De Grey’s central idea is that if we can improve average life expectancy faster than we age—if, in other words, life expectancy increases by more than a year annually—we can hope to escape death altogether. He calls this “escape velocity.” To reach escape velocity, de Grey has a plan. Bucking the conventional wisdom of the biological community, he proposes that we can defeat aging if we crack seven key problems: (1) replenish cells that are lost or damaged over time, (2) remove senescent cells, (3) prevent stiffening of structures around the cell with age, (4) prevent mitochondrial mutations,
...more
