>> 
Good afternoon everyone. It's my pleasure
to introduce Dr. Gregory Benford who is a
famous science fiction writer and a real life
scientist and he's done lots of other cool
things that it would take me way to long to
enumerate. But today he's going to talk about
Selection and Genomics and Longevity research;
so without further ado.
>> BENFORD: Thank you. I am happy to be here.
I've been to Google before, enjoyed the science
food this summer. And I'm here to talk not
in my role, actually in my hobby as a science
fiction writer although I would point out--is
there anyone in the audience who's ever written
a grand proposal? You too, are science fiction
writers. Perhaps not as well pay [INDISTINCT],
but that's it. About ten years ago an elderly
woman was interviewed on television and the
interviewer said, "What's the best thing about
being a hundred and four years old?" and she
thought for a moment and then said very decisively,
"No peer pressure!" The point about Genescient
is to make that little joke obsolete by using
the methods which you people know very well,
IT methods and a very well known thing; a
present in this--in our scientific world for
a very long time which is however not been
widely used; natural selection. Although actually
Genescient Corporation uses artificial selection
and the artificial aspect of it--why is my
slide not jumping? Hitting this or...
>> There.
>> BENFORD: Okay. Didn't get after it here
[INDISTINCT] that, is to note at that in a
sense national selection of course has been
acting on the human population for a very
long time. As you can see from this data,
in which I harvested from many sources, the
species has had a hard time of it. It's amazing
we've gotten this far in so relatively little
time, roughly a hundred thousand years, because
in pre history it was a very tough job to
get out of adolescence. You know, that is
to actually get to reproduce. And that's really
the point. Natural selection acts up until
the time you stop reproducing. And beyond
that point it has no way to convey information
forward into an organism because you cannot
curve forward to the next generation. And
for us that means roughly age 40; although
it's age 40 for women but not for men which
leads to another topic entirely. But notice
for example, that the big change in the civilization
has been to slowly get rid of early childhood
mortality, as you can see from the difference
data between say, Mexico and India that is
dependent on what culture you were in. So
at about the same time it was better to be
in Mexico than in India because you were making
at least some uses of new technologies. And
right now, the mean life span in the United
States is roughly 78, 79? And so you can imagine
what is the best present possible, that's
that curve that essentially ends at 100 but
the world record in longevity is a French
woman who lived to a hundred and twenty-two.
Died a few years ago and once sold pencils
to van Gogh. I think that's a great way to
pin how much experiments--experience she's
had. And so it's worth asking, how much longer
can this go on? With [INDISTINCT] we have
from the [INDISTINCT] which Genescient Corporation
has developed and owns, is that it can go
a great deal longer. I compiled this data
from US Census Bureau and it tells you something
interesting about just the last century . You'll
notice that the top curve by the way, the
yellow is main life span for women in The
United States for the 20th century and below
this man. Notice that big downward jog around
1918 and 1990. That's the Spanish Influenza.
It had a very big effect. But more importantly,
look at all the data leading up to about 1940,
there were all these ripples with the periodicity
of, rough periodicity for about four years.
They were propagating forward, these [INDISTINCT]
in the population and changes in longevity
from many plagues that had occurred in the
19th century. And you'll notice that the whole
curve starts to smooth out around 1940. That's
the advent of what I think of as truly modern
medicine: penicillin, vaccines. And you'll
notice that all those oscillations went away.
Meanwhile, a study of progression upward and
the longevity of women has consistently ranked
higher, and in fact just increased until very
recent times, steadily also, versus men. So,
you can learn a lot a great deal about the
impact of technology by just looking at data
like this. But I just gave this talk at a
Singularity Summit in Manhattan and--and there
were a lot of people there who expect the
Singularity to change everything in the human
society and I'd hope longevity. But there's
this problem what I call the gap problem,
is that you have to get to the Singularity
to enjoy its benefits. And some of us, that's
a significant issue because when [INDISTINCT]
when I asked him again last weekend, you know,
"What's your best take for Singularity?" And
he said, "Well, maybe 20, 45." And he probably
said, "And I take over 200 supplements a day
to be sure that I get there." And I said,
"Bray, you know, we've spoken of this before
but you--you realize, you know, you only got
two kidneys and one liver. And you got to
worry about stressing these systems." But
in more general terms, I think it's really
worth saying that--that what we now have to
do is use the greatest tools that have ever
come into the hands of biologists and that's
the ability to truly read the genomics of
both ourselves and other species. That's an
enormous advantage and it's only been a round
a decade. So this is just the beginning in
which we are turning on the flashlight in
a room that's always been dark to--to the
biologists and everyone else and try to understand
what we find there and to affect what we change
there. But you got to be careful that you
don't use the wrong technology in the wrong
setting. I love this discovery because I actually
saw it on this issue of "Astounding S F".
