this book is about the norms, structures with systematic, sophisticated and dangerous attacks on that system. >> to watch the rest of this program visit booktv.org. search for jonathan rauch or the title of his book the constitution of knowledge using the search box at the top of the page. >> obtaining a phd from physics and oxford an agent was a scientific challenge of our time. switch gears to computational biology but he worked at the institute using machine learning to decode dna and patient medical records. presenter based in london has appeared on discovery and the bbc. guiding us on a journey for the work being done to understand and combat the cause of the suffering, easing

itself. you come to expect physical and mental deterioration is inevitable part of growing older. this decline with age in the same way that we do. this work introduces us to the scientists attempting to understand why that might be on target the biological processes responsible for her own age -based. fascinating, stimulating and pleasing guide to the signs of aging and how we might improve our health, and or scott says, issues can be more important in the future than ensuring we age as well as possible. explains extraordinary achievements of achievement around longevity. we are so pleased to be hosting here tonight without further ado the digital podium is yours, andrew.

rick's hi everyone thank you so much for the introduction and having me. i thought i would start by giving a bit of introduction to myself. as you heard i'm a scientist, a writer and a campaign i'm trying to raise the profile of this issue of aging. as you heard i started out as a physicist ended up taking a segue through computational biology into that for about five years before deciding aging was so important in within biology had to write a book about it. i'm trying to say about that now. in my book is called ages signs of getting the yogurt withoutt getting old. the thesis of the book a lot of us think of aging is a natural process for to try to make the case that aging is the single greatest humanitarian challenge of our time. sounds like a strange claim i'm going to unpack that and the next half hour. going to talk about the fact aging is inevitable. it's an unavoidable side effect of being alive. we've got animals, pets, farm

animals to have similar trajectory of decline. we know that is not universal around the animal kingdom at all. we have these experiments going on he got labs all around the world dozens of different ways to slow down and reverse the process of biological aging with the combination of things that make it most exciting got this in norma's humanitarian on one hand on the other it got the biology, the science to rise to that challenge. i think what this means is are going to end up having what we deliver medical care since antibiotics. as we heard already i changed my career from a physicist to a biologist as a result of learning about the stuff. there's a reason i change my career it's because of a graph them and to start out by showing that this graph and see if i can convince you of the importance of this topic too. it's a surprisingly simple graph it's got your age along

here and your risk of death in that year. all of us know older people are more likely to die but just how mucho more likely really shocked me so without further ado let's see with that curve look like. there you go, you can see quite surprising how rapidly it ascends to really make sense of this was to go to the numbers but let's start on that very left-hand. when you are born about .5% chance of not making your first birthday if you're born in average country in the developed world. you can be born of the various congenital issues. if you're lucky to make it to the first year of life your risk of death carries on going down to write your childhood. eventually reach the age of about ten. current ten -year-olds have a fantastically important distinction. they are the safest human beings in the history of humanity. cliff got less of one in 10,000 chance of not making their 11th birthday which is quite amazing if you think about it. but unfortunately in graft its

downhill on this curve uphill from there. one and 3000 chance to not make it your 19th birthday party in your 30s like i am your risk of death this summer on the ballpark of one and a thousand per year. it's worth transposing those numbers into your life and thinkse about what that actually means. if i could somehow continue that chance of death throughout my life, that would mean i live in 2030 on average for is pretty clearly based on how expectable based on this graph you can see that is not what happens. unfortunately her adult your riskor of death doubles about every seven or eight years there's an exponential growth in your risk of dying. i guess in the last year so we've all seen huge a power and it can start out very small and get very big very quickly. what that means is doubling 1000 or doubling one in a thousand is still a quite small chance. by the time it 65 you have a 1% chance of not reach your next birthday. those are not that bad if you

are 65 he would make it to 165 on average, clearly unfortunate by that .1% is a fairly significant chance you can start to doublet make really significant progress. you're lucky not to make it 80 but one in 20 chance of dying that year pretty if you're fortunate enough to make it into your 90s, is at the top of this graph the odds of death or one in six per year. life or death of the roll the dice. there are two ways to look at this graph. the first is a human being, this is quite terrified because i've got this exponential wall of mortality racing towards me as i advanced in years. but as a scientist you look at this graph and think this is really fascinating because it's really quite sudden increase in the risk ofna death starting seventh or eighth decade depending where you draw the line% increase. what is the cause of the synchronized change that makes us so much more likely to die really, really all at once? the question got the answer ask yourself to answer this question is what is aging?

