Humans for Longevity

When I was 13 years old, my grandfather died of dementia.

My early childhood years were full of frequent visits to the nursing home where he lived, which slowly increased in number as the years passed. It had always been in the back of our minds that our time with him wouldn’t last forever, but in the end, that knowledge didn’t make the loss any less worse.

Truthfully, I didn’t spend enough time with him growing up, swapping out that time for more high-dopamine things like watching TV or posting on social media. When he was gone, I lamented the loss of potential time with him, and the ability to get to know him better. It was gone, and I had screwed my past opportunity up.

            I don’t want anybody else to feel that way; it’s a horrible feeling. However, this is a natural part of life now. People live and die of aging-related diseases, and our toleration of this doesn’t make any sense. Why would we let aging, something we can fix, hurt the lives of millions? I hope that one day we will stop the damage aging-related diseases do and gain back the time they have stolen.

Nina Khera is a human longevity researcher. She specializes in senescent cells & their eradication and is a co-founder of http://bioteinresearch.ca.

My grandfather died of pneumonia when I was 16. 

In the years before my grandfather’s death, aging slowly robbed him of his health, his strength, his happiness, and his dignity. He exists in my memories, through vicarious stories, as the strong hero who persevered through unspeakable adversity during the Communist Revolution. Who sacrificed much in order to immigrate to Canada.

But he also exists in my memories more directly as as a quiet, frail, old man who suffered greatly as his body broke down. The last several months of his life were spent confined to a hospital bed, barely able to speak.

No one should have to suffer like that. And yet many do.

Society tolerates the suffering of our elderly loved ones because the majority do not think biological aging is a disease– or that we can do something about it. It is my hope that one day we will all open our eyes, rise up, and muster all manner of our scientific and technological ingenuity to end the inhumanity of biological aging once and for all.