Seizing a spaceship in the future, right?
Taking your own compensation ability along.
Now, the--the problem is you couldn't make
this same visual analogy anymore because what
would he have between his teeth? Not the simulated
dagger that pirates famously carried in their
mouths to come board. It will be a hard drive
or something. I--I mean, it--visual imagery
wouldn't work but you do have to be careful
to not take the modes of thinking about technologies
forward into a changed world. And so, what
Genescients has done is take the infusion
of flies which was developed by Michael Rose,
who is a professor at UC of Irvine, just as
I am. You came from Canada personally owning
the flies he had already developed for over
a decade by a simple myth. He took these awful
of fruit flies and would put them in cages
500 other times so, these--the populations
were huge, 10, 000 flies, so they will not
become inbred. When you hear of mouse results,
for example in medicine, almost all mouse
experiments are deeply inbred. And so you
have to question how relevant they are to
us because if, you know, we have many bad
qualities but one of our best biological qualities
is that we are out bred. That is to say we
don't carry forward pernicious genes in the
population. It can always be factored out.
And so, we have a wide range of genomics and
therefore, by the way of wide range immortality.
So, Michael continued this. In 2006, when
I am a co-investor, bough these flies and
found the Genescient. They lived to be four
and half times longer than ordinary flies.
They had gone through over 700 generations
of forced--that is artificial selection. Since
then, by the way I've--since I was the CL
and I'm not chairman of the board, I simply
took another population or had the lab people
exhilarate the force of natural selection
by removing the eggs after selling fibrosil
in the population instead. Still keeping enough
flies to have the bee out bred. And those
flies now live five and a half times longer
than control flies. What would the Genomic
implications of all that? Nobody knew because
genomics had never been done. Only a decade
before, it would have been hopeless and expensive
to do so. But we managed to do it for just
a few hundred thousand dollars and analyze
it in detail. And a--you know, its one way
of talking about this is to say it's fairly
easy using all methods to illuminate simple
biological mechanisms. But the really big
problem is that the genomic networks illuminated
over the last decade and particularly by the
Methuselah flies are incredibly complicated.
So then they become an information technology
problem. And one of the problems of biology
is that it typically didn't have a lot of
IT people on hand. So in fact, we've been
bringing IT people in, not just Genescient
but everybody in order to try figure out all
these pathways. Because what this result show,
you know, we go in more detail in a moment,
is that longevity is a very general trait.
And there are many path works or pathways
involved. And in the Methuselah of flies versus
the control flies we found that many, many
have been used and certain genes and snips--that's
a single nucleotide polymorphisms emerged
as really outstanding. But there were a lot
of contributors. So it's a very complicated
problem because evolution does not have to
do things in simple elegant ways. It can do
them because it has an infinite budget essentially.
It can do them as it likes. And it can do
it all simultaneously. Evolution acts upon
sweets of genes, not just one or two. And
so there's no miracle solution. There's no
gene that's going to suddenly make you double
your life--expected life span. And the thing
is about these networks is that they really
are large. Networks involving tens of thousands
of snips and the way to understand this from
the IT perspective would be to just do it
in enormous--an enormous study and a lot of
code. But of course, the nice thing about
science is you can do experiments. And so,
what we really done is eliminate this problem
with an algorithm that is artificial selection.
And it took a lot of time. It took over 30
years for Michael Rose to develop this long-life
flies. There are no such other organisms in
the world. No flies, no mice, nothing. And
therefore, it's the unit case. No one had
the patience to do this over decades and that's
also why we have an enormous advantage. We
got the information and it's not going to
be easy to get it in any other way. It's worth
remembering though that--remember that reproduction
and the end of reproduction marks the closure
of information propagating forward into the
next generation. So, if you keep moving reproduction
forward, that is to say you select for the
flies that can reproduce later, because after
all if you wait until half are dead only a
long life is going to be able to reproduce
then you can continue to shed the genetic
modifications that shorten your life span.
