&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F02%2Fthe-international-aging-research-portfolio-launches.php A little while back, I was invited to preview an independent project under development at the behest of Alex Zhavoronkov, one of the trustees of the UK-based Biogerontology Research Foundation, a group with strong ties to the Methuselah Foundation and SENS Foundation communities. That project is now launched and open to the world: it is the International Aging Research Portfolio - "tracking international progress in aging research". The site grants users access to research and funding information for over a million [projects]. The IARP is a fully searchable, flexible and highly scalable knowledge-management system developed to enable organizations to collaborate, track, analyze, structure, make decisions and set directions for future research efforts in aging. ... Aging research spans man... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4517146 Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4517146 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4507249&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F02%2Fphotographs-russian-cryonics-american-rejuvenation-biotechnology.php Follow the links below for a little photography for an otherwise slow Tuesday: My Visit to KrioRus - the First Cryonics Company in Europe and Asia Yesterday I visited the facilities of the Russian cryonics company KrioRus, which are located just outside Moscow. That's the huge dewar flask where the cryopreserved bodies are stored. It's so big that one needs to climb up a ladder to peek through the steamy nitrogen. And in the picture below Alexei Turchin, a renowned futurologist and expert on global risks, and I are in front of the other dewar flask, now empty and waiting for the new cryo patients. Cryonics is an amazing opportunity to get a chance to find yourself in the future. I believe cryonics is the choice of truly smart people. SENS Foundation 'Lab Warming' One of the Foundation'... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4507249 Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4507249 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4495168&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F02%2Fa-podcast-interview-with-aubrey-de-grey-of-the-sens-foundation.php Around these parts Aubrey de Grey and the SENS Foundation should require no introduction. His advocacy and the Foundation's work on the science of repairing aging is well known, and has been mentioned here at Fight Aging! too many times to count. In my eyes, the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) continue to be the best extant plan for extending human life span as rapidly as possible - and within our lifetimes. The more funding that is devoted to realizing that plan, the better all of our futures will be. I noticed that a podcast interview with de Grey is up at the Singularity Weblog: Last time I had Dr. Aubrey de Grey on Singularity 1 on 1 the interview turned out to be a hit. In fact it is still by far the most popular podcast that I have done and the audio file has... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4495168 Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4495168 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4489617&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F02%2Fan-editorial-on-death-and-ageism-from-the-latest-rejuvenation-research.php The latest issue of Rejuvenation Research is available online, and it opens with what is perhaps one of the best of points to make in a world in which people are dying all around us: I welcome Dr. Paula Moreira as a new member of our editorial board, but for the worst possible reason. Moreira has been appointed as a replacement for Mark Smith, a fellow professor at Case Western Reserve University, who tragically died in a car accident late last year. What is even worse is that Smith is not the only loss that the field of biogerontology has suffered in 2010. In fact, I am aware of fully five other researchers who died during 2010. Amir Abramovich (whose Ph.D. advisor has penned a brief obituary that appears later in this issue) and Estela Medrano also succumbed to road accidents. James Jos... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4489617 Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4489617 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4455239&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F02%2Fthree-clades.php Amongst the folk who talk seriously about aging and longevity, you will find a number of quite different clades characterized by the ideas and ideals held by their members. For example, and drawing with broad strokes: Optimistic Dynamists The optimists understand the promise of rejuvenation biotechnology - that we stand on the verge of being able to greatly extend the healthy human life span - while remaining aware of the challenges that lie ahead. It will require decades to get to where we're going, but the goal of human agelessness can be attained if we put our shoulders to the wheel. Pessimistic Stasists A pessimist is dismissive of technological progress, either deliberately or through simply being one of those people who don't spend a lot of time in the consideration of change. Th... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4455239 Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4455239 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4445760&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F02%2Ftranshumanism-en-francais.php The objective is fundamental, it is located in the top three "to do" transhumanist, says Remy Sussan, journalist [and InternetActu.net author of] a book about Utopias posthuman. Some go even further, seeking not only to bring down the wall of our ultimate condition of finite being, but also to reverse the effects [to develop methods of rejuvenation]. The contents in detail are less important than the existence of such articles, I think. A significant proportion of the world's population does not speak English, or has no great interaction with the English-language body of work on longevity science. To spread more broadly and gain more support, the ideals of engineered human longevity must become common topics of conversation in languages other than English. Technology will greatly acceler... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4445760 Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4445760 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4433151&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FEmrAndHipaa%2F%7E3%2Fixc6zW-_Npo%2F As many of you know, I get a lot of interesting emails. I generally try to respond to all the emails I get. In many cases, the topics work great for a post on this blog and will extend the discussion beyond the email. This is one such case. The following is an email from a student in one of the HITECH funded healthcare IT education programs and my response to them (published with permission). I’ll be interested to hear what others think about the topics we discussed and if you have any other suggestions for Jojo. I would like to ask your opinion about what will the graduates of the HIT education grant do after fiishing the 6 month course ? I am one of these students and I want to freelance after. I have 13 years of IT experience and none of heallthcare (except for my medical appointm... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4433151 Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:20:43 +0100 4433151 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4419092&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F01%2Fis-there-a-maximum-human-life-span-and-longevity-for-the-long-term.php The maximum human life span will be whatever we make it to be over the decades ahead - the advance of biotechnology will see to that. But even here and now, the question "is there a maximum human life span?" doesn't exactly have a straightforward answer. Here speaking on the topic at a recent Humanity+ conference is L. Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group: At the same event, Gregory Benford (scientist, science fiction author, and board member of Genescient) discussed his view of the future of engineered longevity: You'll find links to more video presentations from the conference over at the Humanity+ website. (Source: Fight Aging!) Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4419092 Mon, 31 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4419092 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4394406&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F01%2Fgenescient-on-genescient.php As a companion piece to my opinions on Genescient from a year and a half ago, you might look at a recent h+ Magazine article in which one of the company VPs provides an overview of their present work: In this article, I describe our efforts at Genescient LLC in Irvine, CA to develop strategies to delay aging and age-related disease. Genescient's primary business focus is on the development of pharmaceuticals for age-related diseases, but in conjunction with its spinoff firm Life Code LLC, it has provided testing services for the development of nutraceuticals based on its unique genomics platform. Our findings can be summarized as follows: Aging is linked to altered expression in more than a hundred genes; We employed artificial intelligence algorithms combined with animal longevity assa... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4394406 Mon, 24 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4394406 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4372017&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2011%2F01%2Fhumanity-board-elections-open.php Humanity+ is a long-standing transhumanist advocacy organization, formed in support of improving the human condition through applied science: extended healthy longevity, engineering the mind, the advent of strong AI, the elimination of disease and suffering, and so forth. In its present guise, I think the organization is better addressing its mission in comparison to past years when it was branded as the World Transhumanist Association. The board of directors is very different nowadays and perhaps more energetic; certainly more appropriate to the way in which Humanity+ presently organizes itself. Humanity+ is an international nonprofit membership organization which advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities. We support the development of and access to new technolo... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4372017 Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4372017 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4298689&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FEmrAndHipaa%2F%7E3%2FEaXwhFuiM7w%2F I’m excited to announce the beginning of Meaningful Use Monday on EMR and HIPAA. I first came up with the idea when Lynn Scheps from SRSsoft commented on one of my previous meaningful use posts. Lynn provided such valuable information, I asked her if she’d be interested in becoming a regular guest blogger on EMR and HIPAA. As they say, the rest is history. Each Monday, Lynn (and sometimes myself) will be covering some topic related to the EMR Stimulus money and meaningful use. We hope you enjoy Meaningful Use Monday. -John With the impending start of the EHR incentive program on January 1, the results of a recent Health Data Management poll are troublesome. 72% of respondents feel that the meaningful use guidance provided by the government to-date has been either “inadequate ... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4298689 Mon, 27 Dec 2010 19:18:40 +0100 4298689 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4287392&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F12%2Falcor-hires-max-more-as-ceo.php Well now, this is interesting: The Board of Directors of Alcor Life Extension Foundation today announced that Dr. Max More, 46, has been named Chief Executive Officer effective Jan 1, 2011. ... "Max brings a quarter century of experience in and commitment to cryopreservation, life extension, and improving the future," said Alcor director Tim Shavers, "and has earned a reputation for both practical and principled leadership and bold thinking. Crucially, he shares our vision of Alcor's mission and understands the organization's past and its challenges and opportunities. His extensive knowledge of our operations, goals, and needs makes him the ideal choice to lead Alcor as CEO," said Shavers. If you want to learn more about Max More, you should browse his website. More might be considered... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4287392 Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4287392 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4277804&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F12%2Fdeath-is-an-inconvenient-obstacle-on-the-road-to-immortality.php The title of this post was recently offered up as a pity quote on the Gerontology Research Group mailing list: "Death is an inconvenient obstacle on the road to immortality." The spirit in which this is intended is evidently that an army of biogerontologists and supporters should marshal, march, and trample death beneath their sandaled feet - to leave it broken in the dust upon the road that leads to rejuvenation biotechnology and agelessness. That trampling will undoubtedly happen, albeit far from soon enough. If you stop to think about this for a moment, however, you might conclude that the defeat of death should not in fact be the conceptual focus of efforts to extend the healthy human life span. Let's try an analogy here: The ground is an inconvenient obstacle on the road to fligh... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4277804 Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4277804 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4275302&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F12%2Fwhy-has-cryonics-so-far-failed-to-become-a-large-and-growing-industry.php Cryonics, as you no doubt know by now, is the low-temperature storage of the recently deceased. The fine structure of the brain can be very well preserved - well enough that all the data that forms your self remains intact. Future medical technologies, such as applications of molecular nanotechnology, will eventually prove capable of repairing cryopreserved individuals and restoring them to life. A number of people have been cryopreserved and stored over the past few decades, and a modest community of cryobiology researchers, workers, advocates, and funding sources continues this work: Death is not a topic that people like to think about, and that is just as true of healthy life extension advocates as anyone else. We have to recognise, however, that the future of healthy life extension (r... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4275302 Mon, 20 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4275302 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4266148&cid=t_116790_136_f&fid=37852&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdonnatrussell.com%2F2010%2F12%2F17%2Ftax-cuts-and-unemployment-benefits-its-a-win-win%2F New cartoon by Trussell & Trussell on Politics Daily. Tax Cuts and Unemployment Benefits: It’s a Win-Win! They’ll gladly feed you Tuesday for a financial beating today. Filed under: Politics Tagged: congress, extension, robert donna trussell, tax cuts, unemployment (Source: Donna Trussell) Donna Trussell blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4266148 Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:54:07 +0100 4266148 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4265645&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F12%2Freports-from-the-december-2010-bay-area-aging-meeting.php Aging science blog Ouroboros recently roused from its slumber for an excellent series of posts covering the Bay Area Aging Meeting held earlier this month. This is a well attended gathering of biogerontologists, who are fairly numerous in that part of the world. There are a number of important laboratories in California, such as the Kenyon Lab at UCSF and the Buck Institute for Age Research, which leads to a fair turnout at most local life science events. Here is the coverage by session, one post for each set of presentations, with some of the highlights singled out and quoted below: Bay Area Aging Meeting: Session I Cognitive decline occurs with age: speed of processing, working memory, and long-term memory all decline. Presumably cell loss is partially to blame - not only loss of neu... