Worthy charities
asked for suggestions of charities worthy of donation. Never one to pass up an opportunity to tell others how to spend their money, here's what I suggested.
Every day, 150,000 die from aging. In other words, more people die from aging every two days than all the people who died in the Asian tsunami, the worst natural disaster in modern history. And unless we do something about it, most likely, you and everyone you love will also die from aging.
Historically, there was not much we could do about aging. As a result, most people have become complacent, or even glamorize death.
But resigned fatalism is no longer warranted.
There are two charities that I think are doing great work in this area: Alcor and the Methusaleh Foundation.
First, the case for Alcor. As medicine advances, we can expect cures for aging, cancer, heart disease, and most other major causes of death. Unfortunately, most of us were probably born too early to take advantage of those technologies.
But suppose that you could somehow halt the process of dying, that you could go into suspended animation. Then you could wait as long as was necessary for science to come up with a cure for whatever was killing you, plus repair the damage caused by the cryopreservation process itself.
Suspended animation, aka cryonics, the cryopreserving of human beings in the hopes of their future reanimation, exists today. However, it is a field still in its infancy. The dollars devoted to research in this field have been minuscule, despite the enormous potential payoff.
Yet, despite extremely poor funding, some advances have been made. One of those advances is vitrification, which has proven promising in the rabbit kidney model. By introducing a high enough concentration of antifreeze, instead of forming ice crystals, the fluid within an organ will vitrify (form a glass). According to rabbit kidney studies, this is much less damaging than ice crystallization.
Alcor is currently raising money for their whole body vitrification research. The whole body vitrification research intends to translate the research that has been done in the rabbit kidney model to whole human cryopreservation. If they're successful, it will mean much less damage for current patients, and a big step forward in the long slog toward demonstrating working suspended animation. Any donations to this research will be matched up to $100 K by Bina and Martine Rothblatt if you pledge before January 31, 2006.
You can read about the scientific case for cryonics here:
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/casef
Alternatively, you could donate to Methusaleh Foundation's Methusaleh Mouse Prize:
The Methuselah Mouse Prize (MPrize), is the premiere effort of the Methuselah Foundation and is being offered to the scientific research team who develops the longest living Mus musculus, the breed of mouse most commonly used in scientific research. Developing interventions which work in mice are a critical precursor to the development of human anti-aging techniques, for once it is demonstrated that aging in mice can be effectively delayed or reversed, popular attitudes towards aging as 'inevitable' will no longer be possible. When aging in mice is shown to be 'treatable' the funding necessary for a full-line assault on the aging process will be made available. This is the true power of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, to demonstrate a proof of principle, and give hope to the world that decline in function and age-related disease are no longer guarantees, for us, or for future generations, if we work together now.
The nice thing about the Methusaleh Mouse Prize is that it only pays for results — if no one increases the mouses lifespan, the prize isn't paid.
If you want to leverage your charitable dollars, I can't think of any better charities. If either is successful, it will mean vastly increased lifespans for millions and eventually billions of people.
Including, perhaps, your own.
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