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[A1CR]

The May 2006 issue of Philadelphia magazine has a feature story called
"Who Wants to Live Forever?" by Kathleen Fifield (begins on p 127). It
features a significant discussion of the work of MPrize contestant Chris
Sell, who is working with a new strain of dwarf mice here in the city, a
brief discussion of the work of Aubrey "de man" de Grey, and a fair
amount of stuff on CR, mostly focused on an interview conducted over
dinner with myself and the Voice of Heaven. The tone is lightly teasing
and ironic, but without all the tiresome moaning about hunger and lost
libido or clicheed "You may not live forever, but it'll sure feel like
it" jokes, and it does capture both the love I share with my thrice holy
consort and the great pleasure we take in sharing our meals.

We didn't realize with whom we were dealing when the reporter came over:
we thought she was with Philadelphia /Weekly/ , which is a free arts &
culture tabloid of the sort that most cities of any size have;
Philadelphia /magazine/ is a large, full-color, quality magazine
<http://www.phillymag.com/index.cfm> . Likewise, the reporter seemed
nice enough, and asked a lot of questions (and asked for clarifications
& repeats fairly often), but also seemed a bit shy, and between the 2
facts I really thought she was a relativly inexperienced writer; the
very good writing, combined with the venue; the quite elaborate,
drawn-out fact-checking by the editors; and the investment of an
original and very clever teaser photo (a mouse in a running wheel shaped
as a moebius strip/infinity sign), suggest much more experience.

Despite the aforementioned fact-checking, the science is not very
accurately reported: eg, "It's believed that a near-starvtion diet
triggers genes that produce hormones that slow down an animal's
metabolic and other bodily functions until the environmental stress
supposedly causing the starvation ... lifts." Aside from the fact that I
was at pains (and IIRC April (blessed be Her name!) reinforced w/the
fact-checker) to say that the slowed metabolic rate was pretty firmly
known to be transient and NOT involved in the life extension effect, who
the heck thinks that CR triggers the production of an ANTI-aging
hormone? Similarly, "Sell's work with midget mice eexamines the effect
on [LS] when you knock out a gene that REduces [emphasis mine] a
specific growth hormone" (I suspect that this was an editorial
"correction" of "PROduction," as the article elsewhere indicates the
correct understanding (noting that popular GH injections are likely,
ironically, PRO-aging -- yet in a third place, it uncritically quotes
"60 Minutes" as calling IGF the "longevity hormone" ). Again, the SENS
platform is said to include "vaccines," which is true but likely to be
misunderstood by readers as indicating vaccines against PATHOGENS
(rather than exatracellular aggregates).

So you'd be unlikely to /learn/ anything, and there is indeed nothing
that any but a real newcomer to the List won't already know amongst the
facts that ARE accurately reported. Still, it's an enjoyable and
basically positive piece on CR and life extension science generally.
Alas, it's not online, but if you're in the Philly area you might enjoy
giving it a read.