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4265645 Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4265645 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4265648&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F12%2Fsens-foundation-is-hiring.php The SENS Foundation, freshly infused with money from a recent half-million dollar donation, is hiring a new research assistant for their California research center. As you'll all know by now, the Foundation works on developing rejuvenation biotechnologies to repair and reverse the damage of aging. Do you want to be a part of that grand and noble effort? Then read on. SENS Foundation seeking to hire Research Assistant SENS Foundation is hiring a Research Assistant for our research center located in Mountain View, CA. Qualified candidates will a BS or MS in the chemical/biological sciences and two years of work experience. Experience should be in using standard equipment, including but not limited to standard bench cell biology/biochem/molecular biology techniques. Good fundamental laborat... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4265648 Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4265648 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4249013&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F12%2F500000-for-the-sens-foundation-from-the-breakthrough-philanthropy-meeting.php Investor Peter Thiel recently held a gathering of the well off and motivated, encouraging them to invest more daringly in philanthropic projects. To take bigger risks and aim to change the world, rather than succumb to the curse of incrementalism - which is a road to accomplishing little of worth when all is said and done. What use is great wealth without the imagination and will to reach for the sky and shake the foundations? So that said, I'm pleased to note that the SENS Foundation received a $500,000 donation as a result of Thiel's event - or more likely the result of the invisible toil of networking and discussion behind the scenes, and which has been building up to this for some time. Regardless of the mechanisms behind this sizable donation, it is very welcome development indeed. C... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4249013 Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4249013 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4238102&cid=t_116790_136_f&fid=37852&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdonnatrussell.com%2F2010%2F12%2F07%2Fan-end-to-unemployment-benefits-a-victory-for-family-values%2F New cartoon by Trussell & Trussell on Politics Daily. An End to Unemployment Benefits? A Victory for Family Values. You kids get out of that cement pond! Filed under: Politics Tagged: benefits, congress, extension, mitch mcconnell, robert donna trussell, unemployment (Source: Donna Trussell) Donna Trussell blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4238102 Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:24:59 +0100 4238102 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4237857&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F12%2Fdirect-and-useful-observations-from-the-founder-of-halcyon-molecular.php Via Next Big Future, some thoughts from William Andregg, CEO and founder of Halcyon Molecular: Question: How do your views on longevity and life extension compare with those of Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil? Answer: Parts of SENS urgently should be funded and tested. That being said, I work on sequencing and not on SENS, because our approach to curing aging is first to turn biology into an information science - actually getting to untangling the morass of metabolism that SENS does an end run around. I believe we can get to a complete mechanistic understanding of human biology in only a few decades, which is a timeline more like Kurzweil’s. On the other hand, if SENS were being vigorously pursued today, it might save millions of lives before the total understanding approach avails us.... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4237857 Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4237857 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4233140&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F12%2Fdecember-2010-sens-foundation-los-angeles-meeting.php Via Accelerating Future, I see that the next meeting of SENS Foundation supporters in Los Angeles will be held this coming Friday. As you may know, the Foundation advocates, funds, and organizes research into methods of reversing the course of aging by repairing the identified biological causes of aging. On behalf of the SENS Foundation I am excited to send you this invite to our next SENS Foundation Los Angeles Meeting on Friday, December 10th @7pm. This time we will hold the meeting at Giant Studios, home of Lord of The Rings, Avatar, Narnia, Tin Tin, The Polar Express, etc. This impressive facility is one of the leading Motion Capture studios in the world. We will be delighted to have three of the Foundation’s co-founders, Mike Kope, Aubrey de Grey and Sarah Marr with us, a talk by ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4233140 Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4233140 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4225200&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F12%2Fmichael-rose-and-aubrey-de-grey-at-humanity-caltech-conference.php The next Humanity+ conference will be held at Caltech on December 4th and 5th, just a couple of days from now. The second session is on the topic of radical life extension, and will feature researchers Michael Rose and Aubrey de Grey, amongst other familiar faces. I see that h+ Magazine is running a selection of promotional short articles on the conference, including one covering the radical life extension session: The term "biological immortality" doesn't mean what you may think - it doesn't mean living forever, but merely "the absence of a sustained increase in rate of mortality as a function of chronological age." That is, you've reached biological immortality if your "personal death odds" - your chance of dying during a given random day, month or year - has stopped increasing. ... ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4225200 Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4225200 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4197014&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F11%2Flinking-stem-cells-insulin-metabolism-and-aging.php As a companion to yesterday's post on insulin metabolism and human longevity, here is an open access paper that looks at stem cells, insulin signaling processes, and aging. In short, the activity of stem cells is vital to your long-term health, but this activity declines with age - and this decline is linked to other age-related changes, such as in insulin metabolism: Tissue and organ rejuvenation and senescence/aging are closely related to the function of stem cells. Recently, we demonstrated that a population of [pluripotent] very small embryonic-like stem cells (VSELs) resides in the adult murine bone marrow (BM) and other murine tissues. We hypothesize that these pluripotent stem cells play an important role in tissue/organ rejuvenation, and have demonstrated that their proliferation ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4197014 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4197014 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4186900&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F11%2Fhow-would-you-spend-millions-of-dollars-on-longevity-science.php In the fantasy land where you have control over a large sum of money, millions or tens of millions of dollars, how would you spend it to best advance the state of longevity science - to bring forward the age of greatly extended healthy human lives? You can't take it with you, after all. In this life, the only rational use for large sums of money is longevity science; all else is fleeting and soon enough dust and ashes. A hundred years ago, additional time was a limited commodity. You could spend resources to have a little more of it - doctors, a good life, the learning needed to take advantage of these items - but after a certain point there was no amount you could spend that would let you live for even one additional day. This is no longer the case. A sufficiently massive directed resea... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4186900 Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4186900 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4183271&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F11%2Fbeliefs-matter.php Some thoughts stood out for me from a couple of recent Depressed Metabolism posts. People believe a great many things, individually and as groups, and beliefs shape actions - or lack of action, as the case may be. Historical Death Meme Historically, there has been a powerfully optimized meme regarding the topic known as death. If you lost vital signs, you were irrevocably lost. There was nothing that could be done. The belief evolved that there is a mysterious point termed 'death' which is in principle irreversible. ... Now, bring cryonics into the picture. The cessation of vital signs is no longer a sign of irreversibility-in-principle. ... In other words, the perfect conditions for cognitive dissonance have been established. As the author points out, traditions regarding what can be d... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4183271 Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4183271 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4172029&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F11%2Ffuture-tense-conference-never-say-die.php The Future Tense event on engineering human longevity was held today: This week, Slate, the New American Foundation, and Arizona State University are sponsoring a conference on the future of life extension and its global ramifications: economic, social, and political. ... Will 250 be the new 100 in the foreseeable future? Human life expectancy has made steady gains over the last two centuries, and anti-aging scientists seeking to spare human cells and DNA from the corrosion once deemed inevitable are eager to trigger a radical extension in our life spans. How likely is such a spike? And how desirable is it to live to be a quarter of a millennium? Will life-extending scientific breakthroughs translate into an interminable twilight for many, or will they also postpone aging? If you were al... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4172029 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4172029 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4124974&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F11%2Fmessaging-rejuvenation-medicine-at-the-sens-foundation.php A recent post by Sarah Marr of the SENS Foundation should really be read as a companion piece to Aubrey de Grey's interview with Wired last month. Taken together they go a way towards explaining the present thinking of the SENS Foundation principals on how to position engineered human longevity to best raise funds and obtain broader support. The lynchpin: This is the basis of our core message: SENS Foundation works to advance research on rejuvenation biotechnologies. We exist because no-one else is working to deliver on the promise of rejuvenation biotechnologies, to steer academia and industry towards the adoption of a damage-repair paradigm which is currently neglected. The mission statement also describes these rejuvenation biotechnologies as being applied to the disabilities and dise... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4124974 Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4124974 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4118835&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F10%2Fcoverage-of-tedmed-2010.php This year's TEDMED conference finished up today. Amongst the speakers were biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Foundation and tissue engineer Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. While we'll have to wait to see video of the presentations uploaded to YouTube to match last year's assembled presentations, you'll find coverage of the event at MedGadget: TEDMED 2010 - Day 1 - Shaf Keshavjee, Nathan Myhrvoid, Nathan Wolfe, and More TEDMED 2010 - DAY 2 - Thomas Goetz, Craig Venter, Alex Berenstein, and More TEDMED 2010 - Day 3 - Danny Hillis, Dean Kamen, David Blaine, and More Next up on stage were aging and life extension scientist Aubrey de Grey and regenerative medicine researcher Anthony Atala. Aubrey is a quirky figure in the world of scienc... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4118835 Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4118835 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4105639&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F10%2Fso-you-want-to-be-a-biogerontologist.php If a job needs doing, there's something to be said for stepping up to help out directly. A number of younger folk in the healthy life extension community see that engineered longevity within our lifetimes is possible, and in response direct their studies and career goals towards biotechnology and aging research. A few of the braver older folk have mastered the challenge of switching careers in mid-flow, returning to university in order to become life science researchers, focused on the biology of aging. Biogerontology is a sub-field of gerontology studying the biological processes of aging. It is composed of the interdisciplinary research on biological aging's causes, effects, and mechanisms in order to better understand human senescence. ... Biomedical gerontology, also known as experime... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4105639 Sun, 24 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4105639 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4097881&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F10%2Fconsidering-cryonics.php Gregory Benford is a man of many hats: prolific science fiction writer, professor of astrophysics, and chairman of the board at Genescient, for example. Lightspeed Magazine recently published a short article by Benford on the topic of cryonics, an item that should be on the mind of everyone past a certain age. As cryonics' determined subculture - clustered around a few companies such as Alcor - labors to make the theoretical into a reality, how close are we to actually making cryonics a real path to immortality? Well, in large measure, cryonics is real right here and now. Today, about a hundred people - including baseball legend Ted Williams who was frozen in 2003 - lie in liquid nitrogen baths awaiting resurrection and the cure for what ailed them. ... Exciting, yes. The bad news? It w... