Nursultan Nazarbayev calls on new research institute to concentrate on study to unlock secret of immortality. Author: Tom Parfitt —– Read more from The British Guardian online, December 07, 2010
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Kazakhstan’s president urges scientists to find the elixir of life
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011Does FDA need to Rethink Aging?
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011Slate and the New America Foundation recently sponsored a conference on Aging. At the conference Professor S. Jay Olshansky spoke about his proposal, outlined in his Slate article A Wrinkle in Time, for using 1% of Medicare monies to sponsor research to slow the aging process. Author: Gary Liberson —– Read more from The Huffington Post, November 23, 2010
‘Wealth hormone’ may lead to longer life
Friday, October 29th, 2010It is a sad fact of socioeconomics that the wealthy tend to lead healthier, longer lives than do the poor. Now scientists have gone a step further, finding a specific hormone that links wealth with a longer life. Author: Robert Frank —– Read more from a blog entry on Wall Street Journal online, October 21, 2010
High-Tech Hogwash
Saturday, October 23rd, 2010What’s wrong with Silicon Valley libertarianism?
If you’ve seen The Social Network, you may have caught a glimpse of Peter Thiel. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, putting up $500,000 to finance the site’s original expansion in 2004. In the film’s version of events, he connives with Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, to deprive Mark Zuckerberg’s friend Eduardo Saverin of his 30 percent stake in the company. Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay devastates the German-born venture capitalist in a line: “We’re in the offices of a guy whose hero is Gordon Gekko.” Author: Jacob Weisberg —– Read more from Newsweek Magazine online, October 18, 2010
U.S. Hispanics living longer than white and black Americans
Sunday, October 17th, 2010Hispanics in the United States live longer than non-Hispanic whites and blacks, according to new data from the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics. Author: Val Willingham —– Read more from a blog entry by CNN Health, October 13, 2010
When Technology Is Health Care’s Foe
Monday, October 11th, 2010It’s “Health Innovation Week” out here in Silicon Valley, meaning that until Saturday, the Francisco Bay Area will be for new health care technology what Park City, Utah is to Indie films during the Sundance Film Festival. Author: Lee Gomes —– Read more from a blog columne on Forbes online, October 04, 2010
Senate bill 3767 seeks to put dietary supplement makers in prison for ten years (for telling the truth)
Thursday, September 30th, 2010Beware of Senate bill 3767, the so-called Food Safety Accountability Act. This dangerous legislation, if passed, would criminalize nutritional supplement manufacturers who tell the truth about their products or link to published scientific studies describing the biological benefits of their products. Author: Mike Adams —– Read more on naturalnews.com, September 23, 2010. See also the controversial discussion about this topic in the forum of the Immortality Institute (ImmInst).
If Only Glenn Beck Were a Cyborg
Sunday, September 19th, 2010While the media and blogosphere spent their August obsessively reporting and debating Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C., a more important gathering with far greater political implications took place two weeks earlier yet went totally ignored by the media. The fifth-annual Singularity Summit was held in San Francisco this past August 14-15. The conference featured a roster of entrepreneurs and futurists and who led the conference goers in a celebration of the transformative power of technoscience and the coming technorapture of what they call The Singularity. Author: David Correia —– Read more on counterpunch.org, September 15, 2010
Pension schemes sceptical over longevity swaps
Sunday, September 19th, 2010Strikes brought France to a standstill last week. The bus drivers were not working and, even if they had been, the streets were full of train drivers, postmen, television presenters, teachers and even magistrates. Author: William Hutchings —– Read more on efinancialnews.com, September 13, 2010
Do We Need $75,000 a Year to Be Happy?
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010People say money doesn’t buy happiness. Except, according to a new study from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, it sort of does — up to about $75,000 a year. The lower a person’s annual income falls below that benchmark, the unhappier he or she feels. But no matter how much more than $75,000 people make, they don’t report any greater degree of happiness. Author: Belinda Luscombe —– Read more from Time magazine online, September 06, 2010
U.S. Judge Rules Against Obama’s Stem Cell Policy
Monday, August 30th, 2010A federal district judge on Monday blocked President Obama’s 2009 executive order that expanded embryonic stem cell research, saying it violated a ban on federal money being used to destroy embryos. Author: Gardiner Harris —– Read more from The New York Times online, August 23, 2010
Japan, Checking on Its Oldest, Finds Many Gone
Friday, August 20th, 2010Japan has long boasted of having many of the world’s oldest people — testament, many here say, to a society with a superior diet and a commitment to its elderly that is unrivaled in the West. Author: Martin Fackler —– Read more from The New York Times online, August 14, 2010
Obamacare and the longevity dividend
Sunday, August 15th, 2010“More broadly, Medicare policies should and can sustain what Dan Perry, the CEO of the Alliance for Aging Research, calls, “the longevity dividend,” encouraging the use of innovations that slow aging to extend healthy life. Duke University’s Ken Manton points out the decline in disability and increase in life expectancy from such innovations could “through increased productivity and labor force participation generate an additional $500 billion in wealth and $100 billion in tax revenues per year between 2018 and 2028.” We should encourage work and wealth creation and discourage early reliance on Medicare subsidies. Once on Medicare, we should reward people for getting and staying healthy and not ration the use of such technologies.”
