Dr. Aubrey de Grey – Source
Wired.com: How often do you get your blood work done?
de Grey: Every three or four years.
Wired.com: What do you look for?
de Grey: The only thing I look for is things that appear to be out of whack, that seem to be, according to regular interpretations, worrying. But then I don’t necessarily worry. I look at what that’s supposed to mean. I look in the detail of what it comes down to.
For example, one thing that was worryingly high for me last time and the time before was homocysteine which is something people are supposed to care about because they have lots of supposed implications. But all my other indicators in terms of oxidative stress in the blood were really good. So somehow or other the generalization doesn’t work for me.
This is one thing I always say to people when they ask me, “What should I do?” I always say, “Don’t generalize. Don’t just read a book and think, ‘Okay I’ll do that.’ The number one thing is to listen to your body and do what your body is telling you to do.”
Wired.com: Is it really possible we can keep pace with cancer, which changes and evolves so much?
de Grey: Exactly. The whole concept of WILT was the last part of SENS that came into place. I was actually considerably more cautious initially about what SENS could achieve, until I felt I really cracked cancer. Then I started feeling like I could go out with all guns blazing.
The thing about WILT is that it should be so powerful that even the engineers of evolution can’t overcome it. The limitation on evolution is that a given tumor has only got a trillion cells and 10 years. And if we’re talking about a situation that would be achieved by WILT, then we’re talking maybe no more than a billion cells before they just finally run out of telomere and explode or keel over or wither away. In fact, the tumor wilts.
This has not really been challenged. Most people who think WILT is not going to work feel that’s because it’s just going to be too hard to implement the stem cell replenishment parts. I think that’s shortsighted.