Regulatory Damage

Although not specifically a CRN issue, the effort to cure the disease of aging and radically extend human healthspans is of interest to us for two reasons: first, because Chris and I both would prefer to live longer and healthier lives than what nature allots us; and second, because the regulatory climate that surrounds aging research may hold lessons for the administration of research into molecular manufacturing.

This post at The Longevity Meme reports that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "blocked a new stem cell therapy for heart damage that has proven very successful in trials. The therapy uses stem cells from the patient's own blood, directly analogous to using your own blood for transfusions in surgery."

As Chris notes, "It's worth asking whether valuable nanotech research might similarly be blocked due to the most trivial of hot-button-word politics."

On this topic, a post by Reason at the Fight Aging site says, ""Heavy handed or not, I am deliberately setting forth the position that Leon Kass, the Bioethics Council, President Bush and his administration, in their deliberate, successful attempts to block progress towards regenerative medicine, will have as their legacy more death and suffering than was caused by all the wars and dictators of the 20th century."

Comments

[Mr. Farlops]

Frankly, I've never been too worried about religiously or politically driven bans on research in either of these areas, rejuvenation or molecular manufacturing.

Controversial research like biotechnology, and soon molecular manufacturing, generates a lot of heat and noise that hardly ever changes any minds. And often people with fixed misconceptions that they refuse to clear up, remain with those misconceptions. Look at nuclear energy. Sixty years later and people still have misconceptions about it. Life extension and MNT will be the same. After the debate, usually, as individuals, we end up right back where we started from and the technology happens anyway.

And often people, even those with devote beliefs, undergo enormous intellectual contortions and contradictions when these issues affect them personally. The recently deceased Strom Thurmond, hardly a big fan of science, had a daughter with juvenile diabetes and despite his vocal opposition to abortion did support embryo research.

Political appointees like Leon Kass don't really matter a jot if the pharmaceutical, energy and other large companies decide to use their money to overturn bans or regulation they don't like. Or they'll just move operations to a country were the laws are too their liking.

Then there is the military angle. The United States has always been very concerned about being the acme of military technology in the world. Our weapons are the most advanced and we spend staggering amounts of money to see that they remain that way. If a politician comes to power with a strong moralistic agenda, it won't matter. Once the military leaders make it plain that bans on nanotechnology research will hurt weapons development, guess which agenda gets trumped?

As someone said about nanotechnology before, "good luck trying to stop it."

However in the short term a lot of time and money will be wasted as we collectively decide what to do. The trick is to figure out which political players really matter and sway them so that policy works out the way MNT advocates want. The rest can be safely ignored.

[Janessa Ravenwood]

Sorry for not getting back to some people here recently, have been mega-swamped at work.

However, I wanted to raise something NOW, and with this "Regulatory Damage" entry the timing seems disturbingly apropos.

A major assault against my primary cryonics provider, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, is currently underway in the Arizona State Legislature. Rep. Stump – who I think is owned by the funeral industry – is trying to regulate them out of existence.

If you oppose this sort of life-extension-prohibition legislation, I urge you to go to www.alcor.org and see the detail and to see how/where to write the AZ legislators behind this. I think the lobbying is making a difference from the reports we’re getting, but we need to keep it up.

Thank You