This entry is contributed by the Anti-Aging Medicine & Science Blog, which reports advances in longevity-related science and technology along with interesting current events in the anti-aging community.

While he is well known and highly respected in the anti-aging community, the public is mostly ignorant of Dr. Aubrey de Grey 's great work. This is unfortunate and I hope his coming appearance on 60 Minutes will rectify that soon.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend an anti-aging conference at Cambridge University he organized called SENS 2. Many of the world's top scientists were there; Woo Suk Hwang who burned up the air waves with the cloning of the first dog recently and Ellen Heber-Katz who created mice that regenerate their own hearts and other organs are two examples.

Dr. de Grey describes SENS best in his opening paragraph on the SENS website: "SENS is a detailed plan for curing human aging. SENS is an engineering project, recognising that aging is a medical condition and that medicine is a branch of engineering." The scope of the anti-aging science and technology at SENS 2 was breathtaking and for me it will be months or even years before it all settles in.

After all the scientific presentations of SENS 2 were wrapped up, a few of the participants went punting on the Cam River. I got a chance to chat with Aubrey and his wife Adelaide and get some up close impressions.

Dr. de Grey is not an armchair general in this war on aging. You won't find him sequestered in some ivory corporate tower, barricaded behind picket lines of middle management suits and secretaries. There's no appointment necessary. He's a "plain Joe" and you can speak with him in the same way you would chat with the next door neighbor. But don't get me wrong, his genius for planning, organizing and carrying out this war on aging is extraordinary.

At this very moment I'm sitting in my motel room waiting for CBS's 60 Minutes to come on the TV. 60 Minutes filmed an interview with Aubrey de Grey earlier this year and promised to air the show by Fall. With 60 minutes however, one never knows till showtime who the guests are, so I guess I'll just have to tune in every week until it airs because I don't have a VCR.
Ed: If someone has a clue when this particular 60 Minutes episode is going to be aired, will you give us a beep? It would be nice to have something more definite.