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Maybe you can't put a price on death, but life certainly has its monetary rewards. And for scientists who can put mice on the road to immortality, the purse just reached $1 million.
The growing prize, offered by the Methuselah Foundation, is designed to stimulate anti-aging research with the ultimate goal of making us all live forever.
A cure for human aging, foundation members figure, will only come if more work is done on rodents.
"If we are to bring about real regenerative therapies that will benefit not just future generations, but those of us who are alive today, we must encourage scientists to work on the problem of aging," de Grey said Tuesday.
De Grey believes there are exactly seven root causes of aging, all of which are reversible. Among the seven deadly, well, things, are cell atrophy, cell death, and unwanted mutations.
Methuselah was a patriarch in the Bible said to reach 969 years of age.
You know, it's funny. I always knew I'd live forever, or at least long enough to see the end of mankind. My parents used to shake their heads and sigh, saying things like 'standard male immortality complex, you'll grow out of it.' It appears I may have the last laugh. :LOL:
Originally posted by they see ALL
if i was a "scientist" or something and i read about this, i would devote alot of my time for this because: its $1,000,000!!!
Longevity Prize (LP): details
The Longevity Prize is won whenever the world record lifespan for a mouse of the species most commonly used in scientific work, Mus musculus, is exceeded.
The amount won by a winner of PP is in proportion to the size of the fund at that time, but also in proportion to the margin by which the previous record is broken. The precise formula is:
Previous record: X days
New record: X+Y days
LP fund contains: $Z at noon GMT on day of death of record-breaker
Winner receives: $Z x (Y/(X+Y))
Thus, hypothetically, if the new record is twice the previous one, the winner receives half the fund. If the new record is 10% more than the old one, the winner receives 1/11 of the fund. The fund can thus never be exhausted, and the incentive to break the new record remains intact indefinitely. (This is in contrast to a structure that specifies a particular mouse age whose first achiever gets the whole fund.) We believe that this is important, because the public attention will be best maintained if there is a steady stream of record-breaks, showing that scientists are taking progressively better control of the aging process.
The record-breaker will receive prize money every week from the point where they beat the previous record. The amount paid each week will be as if their mouse had just died; the total amount won so far by a living record-breaker will be prominently displayed on the web site.
Rejuvenation Prize (RP): details
The Rejuvenation Prize rewards successful late-onset interventions. There are many ways to structure a prize to achieve this goal. The Rejuvenation Prize has been instituted (in replacement of the Reversal Prize -- see above) so as to satisfy two additional shortcomings of the Longevity Prize: first, that it is of limited scientific value to focus on a single mouse (a statistical outlier), and second, that the most important goal is to promote the development of interventions to restore youthful physiology, not merely to extend life. Thus, the Rejuvenation Prize rules are as follows:
1) The Rejuvenation Prize is awarded not for an individual mouse but for a published study. The study must satisfy the following criteria:
- The treated and control groups must have been at least 20 mice each
.
- The intervention must have been begun at an age at least half of the eventual mean age at death of the longest-lived 10% of the CONTROL group.
- The treated mice must have been assessed for at least five different markers that change significantly with age in the controls, and there must be a statistically significant reversal in the trajectory of those five markers in the treated mice at some (unrestricted) time after treatment began versus some (also unrestricted) time before it began. (It is OK if other markers do not show this.)
2) The record that a new prizewinner has to beat should be the mean age at death of the longest-lived 10% of the treated group.
Conveniently, the Rejuvenation Prize does not require the same rigorous validation procedures as the Longevity Prize, because the age involved is defined to be that reported in the publication of the study.
Originally posted by WyrdeOne
Excellent post Sardion, I wasn't aware of the particulars behind the prize.
It's an excellent idea to stimulate research, but the money would be the least of my concerns if I found a repeatable way to extend the life of a rat. I'd be like the mad scientist, injecting himself before it was fully tested...
And I'm already big and green!
Originally posted by Umbrax
Anti-ageing is not a good thing. Sure I would like to live a long if not endless life like the next guy. Over population is going to be a big enough problem as it is. Maybe we can set up a law where you can either have children or add 40 years to your life. The way things are going I think our grand children will be or have the ability to be immortal. Sounds great but it is defiantly not a good thing.
Originally posted by Umbrax
Anti-ageing is not a good thing. Sure I would like to live a long if not endless life like the next guy. Over population is going to be a big enough problem as it is. Maybe we can set up a law where you can either have children or add 40 years to your life. The way things are going I think our grand children will be or have the ability to be immortal. Sounds great but it is defiantly not a good thing.
i would not like to live forever if my body aged and i was really old...
Originally posted by sardion2000
Well you do know that if we do become immortal it will make interstellar travel that much more attractive eh Lot's of room to spread out in our Solar System and before you bash that idea note that Technology development is speeding up approaching exponantial proportions.
By 2050 there will likely be 9 billion people on this Earth.
Originally posted by Charlie Murphy
We will probably prolong life with better vaccinations and stem-cell research to regenerate us; but oxygen causes us all to age and we need oxygen so I don't think anti-aging can be achieved.