The finder, chairman he is an accomplished surgeon. And a biomedical scientist in aviator. Also earned the Vice President of aging research at calico life sciences. A Google Alphabet company. She earned her chemistry degree from georgia and mit. Kat walter is a science journalist and a National Geographic explorer filmmaker and author of immortality incorporation. Chip was a one one of the original employees at cnn and served as bureau chief in san francisco. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming our panel for today. They will be joining me on stage shortly. [applause]. We have some experts in the field. We only had about 50 minutes to explore the science inquest for longevity. I would like to keep us on a story line. Chip and i have discussed this previously. We are gonna start by defining a mission then we will dig into the science of aging. As well as the pros and cons. Lets start with chip. You had written this amazing book immoratality, inc. Can you describe your admission with the book what made you want to write this book and what are you hoping to achieve. I have always been fascinated with the idea of the life long longevity. I think all of us are fascinated in the human the human race has been fascinated from the beginning. There had been plenty of myths and art and philosophy and religion and there has also been plenty of steak snake oil. When ever i was looking at this i began to wonder is it possible that we are actually at a place in Human History where science not snake oil or mist could solve one of the great mysteries that we have all wondered about which is basically solving aging. I think this is beginning to happen and i wanted to go out and look at that question and in a way you might think of it as a science book its kind of a history book i am trying to look with the book i wanted to ask well, if this happens who are the people behind it and what would be the motivations behind it. What kind of forces would need to take place and then tell that story. Try to get to the bottom of that. And that is what i had tried to do with this book. Who are the big thinkers what kind of money has to be behind it and why do why do we even want to do this. In the end i hope that i was able to weave together a story that tells the tale. So fascinating story it reads like a novel. Cynthia you are a leading aging research. What is your mission there in your definition of success. I was the professor for almost 30 years before i went to calico and while i was there i became interested in aging partly because at the time most people thought that aging was just empathy. If you look in nature what you see different species had very different lifespans. Some lived a very long time. During the changes they have to change with the life span. They determine the rate of aging they have to be make us age much more slowly than a dog. This is just a few weeks. We looked for gene changes that could extend life and we were very lucky to find the in that in the single gene they could keep it young way longer than normal. And the work that we did with the mechanisms trying to understand them a really got me interested in trying to go beyond my own lab and try to help find out whether you could first of all trades list to humans in some way and use some of the information that we know from studying the basic biology of animals to improve our health. And also when i learned about that. They were a kind of funny company. They wanted had just basic research. They have creativity and basic research and it really kind of moonshot way. They seem to live a really long time for example and also to be in a position where we could try to take to the clinic some of the information that we have gleaned from work on animals. It was just too exciting and too big of an opportunity for me to turn down. There was two kinds of success actually. I hope that we can talk about this really fundamental fascinating discussed breeze and how it works in many ways. I hope that we find another. I hope that we really can apply what we know to humans. Im in a stop in just a second. And she now for just a long time we had been trying to cure diseases which is fantastic and weve done a terrific job with Heart Disease the way they used to. But they still age at the same way. If more people who are older. In some cases arent are living in very healthy conditions so the hope is that we can find ways. Its a shared goal. What is your mission with the imported success for you. First of all is this working so really its very similar to what they just said. I grew up not understanding that the idea bringing aging over medical control was a controversial concept. I just thought nobody ever told me aging was not a medical problem. It was actually 1993 the same year in which she published her paper that transformed the whole field that i went through a transformation of my own. Couple years before that i had married a biologist having previously been a research in a completely different discipline and through her i learned a little biology. She just was not interested in aging. I thought what is going on. After a year to mark or two more i said i have to switch fields and work on this. As time went on. The field be able to make a few contributions. I do want to mention a new contribution that cynthia has made over the years. When the medical applicability of this field is more established back in the 90s this was heretical and extreme the idea of actually saying we gotta do something about aging. If there was a Grant Application cynthia was one of the very first people that went out and said this. I feel like im standing on hertzs shoulders. Its all about saving lives. Of course im talking about quality of life. Longevity is just a side effect of health. Were just doing medical research. We are all were all about keeping people healthy and we think we have a a fighting chance of doing it so well that the magnitude of that side effect well actually be there. Can you quantify large. Know we cannot quantify that. I always like twopoint out that the human body is a machine. And as such we need to look at what happens with several machines. We know that a car for example can be maintained in a functional state with the day its belts built for as long as we like. Theres cars that are hundred years old today that were not designed to last more than ten or 15 years. We already know how to do really comprehensive maintenance on them. The goal of our work is to development if and medicines that do exactly the same thing. That had preventative maintenance to eliminate the damage that the body does in the course of its normal operations. And thereby to completely transcend the warranty time that evolution has built in to our bodies. Robert you said believed aging was as stem cell problem. And now what are you striving for exactly and when will you have arrived. Singularity was born out of a company that was seeking to turn living cells into medicines and we use a platform that took advantage of some very unique biology. Organ that we all know is sort of the life support system. It turns out at a time im a neurosurgeon by training. I was mostly interested in finding a way to improve the outcome in those patients when stem cells first hit the airwaves. I said i think this might be a tool for me to improve the neurological outcome. We made a lot of advances turning those cells into tools to control inflammation which stem cells are very good at doing. In the concept as a means to provide or improve health is not new. But it was during that time when our Company Became part of a growing enterprise it was really a cancer focused company the data basically showed that in patients as they age there was a very abrupt decline in the number of stem cells that we were looking at. It turns out if you look at the bone marrow of a baby one in about 20 to 30,000 cells is a stem cell. If you look at the bone marrow of an 80yearold is one of 30 million. What does that tell a surgeon who is not as smart as the rest of the folks. Can we just add stem cells and change things. I gave them back their stem cells after maturity on a regular basis. And this study turned out to show us that they live 30 to 40 longer. That was obviously enough to launch a big Research Program but it intrigued us of enough. They may extend the role. Maintaining the structure and function of our bodies as we age and allowing the immune system to perform at optimum levels throughout our life span. Thats what got us there. Success is showing that these products are meaningful. With the agerelated diseases. Its a nicer way of saying longevity. I think you are the best to explain in basic terms why do we age. The tissues ability to withstand stress and function it just declines. Cells lose their integrity to some extent. The cells within the tissues lose their ability to carry out their functions in the normal way that they behave. They dont coordinate their behaviors with one another as much as they used to. If you look at the mortality rate of a species like humans and the chance that you will wake up one morning and die that day goes up with the older you are. It goes up in a very regular way the chance of thats the human rate. Its something inside a young person. Its in all the cells. Or its just in one place that has has programmed that person to age at a certain rate. As is already there when they are young. What is the programming. It is different dash make different in different species. How does that happen. What is going on. It turns out very early and evolution it looks as though simple organisms develop the capacity to withstand stressful conditions like the removal of food or the presence of a lot of radiation or hot temperature all sorts of different stresses. If any of these stresses. They have a system at least that can make them really resist all of these stresses all at once. It turns out the mutation has changed in the gene. One basic care. Thats all. Everything changed. In the animals aged much more slowly. How did we do that with one base pair change. It is like a Computer Program and you have a hierarchy of control systems. We have intervened at a very high level without knowing what we did at the time. We came at a very high level on what we did is essentially we caused the animal to think that it was under stress. This animal had reprogrammed itself. Now they were much more resistant to any kind of damage. They prepare the dna. And also things that we do at different levels. And those animals lived twice as long. We dont really know exactly at least some of the same properties that we can protect animals from stress can also protect them from the stress of aging. Its kind of a very high level not very nuts and bolts he explanation. The thing is cool about this is that if you change the same genes in fruit flies or mice they all live longer. It is a universal programming mechanism and there are hints that it is present in humans as well. We already live a pretty long time. Perhaps the system is pretty much turned on in us by evolution allowing us to be just naturally more resistant. The wear wearandtear and time. It eventually kills us. Can you explain that. Them women answer this quickly. I need to jump out from what cynthia just said. I focus on a long time im not slowing aging down but actually reversing it. In preparing the damage. To truly rejuvenate people and of course in principle this would be where the air to get to the got to the middle age or older. It is now being taken more seriously. One thing that cynthia just said. To be the kind of thing that the organisms can confer. It does seem that way. If you put if you put them under that. Then they tend to live longer. The proportion for which they live longer is much smaller than what you get. In other types. There is a lot of complications here. We certainly need to understand and to meet the goal is to figure out how much we need to understand. I look at this as a technology contest. I dont think to find things out for the sake of finding them out. In order to figure out what to do to manipulate the system. The kinds of damage kind of damage that we look at. In the waste products. In different ways in different cell types. And different ordinances him and the loss of cells. Thats what we had thought about. It is ultimately the driver of that. This means the approach we are taking the room to venetian approach. Its much more of a divide and conquer approach. They are there simultaneously. That is kind of complementary to the more unified approach when they blew the whole thing open. I think there has to be both of those things. Robert you are a pioneer in stem cell research. And the use of the placenta to speak to