Dublin Biostasis Evening

A short report on our satellite meeting at the Longevity Summit 2023

Human biostasis is part of the life extension project and movement. Despite that, it has rarely been included in the program of major life extension conferences. One of the rare exceptions was my talk “Cryonic Life Extension” at the SENS5 conference in Cambridge, England in September of 2011. It was therefore both an honor and a pleasure to be invited to the Dublin Longevity Summit. My thanks to LEV Foundation President & CSO Aubrey de Grey (and main conference organizer Martin O’Dea).

I was not the only biostasis-related speaker. Our Saturday afternoon section also featured Tanya Jones who talked about her persufflation-cooling project and João Pedro de Magalhães of Oxford Cryotechnology. Aschwin de Wolf and I had decided that the conference would be a good opportunity to reach out to the broader life extension community. We organized a gathering for the Sunday evening at the nearby Bonsai Bar.

In my talk, I noted that most people in the world are too pessimistic about the potential for extending the healthy maximum human life span. Either they don’t believe it’s possible, it’s far in the future, or it’s undesirable. Conversely, I have the impression that most people attending life extension conferences may be too optimistic, especially if they are relatively young. Having been involved in life extension for over 40 years, I have seen the coming and going of numerous theories of aging and treatments.

As a side note: Curiously, despite the optimism for the future, most of the attendees were too pessimistic in their beliefs about current global life expectancy. Speaker Andrew Steele asked everyone to stand. He then asked: “How long do people globally live? Sit down if you think less than the number I say.” He then went through the ages 40, 50, 60, 65, 70, 75. The great majority had sat down before he got to 70. I was one of maybe a dozen or fewer people remaining. I sat down for 75. (The correct answer is a bit over 72.)

Decades ago, I saw the same optimism about future progress among writers on the topic. I shared it. And yet, the maximum human life span has not moved after decades of research and life expectancy improvements have slowed. This is why we must aggressively continue research in fields relevant to life extension and why people who want much longer lives should make their biostasis arrangements a priority. At the end of my talk, I told the audience about our event the next evening. A QR code kept on my phone also made it easy for people to get the details.

My talk was a customized version of my Cryonics/Biostasis as Plan A talk. My talk had two main points directed to the pro-longevity crowd. First, a warning against too easily believing that we will reach “longevity escape velocity” during our remaining years of life. Given the history of the longevity/life extension field over the last 50+ years, it would be foolish to be highly certain that you will make it to a time when effective anti-aging treatments are developed and made available. In my 60^th year, I put the odds of this happening in time for me very low. Even someone decades younger may not make it.

The second point is that treating biostasis as your Plan A – the thing you can and should do now – is sensible even setting aside the first point. Cryocrastination can be deadly at any age. You might develop a condition that makes you uninsurable, perhaps making cryonics unaffordable. You might have a heart attack, or unexpectedly discover that you have stage 4 cancer. (This recently happened to someone I know who went in for a medical checkup for something entirely different.) And even if we do develop an effective anti-aging treatment, you will not be immortal. You can still be killed by an untreatable pathogen, by a bad fall, in an accident, or by murder.

You can read my article on Plan A here or watch the talk I gave at the Alcor-50 conference here.

After four days of intense talks and networking at the conference, 30 of us retained the energy to head over to the nearby Bonsai Bar. For four hours or so during the evening of Sunday August 20, vibrant conversations about biostasis and cryonics ensued. Emil Kendziorra, CEO of Tomorrow Biostasis, briefly spoke about his new cryonics organization in Europe. Aschwin then gave a remarkably smooth and informative talk without notes about misconceptions about cryonics research (versus longevity research). Then the networking and conversing began and didn’t end until we had to vacate the space.

It was a pleasure to chat with existing acquaintances and friends and to meet new people including students in physics and neuroscience, several Irish life extensionists, transhumanists, and cryo-interested persons. The event also provided an opportunity to get to know better people such as Kelsey Moody, CEO at Ichor Life Sciences.

Social and intellectual gatherings are not frequent in biostasis circles. Gatherings like this not only keep people informed and help with networking, they also draw in people interested in the topic but not yet involved. At Biostasis Technologies we primarily focus on research and improving protocols and procedures but we also want to bring together people with a practical interest in biostasis. We hope to work with other biostasis/cryonics groups to organize future events.