(From an article about “Obamacare” in The American Spectator, August 13, 2010)
Bullish on Longevity
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010About seven years ago, I reported regularly on the science of longevity, and the prospect of human life extension, for a site called Sage Crossroads. And then I stopped—pretty much dropping the topic for a while and going on to other things. Author: Chris Mooney —– Read more from a blog entry on discovermagazine.com, August 06, 2010
Looking for Answers in Duisburg
Thursday, August 5th, 2010The death of 21 people at the Love Parade in Duisburg on July 24th was far from a random accident. It was the result of a series of failures made by the city, the police and the event organizers. Particularly damning, at the height of the crush, there was no way out. Author: SPIEGEL Staff —– Read more from the international issue of the German newsplatform SPIEGEL-Online, August 02, 2010
Social relationships key to survival, study says
Saturday, July 31st, 2010Having satisfying social relationships may be about as important as not smoking when it comes to your lifespan, a new study suggests. Author: Elizabeth Landau —– Read more from a blog entry on CNN Health, July 27, 2010
RMS contests rise in longevity risk
Thursday, July 15th, 2010The increase in life expectancy is likely to slow compared with the past 30 years, meaning that insurers and pension funds could be overestimating the risk of longevity increases on liabilities, according to new forecasts. Author: Paul J Davies —– Read more from the Financial Times online, July 12, 2010. This article may be accessible only once!?
Gerontology Comes of Age
Thursday, July 15th, 2010In the quest to avoid growing old, signs of life—and biotech
In 1923, at age 67, Sigmund Freud had a vasectomy. By signing up for the Steinach operation—as the procedure, named for the Austrian endocrinologist Eugen Steinach, was then known—the famed psychiatrist was less concerned with sex than he was with longevity. Author: Scott Gottlieb —– Read a book review about “The Youth Pill” from The Wall Street Journal online, July 08, 2010
Despite Aging Baby Boomers, N.I.H. Devotes Only 11 Percent to Elderly Studies
Monday, July 5th, 2010The health needs of tens of millions of aging baby boomers threaten to overwhelm the nation’s hospitals and caregivers within a decade or two, but the geriatric tidal wave does not appear to have been fully recognized at the National Institutes of Health. Author: Milt Freudenheim —– Read more from The New York Times online, June 28, 2010. See also the NYT-article from the same author and the same day Preparing More Care of Elderly and a comment to the first text on medcitynews.com.
The end of early retirement?
Monday, June 21st, 2010The French government announced today that it will raise the country’s retirement age from 60 to 62, a move likely to be fiercely resisted by French labor unions. The retirement age was already one of the lowest in Europe and economists have long pushed for it to be raised. They aren’t the only ones. As part of its ongoing austerity measures, Greece’s government is pushing to raise its retirement age from 61-63. Author: Joshua Keating —– Read more from a blog entry on Passport, a blog by the editors of Foreign Policy magazine, June 16, 2010
We will be made out computers before we have electronic medical records
Thursday, June 17th, 2010To say one more word on electronic medical records, the fact that it’s 2010 and we’re having a conversation about how to move records from paper to computers is evidence of how screwed up the American health-care system is. Author: Ezra Klein —– Read more from The Washington Post online, June 14, 2010
Top 10 world military spenders 2009
Thursday, June 17th, 2010The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has released its annual yearbook detailing worldwide military expenditures last year. Author: John Signoriello —– Read more on examiner.com, June 11, 2010
US places No. 85 — behind Libya — in Global Peace Index
Saturday, June 12th, 2010The 2010 Global Peace Index is an attempt to quantify which countries are the most secure and the least violent. New Zealand is No. 1, Iraq is last, and the US is in the middle. Author: Howard LaFranchi —– Read more from The Christian Science Monitor, June 08, 2010
Could this man actually live forever? Berlusconi invests in medical company researching long life
Monday, June 7th, 2010Silvio Berlusconi has thrown his fortune behind a medical company researching long life. The famously looks-conscious Italian premier has invested £40million in a biotechnology firm researching cancer drugs, becoming its biggest shareholder. Author: Nick Pisa —– Read more from the british Daily Mail online, June 03, 2010
The economics of immortality
Thursday, May 20th, 2010Controversial scientist Aubrey de Grey says medical advances will allow us to extend youthful life indefinitely – and defuse the pensions timebomb to boot. Author: Richard Harris —– Read more on the british financial platform Citywire, May 16, 2010