So that if you could imagine this yellow box
and reproduction sliding in that direction,
then the downward arrows which are the bad
genomic symbols--signals that is they are
bad for us or bad for any organism. The communication
of those into the next generation gets pushed
further and further out so that only the--the
children of the long-life flies are more robust
and function better. And so, that's the key
to getting an advance life span. And of course
this is not a new idea. I notice the science
fiction writer but the actual idea behind
this was proposed by Robert Heinlein in Methuselah's
Children on album in the 1940s. And I talked
to Heinlein who's a friend of mine about this
and he said, "You know, I hope it could be
done in a few centuries." But we now know
actually just from the simple data from the
flies that a few generations is going not
to do it, ten generations gives you an increase
in life span on a range of some percent a
few percent but not a hundred percent. And
so, you can't wait for that it would take
a calculated 17 thousand years to do this
humans, but you can do it to flies and we
have. So, what have been learned from them,
Methuselahs. Well it's actually all good news,
there was a novel in the 1930s by Aldous Huxley
called "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan"
in which all the way through, you know, that
there--there's some people who advanced [INDISTINCT]
and he finally mixed them, the Prodinus and
he discovers that they are in terrible shape.
They're weak, fragile, huddled over, not really
enjoying life but then they live long. [INDISTINCT]
that none of that is true. The Methuselah
flies--and we actually measured these things--there
are biologists who spend--working for us--who
do all this, kind of, "[INDISTINCT] never
do." That the Methuselahs have more sex throughout
their lives, although they start reproducing
a little later than the other ones and then
reproduce much longer. They lay more eggs
as a result of that and they're more vigorous.
And if you put them in a cage with the control
flies, they beat them up. I mean, they out
compete them. You can actually measure this
quantitatively because the flies have to do,
the males must do a mating dance, right? In
order to get to fertilize the female. So you
see it's just like us. And you can measure
how good they are at it and you can tell when
they are going to die because they can no
longer do the mating dance. And the interesting
things is, in the population curve, that they--the
Methuselah flies have a long plateau toward
the last term of their live and then they
fall flat off the plateau. If they start doing
the mating dance they will be dead in a day.
So in a way, perhaps, it isn't also like us.
And so this is what a kind of population curve
looks like toward the last portions. They
have better lives, not worse lives. And so
if we can harness this information and we
have, then we can go forward to a world in
which you will not only live longer but you'll
live better.
>> What is the percentage scales [INDISTINCT]?
>> That's the survival percentage, starts
at a hundred drops to zero. So that's the
same population curve [INDISTINCT] humans
and this is for flies. So, what we did is
read the Genomics of the flies. And using
special analysis we found about a thousand
changes that were plainly to a high probability
by that, I mean a probability better than
one chance it--well--the chances that you're
wrong are less than one in a thousand. We
impose that standard--we have a bunch of things
that are good to one in a hundred which would
be extremely good in other kinds of biology.
But we insisted on a standard in which we
absolutely know that these things are implied
in longevity. That is, compared to the control
flies. We found about a thousand of those
and we then, from this gene expression we
compared with humans. I mean the standard
question we always get is: why should I care
about the lifetime of flies? In fact I like
to kill all the flies in my house. Actually
that happened to me because for the first
two months of the company while we're looking
around for a place for the lab, we kept flies
in my house and we did genomic analysis on
it there. We shifted out actually the Epimatrix--so
they use their half a billion snip--a half
a million snip of codes but seven of them
got out so when we moved the flies to the
lab their were about half a dozen Methuselahs
left. And you could tell if a Methuselah came
into the room, I'd be sitting there reading
and I'd hear distinct little buzzing. I mean
how many time do you hear a fly buzzering
across the room. And they would buzz around
and I try to swat them and I couldn't them.
They were so fast. They could get away. They
were good at everything. We have to wait until
they die which actually never successfully
killed a single one. So, to me that was an
impressive--I mean, never mind the genomics.
On real things that I care about they were
good. So, in this we were--we were then looking
at why should we care about flies when we
really care--concerned about humans? And the
answer is that the flies where the template
that evolution works out to do things that
we do all the time. We separate--I mean the
sense that, that makes sense separated from
Methuselah's--from the flies 600 million years
ago, so it's been a long time in production.
Well what do they do for a living? They eat
server and they fly around. So we'd have:
type two diabetes; cardio vascular problems
and interestingly to us when we [INDISTINCT]
it in the human genome we found that they
have a lot of neurological problems. And so
in fact we harvested and have patented in
our methods patent and elsewhere, genes which
nobody else knows that are associated with
Parkinson's, Huntington's and Alzheimer's.
And we checked those against other human data
bases too, and it holds up. So they, the Methuselah's,
have the ability to defend their bodies against
these disorders. And we know what those genes
are. Got a question?