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4097881 Wed, 20 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4097881 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4074004&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F10%2Fthree-decades-of-cryonics-history.php In the course of noticing the shiny new design recently applied to the Alcor News blog, it occurred to me that I've never mentioned the archive of Cryonics Magazine issues that is maintained at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation website. There is a lot of material there, with quarterly or monthly issues dating all the way back to 1981. The present day interest communities whose members advocate transhumanism, engineered longevity, cryonics, strong artificial intelligence, and advanced nanotechnology (in the sense of molecular manufacturing) didn't spring forth from nothing. They are an ongoing evolution that started with much smaller groups in the 70s and 80s, their growth and changing form spurred by the advent of the internet, web, and other advances in communication and distributed ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4074004 Thu, 14 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4074004 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4060560&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F10%2Fa-few-videos-from-the-recent-immortality-institute-conference.php The Immortality Institute 2010 conference was held in Brussels this past weekend: a mix of life science researchers and advocates for greater research into engineered human longevity attended and gave presentations. From what I hear, the conference went well, with congratulations being due to the volunteers who organized it. That was absolutely a great event, with some of the most cutting-edge scientists in the field, presenting new facts, some of them not published yet, that will certainly change the face of the world in the next years or decades. I felt that scientists were really touched by this young dynamic generation that understands their work and supports them, and we could feel that this bridge between generations as well as between researchers and amateurs is bringing a lot of c... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4060560 Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4060560 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4055690&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F10%2Fthoughts-on-the-prehistory-leading-to-gerontology.php Today I'll point you towards a translated blog post from Alexey Moskalev, a biogerontologist in Russia. He offers some views on the history of mankind's adversarial relationship with death, and how this informs what should be our modern view of gerontology and aging research. As always, you'll have to excuse the quality of automated translation: it is improving rapidly, and is good enough for comprehension, but still, I think, stumbles on structural differences in the way in which different cultures use language to express themselves. Unconscious fear of death occurs in a child already at birth. There he and the animals [are the same]. Fear of death plays an important biological role: along with the pain he wakes survival instinct that forces to avoid danger or flee from it. However, in h... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4055690 Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4055690 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4031201&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F10%2Fi-refuse-the-invitation-to-my-grave.php I don't think I can better the title of a recent post by Maria Konolavenko, so I'll quote it instead: "I refuse the invitation to my grave." You might read it with the accent of a weary but determined Russian spy in a late black and white era film, but the topic is the way in which so many people encourage us to turn our backs on longevity science. I fundamentally disagree with the following idea made by [researcher Tom Kirkwood in a recent issue of Scientific American]: "The goal of gerontology research in humans, however, is always improving health at the end of life, rather than achieving Methuselean life spans." This is a traditional stance taken by the hawks of the conservative wing of gerontologists: to [set quality of life and longevity as distinct research goals that are in oppos... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4031201 Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4031201 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4003229&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F09%2Fsponsor-positions-open-for-next-months-immortality-institute-conference.php I should remind you that the Immortality Institute conference in Brussels is coming up next month - just a couple of weeks away now - for those of you on that side of the pond who grow tired of seeing nothing by US-based conferences focused on the advancement and application of longevity science. Many of the usual suspects from the longevity science community will be speaking or presenting, as well as a fair few faces you might not be so familiar with. Not too many of the European advocates for extended healthy life spans make it out to the US-based conferences on a regular basis, so it should be a different crowd from the circuit of the past few years. The Institute volunteers let me know that there are sponsorship positions remaining open. If you missed the chance to fund the latest In... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4003229 Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4003229 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3993849&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F09%2Fsens-foundation-funds-research-into-a-therapy-for-ttr-amyloidosis.php A condition called TTR amyloidosis - very rare in young people - appears to cause the death of the elderly who survive or evade all of the other common age-related diseases: TTR is a protein that cradles the thyroid hormone thyroxine and whisks it around the body. In TTR Amyloidosis, the protein amasses in and clogs blood vessels, forcing the heart to work harder and eventually fail. "The same thing that happens in the pipes of an old house happens in your blood vessels" This is one of many types of amyloid that build up in the body with age. If we want to repair the damage of aging, we'll have to learn how to remove these unwanted substances - and certainly find ways to reverse the course of TTR amyloidosis, which at present looks very much like the roadblock at the end of life. Finding... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3993849 Tue, 21 Sep 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3993849 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3987024&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F09%2Fthird-sens-foundation-los-angeles-chapter-meeting.php The Los Angeles chapter of SENS Foundation supporters will be holding a third meeting on October 2nd. I encourage you to attend if you're in the area and are interested in engineered human longevity. On behalf of SENS Foundation I am thrilled to write to you to invite you to join Dr. Aubrey De Grey, Dr. Sarah Marr, Dr. L. Stephen Coles, and actor/director Edward James Olmos for our third SENS Foundation L.A. Chapter meeting to be held on Saturday, October 2, 2010 at the Westwood Brewing Company (1097 Glendon Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-2907) from 4 PM until 8 PM and to our "after party" downstairs from 8 PM and until we are done fixing the world! We've put together a spectacular program for this third meeting beginning with a presentation by Dr. L. Stephen Coles (Director of the Geront... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3987024 Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3987024 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3880805&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F08%2Fsecond-meeting-of-the-sens-los-angeles-chapter-on-august-27th.php Not so long ago, the SENS Foundation folk kicked off efforts to organize a Los Angeles chapter of supporters. The Foundation has a great many supporters and some significant donors in the Bay Area, so it seems only fair that the other half of California has a chance to show their worth. The second chapter meeting will be held later this month; if you're in the area, you should drop by: On behalf of SENS Foundation I am excited to write to you to invite you to join us for our 2nd SENS Foundation L.A. Chapter meeting to be held on Friday, August 27th, at the Westwood Brewing Company (1097 Glendon Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-2907) from 6PM until we have had enough fun. In this second meeting we will be joined by the fabulous Dr. Sarah Marr (SENS Foundation Vice President)... and, of cour... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3880805 Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3880805 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3876609&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F08%2Fa-selection-of-singularity-summit-2010-coverage.php This year's Singularity Summit was held in San Francisco a few days ago, and generated a fair amount of coverage. The event was largely focused on artificial intelligence and other topics not directly related to engineering greater human longevity, but there were nevertheless one or two interesting presentations that touched on related science. Here is a small selection of links for those who didn't manage to make it to the event: Singularity Summit 2010 - Optimism, Intelligence, and the Future - Oh My The Singularity Summit is a weird beast. Part science lectures, part networking, part philosophical discussion it comes off as an enthusiastic collection of people who aren’t afraid to think well outside the box. ... [Ben] Goertzel shared his recent collaborations with Genescient using A... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3876609 Mon, 16 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3876609 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3813064&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=38130&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tempdev.net%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D1016 We are excited to announce that TempDev has been named an approved service partner for CalHIPSO. As the Regional Extension Center for California (except LA and Orange counties), CalHIPSO is responsible for helping priority primary care providers reach meaningful use. As an approved service partner, we will be providing our optimization and template development services to CalHIPSO enrolled providers. To enroll in CalHIPSO, visit their website and be sure to mention you would like TempDev to help you achieve meaningful use. Related Posts August 24, 2009 — Meaningful Use Due Date: Mid 2010? March 5, 2009 — What Problem Are You Trying To Solve? March 3, 2009 — TempDev Connects: Interoperability to Create A Connected Record (Source: Implementing EMRs) Implementing EMRs blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3813064 Tue, 03 Aug 2010 04:48:16 +0100 3813064 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3816361&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F08%2Fthe-little-things-add-up-over-time.php Your body is an integrated collection of systems, all interacting with one another. When any one system becomes damaged and degraded, that change is felt elsewhere. The degenerations of aging are an accelerating downward spiral precisely because our biology is this way: slow at first, accumulated damage in different locations and biological processes feeds on itself. Degraded performance in each failing system causes more damage elsewhere, a feedback loop that moves ever faster as the years pass until the catastrophic end when a critical organ fails. The way out of this feedback loop is to understand what the damage is and how to repair it. That is presently something that can be partially achieved in mice - for some forms of damage only - and therefore the same is probably possible in hu... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3816361 Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3816361 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3794739&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Fthe-rift-in-longevity-science.php From a recent article on the film To Age or Not to Age: It's easier to change lifespan than previously thought, notes Dr. Austad. "We already know how to make animals live 25-40% longer." But no one really know what all this means for humans... yet. Gerontology expert Aubrey de Grey, long dismissed as a fringe thinker in the field because he doesn't think we should have to age at all, believes it will be a short leap from a 150-year lifespan to 1000. He notes that, with the speed of the current research, "If you're only 50, ... there's a chance you could pull out of the dive." He is beginning to be considered more mainstream. The current rift between de Grey's philosophy and the other scientists, records Pappas, is that de Grey wants to get rid of aging altogether, while they just want ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3794739 Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3794739 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3780320&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Ffollowing-up-on-cryonics-in-the-media.php A recent New York Times article on cryonics generated a fair amount of discussion online. I thought that I would provide a few quotes and pointers for those who would like to browse, but you should read the Times article first. Picking On Cryo-Nerds: Tyler Thursday on cryonics: "My question is: why not save someone else’s life instead?" ... Tyler’s argument is hard to follow here. Is he merely saying the world is better if anyone acts more contrary to type, expresses less relative to instrumenting, or donates more to charity? If so, why pick on cryonics and tech nerds in particular, why not just rail in general against all expressing, typed-acts, and non-charity? The Presumption of Death: Peggy Jackson, Robin Hanson’s wife, wonders “what’s so good about me that I’m going to... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3780320 Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3780320 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3776340&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Fan-interview-with-david-stipp.php David Stipp is the author of a recently released book on longevity science. Much like the mainstream of the research community, he is of the view that slowing aging is the only practical way forward. Which is a pity - we definitely need more of the popular science authors to lean towards advocating repair strategies like SENS, but I don't see it happening before opinions change within the scientific community. In any case, here is an interview that presents a more nuanced version of Stipp's viewpoint than has appeared in articles to date. Regardless of his opinions on the science, you'll find things to agree with: Q: What's the brass ring in anti-aging research?A: The near-term, totally feasible prospect scientists are working toward is the development of a safe drug that delays by seve... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3776340 Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3776340 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3772202&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Freminder-singularity-summit-2010-in-august.php To go along with the upcoming Immortality Institute International Conference and TransVision 2010 over in Europe later this year, I should also note that the Singularity Summit 2010 will be held next month in San Francisco: The first Singularity Summit was held at Stanford in 2006 to further understanding and discussion about the Singularity concept and the future of human technological progress. It was founded as a venue for leading thinkers to explore the subject, whether scientist, enthusiast, or skeptic. ... We invite you to join our extraordinary group of visionaries in business, science, technology, design, and the arts, as our community explores this exciting topic. Your participation offers a world of powerful ideas, a unique networking opportunity, and access to an exclusive dire... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3772202 Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3772202 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3767038&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Ftransvision-2010-october-in-milan.php It seems to be conference season again. Time flies. While we're noting European conferences of interest to supporters of engineered longevity, I should mention this year's TransVision event: TransVision 2010 is a global transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan, Italy with many options for remote online access. While TransVision 2010 is not organized by or connected with Humanity+ (formerly WTA), the organizer of most previous TransVision conferences, we wish to thank the Humanity+ Board for allowing the use of the nam... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3767038 Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3767038 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3761394&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Flifestar-institute-launches-new-website.php The LifeStar Institute is the public face of the Millard Foundation, a family organization whose principals decided a few years ago to throw their weight behind making rejuvenation medicine a reality. The LifeStar folk move in the same circles as the SENS Foundation and Methuselah Foundation, and have in the past advocated for the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence as the best technological path forward. The Institute volunteers recently launched a new website to coincide with their call for global collaboration in longevity science, a message which can also be viewed as a video: Leaders in the biology and polices of aging research at the first LifeStar Institute Global Aging Science Summit conclude the time has come to launch an ambitious global effort to keep aging generat... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3761394 Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3761394 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3750019&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Fanalysis-of-gene-expression-and-longevity-is-forging-ahead.php The process of gene expression, in which a gene is used as a blueprint to construct a protein, is anything but static. Levels of gene expression for individual genes rise and fall with environmental circumstances, health, injury, and over the course of aging. It's a tremendously complex system, with a lot of feedback loops and switches, but fortunately the cost of analyzing gene expression profiles over a whole genome is falling rapidly. It is now feasible to run hundreds of such profiles over the course of a study. At the same time the tools of analysis are starting to catch up with the amount of data being generated: researchers are able to more rapidly and effectively draw conclusions from the mountainous databases they construct. So, for example, see this study on flies, which compare... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3750019 Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3750019 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3746700&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Fimmortality-institute-international-conference-october-2010-in-brussels.php If you'll allow me to direct your attention: registration is now open for the Immortality Institute International Conference, which will be held on the weekend of October 9th in Brussels, Belgium. It's a great chance for Eurozone folk to gather and meet like-minded supporters of longevity science: there are far too few such gatherings held on that side of the pond, so make the most of this one. Many of the usual suspects from the longevity science community will be speaking or presenting, as well as a fair few faces you might not be so familiar with. Not too many of the European advocates for extended healthy life spans make it out to the US-based conferences on a regular basis, so it should be a different crowd from the circuit of the past few years. Dr. Aubrey de Grey: Chief Science Of... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3746700 Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3746700 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3740689&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=38494&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcuretogether.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F07%2F09%2Fpersonalized-life-extension-conference-curetogether-discount%2F If you’re interested in living a longer, healthier life, here’s your chance to learn about the latest research, meet other enthusiasts, and save money too. Christine Peterson is hosting the first Personalized Life Extension Conference, October 9-10 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott. She is offering a $100 discount on the $275 registration price to all CureTogether members who register with the discount code “CureTogether”. From the conference website: “Topics to be covered in lectures, Q&A, and during meals and breaks include: Supplements: Should we be taking resveratrol, vitamin D3, fish oil, coenzyme Q10, acetyl-L-carnitine, melatonin, DHEA, and many others? Benefits, costs, risks, and supplement advisors to consider. DNA testing: Costs are coming do... The Collective Well blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3740689 Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:09:52 +0100 3740689 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3740561&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Fa-strange-but-true-cultural-obstacle-to-cryonics.php In cryonics circles, it is not unusual to hear tales of a spouse - usually a wife, as most people presently signed up for cryopreservation at clinical death are male - who is adamantly opposed to cryonics, even to the point of requiring the potential cryonics patient make a choice between cryonics or the partner. This has always struck me as odd, but it is clearly more than just an urban myth or a few anecdotal couples; there is some core incentive or common aspect of human psychology at work here that generates these conflicts often enough to make the situation well known. (Well known to cryonics supporters, at least). Via Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias, I see that his own tale of conflicting spousal views on cryonics has made it into the New York Times as an example of the type: Robin... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3740561 Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3740561 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3729838&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Fsens-foundation-los-angeles-chapter-meeting-july-9th.php Via Accelerating Future, I see that the SENS Foundation is hosting an initial informal meeting this coming Friday with the aim of establishing a Los Angeles chapter of supporters: On behalf of SENS Foundation I am writing to you to invite you to join Dr Aubrey de Grey for our first SENSF L.A. Chapter meeting to be held on Friday, July 9th, 2010, at the Westwood Brewing Company (1097 Glendon Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-2907) from 5pm until Aubrey has had enough beer :-) This will be an informal gathering to create a local initiative to promote the Foundation’s interests and mission. The idea of forming a SENSF L.A. Chapter, which is planned to have monthly meetings, is to create a network of enthusiasts, field professionals, potential donors, sponsors, collaborators, students, etc. A... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3729838 Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3729838 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3729957&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emrandhipaa.com%2Femr-and-hipaa%2F2010%2F07%2F02%2Fshould-working-with-recs-be-an-emr-stimulus-requirement%2F I know that many of you don’t read all of the past comments made on this site. So, I’m sure many of you missed when DonB asked Bobby Gladd the following question: Could you explain your statement at the end of the fifth concern: “I would have added another MU criterion: require working with the RECs as a condition of incentive money eligibility;” Bobby, from this REC blog, offered the following well thought out answer: HHS is spending nearly a billion dollars on us RECs, yet we then have to go out and “recruit” providers, doing months of cold-call sales? That just opens the government up to right-wing charges that Obama is simply blindly throwing money around at cross-purposes. Many vendors and VARs see us as “competition,” which, in my view, is why ... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3729957 Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:30:38 +0100 3729957 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3718358&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2Faubrey-de-grey-in-the-media.php Longevity advocate and biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey presented at the technology gathering Activate 2010 in London today, and here's a short interview: I plan to focus [my presentation] on the acceleration of progress in technology (with an emphasis on biomedical technology, naturally) that arises from the internet's facilitation of communication between scientists, technologists and the general public. Public enthusiasm for new advances is a key ingredient in influencing policy-makers to stimulate follow-up work with suitable funding, and it can be achieved far faster now that interested non-specialists can explore new research autonomously and can also be appealed to directly by scientists. I will illustrate this with a few examples from my foundation's work. One of the Guard... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3718358 Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3718358 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3714284&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emrandhipaa.com%2Femr-and-hipaa%2F2010%2F06%2F29%2Femr-challenges-faced-by-recs%2F I’ve been meaning to write a post linking to BobbyG’s blog for a while and just never got around to it. If you follow the comments on here, you’ll have seen many of BobbyG’s comments as well. The thing that first struck me about Bobby was his sincere and thoughtful comments on the challenges that the RECs face. Here’s some of his thoughts on REC Challenges: Critics bemoan a lack of prior HIT deployment and QI experience among some REC awardees (as well as the heterogeneity of business models); While 60 REC contracts have thus far been awarded, with the newly chartered RECs frantically ramping up to meet the rather compressed Stage One Meaningful Use incentive payment timelines, both the requisite Meaningful Use reporting criteria and the EHR (Electronic Healt... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3714284 Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:41:15 +0100 3714284 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3690802&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F06%2Fis-aging-a-disease-part-ii.php Following on from a recent post on defining aging as a disease, I see that an article from Proto Magazine looks at the same question. This is really an examination of the slow boat mainstream of aging research: scientists who are careful to say in public that they are not in fact working towards greater maximum human longevity, but rather trying to achieve what is known as "compression of morbidity," wherein the period of illness at the end of life is shortened, but life span is not lengthened. According to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimate, some three-quarters of the $2.3 trillion the United States spends on health care each year goes to treat chronic diseases - most of which are diseases of aging. If scientists identify drugs that could push back the onset of several of those di... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3690802 Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3690802 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3671642&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F06%2Faubrey-de-grey-presenting-at-the-mit-enterprise-forum.php Biomedical gerontologist and engineered longevity advocate Aubrey de Grey presented at the MIT Enterprise Forum in March of this year. I somehow failed to notice the resulting video, despite a link to it sitting quite prominently on the SENS Foundation home page. Aubrey de Grey, author and researcher on aging, claims he has drawn a roadmap to defeat biological aging. He provocatively proposes that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born. ... Dr. de Grey holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science and a PhD, both from Cambridge University. Until 2006 he was in charge of software development at the university's Genetics Department for the FlyBase genetic database. In 1999, his book The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging was published. Then i... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3671642 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3671642 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3678586&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emrandhipaa.com%2Femr-and-hipaa%2F2010%2F06%2F16%2Frec-sharing-or-lack-thereof%2F There was a pretty interesting thread posted to a LinkedIn group about the RECs. Here’s some comments that will make you think a little bit about the RECs and in particular the RECs working together (or not). It is understandable that REC’s must adapt their programs to the communities they plan on serving….Healthcare is local. However, living in Florida, where there are 4 REC’s, I expect some things to be consistent…for example the implementation process should include the same pre-implementation workflow worksheet. Unfortunately, this may not happen. We know that ONC is asking that the REC’s play nice and share best practices. However, as a consultant that is talking with 3 of the 4 REC’s about a role….one REC leader in Florida asked me&#82... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3678586 Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:59:38 +0100 3678586 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3665933&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F06%2Frussian-language-longevity-advocacy.php The world is getting smaller, year by year, and the steady improvement in freely available automated translation engines has a lot to do with that. Unlike even just a few years ago, it's now possible to dive right into a foreign language community online and follow the conversation using tools such as Google Translate. The one area where this is a still a challenge is scientific literature, science being one of the last fields of human endeavor in which it is still legitimate to (a) make up entirely new words and new meanings for existing words, and (b) refuse to explain yourself in anything other than a highly formalized, esoteric dialect of your language. But the language barrier for reading the results of scientific research will fall, just as the barriers for common subjects are now a... