X-Message-Number: 23414 Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 14:34:46 -0800 From: "John Grigg" <> Subject: John Sperling is our man!! As has already been stated on Cryonet, the latest issue of Wired magazine has an incredible article about the new patron saint of extreme life extension, Arizona billionaire John Sperling!! This eighty-two year-old old man is very practical minded and yet still on fire in his desire to "brick by brick" as he puts it, research the way to physical immortality. He is the founder of the Kronos Group, a for-profit medical organization which practices state of the art age management medicine and is located in Scottsdale, Arizona. This man has purchased and created several different biotech companies such as Exeter, to create an umbrella researching group to make the necessary advances and also generate money in the meantime. Sperling was born into a very poor family in the Missouri Ozarks. His mother was a fundamentalist and his father, a railroad worker, was a brutal man who beat his son and drank too much. Sperling's father eventually died (happiest day of the young boy's life) and to escape the depression he joined the merchant marine where he met people who introduced him to the new world of books and love of learning. On the GI Bill he got his degrees at UC Berkeley & Cambridge and later became became a notorious agitator on behalf of both students and faculty. He eventually left acadamia to found a for-profit distance learning school which is now known as the University of Phoenix. As its stock value rose over the decades Sperling became worth close to three billion dollars! He says his plan to create a three billion dollar life extension research superfund is not about his own desire for immortality because he sees himself as being simply too old. So this will be his legacy to humanity. from the Wired article by Brian Alexander: "I am 100 percent for human enhancement!" Sperling says. "The more you can get the better! What do we want? To improve the quality of human life to maximize happiness, right?" According to Thatcher and others, Exeter will eventually try to develop cell therapies for regenerative medicine, possibly pursue therapeutic cloning technology on human cells, and maybe, someday, experiment with genetic engineering. It's too early to tell where the science will lead, but Sperling is keeping his options open. One thing seems certain: Further research into life extension is going to earn Sperling a bunch of enemies, especially in the Bush administration. He says he doesn't seek confrontation, but he's happy to take on the Bush White House, especially on issues like therapeutic cloning and stem cells. "It became a philosophical construct with George Bush's election," Sperling says. "He decided to impose a fundamentalist Christian ethic on the scientific community." Sperling renounced any belief in God as a teenager, and now nothing steams him more than what he sees as religious-based oppression. So if the president - or anyone else - wants a fight, so be it. The others nod. "As John said to me," Hedegaard recalls, "why fund popular causes? There's a lot of money for the popular causes. It's the unpopular ones that don't get the funding." Sperling is hardly a naive utopian. Contrary to the easy cliche`, he's not a rich old guy gunning for immortality. He does not expect to reap much personal benefit from the science he's funding. "It will not help me at 82," he says, laughing. "I might eke out another six months or so" - "so we're not talking about me." Then he nods to his acolytes. "Maybe these folks, at 40, or maybe not. As Chris says, it may take a century to solve this problem." Meanwhile, he's enjoying the adventure. "I am spending my money on exactly what I want to." And what he doesn't spend now, he tells me as we sip a nice merlot at the dinner table, he'll put into a foundation. "These three people, he says, pointing to Heward, Thatcher and Hedegaard, "will all be part of the board of directors of the foundation. They'll have a huge pot of money to spend on good causes. I want to leave them $3 billion." "We're going to pursue the goal," he says. "That will be my legacy." The three laugh a little uncomfortably. I'm not sure if it's the huge figure, or if they're just beginning to grasp the magnitude of Sperling's last wish. (end) Wow. I was awestruck the first time I read these words. This is what we have all been waiting for and now here it is! I just hope a 3 billion superfund is enough money to get the job done fairly quickly. I wonder to what extent John Sperling has been approached about cryonics? He would seem like a golden candidate. best wishes, John ____________________________________________________________ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23414