>> Yes. It sounds like you're amplifying the
selective pressure but still selecting only
for things that would have been selected for
in their natural environment; so given that
they've been in that natural environment for
vastly more generations than your experiment;
why--I mean was there anything maladaptive
in what you're selecting for and if not why
did you get results that many more generations
of evolution in their natural environment
did not get. And just to extend the question;
since some flies did escape is there any evidence
that those flies are displacing the regular
flies in the natural habitat?
>> BENFORD: Well, we don't know about any
Methuselahs that ever escaped, but remember
they were still in my house. But--know--why
doesn't everything live in for not any long,
right? I mean how come natural selection doesn't?
Because there is always a tradeoff. Remember
in high school? When the football guy got
all the girls? He was trading all benefits
here, right? Actually I happen to know the--I
used to play high school football and four
or five of guys who were on my team already
did it, right? They've been selected out.
They were really great in their teenage years
but there's always a selection for early reproduction.
But we removed that. We got rid of the early
reproducers so we specifically select it for
longevity and that's why nature doesn't do
it because it always favors the young and
quick.
>> Did the--were the--were the late reproducers
less good at early reproduction?
>> BENFORD: Yes. They're right. The Methuselah's
do not reproduce as early as ordinary flies.
That's also true. You will notice of everyone
who goes to universities. In fact, when you
think about it the university system is selecting
for longevity. So you've already gotten the
benefit. My parents actually didn't go to
universities, so there you go. I grew up in
southern Alabama on a farm. So, that was a
very good question because it illuminates
why this could emerge and did not in nature.
Although there are extremely a long live species;
the sea turtles live well over a century.
And of course we know trees that live--that
were alive and then in California at the time
of Christ. So, what we really learned and
this was an open question until we actually
did this Genomic mapping, is that these genes
are salient in our longevity. So, these homologues
from the flies to us are extremely useful
genetic medical information and when I say
that we found, say some, some Parkinson's
genes, we got a large number of the genes
associated with Parkinson's in humans that
are known but we also got those that are not
known. And that's the key. We just got more
genes than you can pull out of raw human data.
We went to the Welcome Trust Genomic Information
which is now publicly available; took us half
a month--a year to get it, because they were
very edgy about giving it to a company. You
know they--you know the Europeans they're
suspicious of profit. And we found that we
could go in there and pull information out
of their database that they cannot because
we have [INDISTINCT] built. We have a roughly
thousand snips to look for and say how does
this correlate in this 16 thousand patient
inventory? And so we could find things that
they could not, and that's another use of
this kind of method. You illuminate a lot
of noise this way. So, what we've done is
use selection as a super computer to pull
long live genes out of another species and
then we do the next thing because--so, I and
my co-founder who is an Italian, a brilliant
Italian woman named Cristina Rizza, who is
a cardiovascular specialist, decided that
we were not going to turn this into just a
diagnostic company because frankly, I've been
noticing that I wasn't getting any younger.
And that's my motive. I don't need money.
I've got lots of money. So we immediately
began a program in which, since we know these
genes, we had biochemists and biologists who
worked backward through the genetic pathways
to find substances that can act to upregulate
the genes that people already have that defend
against these diseases. Now by upregulate,
I mean you stimulate it with these particular
chemicals so that the gene functions at a
higher level. That--it took a while to figure
out this and we learned a lot about why FDA
is in some ways a block to progress because
as you all know, it takes about a decade to
develop a pharmaceutical. But there's a hole
in the whole method. All the traditional medicines
of India, China, other places have been grandfathered
in to the American pharmacopoeia. They are
called the grass substances. Generally we
recognize them as safe because they've been
used in China for 5000 years, etc. So, we
went in to that suite which is thousands of
substances. We found those that our own analysis
said could upregulate the genes and then we
tested them [INDISTINCT] particularly flies
or spend down on mice. And we then resolutely
marched through dozens of these things and
found out if we could increase the life--lifetime
of control flies by simply giving them these
substances in their foods. It's a direct experiment
down to the tune of tens of thousands of flies.
So you get lots of nice data. That's another
problem with human genome stuff. It's a big
deal and it takes a lot of time and money
to get a 10 thousand human. Genomic analysis
stuff but of course we did--what we did was
simply force to our--through the experiment
forced flies to--force the substance that
we've chosen to see if the flies could in
fact live longer and we look at side effects.
