“Do We Want Science to Reinvent Human Aging?”

Daniel Perry, Executive Director, Alliance for Aging Research: Good afternoon, my name is Dan Perry and I’m the Executive Director of the not-for-profit Alliance for Aging Research. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the second debate under the banner of SAGE Crossroads. This is a project that will continue for the next three years, bringing to light the crosscurrents in our political life that affect the science of aging. We know that there is a great deal of research going on in the United States and around the world trying to plum the secrets of human aging, and as it increasingly becomes possible to modify the trajectory of human aging there will certainly be consequences, indeed controversies, that go to our economics, our politics, our religion and our sense of ourselves as human beings.

Today’s debate is one that really brings focus very sharply on this question, as we will soon hear from our two esteemed participants, Doctor Gregory Stock, who is the director of UCLA’s Program on Medicine, Technology and Society, and a widely quoted lecturer...