De Grey Technology Review debate

The De Grey Technology Review debate was a debate over the validity of the ideas of Aubrey de Grey, published in MIT's "Technology Review".

Aubrey de Grey believes that human aging is like any disorder, and that it can, in principle, be eliminated. He has identified what he says are the seven causes of human aging, and has proposed remedies for each cause. He calls his proposals Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS).

The Technology Review article

In February 2005, Jason Pontin, the editor in chief and publisher of "Technology Review", criticised de Grey, at the time a computer associate in the [http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/Research/flybase.htm Flybase Facility] of the [http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/ Department of Genetics] at the University of Cambridge. De Grey is currently Chairman and Chief Science Officer of the Methuselah Foundation. [ [http://www.methuselahfoundation.org The Methuselah Foundation-Welcome to The Methuselah Foundation ] ] Pontin began the controversy by:

* publishing an article about de Grey by Sherwin B. Nuland, a professor of clinical surgery at Yale, and the author of "How We Die". The article was entitled "Do You Want to Live Forever?" [cite news | first=Sherwin | last=Nuland | title=Do You Want to Live Forever? | date=February 2005 | publisher=Technology Review | url=http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/02/issue/feature_aging.asp ]

* writing an editor's letter, titled "Against Transcendence", [cite news | first=Jason | last=Pontin| title=Against Transcendence | date=February 2005 | publisher=Technology Review | url=http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/02/issue/editor.asp ] that questioned the usefulness and appropriateness of introducing transcendentalism, or transhumanism, into science. Pontin noted what he claimed was a paradox: he said that those who looked for transcendental qualities in science often lived limited lives. Pontin wrote:

* responding, when de Grey's defenders protested that these articles contained no detailed, scientific criticism of SENS and amounted to little more than ad hominem attacks, that he would find "a working biogerontologist" who would thoroughly criticize de Grey's ideas.

Pontin later commented that the de Grey article was one of the most read and most-discussed article that appeared in "Technology Review" in 2005. The April 2005 issue of "Technology Review" contained a reply by Aubrey de Grey, [cite news | first=Aubrey | last=de Grey | title=Aubrey de Grey Responds | date=April 2005 | publisher=Technology Review | url=http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=14097&ch=infotech ] and numerous comments from readers. [cite news | first=TR | last=Readers | title=LETTERS: Our February cover story on Aubrey de Grey and antiaging science lives on | date=April 2005 | publisher=Technology Review | url=http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=14310&ch=infotech ]

Pontin acknowledged that neither the article by Nuland nor his own column attempted to disprove de Grey's ideas. He defended his approach by noting that he "commissioned what I called a 'profile in the style of The New Yorker'". He argued that his own column was never intended to address SENS, but was concerned with the more general subject of science and religion.

As of July 2008, Pontin had failed to find one "working biogerontologist" to take the time to publicly debunk SENS.

The SENS Challenge Prize

In July 2005, Pontin announced a $20,000 prize open to any molecular biologist, with a record of publication in biogerontology, who could prove that SENS was "so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate." (See Pontin's TR Blog "The SENS Challenge" [cite news | first=Jason | last=Pontin | title=The SENS Challenge | date=2005-07-28 | publisher=Technology Review | url=http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/pontin/14968/ ] ). "Technology Review" pledged $10,000 towards the prize, and the Methuselah Foundation, an organization co-founded by de Grey, pledged the other $10,000.

In March, of 2006, "Technology Review" announced that it had chosen a panel of judges for the Challenge: Rodney Brooks, PhD, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); Anita Goel, MD and PhD, founder and chief executive of Nanobiosym; Vikram Kumar, MD, cofounder and chief executive of Dimagi, and a pathologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston; Nathan Myhrvold, PhD, cofounder and chief executive of Intellectual Ventures, and former chief technologist at Microsoft; and J. Craig Venter, PhD, founder of the J. Craig Venter Institute and developer of whole-genome shotgun sequencing, which sped up the human genome project. [cite news | first=Jason | last=Pontin| title=We've picked the judges for our biogerontology prize | date=2006-03-14 | publisher=Technology Review | url=http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/16593/]

"Technology Review" received five submissions to its Challenge. Three met the terms of the prize competition. They were published by "Technology Review" on June 9, 2006. Accompanying the three submissions were rebuttals by de Grey, and counter-responses to de Grey's rebuttals.

On July 11, 2006, "Technology Review" published the results of the SENS Challenge. In the end, no one won the $20,000 prize. The judges felt that no submission met the criterion of the challenge and disproved SENS, although they unanimously agreed that one submission, by Preston Estep and his colleagues, was the most eloquent. Craig Venter succinctly expressed the prevailing opinion: "Estep et al. ... have not demonstrated that SENS is unworthy of discussion, but the proponents of SENS have not made a compelling case for it."

Summarizing the judges' deliberations, Pontin wrote, "SENS is highly speculative. Many of its proposals have not been reproduced, nor could they be reproduced with today's scientific knowledge and technology. Echoing Myhrvold, we might charitably say that de Grey's proposals exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait (possibly in vain) for independent verification. SENS does not compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists; but neither is it demonstrably wrong." [cite news | first=Jason | last=Pontin| title=Is Defeating Aging Only A Dream? | date=2006-07-11 "(includes June 9, 2006 critiques and rebuttals)"| publisher=Technology Review | url=http://www.technologyreview.com/sens/] However, Myhrvold himself was later quoted in the Washington Post (November 1st, 2007, page C10) as follows: “It was a bit ironic because they were mostly the work of established scientists in mainstream gerontology who sought to brand de Grey as ‘unscientific’ — yet the supposed refutations were themselves quite unscientific. “The ‘refutations’ were either ad hominem attacks on de Grey, or arguments that his ideas would never work (which might be right, but that is what experiments are for), or arguments that portions of de Grey’s work rested on other people’s ideas. None of these refute the possibility that he is at least partially correct."

In publishing the results, "Technology Review" also announced that it would make a $10,000 payment to Estep et al. in recognition of what the publication called their "careful scholarship." David Gobel, Co-Founder of the Methuselah Foundation, commented: "While of course "Technology Review" is at liberty to make whatever ex-gratia payments it likes from its own funds, it is important to make it clear that this consolation prize was awarded outside the framework of the SENS Challenge, and without consulting or notifying the Methuselah Foundation, which contributed half the as yet unclaimed $20,000 SENS Challenge fund.'" [cite web
title = SENS Withstands Three Challenges : $20,000 Remains Unclaimed
url=http://www.mprize.com/index.php?pagename=newsdetaildisplay&ID=0104
accessdate = 2006-07-12 ]

In a letter of dissent dated 11 July 2006 in Technology Review, Estep et al. criticized the ruling of the judges, said the judges had little expertise in the field, said the judges apparently did not appreciate the issues involved nor did they understand the details of the Estep et al. refutation of De Grey's propositions. The letter concluded: "SENS is agenda-driven pseudoscience and unworthy of learned debate."

ee also

* Biogerontology
* Life extension
* List of life extension related topics
* Senescence
* The Methuselah Mouse Prize

References