when most of us think about aging we think about a variety of and effects wee get when aging happens. we think about cosmetic superficial external fines, that thing called gray hair. that does not have a huge impact on our health it's what's going on inside of us. the scarier things of the increasing risk of diseases things like cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia. these are the diseases we characterized biologically's been caused by the aging process. the single biggest risk factor for getting one of these diseases is just getting older. that sucks quite quite scary thing. we have a whole range of other changes that happen to us. some are disease some are not. you put all these together different kinds of loss like loss of hearing, loss of muscle, loss of vision and that kind of thing. it is lack of independence. if you get older are less able toto house, but played their grandkids, socialize with your friends because these eat away at your independence and remove the ability to you to think you like to do.

finally things that are not directly related to the aging process but significantly worse but it's an older age. things like infections and injuries. imagine your young person, in your 20s and you break a bone that means a few weeks in a cast it will feet heal. your 70s or 80s you comment to break a hip at that age for that's extended hospital here stuck in a bed maybe you have a secondary infection in the hospital. if the whole chain of events is not end up killing you can dramatically affecting your future course ofma your life. something you shrugged off in a few weeks as a young person can dramatically affect as you get older. this whole constellation of changes combined to be the aging process. and so now we can look at this graph and see not just the death changes that underlie that death.ec particular what causes the deaths. third diseases i mentioned are slightly change the graph. on the side got risk of getting a particular disease.

those diseases as i mentioned, cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia, you can see they got a very similar exponential looking risk rapidly increases toward the end of life it. the chance of getting diagnosed with these diseases gets very much higher because as i said these diseases are caused by the underlying aging process. each one of these things is not directly cause they become much more severe this is chest infections not just cough and snuffles things deep into your lungs. he got a reasonable chance maybe one or two perch sensitivity or lower risk of getting one of these infections at any point inow your life. when you're young and your system is hold when you're old and start to decline because of aging you're much much more likely to yield one of these diseases. that's why the flu jab as important as you get older. that means you protect yourself against one of these infections. far more flu of course one thing has been home last year or so. look your chancee of death with

infected with the coronavirus, that looks like this as well. it has a terrifying exponential increase. it's rising at a faster rate than death overall. if you catch coronavirus your 20s there's hundreds of times and less like a to die than someone who catches it in their 80s. luckily in the u.s. and uk a lot of our 80 year old are vaccinated now. nonetheless, this shows of the huge, huge impact the aging process has on us to fight off infection and our ability to fight off stress generally. there is a myth you can die of ytold age. if you grow old gracefully and one that you passed away peacefully in her sleep with no suffering. that's not the way most people die. the vast majority get one of these diseases advances years or decades the treatment can be hard work as well. eventually it becomes severe enough to take w your life whether it's cancer, heart disease, it robs your independence of the time you're sick with it. it becomes a series you die

from it as well. often give multiple diseases that wants for the average 80-year-old has five different diagnosis and take a similar number of medications to try to counteract those. it's really serious effect on her quality quality of life overall. so that is why aging causes quite so much suffering. you might be thinking about this and, my favorite graph, youap might be looking at this graph thinking about risk of diseases and thinking this is something, we in the rich world are perversely lucky enough to have this bread we can live long enough to expend his terrible effects of aging. normal in the presume world i would have given, i would have an audience quiz what you think global life expectancy is now question with the average life expectancy for every country the world? the reason i like to act this they think it's quitete significantly younger than the case. you to service of these people, people get ten orpe 20

years lower. that's because a lot of us are taught in school at that developing world in poor countries have poor healthcare poor access to sanitation, all kind of different issues. that means a living much shorter lives in us and the rich world are. action is been a huge acceleration of living standards and poor countries. the life expectancy is caught up in the richard countries the last 50 years or so for them to put you out of your mystery now. global life in 2019 was 72.6 years. this is a double-edged sword. on the other hand a list people living longer healthier lives than ever before that's fantastic news. on the other most people most countries are living longer to get a significant way up the curve. they have a significant number of side effects of growing old the suffering, the diseases, the causes of death. so o what this means if we break it down looking at global death statistics is roughly one or 50000 people diver down planet earth.

