When did life extension studies first begin?
The study of life extension is actually in some ways older than the study of how aging happens in the first place. There are myths from many thousands of years ago like the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the myth of Thymus, that talk about life extension. So it's always been a goal for society. So as soon as people started to think scientifically about nature at all, and certainly about the human body, people were thinking about it in terms of the big enchilada, the ultimate goal, being to fix this damn problem of aging. If we come a little bit more recently, down to let's say a hundred years ago, then young people who were getting into studying biology carefully and looking at the way our biochemistry works for example, they prioritized the concept of life extension as a really important aspect of this. It's only really in the past fifty years as biologists have had to worry more and more about funding, and have decided to try to be as politically correct as possible, if you like, to and try not to scare the politicians, that its become a little bit less popular to do this. And most biologists in fact try not to talk about life extension as part of their work they're trying to do. I think that's been a massive mistake. I think that trying to pull the wool over politician's eyes, effectively, has not been the way to go. Politicians are far less dumb than they look.
