"The sixth age shifts / Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon..."

Interesting article from The Daily Galaxy:

The End of Aging?

De Grey's call to action, writes Dr. Sherwin Nuland, clinical professor of surgery at Yale University School of Medicine and author of How We Die and The Art of Aging, "is the message neither of a madman nor a bad man, but of a brilliant, beneficent man of goodwill, who wants only for civilization to fulfill the highest hopes he has for its future.” An opinion darkly countered by Dr. Martin Raff, emeritus professor of biology at University College London and coauthor of Molecular Biology of the Cell: “Seems to me this man could be put in jail with reasonable cause.”

Despite the fact that the name "Aubrey de Grey" sounds like it belongs to a megalomaniac villain, and the irony that de Grey is fighting de gray, this kind of thing is like scientific catnip to me. It has the right blend of pseudoscientific wackiness and a genuine appeal to the relief of one of my darker fears. If de Grey is a nut, then this is entertaining claptrap on the order of cold fusion. But if he's right, I'll be the first to sign up for immortality, ethics be damned.