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The Weight Of Our SENS

I’ve feared death in some way or another my entire life. You know that period of time just before you have to go to the place where you spend your day? Like, the morning before going to school or to work. For me, I get a lot of anxiety just thinking about that time coming up. I’ll sit there and count down every minute, directly or subconsciously. Sometimes I feel like life is that, and dying is starting your commute.

It’s this fear I have that always drove me to look for answers. My aunt was someone I looked to often in this regard because she was new-age and believed in all the things that entails. She would take me to her conventions, or shows as she called them, and I was fascinated by all of the things I saw. Crystals, ‘energized’ objects, tarot, and all those things you can imagine. As my fear of death grew, so did my fascination. I wanted to believe in all of these things, but at the end of the day, they required faith. That faith was taken advantage of by charlatans, and I soured on the conventions as I realized they were just full of snake-oil salesmen. At the same time, I was turning to Aubrey de Grey and SENS. I was fascinated by the idea of curing aging through science.

SENS felt different at first. Real research papers, actual scientists talking about treating aging like a disease we could cure. De Grey laid it all out – seven types of damage we needed to fix. It seemed so logical, so achievable. Just give them enough funding, and we’d crack it within decades.

I really believed in De Grey at first because he put his own money on the line when he could have just sat on his inheritance comfortably, but something familiar started happening. Every year, those decades never got any closer. The promises stayed the same while the price tag kept growing.

When the allegations about de Grey came out in 2021, it hit hard. Two women accused him of sexual harassment dating back to when they were minors, and SENS had to remove him. The foundation he built, the credibility he’d brought to the field – it all started crumbling. Then came people like Richard Heart with his PulseChain cryptocurrency, promising to fund longevity research while really just running what looked like a pyramid scheme. David Sinclair started selling supplements and books while making wild and irreproducible claims about reversing aging. The similarities to those new age shows became impossible to ignore – the same mix of true believers and opportunists, all selling hope in different packages.

I watched legitimate researchers distance themselves from the field as it filled up with more hype men than scientists. Conference halls that once hosted serious aging research discussions now featured cryptocurrency panels and supplement vendors. Just like those crystal sellers at my aunt’s shows who’d prey on grieving widows, these new charlatans targeted anyone afraid of death – which is basically everyone.

I almost gave up on the whole thing. My belief is that the real hope is in the Yamanaka factors – four genes that can reprogram cells back to a younger state. Scientists Shinya Yamanaka and John Gurdon won the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 2012. These factors – Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc – can reset a cell’s age, like turning back its biological clock. The catch is, if you use them too much, the cell forgets what kind of cell it’s supposed to be entirely. It’s like trying to edit your age in a video game but accidentally deleting your whole character.

But here’s where it gets interesting: researchers figured out you can use these factors partially – just enough to make cells younger without erasing their identity. A team at the Salk Institute showed they could extend the lifespan of mice with premature aging by doing this. Now there’s this ongoing study at Altos Labs where they’re trying to fine-tune this process, making it safer and more controlled. They’re not promising immortality – just trying to understand how we might safely reverse some aspects of aging.

I still spend too much time thinking about death. Those morning anxieties haven’t gone away, and maybe they never will. But I’ve learned to separate hope from hype, whether it’s coming from a crystal healer or a crypto bro in a Tesla. Real science moves slowly, carefully, with more failures than successes. It’s not as exciting as promises of immortality, but at least it’s honest about what it doesn’t know. And right now, that feels more comforting than any miracle cure.

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