HEALTH 'Immortalists' await 1,000-year-old man

Mainstream scientists aren't quite so optimistic.
TOLEDO BLADE
The first person to live to age 1,000 probably will turn 60 in 2006. Within 20 years or so, we'll have treatments for aging. Medicine will repair the damage that already has occurred in people who are in their 80s. They'll live on and on with healthy bodies and sharp minds.
Medicine also will keep younger people from aging and getting frail and decrepit. By 2026, people will look forward to an average life span of a few thousand years. People will still die, but mainly from accidents -- without the downward spiral into debility and dependence.
Sound like hype and junk science?
That's exactly how most experts on human aging describe a fledgling new scientific faction sometimes called the "immortalist movement."
Their theory
The immortalists argue that aging can be prevented and treated, just like medicine deals with other health problems.
Cambridge University's Aubrey de Grey, one of the leaders, claims it will happen in time for some people alive today. Much of the scientific knowledge, he argues, is already available. And de Grey has mapped out a project, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/) to treat and cure aging.
The immortalists organized the Methuselah Foundation to encourage medical research on the topic. The foundation itself is doing so with the Methuselah Mouse Prize (www.mprize.org) the world's first scientific prize for research on extending longevity.
Mainstream experts on aging say we are getting better at enabling people to live longer. The life expectancy of a child born in 1900 was 47 years. Children born in 2006 can look forward to an average of 78 years. Further increases, they say, will be small and slow in arriving.