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3665933 Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3665933 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3662633&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F06%2Fhumanity-summit-2010-coverage-and-video.php The 2010 Humanity+ Summit was held this past weekend. Video from the event is archived at Livestream and you can find a brace of posts covering the event at the Speculist: Coverage of H Plus Summit at Harvard H Plus Summit Sat. Afternoon Highlights H Plus Summit Day 2 - Morning H Plus Sunday Afternoon If you want to browse through the video streams, the links above are a useful guide to finding the presenters and topics of interest. A few items of interest related to engineered longevity: There is a very ambitious schedule with an A-list group of speakers, full streaming worldwide over the internet ... John Smart announced his new venture to provide a push prize for brain preservation (25% for a mouse brain and 75% for a pig brain) at a nano-scale resolution. They have $100,000 but a... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3662633 Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3662633 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3640981&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F06%2Fthe-tumbling-walls-of-formal-science.php Science is not really an institution per se. It is a state of mind - a willingness to follow the scientific method and the willingness to put in time on a particular job that needs doing. That science is currently and has been an institution for most of the later 20th century is something of an aberration when considered against the broader scope of history. Science has far more often been a matter of folk with the right mindset stepping in to learn what they needed and make progress as they could. Most blurred the line between engineer and scientist - cheerfully mixing discovery through the scientific method with implementation that worked around gaps in knowledge within their field. As the h+ summit this next weekend puts it, these people were citizen scientists. Their time is coming a... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3640981 Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3640981 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3632328&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FEmrAndHipaa%2F%7E3%2F8UP7zpEkYB8%2F I’ve previously posted a number of posts about the RECs. However, I found this guest post by Bobby Lee was interesting since it looked at how the RECs could significantly influence the EMR vendor market. I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts. There’s EMR shopping list being created across the country – about sixty of them. Whether or not your favorite EMR vendor makes these lists may determine the vendor’s future viability. Let me explain. HITECH Act established Health Information Technology Extension Program which in turn established Health Information Technology Regional Extension Centers (REC). ONC awarded 60 RECs across the country in two rounds of funding (first on 2/12/2010 and second on 4/6/2010) totaling $642 million. Collectively RECs are charged w... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3632328 Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:45:22 +0100 3632328 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3632241&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F06%2Fa-regenerative-medicine-roadmap-from-the-science-for-life-extension-foundation.php Via Maria Konovalenko we are pointed to an updated English-language version of the PDF roadmap for regenerative medicine, a document assembled by the PhD-laden Russian volunteers at the Science for Life Extension Foundation. This is a work in progress, but it's pretty comprehensive on the scientific side - just the sort of thing to pass around to people not yet convinced that the future of tissue engineering is golden. Here is the updated edition of the Roadmap in Regenerative Medicine ... Cell therapy and tissue engineering are described in more detail, than the rest of the scientific issues. I welcome everybody to take a look and add what's missing and/or what's wrong. I'd also like to notice that the organizational issues aren't described at all, but this is probably the most importa... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3632241 Thu, 03 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3632241 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3625459&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F06%2Ftwo-films-on-the-topic-of-the-singularity-that-lies-ahead.php The technological singularity, when considered rigorously, is something of a framework for thinking about the future of human engineering and the capabilities of the tools we build. It is of interest to supporters of healthy life extension for the same reasons as any consideration of the future of biotechnology: we want to gain a better idea of (a) what it will take to create foreseeable medical technologies of rejuvenation, and (b) whether it is possible or plausible for these advances to arrive within our remaining lifetimes. It is self-evident that agelessness is possible in the long run, given what we know about our biology and the laws of physics: Imagine living in a body fashioned from "designer cells" that can never age or get sick; and sporting a mind that thinks millions of times... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3625459 Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3625459 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3617804&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F05%2Fthe-blog-of-maria-konovalenko.php Maria Konovalenko is a molecular biophysicist and program coordinator for the Science for Life Extension Foundation, an organization that might be seen as the Russian equivalent of the SENS Foundation or Methuselah Foundation. There is the same dedication to extending healthy human life span, the same strong connections to the scientific community, and similar outreach programs. If you haven't already done so, you should take a look at the Foundation's website via Google Translate. In any case, Konovalenko came to my attention as an advocate for engineered longevity a little while back via a well-done video presentation. Now I see that she has a blog up and running; a couple of recent posts caught my eye: Bubonic plague Almost every time when the conversation drifts to fighting aging t... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3617804 Sun, 30 May 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3617804 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3595680&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FEmrAndHipaa%2F%7E3%2Fx70ShBxHWJ4%2F Sorry if you’re bored, but I’m still completely obsessed interested in the RECs and how they’re using millions of government dollars. From what I’ve seen most RECs are really getting the cart before the horse. From what I’ve seen most (if not all) of the RECs are out their doing RFPs with various EMR vendors and they are trying to narrow down their list of EMR vendors that they’ll support. Ok, yes I know they’re going to support all EMR vendors, but there’s going to be a different level of support for those EMR vendors for whom the RECs do group purchases with and “promote” in their REC. I just don’t see what kind of RFP a REC could be sending to an EMR vendor. How would an EMR vendor even respond? Does the RFP say, we need ... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3595680 Tue, 25 May 2010 15:30:20 +0100 3595680 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3599334&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F05%2Fvideo-of-aubrey-de-grey-presenting-at-tedmed-2009.php Via Accelerating Future, I see that video of biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey presenting at last year's TEDMED conference can be found at YouTube: You can find coverage of TEDMED 2009 back in the archives here and at the Longevity Meme: Longevity Advocacy at TEDMED 2009 and BIL PIL TEDMED Day 1 Coverage TEDMED Day 2 Coverage Also before lunch was the science of aging pair up with Aubrey de Grey, CSO of the SENS Foundation, and David Sinclair, professor at Harvard Medical School. If you've not heard of these gentlemen before, both view aging as a disease but both are approaching aging in very different ways. Aubrey spoke first and has a more futuristic view of aging. His mantra is that aging is metabolism caused cellular damage that leads to organism pathology, and the human bod... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3599334 Mon, 24 May 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3599334 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3573786&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emrandhipaa.com%2Femr-and-hipaa%2F2010%2F05%2F17%2Fguest-post-healthcares-challenging-with-meaningfully-using-an-emr%2F Tom Chernitsky has over 15 years experience in the fields of Document and Information Management. He is currently President of File Management Solutions, LLC, which offers a variety of solutions for helping Practices digitze their paper files to be linked into an EMR system. As we SLOWLY progress towards the Government putting in place an actual plan to fulfill the goals set forth for Healthcare in the American Recovery and Reinvestment act of 2009, the backlash seems on the verge of overtaking the talk of actual good that would be achieved. Perhaps it’s because without a clear plan, everyone has had the opportunity to focus on the negatives. Maybe it’s because many think that by the time a plan is in place, it will already be 2020. Or it could just be the general fact that no one lik... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3573786 Mon, 17 May 2010 13:58:15 +0100 3573786 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3560182&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F05%2Fan-interview-with-nir-barzilai.php As you might know, the Royal Society recently held a meeting on "the new science of aging." Amongst those attending was researcher Nir Barzilai, who has been investigating genetics and metabolism associated with human longevity for some years. One example is his work with long-lived members of the Ashkenazi Jewish population. The UK press recently published a short interview with Barzilai: [Barzilai] studied 500 Jewish people between 95 and 112. He said: "These people smoked, they are overweight, they have high cholesterol." Qualifying his remarks, he said about 30 per cent of them were obese, while 30 per cent of them had smoked to the age of 95. "They are protected from the environment by their genotype," he said. Living a healthy life might help most people increase their life expectan... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3560182 Tue, 11 May 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3560182 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3556045&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F05%2Fthe-longevity-consortium.php is an interesting project, and its members are a representative cross-section of the mainstream of modern aging research - which is to say people who largely focus on understanding aging only, or on slowing aging by manipulating metabolism. From the Consortium website: We are a consortium of scientists from multiple disciplines interested in the study of genetics of aging and age-related traits. Our group includes laboratory-based scientists, epidemiologists and statistical geneticists. Members of the Consortium represent three types of research efforts: Laboratories devoted to the identification of longevity-related genes and pathways in non-human species; Studies of special populations (e.g., centenarians) that are engaged in the discovery of genes associated with longevity; and Es... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3556045 Mon, 10 May 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3556045 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3545417&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F05%2Fsens-foundation-is-looking-for-an-academic-coordinator.php If you've ever wanted to work with Aubrey de Grey on advancing the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, here is your chance. The SENS Foundation is looking for someone to fill the position of Academic Coordinator: SENS Foundation seeks a consultant to act as Academic Coordinator. The Academic Coordinator will be the head of the entire Academic Initiative and be responsible for designing and implementing short, medium, and long term operational strategies which align with the broader aims of SENS Foundation. ... Major projects already in development include the creation of online undergraduate courses in longevity science, development of a comprehensive training program for SENSFAI, continuance and expansion of the scholarship program, formation of a collaboration as a granting... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3545417 Thu, 06 May 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3545417 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3542551&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F05%2Faubrey-de-grey-at-the-lift10-conference-in-geneva.php Biomedical gerontologist and engineered longevity advocate Aubrey de Grey is one of the speakers at the Lift10 conference presently taking place in Geneva. You can browse the conference site, watch video of de Grey's presentation at the conference from the channel at Livestream, or take a look at this article from the local press: Aubrey de Grey declares an end to generations: "There won’t be generations anymore," says Aubrey de Grey of tomorrow's world where anti-aging treatments will give us at least 30 extra years of life. You’ll be able to keep up with your granddaughter on the ski slopes, he told his host at the Lift 2010 conference in Geneva Thursday 6 May. And for de Grey, the future is close: we can expect to see such treatments within our lifetimes, he believes. ... The qu... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3542551 Wed, 05 May 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3542551 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3529739&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F05%2Fthe-next-research-project-for-immortality-institute-funding.php The Immortality Institute volunteers are making a go of becoming an organization that regularly raises a modest level of funding for scientific research into engineered longevity. You might recall that the first project funded this way was an investigation into the use of pulsed lasers to destroy lipofuscin. This chemical gunk builds up in long-lived cell populations and contributes to age-related damage and dysfunction by harming the garbage collection functions of the lysosomes in our cells. Safely destroying this lipofuscin in one way or another will assist in restoring these garbage collection functions to a youthful level in the cells of elderly, and so is an important facet of any scientific path to actual rejuvenation. The Institute is presently soliciting project outlines from int... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3529739 Sun, 02 May 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3529739 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3515481&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emrandhipaa.com%2Femr-and-hipaa%2F2010%2F04%2F22%2Fpossible-rec-business-model%2F As I said before, I’m finding the EHR RECs very intriguing right now. Thus a few extra posts about the RECs. First, thanks for those who have been helping update the EHR REC wiki page. There’s still a ways to go, but little by little we’ll get all of the RECs listed in one space. From what I can tell, and as evidenced by this CalHIPSO REC blog, these REC organizations have A LOT on their plate. First, they have to meet the mandates of the government (which I’ll talk about more another time). Second, they have to create an organization that didn’t really exist previously (for the most part). Third, they have to look at a long term business model for when the government funding for EHR RECs runs out. Not a simple task. I find the third item pretty interesting si... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3515481 Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:03:00 +0100 3515481 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3490709&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emrandhipaa.com%2Femr-and-hipaa%2F2010%2F04%2F20%2Fehr-regional-extension-centers-recs%2F Every day I’m seeing little pieces of information come out about the EHR Regional Extension Centers (RECs). Sadly, there’s not one central location that is covering the activity of these RECs so that doctors and clinics could quickly see what’s going on and enjoy the benefits of the millions of dollars that was given to these RECs as part of the ARRA EHR stimulus money. Rather than just complain, I’ve started to create a wiki page that lists each of the EHR RECs, how much funding they’ve received and hopefully links to all of the REC websites. I have a long way to go, so I’d love to get your help in updating this list. So, leave a comment or feel free to update the wiki with the information you have about these RECs. Unfortunately, I’d guess that 9... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3490709 Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:23:56 +0100 3490709 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3475778&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F04%2Fhumanity-uk-2010-conference-on-april-24th.php By way of a reminder, the Humanity+ UK 2010 conference will be held in London later this month. Those of you familiar with the evolution of the transhumanist community over the past decade will recognize most of the names on the conference agenda. Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey is presenting on "human regenerative engineering - theory and practice", so if you have the chance, you might consider attending. The UK chapter of Humanity+, an organisation dedicated to promoting understanding, interest and participation in fields of emerging innovation that can radically benefit the human condition, announced today that registrations are on track for record attendance at the Humanity+ UK2010 conference taking place in Conway Hall, Holborn, London, on April 24th. "Approaching 200 attend... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3475778 Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3475778 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3471749&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F04%2Fdeathism-from-an-expected-quarter.php As noted by Sonia Arrison, the Pope is not in favor of engineered human longevity. Surprise, surprise: Modern medical science strives, if not exactly to exclude death, at least to eliminate as many as possible of its causes, to postpone it further and further, to prolong life more and more. But let us reflect for a moment: what would it really be like if we were to succeed, perhaps not in excluding death totally, but in postponing it indefinitely, in reaching an age of several hundred years? Would that be a good thing? Humanity would become extraordinarily old, there would be no more room for youth. Capacity for innovation would die, and endless life would be no paradise, if anything a condemnation. Which nicely frames three of the common mistaken, knee-jerk objections to greater longevi... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3471749 Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3471749 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3463885&cid=t_116790_180_f&fid=38610&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.productivity501.com%2Fharvard-masters-degree%2F6463%2F Conclusion Overall, I was very happy with the experience and education. It significantly added to my education without taking much time off work. I believe this type of degree is particularly valuable for work beyond your first master’s degree. Taking the majority of your classes online does limit your interaction with other students, and this is often one of the most valuable aspects of college. I would be very hesitant to recommend getting a bachelor’s degree online for someone recently out of high school because the student interactions are so valuable. One of my regrets is that I didn’t work harder at networking with classmates during the summer residency. While there are a number of other schools that offer various types of online degrees, there is a significant bene... Productivity501 blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3463885 Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:00:25 +0100 3463885 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3463553&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F04%2Freports-from-the-bay-area-aging-club.php Over at Ouroboros, you'll find a brace of posts reporting on the first Bay Area Aging Club meeting. There's actually quite a concentration of both mainstream and more ambitious biogerontologists and other life science researchers and advocates in that region, what with the Buck Institute for Age Research, Cynthia Kenyon's lab at UCSF, and the legacy of a few years of SENS-related conferences, fundraising meetings, and organizational work. Today I’m attending the first Bay Area Aging Club at UCSF’s Gladstone Institute. BAAC is a meeting of local scientists working in biogerontology and related fields ... The idea is that the conference will be held regularly (every 6 months or so), allowing frequent discussion of recent progress and ongoing work, and encouraging networking and collabo... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3463553 Sun, 11 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3463553 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3448818&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F04%2Fengineered-immune-cells-viruses-or-nanoparticles.php The future of cancer treatment is targeting: killing only the cells you want to kill, with no side effects or harm. Discrimination and control is the benefit brought by advances in biotechnology, and the results presently tested in the laboratory are a world removed from even the best contemporary chemotherapy or radiation treatment. A number of different technology platforms are under development within the paradigm of targeted cell killers: First is the nanoparticle: comparatively simple structures whose behavior researchers can expect to fully understand. They only do what they are designed to do, which is typically to act as an inert link between a homing device and a kill mechanism. Second is the engineered virus, altered natural self-replicators that are restricted to working thei... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3448818 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3448818 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3443657&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F04%2Fthe-sens-foundation-academic-initiative.php I see that the SENS Foundation is devoting more space to promoting their academic initiative: The study of human aging requires an implementation of translational approaches which many students are simply not exposed to in their general education. Current educational paradigms present an opportunity to easily and inexpensively train students in these methods and cultivate interest in aging research. These assumptions have led to the formation of SENS Foundation's Academic Initiative (SENSFAI), a student-focused research and development program designed to recruit talented student scientists into the broad field of longevity science with a specific focus on the SENS engineering platform. Since the launch of its pilot studies in the fall of 2008, SENSFAI has demonstrated its potential as a ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3443657 Mon, 05 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3443657 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3408342&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F03%2Fmore-on-the-methuselah-foundations-present-strategy.php As you might know, the Methuselah Foundation volunteers are presently engaged in initiatives that attempt to broaden the pool of people who support engineered longevity. Those of us who are already enthusiastic about the idea of science to help us life much longer are comparatively rare outliers: we tend to understand how technology can change the world around us, and feel comfortable estimating the plausibility of future technologies based on present trends and capabilities. But most people live in the here and now: it's hard to persuade them that the future will be far different from what they see today. Yet these folk make up the majority of the population, and until we can persuade them to see things our way, the quest to extend the healthy human life span will remain a fringe interest... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3408342 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3408342 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3403839&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F03%2Fproposed-a-brain-preservation-technology-prize.php Research prizes are demonstrably effective when it comes to producing results, as measured in funds raised and new technologies developed. One of the more influential organizations in the aging research space, the Methuselah Foundation, started out focused on a research prize for engineered longevity, and there are many historical examples of prize-spurred innovation. Via Accelerating Future, I see that an earnest effort is being made to propose a prize for brain preservation: almost everyone has heard of cryonics but assumes the entire concept is fundamentally flawed. The concept is not flawed; it just requires diligent research and technology development to perfect the technique of brain preservation. ... A Brain Preservation Technology Prize has the unique ability to get the scienti... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3403839 Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3403839 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3403965&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emrandhipaa.com%2Femr-and-hipaa%2F2010%2F03%2F23%2Fregional-extension-centers-recs-and-hitrcs%2F One area of the HITECH act that I haven’t heard discussed nearly enough is the Regional Extension Centers. Sure, I’ve heard them mentioned in passing plenty of times. However, I haven’t heard any real good information on what’s being done to make sure that these RECs are going to be successful in their goal of 100,000 providers becoming meaningful users of EHR’s by 2011. Yes, that’s a pretty big hairy goal. Especially considering the EHR adoption rates up until today. Not to mention, these Regional Extension Centers (RECs) are going to have to find a way to effectively help doctors sort through the 300+ EHR vendors that are on the market with more coming out every day. This is not an easy task to accomplish and will require a lot of great tools to do it ... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3403965 Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:19:50 +0100 3403965 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3382777&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F03%2Fsens-foundation-launches-new-website.php The SENS Foundation, biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey's umbrella organization for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence research, is putting their best foot forward with a new, more functional, and attractive website: The news section contains some updates of interest, such as this from the web team: The new site is organized around a series of projects, which are in progress at our Research Center, in the facilities of our collaborators, or under the auspices of our Academic Initiative. Blogs and news items relating to all these projects will be added regularly, giving you an up-to-date picture of the work we do. News items from outside the Foundation, which relate to our mission, will be available here. Publications and proceedings of past conference are also availab... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3382777 Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3382777 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3354278&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F03%2Fmore-on-stem-cell-technology-and-the-rise-of-medical-tourism.php To follow on from a recent post on medical tourism for stem cell therapies, I though I'd note the pace of development in Asia. The medical industry in countries like India, Malaysia, Vietnam, and so forth is in many ways more energetic than in the West. It is certainly less burdened by regulation, and that makes all the difference in the long run. For so long as it costs less to achieve the same goals, the level of growth will be greater, and that difference will compound year after year. Heavy regulation and socialist command and control systems such as those that shackle medicine in the US will always ensure that a region becomes backwards and poor in the fullness of time. It will be overtaken by competing regions, and the bulk of new investment will go elsewhere. We can see aspects of ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3354278 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3354278 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3335280&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F03%2Fvideos-from-the-foresight-2010-conference.php The Foresight 2010 Conference was hosted by the Foresight Institute back in January: Foresight Institute is a leading think tank and public interest organization focused on transformative future technologies. Founded in 1986, its mission is to discover and promote the upsides, and help avoid the dangers, of nanotechnology, AI, biotech, and similar life-changing developments. ... Several rapidly-developing technologies have the potential to undergo an exponential takeoff in the next few decades, causing as much of an impact on economy and society as the computer and networking did in the past few. Chief among these are molecular manufacturing and artificial general intelligence (AGI). For those of us who like to think about the biotechnologies that lie beyond present day development cycle... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3335280 Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3335280 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3311637&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F02%2Frapamycin-research-rolls-onward.php Rapamycin, as I'm sure you're aware by now, is a drug that has been shown to extend life in mice via a mechanism that may stack with the beneficial effects of calorie restriction on longevity. Unfortunately, its primary effect, and the reason for its commercial development in the first place, is suppression of the immune system. Rapamycin has been used to help prevent rejection of organ transplants for quite a while. It's not the sort of thing you'd really want to take on a regular basis, given the choice. Nonetheless, now that rapamycin has been shown to influence longevity strongly enough to be worth an entry into the Mprize, interest has been spurred amongst those researchers who aim to slow aging through drug-induced manipulation of metabolic processes. So expect to see a steady flow... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3311637 Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3311637 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3302286&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F02%2Fthe-body-does-work-to-break-down-damaging-aggregates.php One of the causes of age-related degeneration and disease is the buildup of amyloid clumps and other forms of aggregated metabolic byproducts. A brief outline: As we get older, many different types of errant and unwanted proteins, the chemical byproducts of metabolism, build up and accumulate between our cells. Collectively these are known as forms of amyloid, a term that might be familiar to you in connection with Alzheimer's disease, but there are many other types of amyloid beyond that implicated in the destruction that Alzheimer's brings to the brain. For example, the work of the Supercentenarian Research Foundation implicates a different form of amyloid in the deaths of the oldest old. Those people who - though good genes, good lifestyle choices, and good luck - manage to evade heart... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3302286 Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3302286 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3287707&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F02%2Flongevity-research-at-the-science-network.php I notice that the Science Network has published a good selection of video interviews with biogerontologists and other folk involved in aging or longevity research. You'll find them in the Diet, Aging, and Metabolism section of the site. One of the more interesting interviews is with Paul Glenn, the philanthropist behind both the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research and the ongoing establishment of laboratories for longevity science in a number of different research centers. In comparison to researchers, most high net worth folk who fund aging research tend not to speak to the public all that often - which I think is a pity, and also one of the aspects of the funding environment that has to change as we move further into the biotechnology revolution. You'll also find interviews with Aubr... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3287707 Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3287707 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3262581&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F02%2Fthe-case-for-cryonics.php Researcher Chris Patil of Ouroboros recently posted a skeptics' view of modern cryonics: I’m a cryonics skeptic of the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" flavor. As I’ve said before, I suspect that long-term preservation of the potential for life by freezing or other means is physically possible, but at present I don’t think we’re making any significant progress in that direction. It wasn't clear to me from his post whether he was aware of the state of the art in vitrification of tissues at low temperature without ice formation; those who write within the cryonics community are careful to distinguish between vitrification and freezing, which are two quite different things. Suppressing the formation of ice crystals at low temperatures is key to preserving the so... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3262581 Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3262581 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3258960&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F02%2Fmalthusian-visions.php Whilst living in comfort and security amidst plenty unimaginable to their ancestors, Malthusians of the developed world look at the poverty and suffering caused by kleptocratic governances elsewhere, and cry that this is the result of too many people: [Malthusianism] is, fundamentally, a failure of understanding. It is to look at the undeniably bad situations and unpleasant regions of the world and say "this is because too many people are using too many resources," rather than to see that in fact it's all due to misallocation of existing resources and the failure to develop new resources - a grand procession of waste, corruption, and the inhumanity with which human beings treat one another. These situations are problems that can be solved through development and tearing down corrupt syste... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3258960 Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3258960 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3254427&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F02%2Fa-profile-of-dave-kekich-of-the-maximum-life-foundation.php Investors Business Daily is running a profile of entrepreneur turned longevity science advocate Dave Kekich, who you might recall was one of the first wave of donors to support the Methuselah Foundation back when it was getting starting. If you'd like to know more about the driving force behind the Maximum Life Foundation and the recent Manhattan Beach Project activities, then take a look. Dave Kekich Seeks The Fountain Of Youth: Told that he would never walk again, Kekich sank into hopelessness. "I felt my life had pretty much ended because I was much into the physical aspect of life," he told IBD. ... Having regained a great deal of lost confidence, Kekich started a venture capital firm in his bedroom. He raised money for entrepreneurs from angel investors and took a few companies pu... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3254427 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3254427 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3231441&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F02%2Fraising-the-dead.php The aging science group blog Ouroboros has been defunct for some months now, which is more the pity. Working your way through the archives will show you that it was a quality effort whilst it lived - and those archives continue to provide value for those interested in learning more about evidence, debates, and directions in aging research. But that is not dead which can eternal lie. Glancing in the direction of Ouroboros today, I notice signs of renewed life from organizer Chris Patil, one of the Buck Institute for Age Research folk: I’m trying to claw my way back from a long period of inactivity. In late 2009, experiments and other work prevented me from devoting time to this project, and even after some of those obligations lightened, I was finding it difficult to get back in the sadd... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3231441 Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3231441 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3220498&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F01%2Fwhy-live-another-20-years.php Discussion Group. Cole's bias is towards some types of therapies that I might not see as favorable roads ahead (such as editing our DNA to change the operation of our metabolism), but the general point being made here is true and important. Progress in science today is very rapid, and this is something new and unusual in the history of humanity. We stand on the cusp of great and sudden advances in biotechnology and medical science; two decades of additional life will make a very large difference in the medical technology you have access to in later life. The Gerontology Research Group, you might recall, is something of a watering hole for the gerontology community - which is still a comparatively small gathering in comparison to the wider field of human life science research. You'll find... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3220498 Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3220498 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3208323&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F01%2Fthe-laypersons-view-of-aging-and-longevity-science.php Once you start digging into a topic, it becomes all to easy to lose sight of your previous state of knowledge, and the opinions you held before you learned more. What were your thoughts on aging research and engineered longevity before you became interested enough to start reading this blog on a regular basis? When we talk about advocacy and fundraising for projects like the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, we are really talking about convincing people who are presently where you used to be: they are potentially interested, but not in the loop, and not seeing the whole picture. If you lose sight of how these folk think - which is the same way that you used to think - then you will find it harder to persuade and educate. The opening paragraphs of a recent book review manage... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3208323 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3208323 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3197591&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F01%2Freports-from-a-youthful-cryonics-meeting.php Cryonics is the science and business of the low-temperature preservation of the body and brain upon clinical death. By preserving the fine structure of the brain, you preserve the data stored within - the mind itself. Cryopreserved individuals can then wait for as long as needed for technologies to advance to the point at which they can be restored to active life. Typically, this is envisaged to involve molecular manufacturing and medical nanorobots capable of cellular repair - none of which is impossible under our present understanding of the laws of physics. But the vitrified waiting part of the equation requires the cryonics community to continue and expand from generation to generation. From this community are drawn the (presently few) professionals in the cryonics field, financial su... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3197591 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3197591 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3185303&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F01%2Fan-update-from-sierra-sciences-cure-aging-or-die-trying.php Cure aging or die trying indeed - that is exactly the position in which we all find ourselves. The development of longevity science is a race, and not the good kind of race either; more the sort of race wherein a horror in the darkness is snorting behind you, and the consequences of failure are dire indeed. Worse, most of those running alongside you are oblivious to the beast that follows, and will not be woken from their daze. But this race we all win together, or we all lose, picked off one by one. There is no middle ground. At the Sierra Sciences website you'll find an audio presentation from an anti-aging conference last year (I should note that I don't have a high opinion of such events, in which the frauds, potion-sellers, and scum far outnumber any serious presentations), and an up... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3185303 Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3185303 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3156438&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2010%2F01%2Fa-message-on-aging-from-the-science-for-life-extension-foundation.php The Science for Life Extension Foundation is the Russian group behind the Science Against Aging initiative. Vladimir Skulachev, whose work I occasionally discuss here is amongst their advisory board, as are researchers you might more readily recognize such as Aubrey de Grey and Leonid Gavrilov. You might think of the Science for Life Extension Foundation as a sort of Russian language version of the Methuselah Foundation and SENS Foundation: similarities include strong relationships with the biogerontology community, advocacy initiatives driven by strong personalities from the transhumanist community, and fundraising for the research required to extend healthy human lives. This sort of message, and the goal of radical life extension, is apparently more popular in Russian culture than in the... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3156438 Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3156438 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3122076&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F12%2Fmore-from-the-methuselah-foundation-as-the-year-closes.php This study showed unequivocally that mice lived longer when they took rapamycin, an immunosuppressant drug generally taken by recipients of donor organs to avoid rejection. The Foundation's strategy these days is incorporating a great deal of work to grow the community of healthy life extension supporters: broadening the appeal, pushing on concepts that haven't yet been tried, and so forth. How does one persuade the common man in the street to be basically for engineered longevity in the same way that he's basically for curing named diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's? Here is one approach, the My Bridge 4 Life strategy that was announced earlier this year: A Long Life Tool: the Perfect Gift Sadly, many of us know someone who is battling a life threatening illness. Or maybe a friend or... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3122076 Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3122076 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3100765&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F12%2Fgenescient-raises-more-angel-funding.php Today I was prodded into noticing that Genescient has raised more angel funding for their work on longevity genes and the potential manipulation thereof. Congratulations are due; it isn't easy raising funds in the present market environment, and the Genescient folk did so whilst clearly stating they are working to extend healthy human life span. That last point isn't quite the albatross it used to be, but it's still a challenge in some quarters. So the more people who stand up to openly and seriously talk about extending human life span the better. Genescient Corporation, a California genomic-health biotechnology company, received $500,000 in new angel investment, to help commercialize the company’s technology and to fund further research. The investment was made by private investors ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3100765 Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3100765 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3089248&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F12%2Fwhat-are-these-immortalhumanscom-guys-up-to.php A blog-style site I've noticed at the edge of my vision of late is Immortal Humans. Based on a first glance, I relegated it to the spam blog / adsense content scraper bucket and proceeded to ignore it. It is sad but true that running ads (and especially Google-provided ads) on a site related to human longevity and aging is a very good indicator of worthlessness in this day and age. The worse end of the "anti-aging" marketplace has ensured that to be the case with their relentless transgressions of marketing norms and internet best practices. That whole culture of buyers and sellers is very much a foaming sea of fools and scum eagerly parting the gullible from their money - whilst simultaneously making it harder for folk like myself to advocate research into real longevity science. There is... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3089248 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3089248 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3066990&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F12%2Ftranscripts-from-the-2009-humanity-summit.php The 2009 Humanity+ Summit was held this past weekend, and included a number of presentations on longevity science and transhumanist aspirations towards radical life extension. Bryan Bishop was kind enough to post transcripts, typed up in real time while he was there; those relating to engineered longevity are linked below: Aubrey de Grey http://adl.serveftp.org/~bryan/hplus-summit-2009/aubrey-de-grey.html Greg Fahy http://adl.serveftp.org/~bryan/hplus-summit-2009/fahy.html Christine Peterson http://adl.serveftp.org/~bryan/hplus-summit-2009/christine-peterson.html Gregory Benford http://adl.serveftp.org/~bryan/hplus-summit-2009/greg-benford.html Here is a line from de Grey's presentation: We need to think properly about what aging is. Not just correctly. In an appropriate way that is ... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3066990 Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3066990 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3052109&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F12%2Fniemals-alt-ending-aging-translated-to-german.php Aubrey de Grey and Michael Rae's Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime is now translated into German by a volunteer team, and published through Transcript: The title, as you can see is "Niemals alt!" - Never Old, or Never Get Old, or Never to Become Old depending on your chosen engine of translation. German sensibilities demand a dark cover for such topics, it seems. In any case, congratulations are due for the volunteer translators. As I remarked when the Russian translation became available: translation of a scientific work is never easy, especially when its focus is on research that is still cutting edge. Much of the crucial terminology in new fields is essentially made up from whole cloth or built of unusual compound words that... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3052109 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3052109 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3048174&cid=t_116790_109_f&fid=34750&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpsychcentral.com%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2009%2F12%2F01%2Floneliness-may-be-contagious%2F A year ago, nearly exactly to the date, researcher Nicholas Christakis and colleagues released a study demonstrating how our moods might be contagious within our social network (sorry, this research pertains primarily to traditional social networks; it’s not known whether it’s generalizable to online social networks). Specifically, Christakis found that happiness is a little contagious within our small group of friends and family. That old study found that “when a person becomes happy, a friend living close by has a 25 percent higher chance of becoming happy themselves. A spouse experiences an 8 percent increased chance and for next-door neighbors, it’s 34 percent.” In other words, happiness can be a little contagious. Today, we discover the logical extension... World of Psychology blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3048174 Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:01:59 +0100 3048174 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3035879&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F11%2Freminder-aubrey-de-grey-live-on-cnncom-on-november-30th.php By way of a reminder, biomedical gerontologist and well known advocate for radical life extension Aubrey de Grey will be participating in a live webcast on CNN.com on November 30th - this coming Monday. The open invitation from CNN runs much as follows: Vital Signs host and CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta will be joined by best-selling author Dan Buettner who has done extensive studies on the areas in the world people live the longest, healthiest lives, known as Blue Zones, and shares their formula for a long life. The other panelist is geneticist Dr. Aubrey de Grey, best-selling author of "Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime." He believes regenerative medicine could, in a matter of decades, extend life expectancy t... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3035879 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3035879 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3029781&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F11%2Fthoughts-on-synthesis-in-aging-research.php I stumbled across some thoughts from the field of neuroscience earlier today, and thought I'd share. Scientific journals publish more than just research findings, after all. You'll also find the occasional deep editorial, opinion piece, or words of wisdom: The brain is responsible for providing everything from the basic involuntary physiological events that allow one to breathe and live, to the conscious actions and thoughts that dictate the very essence of mankind. As such, the preservation of brain function as individuals age is not only crucial to support the ability to live but also the ability to maintain their individuality. Aging is an inevitable process that everyone faces and one that has captivated people's minds since the beginning of our existence. Promises of life extension a... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3029781 Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3029781 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3003713&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F11%2Fronald-bailey-reports-on-the-manhattan-beach-project.php Ronald Bailey, who has long covered conferences organized by the transhumanist and engineered longevity communities, has an article in Reason Magazine on the recent Manhattan Beach Project longevity summit. Our first scientific anti-aging conference was held in Manhattan Beach, California over nine years ago. This was no ordinary conference. Rather, it was a high-powered brainstorm session to figure out how to reverse aging. Twelve researchers from around the world combined their genius and their levels of expertise in their specific specialties, and they laid the groundwork for what eventually evolved into a scientific roadmap for full age reversal. ... a Longevity Summit under the Manhattan Beach Project umbrella is scheduled for what looks to be [mid-November]. The Summit agenda lis... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3003713 Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3003713 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2981178&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FEmrAndHipaa%2F%7E3%2FL5UhCmQtGOc%2F I just read one of the best blog posts I’d read in a long time. So much so that I just had to post part of it a link to it on my site. The post is called “Far From Shovel-Ready” by Anthony Guerra. I think you all should go and read the entire post. It’s well thought out and well written. I don’t know Anthony Guerra personally, but our paths have regularly crossed on the internet. I hope one day to have the pleasure of meeting him (maybe at HIMSS?). His blog post starts out with this statement, “Legislation that took weeks to write will wreak havoc for years.” I’m not quite as certain as Anthony that it WILL wreak havoc. However, I’ve been warning of the possibilities of problems for a while now. He describes the main points of his post ... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2981178 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:58:27 +0100 2981178 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2977249&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F11%2Flivly-and-granulocyte-therapies-to-kill-cancer.php For any given human cancer there is, somewhere, a person who possesses immune cells that can kill it efficiently and rapidly. That, at least, is the theory - and the evidence backing it up is good. Some people have granulocyte immune cells that are immensely effective at destroying cancer, and those cells and their cancer-killing properties can be safely transferred to other people. You might recall that the work of Zheng Cui, presented at SENS3, provided an impressive demonstration of this strategy for dealing with cancer: Dr. Cui tested the ability of these cells to fight off cancer by transfusing them into normal mice with cancers. Surprisingly, the simple transfusion of the cancer-fighting immune cells from the resistant mice effectively transfered the same remarkable protection to th... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2977249 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2977249 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2954481&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F11%2Ftwo-videos-aubrey-de-grey-and-an-unofficial-sens-foundation-promotional.php While meandering the byways of the internet, I came across a rather nicely done promotional video short for the work of the SENS Foundation. I don't believe it is in any way authorized, but it's the sort of simple, quality product that this community excels in producing. Take a look and see what you think. On a related note, I see that videos from the recent Singularity Summit are available online. Here is Aubrey de Grey speaking about the Methuselarity: More on the Methuselarity as a concept, and how it relates to longevity escape velocity, can be found back a little way in this year's Fight Aging! archives. At some point, the advance in biotechnology and its applications to medicine will begin to add more than one year of remaining life expectancy with each passing year of progress... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2954481 Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2954481 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2946882&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F10%2Fpresent-areas-of-focus-in-regenerative-medicine.php Whilst browsing PubMed today, I noticed an informative survey of publication trends in the field of regenerative medicine. The full PDF text is available from the journal for those of you who like to dig further: The articles published in the journal Cell Transplantation - The Regenerative Medicine Journal over the last two years reveal the recent and future cutting-edge research in the fields of regenerative and transplantation medicine. 437 articles were published from 2007 to 2008, a 17% increase compared to the 373 articles in 2006-2007. - Neuroscience was still the most common section in both the number of articles and the percentage of all manuscripts published. - The increasing interest and rapid advance in bioengineering technology is highlighted by tissue engineering and bioa... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2946882 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2946882 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2934639&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F10%2Fthe-manhattan-beach-project-longevity-summit-in-november.php Like the Maximum Life Foundation, which I commented on in a post here not so long ago, the Manhattan Beach Project is a wrapper for entrepreneur Dave Kekich's view of longevity science and advocacy for progress in enhancing the healthy human life span. Our first scientific anti-aging conference was held in Manhattan Beach, California over nine years ago. This was no ordinary conference. Rather, it was a high-powered brainstorm session to figure out how to reverse aging. Twelve researchers from around the world combined their genius and their levels of expertise in their specific specialties, and they laid the groundwork for what eventually evolved into a scientific roadmap for full age reversal. Each scientist represented a separate discipline. Fields such as stem cells, genomics, nanotec... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2934639 Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2934639 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2930942&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F10%2Ffoldinghome-with-the-immortality-institute-and-longevity-meme-team.php Competition makes the world go round, and competition is what drives the continuing success of the Folding@home (or F@h) distributed computing project, as well as other similar initiatives such as Rosetta@home. Few people are naturally given to rush towards charitable giving - even when it costs them next to nothing - but how the crowds flock to donate when giving things away is presented as a contest! The F@h project uses spare processing cycles donated from volunteers' home computers to solve tough problems in protein folding, one small block of calculations at a time. These are computational simulations that would tie up a supercomputer for a very long time, and at an unfeasibly high cost, but the millions of volunteers and their spare processing cycles constitute a supercomputer in a c... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2930942 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2930942 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2901709&cid=t_116790_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emrandhipaa.com%2Femr-and-hipaa%2F2009%2F10%2F14%2Ftimeframes-to-implement-an-emr-and-the-emr-regional-extension-centers%2F I quoted this CIO in my previous post about EMR Motivations, but I also thought that Neal Ganguly provided some interesting analysis of the time frames involved with selecting, implementing and using an EMR. Plus, he takes it one step further and adds in the time frames to get the EMR regional extension centers in place as well. Check out the EMR timelines: Hospitals / Physicians: It can take 3-6 months to evaluate and select a system and then it takes 18-24 months to install a hospital clinical system. It takes 2-5 months to properly install a physician EMR. It can take 6-12 months or more to work out the kinks and become productive on such systems. The talent pool to accomplish this work is spread thin. Hence the extension center concept. However, it can take 3-6 months to establish cent... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2901709 Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:12:38 +0100 2901709 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2890603&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F10%2Falternate-day-fasting-continues-to-look-promising.php Alternate day fasting, or intermittent fasting in general, is known to produce similar health and longevity benefits to the practice of calorie restriction. Intermittent fasting isn't as well researched as calorie restriction - by which I mean to say the evidence for health benefits is "only" very good rather than overwhelming, as in the case of calorie restriction. It's worth noting that there exist intriguing hints that the underlying biological mechanisms by which these benefits are conferred are different for these two strategies, despite the basic similarity: eating less while still obtaining all the necessary nutrients. Over at the Longevity Meme I recently remarked upon a study showing improvement in heart function and overall health with age as a result of suppressing one gene inv... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2890603 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2890603 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2875995&cid=t_116790_87_f&fid=34980&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fightaging.org%2Farchives%2F2009%2F10%2Fanother-method-of-increasing-autophagy-to-enhance-longevity.php Autophagy seems to be the topic of the week, and here's another example of research demonstrating enhanced longevity in laboratory animals through increased autophagy: Here, we report that administration of spermidine, a natural polyamine whose intracellular concentration declines during human ageing, markedly extended the lifespan of yeast, flies and worms, and human immune cells. In addition, spermidine administration potently inhibited oxidative stress in ageing mice [and] led to significant upregulation of various autophagy-related transcripts, triggering autophagy in yeast, flies, worms and human cells. Those of you who like your research a little more preprocessed than the original papers will no doubt prefer this article from the science press: It seems that spermidine exerts its... Fight Aging! blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2875995 Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2875995