it represents 1000 people. over 100,000 of those people die because of aging. so more than two thirds of deaths around the world are caused by aging. this fundamentallye so i think aging is the world's largest humanitarian challenges they cause of the majority of death. also i contend the majority of suffering. you go from aging is horrible, they drank at your death per years orr decades. even if things don't kill you they reduce your independence. what that means is aging is an enormous synonymy of death and suffering. we should be looking at scientist and a global community to bey doing something about. this could be quite depressing. it's much more interesting to think what can we do about it? a merchant back to the graph. our risk of death as human beings doubles every seven or eight years. there are other animals and animal kingdom. this is a particularly striking example this is a freshwater animal. it is very, very small. first reason the hydra came to

the attention of the scientific community that's got incredible regenerative powers. you can chop off any part it will grow into a second fully functioning hydra in the original hydra will grow back on you chopped off it's got incredible power regeneration. our scientists are setting them something amazing about them the risk of death does not do what humans does as they got older. there death is something like this is completely flat. this is negligible, they don't grow old they're likely to die they just carry on throughout their years. we have not done this experiment we haven't had a lab looking at these long enough. it's estimated at the risk of death would stay as flat as that is about 20% a year into the indefinite future. that 10% they would be alive after a thousand years it's really incredible. but what is most amazing is not that fantastic longevity it's negligible the risk of death does not change as we get older.

can we learn from d these creatures question mike you might be thinking this is that centimeter long pod creature hockley applied to human beings? there creatures much much more closer to humans. this beautiful beast is a galápagos tortoise the oldest one living to 177 years old. again a lotth closer to that have their clues or to appeal their reproductive capacity. he was a slightly different species of tortoises the oldest tortoise in the world, coming up on his 190th birthday. apparently celexa get it on with the ladies. they are very much enjoying life right until the end. could we be more like a tortoise? they are not close relatives ours.

this is something called a naked mole rat. it's a tiny mammal about the size of a rat or mouse. mice may live two, three, four years if you live them in the lab. this can live until it's 30s. there's no loss of capacity with age. even though this thing looks wrinkly it stays fit and reproductive until very late in their life. with that they were completely immune to cancer until a few years ago with science setting big colonies and then found a handful of tumors in a them. they have degenerative disease or creatures that appear to get old without becoming elderly. how can we learn? how can we adapt and take some of these ideas and turn them into medicine and human beings? i returned to the question worth aging. the answers i gave before hard not very helpful answers, for two different reasons. the first is there really, really large high-level categories. every single one of these could have hundreds of

subtitles, hundreds of kind of cancers. you talk about memory there so many ways your brain can lose capacity to store its memories. very, very different levels v inside of biology. we also tend to treat them one at a time. if you get cancer goes your oncologist they might give you chemotherapy or radio therapy or center to surgery. they largely ignore everything else is wrong with you. if that heart disease at the same time which a lot of people have is treated by a separate doctor in a separate building. we treat all these very, very differently. we treat them for the end causes. if we have muscle loss we often give you a walking stick. these on root causes the end stages or loads, loads of them we tend to treat them in a sideload away very separately. going to try to ask the question is slightly different way. ngif you asking an aging biologist that might give an answer like this this is the ten hallmarks of aging and talk book.

they have quite scientific sounding names. i'm not going to it every single one of them now. there's a variety of different ways this list is more exciting than slideshow just now. the first reason is these are the fundamental cellular and fundamental reasons why we age. most age diseases can be chalked up to a variety of changes predicted is if we go after these changes we could potentially slow down reverse the progression of all different things. everything from wrinkles and gray hair to muscle loss or should cancel entering cancer and dementia. and i think the reason i talked about this being as exciting as discovering antibiotics is because you can go after one of these hallmarks and potentially hit several or all the change of the same time.ne now as i said i do not have time to go through the whole is pretty goodim have a couple to highlight for the first one i will go for is this, number two. trimmed. the person going to talk about that some ofha the most common questions c get when you're writing a book about aging viruses.

the answer is yes is but it's a bit complicated. let me explain how so. this is a beautiful fluorescent image you might see if you look down inside the nucleus of one of your cells. the dna, the genetic instruction manual for human being or another animal. what you see here the blue stuff you put fluorescent down the dna showing the chromosomes inside the cell. these are red and green dots on the ends of the chromosomes these are telomeres. to start and end of the chromosome they actme as protective caps on the end of her dna. if you were tof zoom in on one and simplify the fixture it would look like this a string of repeated letters over and over again. you know dna made up of four letters. tell us rt ta ggg, tta, gga. hundreds or thousands of times. the question is, white or chromosomes these incredibly detailed instruction manuals for building a human being

break up the strings of repeated numbers on the end of each day? answer this they been constructed to solve really ridiculous problems that we've been left with. the first as they protect the ends of her chromosomes were dna repair system. that is because if you find loose flailing of dna around, that probably means that dna has been damage. here sal will try to fuse those bits of dna together, stick them back, fix whatever the damage s was. it basically tell the dna or don't worry this is what it should look like. they also exist to correct a very strange mistake ourselves have her comes to reproducing. when one cell divides the copy all that dna to make sure both cells have a full repertoire of dna. and the problem is when our cells duplicate that dna, the enzyme does the duplication moves along the dna it can't quite make it all the way to the end of the chromosome.

