Dr. Butler is also a case study revealing the limits of Mortalist Medicine, and its subservience to its Death Ideology.  His is a tale of a monumental anti-aging research opportunity missed.  Squandered by the straying from and subversion of the National Institute on Aging’s original goal and mandate:  to tackle head-on, via government-funded research, the cause of so much disease and suffering in human life: the mystery and curse of human biological aging.

What happened?

In 1974, the U.S. Congress, shepherded by Senator Alan Cranston (Democrat, California), passed legislation to create the National Institute on Aging. It was a momentous achievement. Arguably the first piece of immorTalist legislation. By arguably the first ImmorTalist U.S. Senator, albeit somewhat in the closet, the better so he could run for President later.

One bright shining moment. With limitless potential to unravel the mystery of human aging and to cure all of its symptoms (the diseases of aging) — heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, and of course Alzheimer’s.

By 2001, when The ImmorTalist Manifesto was first published, the NIA was squandering over 50% of its limited budget on Alzheimer’s Disease. It is as if over half of all AIDS funding had been devoted to one symptom or complication of AIDS. As if instead of trying to unravel the AIDS virus, we obsess about curing one of its myriad symptom like pneumonia.

Butler, a psychiatrist, and the NIA’s first director, had launched it on this course which it continues merrily to this day. By 1997, even Dr. Butler had to admit to the New York Times that the overriding emphasis on Alzheimer’s in NIA research funding was “out of balance.” (p. 175-176, ImmorTalist Manifesto, original trade paperback edition, 2001) It still is.

Why did Dr. Butler push for this disproportionate funding emphasis on one disease of aging? Butler argued that “my perception was that we shouldn’t just focus on aging, because aging was not considered a disease, and was obviously not something that was immediately eradicable.” (NY Times, Mar. 9, 1997)

Butler’s first argument “we shouldn’t just focus on aging, because aging was not considered a disease.” Not considered a disease by the powers that be. He was simply being a pragmatist then. For the NIA to get real funding, he was basically arguing, it cannot tell the U.S. Congress it is going to fund research to cure human aging. Since most of Congress refuse to see Human Biological Aging as a disease. But rather as a natural, Yahweh-ordained curse (erh, state of life) which we must all suffer through.

Aging is NOT a disease is a core belief not merely of Dr. Butler, but also of Mortalist Medicine. This is shown right on the NIA’s own website. In its tribute to Nathan Shock, Ph.D., who built the NIA’s Gerontology Research Center, the NIA website hastens to affirm this dogma under the watchful eyes of the Mortalist powers that be.  The NiA page points out that the venerable Dr. Shock “insisted” that “Aging…was not a disease.”

To buttress this core belief, Dr. Butler also argued that to see Aging as a Disease would encourage Ageism.  But as The ImmorTalist Manifesto asked, “If Butler was worried that declaring Aging a disease might increase Ageism, should we then say AIDS is not a disease to prevent homophobia?” And it answered: “Of course not. Because if AIDS is not a disease, then the government is not compelled to fund AIDS research or programs.”

And it is precisely because aging is not recognized as a disease that no government feels obligated to fund any serious research to eradicate this scourge of the human race since time immemorial.

Butler’s second argument: it is not practical to fund research on aging as aging is “not immediately eradicable.”

But as The ImmorTalist Manifesto pointed out, “if we were to accept this argument, we would not have put any money into cancer research. When the U.S. government started its War Against Cancer in the 1970s, cancer was definitely not ‘immediately eradicable.’…The same could be said for AIDS research.”

“In fact, why bother to do research on any disease? When we start looking at any disease, whether it be polio, measles, smallpox, or Alzheimer’s, it is usually not immediately eradicable.* (p. 177, The ImmorTalist Manifesto)

This is glaringly true of Dr. Butler’s pet disease Alzheimer’s. It is obviously “not immediately eradicable.” We still have no real Alzheimer’s treatment, much less cure. And yet it has not deterred Dr. Butler or the NIA since the 1970s from pouring over half of its research funds into this one not-immediately-eradicable symptom of aging.

Aging is not a disease. It is not only not immediately eradicable, it must not be eradicable. So we cannot, must not spend money researching it. These are two core beliefs of what The ImmorTalist Manifesto calls “Mortalist Medicine. And These two core beliefs of Mortalism and Mortalist Medicine are tackled and rebutted in Chapter 15 of The ImmorTalist Manifesto — entitled ” Mortalist Medicine v. ImmorTalist Medicine.”

So right from the gitgo, the belief system of the Mortalist medical establishment ruthlessly subverted the original goal, mandate, vision of Senator Alan Cranston. Butler, with his Pulitzer-Prize prestige and savvy in bureaucratic manueverings, could have tried to prevent this from happening. But he didn’t. It was not a profile in courage. Could Senator Cranston have fought against this hijacking of the NIA by the Death Society and the degradation of its immortalist goal? Yes, but victory was not assured against the Mortalist Congress. And besides, he couldn’t be unmask as a flaming Immortalist and then run for President, could he?

So there, it is something about Human Biological Aging that is untouchable. It is The Last Taboo. To Dr. Butler and Mortalist Medicine.

This is what The ImmorTalist Manifesto calls the Mortalist Medicine Paradigm. It is not a matter of rhetoric or semantics. It has consequences. Life and Death consequences.