Did they reproduce? Because in fact some of
substance yes, they will extent the lifespan
but they don't reproduce. When you look at
studies of sea elegans and places with stuff
like that such as is done near here in San
Francisco, oh yes, they live together and
they're lying about their cage and they don't
do anything else. It's easy to sedate animals
and make them live longer. Calorie restriction
does the same thing. Calorie restriction has
many good things about it I suppose but I
know Roy Walford who died some years ago.
For over 20 years and these--once when we
had a drink, one drink. If you don't drink
much, one drink will reveal a lot and he said,
"You know, I really want to live longer but
I really do miss sex. I really do miss vigor,"
and so forth and so on. Well, I'm just not
willing to make that bargain but we found
that some substances will knock the flies
down and let them live longer but they don't
do anything else. And so we looked at the
mating essays, the fecundity, and the vigor
analysis and we only kept those things that
would increase lifespan and let the flies
remain vigorous because that's another clue.
The Methuselah's remain vigorous. So, we wanted
to look at that narrower suite of substances
that can do that. And we've now found quite
a few. Our league product which will be out
next year increases the control fly lifespan
by 30%. That's good five standard deviations.
We have others, combinations of single substances
but--and that's what nature hasn't done is
that we have to take several of these things
and put them together, you see, which doesn't
occur in Chinese medicine but is okay because
individually they're all in the grass category.
And see, what they do to the lifespan--we've
got about at the moment half a dozen that
can increase the lifespan over 20%. We think
we know what the leader does. We think it's
a repair mechanism from research other people
have done. So, we're pursuing two different
things. We got to--we're going to sell what
we call nutri-genomic agents. I mean, we know
these act up on these genes better associated
with longevity and in the first week, the
first six, it's all cardio. I mean, it undoubtedly
does some other things just as the statin
drugs do and I've been taking the statin drugs
I'm going to live forever, right? So, we--stopped.
No.
>> Signature problem.
>> BENFORD: We consistently try to find the
substance that will do all of those major
functions and we know in this case what they're
doing. They're operating on cardiovascular
system. Why? Because over half of all deaths
in the advanced human population are [INDISTINCT]
vascular problems. So we're now going to march
on to diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and
Huntington's and some others that are lesser.
So, what's the moral of the story? We're not
operating on single genes. We're operating
on networks of genes. So it's not a quick
fix and the age dependent disorders, particularly
heart disease are central to all of these.
So we've actually gone ahead and done other
things to do this. We look at side effects
resolutely; male mating success and also about
a way they resist infection. In fact I'll
show you a little data. Here's a heart pacing
experiment in which--this is the percent--percentage
of heart failures. And basically what its
saying is that B, in this notation means ordinary
flies and O means Methuselah flies, O for
older. These--this is the heart check rate.
We actually have developed ways of giving
hearts--the heart supplies attacks, give them
fibrillation by electrical current and you
look at the heart and count its pace, its
pacing and look for other disorders. You find
out how the fly performs after a heart attack,
in other words the ability to survive a heart
attack. And we've been able to show that the
Methuselah's are much better surviving heart
attacks which is actually going to happen
to a large number of people. Half of those
who have heart attacks die in their first
heart attack. You make a [INDISTINCT] first;
well it's certainly a good idea but--so we
specifically looked at that ability and we
showed that this is true of the Methuselah's
to a probability which is better than five
percent by a chi squared test. So we actually
know that the Methuselah's survive heart attacks
better. And we also know--this is sepsis that
was--we--these flies are better at surviving
infection. Now it occurred to you already
that since--and you can just study this data
here for example--this has not been published
yet but the survival of the Methuselah's is
about 50% better for given infections. It
will have occurred to you though that you
can take the flies that survive and use those
as a selection protocol. This gentleman asked,
you know, "So you select for longevity, what
else do you get?" Well you can also select
for survival of the infection or survival
of heart attacks and that's another selection
mechanism that will illuminate different pathways
and different ways and so it's not just one
thing you can do with these. You can force--the
force of natural--of artificial selection
to give you information and you can use that
in the laboratory; that's the long term prospect.
We're not going to start--stop just for longevity,
we're going to look at survival for the [INDISTINCT]
of the signs and arrows of outrageous fortune
that occurred to all humans. Now, so what
are you? I mean you're all young, hopelessly
young but it's all the--the best point is
take care of yourself. Delay as long as long
as possible your need for these kinds of mechanisms.