they chop a tiny bit off every time the cell divides. if this chopping off critical g&a a gene that is coding something very, very important, then every time your cell divides you lose a very important dna and your slows would slowly lose their function is. you got hundreds of thousands of repeated nonsense that means the dna can chop off the end and nothing important gets lost. but you can see this is a rather temporary reprieve from theee situation. he stick a few thousand bases like this on the end of it in the cell divides but loses these basis and eventually you are going to get down to that important dna. that is not a long-term solution to the problem. this you can really see what could be a problem. it's one of the causes of get olderuse as we ourselves divide to replace cells that have been lost. as they divide and lose it it's getting gradually shorter as we get older. so, how much shorter they get? got the age on the bottom,

every single one of these is anve individual person you can see there is a trend. it is not the greatest trend in the world. you can see some particularly lucky nine years old have telomeres as long some unfortunate 30 years old. as a quite a big discussion on this. particular wet outlays otherwise this person must be all the rain they've got regenerative powers. you can see the average decrease is something like 20 bases, 20 dna letters every year of your life. there's a gradual decrease but is not the pretty best perch of the world. nonetheless it does him again obvious can it for aging. look at the data in humans, people who have short for their age tend to have worse health and the attendant died more or die more quickly, die sooner basically. clearly there's something going on here. again it's quite a fascinating

thing. there is something we can do about it. public dues using enzyme. this is discovered back in the 1980s and garnered a nobel prize for three co- discoveries. together what they did was discover there is an enzyme hethat can add extra letters to the end. it can add more of the repeats and build them back up. it is actually deactivated him as adult cells. the question is can we turn that back on and then cure aging? allow them to carry on replacing your old cells and thus manifest anep increased longevity for all of us. now, it might seem a bit bizarre evolution is not already done this. it is a cancer defense mechanism. think about cancer is for a moment. cancer is what happens when a sale gainst the ability divide an infinite number of times. the cell carries onn dividing and dividing. if it hast the right amount of

mutations they can do that, it can grow big enough to build a tumor, spread it around your body and kill you. the first experiment in mice for the mice were given this, they're told to carry on using that gene muchy much more than they do so naturally. it's very unfortunate side effect the mice got a lot of cancer. when this is being done the first experiments were being done in the late 90 early to thousands burst the bubble. his excitable documentaries want to watch back in school with from the fountain of youth. but of course within found it is pre-picking a box on cancerous list. it is not automatically create cancer but it means the cells of got away to extend that helps them divide an infinite amount of times. as i say burst the bubble. my cynical narrative it's more complicated does not work quite like that. but fascinatingly, much more recent research that shows a variety of ways to get around

this cancer problem. the first is back in 2008 when mice were given extra copy having extra dna increasing enzyme. there's also three other genes i will not go into the details of exactly what they do. their anticancer jeans for they convince cells to maybe commit suicide. they stop dividing. the cells will come back the next part of the talk. the point of being in my pre-takes a box on cancer it's got anticancer genes what that means these mice live 40% longer than those have been given the genetic modification they did not get any extra cancer. so its naïve genetic than that doesn't work if you added a few extra genes that can help prevent cancer does seem to improve life span to give them a healthier lives. it's optimistic for the rest ofof us.

having ourselves modified from birth mice have temporary they were injected with a gene therapy it was added for short period of time it extended but did not pre-check the list. they live 20% longer when they're given the injection of about 1-year-old. that's about 40 years old in human years if you convert mouse to human. they live not longer but healthier. plumper skin that better tight rope walk a which is something you will aspire to as you get older. this is the reason i am excited. they're different therapies have a nuanced approach appear to be able to expand life the next is a trance like these into human therapies and that's what i'm doing right now. so back to the marks of a talk about a couple i mentioned during the course of talking there. one of the ways a cell in the state is when they get too short it stops dividing.

let's talk a bit about that. it is a biological word meeting old. what that means then, as we age we accumulate more of these cells. one of the reasons i've already mentioned as they did get very short. you divided a suspicious number of times maybe you're at risk for becoming cancerous they put on the brakes they stop dividing. i get to damage the dna it looks like it could be a risk of becoming cancerous. putting on the brakes seems like a sensibleag move. the cell cannot continue dividing it turn into a cancer. but fortunately these cells don't just sit back and not dividing, what they do is they pump out a toxic cocktail. the primary purposes until thend immune system to clean them up we don't need them in our bodies. they gobble them up and get rid of them. but unfortunately as we get older, our immune system get less effective at clearing the cells wish more ways we can

acquire them because dna damage is more frequent, that accumulate to a time. the other fact these molecules can have is they can accelerate the process globally. what's exciting begot drugs that can get rid of these cells can kill the cells and leave the other cells in your body unharmed. this is been done and mice. let's talk about an experiment is done about five years ago now. it was an experiment with took some mice there 24 months old were these are quite old by standard. you give the mice this drug. but they found was it basically makes the mice biologically younger. they get less cancer, less heart disease, fewer cataracts. they also l live longer which is suggested of a slowing of the aging process. they live a couple of months longer which is something like a few years in human terms.

not just hobbling on, not diseased and geriatric lack late stage of life. they run further and faster on a mousy treadmill by using these six they're more curious we put themre in a maze. they even have it better for. these mice look fantastic. what is clear by targeting these hallmarks targeting cells you can really globally reverse the aging process not just target a single disease not make them live longer and ill health but improve health for the rest of their life and live longer. it's fantastically exciting news. what's so cool about the analytics is very closer to globalization is 20 or 30 companies that are trying to turn these treatments to things that are happening in the clinic for the first human trials are already started. they started back in 2018 for the way it's going to pan out the first treatment so be for

people have got particular diseases, things like arthritis, things like lung fibrosis that commonly occurs in older people. if these work and proved safe we can start thinking about giving preventative lead to people who are in their 50s or 60s who do not have any particular disease that would currently diagnose. they were born along time ago and they accumulated a lot of the cells. by clearing them out we can prevent them from getting ill in the first place. that is a preventative medicine that can slow down and reverse a certain aspect of aging and stop us from becoming ill. i just thought quickly to end the talk i would ask the question should be and aging? it's a strange question for me. i talk about cancer research i would never get anyone asking in the end shouldn't we be concerned if we cure all these people with cancer going have an increase in population on her hands?

that's going to mean or dealing with the environment or consequences. when aging research we often get these kind of questions at the end of talks. a separate moral and ethical category to other research. i'm going to give a generic answer there's population, whether this access to these treatments are only available to a the rich questions about dictators live forever it's a whole can off ethical worms. the way i like to think about this is turn the question around. imagine we lived in an ageless civilization. did not degenerate with times they live a healthy long lives and drop off a cliff. when you invent aging to solve any of these problems? we live on earth this 20 billion people we have climate change, human huge overuse of resources. there is an environmental catastrophe going on. there's a way to solve that

problem to invent aging. would you condemn people to decades of slope suffering in these horrible, horrible diseases and able to alleviate the environmental challenges? i don't think you would. if you exhausted every other possibility, you try to make things green and none of the things are working for the only thing you could do is kill people. i really suggest that the option of last resort. you certainly would not do it in an incredibly humane way by causing their faculties their independence slowly over years and years and years before finally succumbing to horrible diseases. you'd want to give them a painless lethal injection that's already had to go down. that applies to all the differentha questions you would have to ask. would you invent aging to solve inequality? to kill off a dictator? i just don't think you ever would. we're trying to solve a problem you can transfer that

by t reversing the question. it's just not morally acceptable to try to prevent medical resource from happening or to solve other kinds of problems for the final thing i want to talk about quickly it was funding. that is because a really, really want to raise the profile so we find it in proportion to the scale of the challenge. i'm going to give some figures here the cost of various diseases in the u.s. things like cancer, heart disease, stroke, dimension of the four leading killers in the modern world. if you look at those things they cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year. these are not even all the age related diseases it's really, really quite close to a trillion dollars. if you had to go to all the different various costs of aging is going to come to this enormous, enormous sum. compare that to how much you spentwe researching. as the national institute of aging the nia gets $3.5 billion a year.

