Please Don't Die -- Rage Against the Gene Instead
I fundamentally believe that the genetic lottery and lack of biological agency (control over your own body) is the biggest problem facing humanity, without getting into the details, I’ll just ask what is higher leverage i.e meta than our own biotechnology?
The urgent issue is aging — we can’t control the most important aspect of our lives — time.
But why?! As a society, we are numb to the horrors of aging — which has a 100% mortality rate – but freak out about piddling problems like COVID. We push old people behind a curtain, they die badly, we actively avoid seeing it, shrug our shoulders (that’s just how it goes), bury our parents or grandparents, and then try not to think about it happening to us in X years. From my perspective, that’s insane! Biology is 100% a technology which means we can 100% change how it behaves. Which means it’s 100% possible to extend lifespan indefinitely. It’s just a question of time and effort.
Whatever generation is the last to have to die of aging is going to be the most tragic generation of all time.
Anyway, this is why seven years ago I decided to become a founder; because no one was doing anything about aging in a meaningful way. I didn’t want to be just another biologist PHD struggling to do research with no money and at the mercy of grant providers… No, I wanted to fund longevity because and change our flawed approach to biology.
My goal was to direct $1 billion in my own capital or as a VC into the space focused on synthetic bio. Why? We need to make bio an engineering discipline from the bottom up. That will give us the know-how and tools to engineer bio starting with simple organisms and ending with complex ones (like us!).
For the first time in 7 years, I’ve questioned my approach. I was invited to attend the Longevity Biotech Fellowship — it was amazing to connect with fellows in the space. There are actually people now making this a movement — building awareness, raising money, and starting companies. But… make no mistake, there has been zero progress towards extending maximum life span. The upper limit that’s been verified is 122 years old. After talking with CEOs, CTOs, PHDs, and VCs in the space I was blown away by the brain trust, and I no longer felt alone. But it’s not enough. Not even close if we want to address this problem in the next few decades.
We should all do what we can about health span — that’s in our locus of control. If you don’t beat the average age of death in the US you probably didn’t do the bare basics and made the obvious mistakes. I love you all and want all of you to live as long and well as you possibly can. If you can’t be healthy for you, please be healthy for me.
If you want to chat about longevity you can join my slack on the topic — Rage Against the Gene. I share what I’m doing in the slack right now and occasionally what’s going on in general — by most measures I’m as much as a decade younger than I am (n==1 though!). I’ve spent at least 10 k on tests over the years. Ironically, at the conference folks thought I was in my early twenties, when they learned I was in my mid thirties they wanted to know my “longevity” program, I found that funny.
To learn more, I would urge everyone to read two books: