Altos Labs is NOT a Longevity Company?

In an article published by Endpoints News on January 19, Altos Labs’ founder & chief scientist Rick Klausner is quoted as saying “We do not view this as either an aging company or a longevity company, and I really feel strongly about that. And I think the science that’s going to emerge shows that yes, you can make cells that get dysfunctional over time healthier and more resilient, but it’s independent of age.”

The news team reached out to Altos Labs to find out more, and they received a response saying “Altos is not an anti-aging or longevity company.”

When Rick Klausner says that Altos is focused on reversing the dysfunction that occurs in cells over time, and that they seek to rejuvenate cells to a healthier and more resilient state, but that that’s independent of age and does not make them an anti-aging company, I think the real issue here is a semantic dispute.

To be fair, I can appreciate where Rick Klausner and the Altos team is coming from. A number of people still have an aversion to the idea of trying to extend healthy human lifespan, and even some of those who fully embrace the endeavor are rooted not in science and rationality, but in misplaced hopes and gullibility. There are plenty of reasons for a for-profit company with a lot at stake to try to control their branding and message, making sure that the focus is on the science and medical breakthroughs and not on who their investors are or anyone’s wild ideas about concepts such as immortality.

This situation probably wasn’t helped by the fact that perhaps the earliest public report about Altos Labs, the MIT Technology Review article from Antonio Regalado, featured a headline about living forever and a poorly-photoshopped image Jeff Bezos as a knight playing a game of chess with the personification of death.

This is likely not the visual that Altos Labs wants people to think of when they hear the company’s name. Others articles talked about bionic billionaires, immortality, and the fountain of youth.

Media outlets want clicks, because that gives them attention and ad dollars. Sensationalism and outrage get those clicks, and this can overshadow the messaging that a company such as Altos, and the scientists within it, really feel should be highlighted.

At the end of the day, the technology that Altos Labs is working to develop may be able to reverse the damage and dysfunction that accumulate in cells as a byproduct of the biological aging process. This could, in theory, revert people to what we would call a younger biological age, even though their chronological age continues to increase. And this has the potential to extend both their healthspan and their lifespan.

So while some involved “feel strongly” that Altos Labs is not an anti-aging or longevity company, and while I understand why they want to frame things in that way, I think there’s more than enough justification for people to refer to Altos as such. At a minimum, I think we can call Altos Labs a “rejuvenation company”, since that’s a word they use themselves. And rejuvenation is a viable approach to tackling aging. A system that rejuvenates faster than the damage of aging accrues will never experience those problems.

If Altos Labs doesn’t want to be associated with longevity, that’s a clear indication there’s a branding problem with it - and it’s up to all of us to correct that.

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FOOTAGE, IMAGES, AND MUSIC CREDITS
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Music: "Elastic Vibe" by Ziv Moran

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Host, Producer, & Editor - Ryan O’Shea
Additional Writing - Steve Hill
Art - Mattijs Vonk, Tim Maupin
Executive Producer - Keith Comito

#AltosLabs #Longevity #Bezos

[LongevityScienceNews]

Do you consider Altos Labs to be an "anti-aging" company?

[KeepOnThinking]

Ultimately it's the science that matters.

[neilchristensen]

With so many great people and such deep funds, I am cautiously optimistic. Let’s hope its just branding as many have said and that they will be open and work with the rest of the community.

[BtrueDesign]

I'm glad this channel exists, keep up the good work!

[mynameismatt]

Any technology designed to increase the probability of living more healthy years is a longevity technology.

[nozhki-busha]

A lot of companies working on aging are using this kind of "smokescreen" to distance themselves from the life extension community and in particular the more wacko elements which are part of it. Altos doing this is absolutely no surprise to me and at the end of the day they are a rejuvenation company which is part of the toolkit against aging.

[JakeMabey]

Phenomenal breakdown- this is pretty much my take on the situation. Props on hitting on the branding problem and mentioning the bad press Altos has already received. It's important to remember that Bezos has gotten blasted for taking his money to go tour space while global warming and other problems plague our planet. It doesn't take a lot to see how people would frame his endeavors into the longevity space as similarly selfish and out of touch.

My guess on the "we are not an aging company or a longevity company, ... it's independent of age" is that he's using a bit of wiggle room. Restoring the programming of health may be required for reasons not *directly* due to aging, even though aging (in particular, the damage that comes from aging) is the primary driver.

[SilverFank]

Any update please later on? Is it still a longevity company

[beepbeepnj]

If you are interested in longevity take the advice of 112 year old Richard Arvin Overton, or you can watch George Burns as he got up to the podium to give his 100th birthday speech with his typical martini and cigar in hand, he told the audience, "If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

[johnniejay]

If they achieve all of their separate aims as set out on their website, they will by extension achieve anti-aging and thus longevity.

[javierderivero]

semantics...and is a good thing that somebody is putting a lot of money to fight the aging process

[ritteradam]

I think the media didn't overreact at all. The sentence of Jeff Bezos wanting to live forever has more truth in it than Altos not being an antiaging company.

[immortalityIMT]

It's all good, we welcome Mr Bezos in longevity. Everyone goes through that stage but in the end everyone is after the same thing. Maximise healthspan and lifespan, well except for the transhumanists that want to become Voltron.

[hasana]

Looking forward to living longer and stronger again...into the future 😅

[PakistanIcecream]

How many longevity enthusiasts in the comment section have taken a vaccine for the Covid19 pandemic?

[Noble_One]

Every soul shall have the taste of death and the final recompense is on judgement day

[bstlybengali]

These guys need to understand that God decided that every soul shall taste death. There’s no escaping the day of judgement.