just to emphasize the square is in proportion to the scale of the amount of money that is spent. it's quite tiny amount compared to the fort trillion dollars a year spent on healthcare in the u.s. less than a thousand goes into the nia. it's not. there's ape running joke of the aging science circles the nia is not national institute on aging's but alzheimer's disease. the significant bulk of the nra budget goes to the neuroscience division about two and half of the 3 billion going to basically researching alzheimer's disease. there's other stuff to get to the actual aging biology it's about three and a $50 million a year. five dollars per american goes into researching white as we age and how we can stop it. the huge, huge cost of aging to society it just does not make any sense this number could be small part i want to raise the profile of this

field and want politicians to think about increasing the size of the research budget. i want you people to read the book, to write your representative to tell them how important it is i want scientists and doctors to realize the huge, huge importance of this. it's already incredibly powerful thing they can spend a tiny more researching on that's before you get on the enormous humanitarianan challenge. fundamentally that is why i wrote this book. i want to raise the profile people will talk about this in pubs and bars politicians to be time with the biologists and medics who do not get enough about aging in their education to understand how important. i've got a couple of pictures here most of you watching will be in the u.s., for the rest of the world this is the uk cover as well perfume to find out more about the book and buy a copy there are linked to age. link and from the harvard bookstore. if you want to follow me on twitter and find more, i think

that is about all i want to give a quick introduction of the book. and now i think we've got time for a few questions. >> hello, thank you so much for that informative talk, the beautiful visual. we got some bright ones from the audience. go get to it quickly as we can pray. >> going to start off with this question we have an anonymous attendee who says what do you currently do in attempts to live longer? >> there's actually a chapter of health advice in the book how to live long enough to live even longer. the reason i did that is if i can live long enough and good health i can be alive in time for more of these treatment to be developed. that really compels me to follow some of the health advice. some of it is surprisingly

obvious likee not smoking, eating a variety of different foods hitting enough exercise, enough sleep, that kind of thing. i find these more compelling because i want to live long enough to experience these treatments. secondly because once you understand something about the biology of aging this health advice effectively slows down the aging process. why these things work it's not preventing a single disease it is a global benefit on the whole aging process, exercising improves your mental health your brain power it reduces your risk of cancers. it is incredible this whole global benefit follow me some basic bits health advice i would highly recommend it those are really, really important. the other thing there's less conventional one is brushing

her teeth. this is my favorite example. we now understand you have good dental hygiene it slows down the aging process. a lot of aging is driven by chronic inflammation. inflammation is a normal process by with her body's fight off disease and heal wounds is why they call attention to the site of an injury or site of infection. bring in the calvary and solve that problem. men and young people that is a good thing. : : : it solves the problem then dives away. so it doesn't fit is away in the background so it is a constant paranoia. that's why it accelerates a whole aging process. if you have poor dental hygiene and tooth decay that's a constant standoff in your mouth between the bacteria and your immune system driving

chronic inflation with the link between poor dental hygiene and heart health. brushing your teeth can reduce your risk of dementia so that is encouragingsoso get that makes e want to brush my teeth and falls everyday to ensure i reduce aging process as much ass possible. >> for the first time. i'm going to move onto this question, will a certain age limit prevent people a from getting antiaging treatment? >> i don't think they will because a lot of these drugs have a global effect. we know you can't take a particular drug or certain health conditions or drugs that might interfere with another drug mother are so many options

on the table. i'm confident that this will happen next few years and they are very old and unwell. some of these are already in human trials and certain conditions in the next few years so it's not inconceivable to roll them out provocatively. there are diabetes drugs currently, we think it might slow it down more globally and there is a trial are supposed to start more recently -- a while ago but it's been delayed because of covid, it targeting aging to the idea is to use this to slow down the aging process. half the people would get a placebo. it's been given out since the 1950s and it's a huge safety record that trial works optimistic and roll out instantly, immediately.

i don't think there's any reason unless you are on death's door and it doesn't arrive on time for you. >> are the questions asked, i'm going to turn to this, can nad -- [inaudible] >> that's a great question and there are some luminary dates about these things. there are various studies given to mice and things, muscle action and a place to have the most effective, the mitochondria which are often cliché called the paracel of the cell.

what they are looking at is decent long-term weight so there's at recent -- a very big trial called intervention testing programs, three different labs in the u.s. they have rigorous protocols try to determine which medications and interventions can prolong the life span. i think it m and m, a precursor of this model. it's not to say it doesn't work in my book, you can change the dose and give these things, you can't completely write it off but i don't think we have a solid data to show that they do improve health long-term. they seem to have studies that show they can do these things to improve the health and mice, the

question is do they slow down aging? i think in this moment, hopefully we will know soon? but right now we don't have enough -- i wouldn't feel comfortable taking it myself yet. >> i was wondering, what impact has pollution had on our industrial society? >> the good news in most countries around the world, this continues to increase. in the u.s., there have been certain areas declining. one is obesity in these things are, improved health generally

anti- and that exercise and prevent medicine, it seems to be contracting these effects. i think these are serious problems and is good evidence pollution is a bit like smoking and they are in the lungs, these tiny particular it's but they do seem to cause inflammation and potentially cause changes around the body so i hope alongside developing medicines we will carry on with attempts to reduce pollution and that kind ofh thig because query it has that effect. it does indeed increase the threat of aging. they've been counteracted by the effects that we should try everything we can to improve people's lifespans. >> is agent intentional from an evolutionary perspective?

>> is a great question, i think it's -- intentional is a wrong word but clearly it not an accident a lot of species age. the symbols way to understand why aging evolved -- excuse me. the thing is people often say you might be looking at aging is strange, a gradual deterioration. losing senses, becoming slower, getting diseases late in life. the practice in the wild, animals -- let's think about short-lived species. there loads not to get it, there's disease and getting really cold, the energy keep

themselves warm, they can die on a cold night and die just like that. there's a lot of different things and therefore what evolution has done is rather than investing in cancer defense, rather than making sure heart disease into the fourth decade, instead evolution invested in making the mice get to reproductive capacity quickly. hopefully they have a few letters of kids before they get killed by something else. evolution basically doesn't care what happens in your life span. most mice in the wild are long dead by the time they get to h. the naked mole rat, they are similar biologically with mice but they live in these colonies in the ground and that means

they are less risky, they are safer in tunnels. they are traveling through them, taking them all out but they've got the opportunity to mature and less risk for other kind of debt and far more important at the age of three, it's likely so they have invested more in these things because they are still going to be going so throughout the animal kingdom, and animal has less mortality we get to the risk of death outside let's a body and then compensate for intrinsic mortality in the aging process exactly as asked, the dietary instructions seems to be a measure of that and imagine yousu are a mouse and the best thing to do is have kids because your kids will be born and they

are basically going to starve themselves the evolution to redirect them and reproduce as quickly as possible at they try to help it survive when there's more food and that's why we think is impressed! , the break on aging to some extent. it's this relationship between evolution aging and dietary restrictions. >> that was very illuminating, thank you. this is a question from andres to help solve aging. >> there is loads of confirmation. one is almost universally needed its data driven science so there's honestly when you imagine someone with mice in the lab or different liquids into

additional cells the practice more experiments have huge data redoubts because one thing i was working on was looking at dna and that's a fantastic example because we went from human genome project, the first readout from the full dna code cost billions of dollars completed in 2001 with the human genome a year later would have cost 100 million to do that from weeks and weeks of worth work. now it can be less than $1000 and can be done in an afternoon. generating vast biological data looking genomes and we can look at which genes are used in which cells at which time have dna is being used and we can do studies we can look at the proceeds inside generate vast amounts of

data and we need biologists to analyze the data and the great news computing power has been outpaced by the share growth but nonetheless we got to where we can use a i think integral data and that is a crucial thing because it's no use having this data if we can't expect them if you got programming skills, and help us in the labs and interpret some of the data to give a concrete example, fascinating breakthrough about a second ago, look at this mark over things which have turned ourselvess biologists must be some relationship ms and it was

speculative so what he did was he took advantage a lot of biological data is put online, free for downloading, he downloaded a bunch of data from a particular thing that he downloaded loads of data in a variety of completely unrelated experience from develop mental abnormalities to cancer and other stuff dozens of different tissues around the body. his only constraint was the data had to have the marker on to show how old the data was and he found millions all over in this genome and he could take 350 of them and determine the age of that person within four years, incredible. it was so incredible, i took a while to get published because nobody including him leave the

it was so accurate. as one of the most fascinating areas because if you have an accelerated range from higher. means you are more likely to get disease and die. we find these all the time and it's frightening, purely because of this open data so it shows you the sheer power of using the pieces to dig through the data and find signals. >> fascinating. the next question is from david who says talking about bio hacking and it's in the mainstream, bio hacking in spect to antiaging for ordinary people. >> i am fascinated by this because it's a realfu continuing of self extermination going on. if you look this, will find our people online even though they

are not diabetic, they get a doctor to prescribe, a take this and hope it slows aging. we don't really have any human data to go on based on that result. a clinic in the u.s. with this gene therapy done, there's this whole spectrum of people taking different approaches and having completely experimental gene therapy. because of a fact that it's more open sourced, you can just do it in your garage, while hackers will have more power. it's fascinating how this will progress and how we will potentially regulate this and

