This is a UK press article on Halcyon Molecular, one of the new companies that has emerged from the pro-engineered-longevity community in recent years. You might also look back in the Fight Aging! archives for more on the views of the founders: "Even by Silicon Valley standards, the grand design drawn up by William and Michael Andregg is hugely ambitious. Halcyon Molecular, the company that the brothers founded in 2008, is developing a way to sequence the human genome - and thus unlock the deepest secrets of DNA - faster and cheaper than ever before. ... William is 29, Michael just a year older, and both are college drop-outs - but given Silicon Valley's impressive track record for nurturing and funding obsessive, unconventional young innovators, their age is hardly unusual. The surprise is the long-term mission of Halcyon Molecular: to solve "the biggest challenge humans can individually face - disease and mortality", as the mission-statement poster in their office reception says. Put another way, they're supercharging the effort to map life's biological code in almost unimaginable digital detail and, by doing so, ultimately, to attempt to conquer death itself." The difference between the here and now and 20 years ago is that you declare your plans to defeat aging and age-related death and both be taken seriously and raise large sums of money for research and development, both inside and outside the scientific community. There has been a sea change in attitudes towards engineered longevity as a goal, and that is one of the reasons that significant progress will be made in the years ahead: things happen when people start earnestly working to make them happen.

Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/2335404.html

Source:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/latest_rss_feed.cfm