Here’s a link to an op-ed I wrote for a London-based financial newspaper on longevity and economics.

I was interviewed about 100 Plus by Dr. Michael Roizen today. He is co-author of the book, You The Owner’s Manual (with Dr. Oz). Dr. Roizen knows his stuff, making the interview really enjoyable since all the questions were super-relevant. I believe the podcast will be up soon at this link.

A 30-year old man in Baltimore had his cancerous trachea taken out and replaced with one grown for him in the lab. Now, he has a second chance at life and his 4-year-old daughter will have her father around. Scientists like Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, director of the Advanced Center for Translational Regenerative Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, are true heroes.

Here’s the full story in the New York Times.

Happy New year! In case you missed it, John Stossel hosted a fun series right before Christmas called “what a wonderful world” where he featured various authors and scientists, including me. Here’s a link to the video:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/index.html#/v/1343254393001/do-you-want-to-live-to-be-200/?playlist_id=87530

Here’s the entire segment which also features Dr. Aubrey de Grey and Dr. Bill Andrews. (100 Plus bit is at the 2:18 mark)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From the NYT:

Medical researchers in Britain have successfully treated six patients suffering from the blood-clotting disease known as hemophilia B by injecting them with the correct form of a defective gene, a landmark achievement in the troubled field of gene therapy.

It’s worth pointing out that gene therapy hasn’t been “troubled” in the last few years, and instead, there have been some rather amazing successes. Some I detail in my book, 100 Plus, and here’s an example that was also covered by the NYT.

Donate to the The Methuselah Generation documentary and get a signed copy of my book.

Vivek Wadhwa, who has just joined us at Singularity University, wrote this article for the Washington Post on hacking DNA. Much of his argument echos what I say in 100 Plus: “Just as the personal computer revolution brought information technology from corporate data centers to the masses, the biology revolution is personalizing science”

Here’s a link to my recent interview with ‘Big Think’ where I mentioned Timothy Brown, the only man who has ever been cured of AIDS.

This is an interesting article from The Scientist. Here’s an excerpt:

According to economists Benjamin Jones and Bruce Weinberg, young scientists making groundbreaking contributions to their fields are becoming an endangered breed. In a study published November 7th in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they reported that the chances a Nobel Prize winner at the turn of the 21st century produced their winning work by the age 30 or even 40 is close to zero.

Their analysis of 525 Nobel Prize winners (182 in physics, 153 in chemistry, and 190 in medicine) between 1900 and 2008, revealed that while the mean age at which they did their Nobel-prize winning work was around 37 for the three fields in the early 20th century, they are now around 50, 46, and 45 for Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine, respectively.

This is the latest in a series of studies to show that aging can be manipulated. If scientists were able to do for humans what these Mayo Clinic researchers did for mice, many more people would be in much better health at older ages. Now, why isn’t everyone who cares about the cost of health care rallying for more work in this area?

Here’s a Wired report on the work as well as one by the Economist.

From “What Happens When the Average Lifespan Hits 100?” by Megan Erickson:

“Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it,” said W. Somerset Maughm. Which is, of course, the way most of us would prefer it.

For all our willingness to play with fire, the human species has quite a flair for not getting burned. The same combination of irrationality and ingenuity that we bring to finding new ways to fight each other also informs our quest for eternal life. We don’t just want to survive. We want to be immortal. We want to defy illness, build utopia, and track down the fountain of youth. We may soon get our wish, says Sonia Arrison, a writer and futurist, thanks to the “coming longevity revolution.”

Here is my review of the new Justin Timberlake longevity-themed movie for Slate Magazine. This Hollywood-created world gets everything wrong about what life in a longer-lived society would look like. While its dystopian nature was disappointing, it was still an entertaining flick. Now, the challenge is for someone to write an exciting movie closer to reality!

I really enjoyed speaking at the open science summit last weekend. The DIY bio community is full of super-cool people and it is always fascinating to hear about everyone’s current projects.

100+: The Possibility of Radical Longevity Breakthroughs from Open Science Summit on FORA.tv

Can be found here.

Ben says:

I have to congratulate Sonia Arrison on putting together a book that is both highly accessible to newbies with no prior background in transhumanist thinking or longevity research, and also richly interesting to those of us who have playing in these regions of conceptual space for a long time.

The folks over at Bloomberg West invited me to chat with them briefly about 100 Plus. It was a short interview, but glad I was able to stop by.

In case you didn’t make the Singularity Summit, here is the talk I delivered there. As I’ve said before, this conference was a really great production this year. Can’t wait to see what next year brings!

Last weekend’s Singularity Summit in NYC was an excellent event. I enjoyed meeting many smart folks interested in future tech issues. Here’s an article from MSNBC about the event, as well as a photo taken by my friend Steve Rosenbaum:

Having healthier people around for longer means that they can remain productive far later in life, Arrison pointed out. Many past innovators accomplished some of their greatest or most creative work relatively late in life — Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa at 51, and Benjamin Franklin conducted his kite experiment at 46.

“Innovation is a late-peak field,” Arrison told the audience gathered at the Singularity Summit.

From GenomeWeb News:

The Obama Administration is asking the biomedical and biotech industries and research communities for their ideas about what steps the country should take to support and advance biological research innovation and business.

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy wants interested parties to provide comments on ways to address new challenges and opportunities related to biological research innovations, including genomics and high-throughput technologies, as it develops its National Bioeconomy Blueprint.

I’ll be speaking at the Singularity Summit next week in NYC and (if you haven’t bought it yet) I’ve been told that you can pick up a copy of my book, 100 Plus there. Below is a description of the conference, which promises to be exhilarating.

The Singularity Summit 2011 will be a TED-style two-day event at the historic 92nd Street Y in New York City. Speakers include futurist Ray Kurzweil, visionary scientist Stephen Wolfram, IBM manager Dan Cerutti, longevity expert Sonia Arrison, author David Brin, neuroscientist Christof Koch, PayPal founder Peter Thiel, MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIT polymath Alexander Wissner-Gross, DARPA challenge winner Riley Crane, Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, economist Tyler Cowen, television personalities Jason Silva and Casey Pieretti, and robotics professors James McLurnkin and Robin Murphy.