make use of the data as well. i talk about this in the final chapter of the book, but i really hope is these people are pretty rich. what i really hope for is we can somehow pull together a community of people interested in doing these extremist and we got to get to the information first and understand what the risks are in potential benefits, how much is known or unknown because we just don't want people doing dangerous extremist on themselves. the second thing is have standardized exams because what we want is bio hackers drink 1000 different experiments in their own garage, we need something pure but using different techniques and so on, if they are going to self excrement anyway, do so in a way to get the way to standardize

the instruments and on the same page and do some useful trials to understand why these things are happening because it's going to be a really fascinating time not just for bio hacking, people willing to give themselves this therapy but for all of us. having information about all of these things the question is, when can we take the plunge? the ideal scenario is you would be born in 2500,go sentries are people taking these medications from all this life, what affects it have on different diseases, that would be the perfect experiment. but they don't have time to wait 70 years to have excrement be done, so we have to take these treatments at various different points in terms of this evidence. i think it's going to be a real challenge how much it's going to

be in the medical community amongst bio hackers and all of society so it is a very fascinating area. >> i definitely agree. i goes into another question that you kind of touched on a little bit, can you give us some idea how likely it is we will see this in our lifetime and how far we might be for humans? >> i am a scientist, that means let us very hard to tie down to numbers. i would just say the way i have my sources, this is exciting, i genuinely think a lot of these treatments available in time for most people alive today. t the first thing is, these treatments already in human trials, it's going to be a few years before we know the first ones were, it could potentially be five or ten years to give us

a ballpark. if it works and we can just start handing it out to people. gene therapy and stem cell therapy, these are more speculative and we are already doing some gene therapy for extreme diseases. these are approved have been used in hospitals now so as you get used to doing these things, gradually for people with mild disease until we are eventually in the general public so even if these things are five or ten or 15 years ago, is decades, not centuries we are talking about. the other thing, as i talked about this data, for the end i talked about revolution will mean we have a system to summarizelo, we need to build computer models for humans. we need to understand how they relate, intervene and clever ways. we want to do something more

subtle, and proof biology and stabilize it, reprogramming our bodies not to age. as i was writing, it's going to be so far, why am i speculating this if you think about this, record happen in the next 50 years because of you think about the last ten years, spent a total revolution in computing sinceer the 1950s and so on. it would be a far better. if your middle age can include help, you can expect to get a first generation, ab stem cell treatment and so on and so on. that means you could potentially expect, i'm in my 30s, i can expect to live into my 80s if science stands still survive to get therapies, whatever these

first treatments are maybe five or ten extra years in good health and not just scientists, but gives them more time for more treatment. potentially long enough for most of the people alive today because not only will they potentially expand to almost that time, it could be extended further for these therapies so we will definitely see antiaging drugs in the next ten years. we could potentially see much bigger increase in human life if progress continues fast enough, basically you can carry on into the future as more technology goes. >> thank you for taking the time and thank you for all of you asking questions thank you to

everyone out there for spending your evening with us. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> bye-bye. >> weekend on c-span2, and intellectual peace every saturday american history tv documents american stories. sunday's book tv brings the latest in nonfiction books and authors. fondly c-span2 comes from these television companies and more including comcast. >> you think it's just a community center? it way more than about. >> 1000 community centers to great wi-fi enabled this so students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything.

>> comcast along with these television companies support c-span2 is a public service. >> yale university history professor elizabeth hinton examining police violence history and social unrest. >> the idea somehow the riots were mass moments of criminality and examples of criminal behavior, his hands very much like johnson because immediately after harlem arrived in 64 after 815 year war, a student is killed by the new york police department, johnson makes the same step in says this is not about civil rights protests, this is tied to the crime. it is a riot in the best way to respond to it is with police

force. this political violence is rooted in the same economic demand of the civil rights movement. that is an end to police brutality, terrorism, people are talking but government support, people aren't saying we want welfare, they are think we want jobs and decent housing. people are calling for more expensive educational systems, educational opportunities and scholarship and to be treated like citizens byler citizens. making and ignoring the root causes and ignoring the demand people in the rebellion participating we get into this policy cycle for the only response is more police, not to

give people jobs, or invest resources into communities, it's to invest in the form this later incarceration so what did you say that your was? 2014. , alive and well. that's been the dominant view ever since, respectful protests and other protests deemed as criminal ignoring the fact that this political violence is in response to police violence. >> you can watch the rest of this program on our website, booktv.org. search for elizabeth hinton or the title of her book, america on fire using the box at the top of the page. >> tonight we are thrilled to welcome daisy hernandez. a former reporter for the new york times