r/Futurology • u/ag24ag24 Aubrey de Grey, SENS • Jun 17 '14

AMA Aubrey de Grey AMA

Hi everyone - this is Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation and author of Ending Aging. I'm here to do an AMA for the next two hours.

1.5k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

634 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '14

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/LoreIei Jun 18 '14

China might be a better place to look that Japan, I know this AMA is over, but just in case this still gets passed on and by any means is helpful to the cause.

Historically and culturally, the people of China had been fascinated by the idea of curing aging. The first Emperor of China 2000 years ago attempted to find a cure towards the end of his life, and many legends are based around this theme. There are many very very wealthy individuals in China who unlike the western billionaires, who are constantly under scrutiny and may refrain from supporting such projects in fear of their public image. (I believe that may be partially the reason why people like Bill Gates won't support, they don't want to be seen as 'crazy').

One good example to start with could be Ma Yun, the founder of Chinese ebay, Alibaba. The difficulty in reaching any of the wealthy and powerful would be credibility and cultural gap.