Keith Comito, President of the Lifespan Extension Advocacy Foundation and the Lifespan.io crowdfunding platform, discusses progress in building a grassroots movement in support of healthy human life extension and details a comprehensive plan to increase support for related research on a societal level.
The talk begins with the history of how early cancer advocates, such as Mary Lasker and Sydney Farber, created the War on Cancer via effective PR maneuvers such as the Jimmy Fund, leveraging the ensuing support to create societal change.
The topic then transitions to pairing growing grassroots support with continual calls to action, such as the projects on Lifespan.io, to enlist thought leaders and synergistic groups, such as YouTube science communicators and video game charities, into the cause and thus engage an increasingly wide audience.
The discussion also addresses how the life extension community can find commonalities with diverse religious groups and overcome the cognitive biases that inhibit laypeople from thinking deeply about longevity.
This presentation is part of the Designing New Advances conference held by the Institute of Exponential Sciences in the Netherlands, which is orchestrated by Demian Hoed and Lotte Van Norte.