#199 - Aubrey de Grey - The Man Who Says Ageing Can Be Cured

**Aubrey de Grey** (0:00)
I always say, we have a 50-50 chance of getting to a point that is, for practical purposes, having defeated aging. At the moment, what I say is, the next 12 to 15 years from now, we will, without doubt, come to the point where medicine is good enough that we can keep people biologically young however long ago they were born, save 110,000 lives a day, which is how many people die of aging worldwide.

**Peter McCormack** (0:25)
Not everyone will want it, though.

**Aubrey de Grey** (0:27)
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Who wants to be sick?

**Peter McCormack** (0:29)
People don't want to be sick, but I just think there won't be people who want to live for it.

**Aubrey de Grey** (0:32)
But if you don't want to be sick, there is this side effect that you tend to wake up tomorrow.

**Peter McCormack** (0:37)
Tell me what day is the day you want to die on.

**Aubrey de Grey** (0:40)
I don't think about it. I genuinely don't.

**Peter McCormack** (0:43)
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Well, good. Well, Aubrey, how are you, man? Good to see you.

**Aubrey de Grey** (1:10)
I'm well, thank you. Thanks for having me.

**Peter McCormack** (1:12)
Is it inevitable that we will cure death?

**Aubrey de Grey** (1:16)
No. One of the most frustrating things about my interactions with the media is that they constantly conflate the word aging and the word death.

**Peter McCormack** (1:28)
Okay.

**Aubrey de Grey** (1:28)
It's painful. The reason it's painful is because death is quite clearly something that cannot be completely eliminated by technology. Yes. Because there's quite a lot of ways to die.
Whereas aging, it's something that absolutely can be eliminated by medicine in the future.

**Peter McCormack** (1:46)
I mean, that's kind of what I meant.

**Aubrey de Grey** (1:48)
Yes, that's what you meant, but don't say that.

**Peter McCormack** (1:49)
Okay.

**Aubrey de Grey** (1:51)
I mean, the reason it's important is because there is this terror in society of thinking rationally about aging.
Because even though it is something that will be overcome by medicine in the form of time, we don't know how much time. And people find that very uncomfortable to think about. So they like to try to keep their kind of emotional distance from the question.

**Peter McCormack** (2:17)
Well, they want to know if it will be solved in their lifetime.

**Aubrey de Grey** (2:19)
That's right, and they can't tell them whether or not it will. And that's not good enough. So people make up these fantasies that tell them that they can put it out of their minds and get on with their miserably short lives.
And some of those fantasies are about desirability, you know, trying to pretend that aging is some kind of blessing in disguise. But also there's the idea that aging is somehow not like diseases at all, in some profound way, such that it is in some, you know, permanent manner off limits to medicine, right?
And, you know, the media like to pander to, you know, what sells, right? So in other words, they like to kind of perpetuate these ridiculous fantasies, whether it's the desirability one or the immutability one. And they do it in subliminal ways. And using death when they mean aging is one of the worst. So that's why I picked you up on it at once.

**Peter McCormack** (3:17)
Right. Okay. So let's start with aging.
Is aging ultimately something we will inevitably have control over?

**Aubrey de Grey** (3:25)
Yes. Yeah. Okay. We will at the moment, at the moment, we've got basically almost no control over aging. We can just very slightly slow it down.
But yes, we will without doubt come to the point where medicine is good enough that we can keep people biologically young however long ago they were born.

**Peter McCormack** (3:44)
Wow.
But we don't know when. That's right. Not maybe in my lifetime.

**Aubrey de Grey** (3:49)
Well, so actually let me say a little more about that because one thing that results from this terrible irrationality of society about aging is that most experts in the field feel unable to give even probabilistic time frame predictions for how long, how soon this is going to happen.
And that's a huge problem. Essentially, it results from basically they feel they're in danger of being accused of saying irresponsible things and it will hurt their next grant application or whatever.