But that's not available to me, I've already
managed to get old. So my second piece of
advice to you is: don't do it like [INDISTINCT]
he's a very sharp guy, good friend of mine
but don't over weight your system with a whole
lot of supplements because one thing we found
from our experiments is that occasionally
we take separate substances that's in the
life span, say three or four of them, we combine
them and you can a negative effect. And so
we've done dosage that is and we found that
some of these things are good in this wing,
have no effect over here, and are negative
over here. By the way I would mention to you
that there is a large negative region, and
we tested these on the flies for caffeine.
Ring any bells? We found that at large overload,
say, probably about ten cups coffee a day,
the flies have a reduced lifespan. Now, that's
not an opening shot. Argument, but I don't
drink a lot of coffee anymore. In fact, every
biologists in the company stopped drinking
coffee and we stopped giving away coffee,
in the corporate lab after this result. And
we published these three months ago. So, what
Genescient is looking for live for is stuff
that works, really works. And our intention
is to carve out of the--the marble that genomics
has. We'll carve out something useful and
beautiful by using [INDISTINCT] learning and
then using the genomic pathways that are available.
And all of these is using adaptive selection.
Force the animals to select--through forced
selection, artificial selection to tell you
information and then use that in the laboratory.
And we call that evolutionary nutrigenomics.
The nice thing about it is you can sell these
on the market. You do not require human trials.
We do safety trials which we're doing right
now. And I should probably advertise that
I've been taking our number substance for
half a year and I seem to be very reasonably
alive. And--and then to point in the market
mechanism. So, these by the way, I will read
it to you, is the summary of the--what I think
we've accomplished by direct application and
shown in laboratories so far. And then I'll
have a couple of--I'll just let you read that
for a moment, meanwhile ask your question.
>> Could you elaborate on the [INDISTINCT]?
>> BENFORD: On the what?
>> [INDISTINCT] human testing?
>> BENFORD: Oh, you give it to the small group,
few dozen people and look at their basic performance
things: what's the blood pressure, how do
you feel--the most important thing is how
do you feel? Do you feel better? Worse? You
know, do you have the depressed thoughts?
No suicides? I mean, basics like that, that's
all the FDA requires by the way or actually
the--the FDA doesn't even require that for
supplements which may shock some of you. It
shocked me.
>> Yes. That's a shame. [INDISTINCT] require
some [INDISTINCT].
>> BENFORD: Your government work.
>> [INDISTINCT] people [INDISTINCT] controls
for [INDISTINCT]
>> BENFORD: Yes, well, you see the grass substances
are generally accepted as safe because they've
been used. And so, no, it's not obviously
bad for you like say, chocolate. Actually,
that's a joke. Chocolate have--actually the
[INDISTINCT] is good. It's actually good to
eat chocolate which amaze me. So, here is
the [INDISTINCT] final conclusion. I'm a physicist.
I'm a Professor of Physics of UC of Irvine,
but we're already in the next century and
it's obviously one that's going to be about
biology, also about climate change. But, that's
another talk. And we now know that biologists
form--fundamentally an information problem.
That's where you can get the most illumination.
And that we have then begun using selection
and genomics to pull this information out.
And so, what we're trying to do is start a
health revolution that is based on a new technology
and new way of looking at the world. So that
we can all advance because that event that
occurred back around 1940 in which we ironed
out the longevity curve and we entered the
era of modern medicine. It's just the beginning.
And here's a new technology beyond, way beyond
what vaccines can do that we use to advance
our prospects. In that case, and then these
are our collaborating institutions, we hope
to have a future in which you can greatly
increase human longevity. It--in that opening
slide, when I said, you know, maybe we can
live to be a 150. I think that's actually
going to be true. I think it's quite possible
that people will live to be 200 and 300. But
it's also quite possible that people who will
live to be a 150 are in this audience, right
now. Because we've actually meshed with other
techniques, both in the 19th and 20th century,
to increase the mean longevity in the advanced
society by 50% each time. You know what they
mean longevity was? Thomas--Thomas Jefferson?
It's about 40. The mean longevity at the time
of Jesus Christ was 30. So, we had 32 when
he died on the cross. He was actually a little
boy beyond me. And you don't think about that,
but imagine the society in which people live
to be only 30? Wait, you don't have to imagine
it. It's in the Bible, right? Which is obsessed
with the after life. Guess what? It's going
to happen next week. But what about the society
in which people live to be a 150? I don't
think it's an accident that the environmentalist,
for example, has occurred in the last century.
The National Parks are only a bit more than
a 100years old. Why? Because people are living
long enough to see the results and they could
see the rate of change. Other concerns, about
climate change in this century and even things
like, say archeology. How come archeology
is not a thousand year old subject? How come
it's only since the time of Schliemann, few
centuries ago? Well it's because people didn't
have enough of perspective to even think about
the ancient past. It seems irrelevant because
after all they were going to die pretty soon.
It's worth imagining what's going to happen
to a society in which people will live to
be 150. I think they're going to have a much
longer time frame in mind and as you probably
noticed our major problems are on that time
scale. Climate change is a problem for the--for--on
the scale in where--of a century because by
that time we'll see at least two, I think
one more like 4 degree centigrade change in
the temperature of the planet, unless we do
things like geo engineering which I've been
working on. But the point is this inherently
a long time scale problem. If you'd make people
live longer, you will get more wisdom out
of the society and of course you'll get more
productivity because people won't be retiring
at the age of 65. No need to. No need to at
all. They will work all the way past a hundred
and you'll get much more yield out of them.
After all you spend what? Twenty years educating
people and then you get 30 years of work and
they're gone? That's not a really great way
to run the societies because if you get a
century more out of them which should be far
more productive. Worth remembering that 65
was the retirement age in social security
for--and they setup in 1936, you know why?
Because at that point half the people were
dead. So you could fund the program on the
backs of everybody but give it to only half.
Its worth remembering how--that your perspective
changes with your lifespan. So that's the
Genescient agenda. That's what we want to
do and the company is growing very fast. And
it's a perfect example of how people like
you who are in IT can help feels--that seem
utterly different. Utterly different. But
longevity is in fact your kind of problem.
So, get to work on it. Thank you.
>> I noticed in the--in the infection study
that you have actually shown in the age of
the flies when you tested them but in the...
>> BENFORD: Closer to the mic.
>> Yes. In the study for the substances the
nutri-genomics you didn't at which age you
started giving these substances of the flies.
So I'm wondering, you know, when you transfer
it to humans, direct applies to how early
in life you have to start taking these nutri-genomics
to have an effect?
>> BENFORD: How early should you begin taking
genomic or derived nutri-genomics because
after all you don't need it when you're just
a snub-nosed kid, right? Well, a rough measure
is you should take it after the age in which
human reproduction stops which is roughly
40. By the way, my co-founder, the cardiovascular
specialist gives all of her patients the Statin
drugs at age 40 because it is essentially
a longevity drug in itself. It's really great
for cardiovascular. It drops the death rate
from cardio problems like 45%, one drug, right?
But it also reduces the cancer death rate
by 20% and the Alzheimer's rate. So, it's
a very general kind of thing, but she gives
them two at age 40 for exactly that reason.
And by the way, the actual data shows that
it works. Even in that low NH. So 40, I would
say. But of course there's no real problem
with taking it earlier because it has no bad
side effects. Yes.
>> Flies to humans seem like an awful big
jump. Have you thought about adding and testing
on mice as an intermediate stuff?
>> BENFORD: Yes. Everybody says why didn't
you it in mice? Well, two things; the control
flies we used, who live in big environments
under a significant stress--they lived three,
four weeks, right? Mice lives several years.
So, it's going to take you much longer to
get so profound a result but there's another
problem. All lab mice are inbred, so you're
looking at a narrow suite of genes. These
are not natural mice. Third, mice die mostly
of cancer. And cancer is a worthy topic but
that's all you're going to get mostly, is
cancer. So, there was other reason we have
on mice. It's far more expensive, but we are
in fact carrying forward such a program now.
It's just that flies look like the lone hanging
fruit, if that's a metaphor. Because they
are fruit flies, right?
>> So, as you say you a get very fast results
from breeding flies and testing on mice is
very expensive and it takes a really long
time to get any useful data. And then you
are going to go and you're going to sell this
to humans and to actually do a double-blind
trial of humans taking this for long enough
to demonstrate a life extending effect to
take a long time. So, is it going to take
40 years before where we can tell whether
you are actually selling anything useful?
>> BENFORD: Yes. I mean, the problem of--in
fact, the human longevity is that it takes
a while. In 40 years, it would be nice to
have a program that would yield the result
in 40 years, but where do you get the funding?
So, we hope that half a century from now,
it'd be clear that these things illuminate
human longevity. But no one will know, as
you say, until we get that far.
>> Are there...
>> BENFORD: The problem is that it--most people
are rather impatient.
>> Are there beneficial effects that you could
test for, that you could do one a one year
trial or a six-month trial where you could
say, "Well look, this person's cardiovascular
health has improved by taking these things",
because then, it would--it would seem to get
much confidence.