those diseases. You have said that you are striving to turn stem cells into medicine. Can you explain in simple terms how Stem Cell Therapy works and what you expect in the next five to ten years. To try to simplify the way we believe that they have their therapeutic effects i think of it in terms that are really consistent with what they are talking about. Adaptability in the ability to head disease. Yet a good programming system. Stem cells can be thought of as a way of preserving that. In a form that can be used. What they do in all of us is they allow for continual process of renovation. All of us sitting in this room most of the cells in your body are less than two years old. They had been derived from a stem cell reservoir thats been called upon to renovate your organs and tissues over time. Operate you said something that i love. As a pilot i see the same thing you can keep an airplane in remarkably Good Condition if you always had perfect replacement parts. And if you replace them on a regular schedule and you actually replace them before they fail it is like a disease. You can replace that beforehand. Replace a bad cell before it goes bad. You might never develop any of these diseases or symptoms. In our world what were trying to do is to provide with the replacement part. And the beauty of the placenta is that they are one size fits all. And not had to match them. We have treated hundreds of patients with stem cells and never had to match them with the recipients and donor. Aside from being universal sell in that regard if we freeze them and put them into preservation they are in a state of suspended they cant be corrupted. A crier preserved cell it is impervious to all of those things which damage dna. You could put that radio source. The cells will not be damaged by a. When you saw them and you put them into somebody you have now given them a whole bunch of master reboot discs and they talked about this. If your dna is your biological programming language. And were talking about some of the corruption that can occur. The cell is like a miniature computer with the processor inside. And the keyboard on the surface. If you can replace that they have a better shot of cnet. Is it one of the ideas with hl i. The idea of understanding the genome. When it was founded. It was just continued to find that. They have that related to risk of developing disorders. The reality is that gives you a great opportunity. To act before they have the fatal lethal events that take place. You remember when we first started talking about this the concept was steady enough patients and then try to find the common denominators in health. In that process is still going on. That brings me to my next question. What tech developments are speeding up the developments you can probably talk to this. They are aiding this. Theres a lot of key people in the book. To learn that as an important character in the book and he certainly is a person that feels that technology plays a big role in this. Was skeptical at the beginning that people like this are not going to solve this problem. I sort of see it in a couple of different steps. One of the first waves iciest stem style engine cell technology. That will be a way to sort of reboot some of the systems that are breaking down and elongate our lives, and improve our lives. And then, that relates a lot to the work you are doing, aubrey, and then i think the second wave is understanding the jnana mix of the human body. Getting a better handle we have sequenced the human gene but we dont know much about it so one of those switches that are flipped in the human body that could change these things, how can we understand those, we need much more information or gathering it rapidly, thats an important factor. And in order to do that you have to have artificial intelligence, machine algorithms that are biological problems that are complex. Bench science is not going to build a solve this problem just sitting there, they will sit there for a million years. And then i think, the last issue is really can we truly understand the underlying reasons why we age and the first place. That is obviously related to jnana mix. What are those switches that are being flipped and how can we change them. Machine learning, it has been a fascinating story to watch the science unfold to watch the thinking and the Human Emotion that is involved in why we want to do these things. I guess one of the things well talk about the end is if we succeed in this, then what . Host that brings us to the pros and cons of longevity you write in your book, with our clocks stopped we might find more time to enjoy our families, friends, and learn from our mistakes. And get our lifes right. Fulfilled and happy at last. Very much a utopian dream. I also want to explore the negative parts of this. Lets talk about the morality and wider implications of extending longevity. There is opportunity cost of using millions in capitals and the best brains use life trent life spans when theres more problems like Climate Change affecting millions. It could create future of over overcrowding and heating up our plan to. Theres a financial aspect would you rather increase the rich . At affordability given that 60 of americans have less than a thousand dollars in savings and is expending our life spent a desirable goal . If we all live ten or 20 years longer, how can many of us afford to retire . So i would like to go down the panel, lets start with you aubrey. So i could spend at least a couple of hours on that. Of course the key things to recognize in the in entirety of what you just said, or the socalled ethical concerns as they revolve around longevity. You may remember some of the others i already told you. We dont work on lunge of it, wework on health. The only way that it is possible to entertain any of the things you just said, is by starting by completely putting out of ones mind, the fact that in a world that doesnt have aging anymore, people wont be getting sick as a result of having been born a long time ago. That is quite a big deal. When i talked to youth about this i ask them hands up for anybody who wants to get alzheimers disease, goahead hands up. Hands up anybody who wants anybody else to get alzheimers disease. Its not a difficult question. And yet, it seems to be possible for people to forget that when they are looking al