Methuselah Mouse

Posted by tomo at 12:11 AM in science . | 1 Comments

The Methuselah Mouse is one of those contests that even kids can participate in.
All you need is a mouse and some time, the goal being to keep alive the former the longest amount of the latter. As my personal hero Ray Kurzweil says:

By encouraging research and raising public awareness around longevity and life-extension, the Methuselah Mouse Prize will play a unique role in accelerating the pace of the biotechnology revolution and building a bridge that will ultimately lead us to radically redefine our concept of human mortality.

Holding contests like this are an alternative to directly funding research. Benefits are that the investment (prize money) isn't wasted on solutions that fall short and the prize amount is an upper bound in how much duplicating the solution would cost. Anyone is allowed to and everyone is encouraged to work on a solution. Other examples I can think of are the $10 million X Prize to get into space and Clay Mathematics Institute Millenium Problems, seven unsolved math problems with $1 million prizes each.

From the brand new fightaging.org blog I hear that they are soon to kick off a new fund-raising campaign to reach $25,000 for aging research. Currently the next $2000 donated will be matched. People are donating as little as 50 cents. Check out the Philanthropist Blogs section at fightaging!