>> BENFORD: That's really good. Are you interested
in a job?
>> No, thanks. I'm good.
>> BENFORD: Because that's exactly what we're
doing. We're looking at their general overall
performance versus time. And much you've already
said anything expect that I can tell you personally,
I've been taking for half a year and I think
it improves your energetic levels and, I think,
we actually know why. So, yes, we're going
to look at people's basic performance over
time. Longevity takes but a good deal longer.
>> Thanks.
>> So, have you tried giving these cocktails
of, you know, chemicals to the Methuselah
flies and seeing if it actually helps them?
>> Yes, but I can't tell you any results because
we don't have them yet. That's exactly we're
doing the experiment right now.
>> Yes, I was...
>> You're right. You're looking for a job?
>> No.
>> You've got a good job.
>> [INDISTINCT].
>> So provided that the project comes to fruition
and you are able to extend human life. I know
several times in length, how do think it will
affect the creativity in the--in the society?
Because ideas, mostly the youth, young people
are the source of new ideas in the society.
And in a society that has people living much
longer but [INDISTINCT] constraint there will
be very few youngsters.
>> Yes. That's essentially a social question.
It says, "So why do you create a long-life
society?" Well actually, you know, I would,
yes, we'll worry about that when we get one
but multi-creativity go away. Two things;
one, I think the lapsing of creativity occurs
at least in part because of the lapsing of
vigor in the human population. On the other
hand, it's also true that Leo Tolstoy wrote
Anna Karenina when he was in his 70s. I mean,
there is some creativity late in life. It
tends to be places where accumulated wisdom
helps you, particularly novelists; and Beethoven
wrote the Ninth Symphony when he was in his
50s. But that studies, I'm not saying implication--of
course, it doesn't mean you won't have young
people around. It maybe that you will have
a wiser society which if you know much of
the history in the 20th Century might suggests
itself as a good idea. So, those social implications
are going to be worked out by, oh, that's
right. You guys. You guys because you're going
to see it and you can even live the singularity.
Let's hope we are selecting for more than
just long life.
>> There's probably going to be much more
conservative society.
>> BENFORD: Will it be more conservative?
You mean, it will do less or it will be more
cautious.
>> It will be more adverse to change.
>> BENFORD: Will it be--but wait a second.
The society with the longest life people in
it had been those who had the greatest rate
of change. That is the societies for the last
200 years. So, the historical experience says
it goes the other way. You want a conservative
society? Think about the pharaohs, right?
Very little happened for over a thousand,
you know, a couple of thousand years. That's
a conservative society. So, I don't think
it's obvious that these societies will be
adverse to change because the writer changed
in the last two centuries had been the highest
in human experience and it's also those the
one in which people live long. So, it's not
an obvious issue.
>> So, my understanding is that, say, five
years from now, we're going to have huge amounts
of genomic data for, you know, hundreds or
thousands or millions of volunteers correlated
with their medical records. So I'm assuming
at that point, you could take your fruit fly
genes and look at the million volunteers and
see if there was a correlation where the ones--the
humans who live longer had these genes also.
Is that in the playbook?
>> BENFORD: That's exactly what's going to
happen. And fact, the centenarians--is that
what it's called? The centenarians, those
who lived longer than 100, they're growing--they're
the fastest growing group of the population.
And so, exactly, there's already a society
that studies this genomically entrust full
information of it. By the way, the methuselahs
show a plateau in late life, so did the centenarians.
Those beyond 105, the rate of mortal--the
mortality rate is flat. It does not continue
and increase. In the human population, mortality
rate increases all the way up to 105 and then
plateaus. Exactly the same things as the methuselahs
do, which is we're very suggestive that longevity
means both vigor of a sort and that the mortality
rate stops declining. So, that's very suggestive
and that's exactly what's going to happen
in the next decade. Yes?
>> So I'm over 40. What do you suggests I
take now?
>> BENFORD: So you're over 40. Just take statin
drugs, regular exercise. All the things that
our mothers told us turned to be true. Isn't
that embarrassing? Eat vegetables and fruits
and the usual stuff. Do not take up hang gliding
as I did. I broke this shoulder twice: once
in baseball and once in surfing, and the spine--the
spine in surfing, my ankles in mountain climbing.
Don't do those things. I stopped playing off
that stuff about the age of 45 to 50. Otherwise,
oh, yes, that's right, buy our nutre-genomics.
Anybody else? Okay. Thanks very much.
