The MIT Technology Review held a contest of sorts, offering $20,000 to anyone who could prove that Aubrey de Grey's "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" was "so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate." They received 5 entries, 2 of which were discarded, and the other three can be found on their website along with de Grey's rebuttal and the subsequent responses.
Yes, but showing that de Gray's ideas are not "so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate" sets a pretty low bar. I would disagree with that statement even though I fully expect to be in a grave along with de Gray in several decades.
I just thought de Gray's work was relevant because it addresses the counterpoint to the author's central thesis. The underlying assumption here is that the body has a built-in expiration date that we cannot avoid, but I didn't think it effectively answered the question of when that expiration date actually is.
My problem with the article, I guess, is the lack of a perspective over time. De Gray also posited that the first person to live to 1000 is probably already alive, I'm not saying all of this really makes sense, but it is scientifically feasible and should at least be noted in an article that asserts the opposite.
According to Wolfram Alpha, the probability of living past 100 (in the United States) increased from .17% to 1.4% between 1933 and 2000 and then to 2.4% in 2008. Living past 70 jumped from 45% to 75% to 76% in the same time period. This has a lot of interesting ramifications that I'm not really in a position to investigate, but they are clearly worth addressing.
The article says there is an expiration date in the body. Nowhere it says that it can't possibly be 'avoided', just that current and foreseeable medicine is not quite there yet.
current and foreseeable medicine is not quite there yet
That's the key point. We all know eventually the singularity will arrive. And we know we have PLENTY of work to do today to make things a little bit better but still be far short of the singularity.
So it's wonderful to be a cheerleader for progress, but it can also be kind of annoying on occasion.
http://www.technologyreview.com/sens/index.aspx
In his TED talk, de Grey claimed the the first person to live to 1000 may already be alive today.
Not saying I necessarily agree with him, but according to the judges at MIT - TR, it's at least not outside the realm of reasonable debate.