I read Technology Review’s February profile of aging research advocate Aubrey de Grey, but missed what Paul Boutlin calls their “bitchy” editorial slam of de Grey,
But what struck me is that he [de Grey] is a troll. For all de Greys vaulting ambitions, what Sherwin Nuland saw from the outside was pathetically circumscribed. In his waking life, de Grey is the computer support to a research team; he dresses like a shabby graduate student and affects Rip Van Winkles beard; he has no children; he has few interests outside the science of biogerontology; he drinks too much beer. Although he is only 41, the signs of decay are strongly marked on his face. His ideas are trollish, too. For even if it were possible to perturb human biology in the way de Grey wishes, we shouldnt do it. Immortality might be okay for de Grey, but an entire world of the same superagenarians thinking the same kinds of thoughts forever would be terrible.
You have to really appreciate a magazine willing to say, “I hope everyone dies.”
And what’s the deal with “he has not children”? Does not having children still relegate one to pathetic status in this enlightened age?