(See Chapter 15 of The ImmorTalist Manifesto for a full discussion of Dr. Butler and the NIA’s deviation from its original mandate)

If the NIA had stuck since 1974 to its original anti-aging ImmorTalist goal, we would not have lost 36 years in life-saving anti-aging research. Which would most probably have led to breakthrough treatments and perhaps cures for cancers, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc diseases of aging. And yes, most probably we would be further ahead in Alzheimer’s research, which has produced no significant breakthrough despite the NIA betting its store on it.

What this would have meant to the countless millions who have died since 1974 of these diseases, and who could have been saved if the NIA had stayed true to its original mission, is incalculable and almost unthinkable. We are not naive enough to blame Dr. Butler solely for all this. He was a top bureaucrat in Mortalist Medicine. But he surely had higher ups to answer to in Congress.

Clueless as The New York Times and The Washington Post may be in their obituaries, it is on this tragic subversion and unforgivable betrayal of the NIA which happened on Dr. Robert N. Butler’s watch and tenure for which he, and the Mortalist Regime, must be judged.

By posterity. By History. But most of all by all those who are suffering and dying from all the Diseases of Aging.  All those and all of us who can’t afford 36 years of lost time.

Elixxir 7/7/2010
Copyright. All Rights Reserved

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/06/AR2010070605125.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/health/research/07butler.html?ref=obituaries

While the current lame attempt to give Americans some kind of health care reform still hangs in the balance, the Chinese government has already successfully passed legislation last year (2009) which is going to give health care coverage to 90% of China’s 1.3 billion people by 2011.  Around 1.1 billion is already covered as of this point.

Something which should shame the U.S. government.  Especially the Republican Party wing and its unhinged zealots. But maybe that’s why there’s a complete blackout of this big China story in the major U.S. media.

Just click below link to story with more details

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-08/09/content_8546881.htm

Universal heath care for 1.3 billion Chinese is a staggering feat by the Chinese government.  Especially when compared to the U.S. government which has long claimed that the richest country on earth cannot afford to give its people what in the European Union is a basic human right.

There has been a total blackout of this big China story in the U.S. and Western media!

The august editors at the New York Times, Washington Post, or Fox have no excuse since they, like anyone, can easily google and find this story extensively covered in the Chinese media.  On their English sites.

And in impeccable, not pidgin, English as the above link shows.

One would think that with all the China-bashing stories that there might be a little twinge of guilt which compels covering this story fairly, giving credit where credit is due.  But nope, that would be way out of line on the media’s China script.

Comparing the fact that China has already passed its health care reform, and the U.S. has not, now that would be to any unbiased news editor a story, right?  Not to mention one that is very revelant and very timely.

Since the health care reform legislation passed, the Chinese government has poured over $10.5 into restoring universal health care which was one of the crowning achievements of China under Mao from 1949 to 1976.

Now if Mao, whom the U.S. media portrays as the devil incarnate, was able to do it, isn’t it more cause for absolute shame and culpability that the U.S. government still hasn’t.  60 years after Mao delivered universal health care to the Chinese people.

Now universal health care is an issue which is of primary interest to The Elixxir Society. Because having or not having health care directly impacts life expectancy, and is a matter of life and death.

©2010 Elixxir at Immortalism.com.  All Rights Reserved.

Are these two crucial questions intimately linked?  Is our prospect for immortality directly proportional to the state of the immortalist movement?  “The ImmorTalist Manifesto” argues they are.

It’s “ImmorTalist Gameplan” requires “creat(ing) an ImmorTalist movement powerful enough to guarantee the anti-aging life-extension breakthroughs arrive in time for us and is affordable.”

So what, pray tell, is the real state of the immortalist movement? How good are its vital signs?  If it’s so crucial to our prospects for survival?

Now we here don’t have our heads buried in the sand like some ostrich.  We realize that there are those who call themselves “immortalists” or “transhumanists” or “cryonicists” who may disagree with The ImmorTalist Manifesto’s conclusion.

From now on, on immortalism.com, we shall unflinchingly examine The State of Immortalism.  Starting this year 2010.  And every year after.

We shall critique our current situation realistically.  If someone or some group is doing great things for immortalism, we shall trumpet it.  If someone or some group is not, we shall spotlight it too.

Other movements like the civil rights, feminist, antiwar, and gay movements have been strengthened by vigorous debates which have highlighted strengths and exposed weaknesses.  The Immortalist movement (if there is one) can surely benefit from such a trenchant annual self-examination.

Otherwise, we are condemned to repeating the same mistakes.  To betting on the same strategies which have proved to be failures. In other words, otherwise we shall never have a viable immortalist movement.  And if this is so, it also means we don’t have a prayer of attaining our goal.

So spread the word.  And stay tuned and return again and again to this immortalism.com.  Your life will depend on it.

– David Spence

© 2010 All Rights Reserved.

Shocking and scandalous but true.  And the U.S. media has been mute on this scandal until an Associated Press article yesterday broke the story which has not been widely picked up or given the prominence such a story deserves  by most of the U.S. media.

Was it an accidental oversight? No money in budget for counting?  No, as the AP story bluntly pointed out in its second paragraph: “they (the U.S. health officials) did it on purpose.”

Now why would U.S. health officials do such a thing when by their own count the swine flu deaths in the U.S.  has already exceeded 600 deaths.  And  76 of these deaths are children.  And counting. (Or not counting.)

The obvious explanation: the U.S. government is more worried about not hurting the collapsing economy than about saving Americans from dying from swine flu.

And most of the U.S. media is toeing the party line by attempting to blackout the mounting deaths.

Can there be any doubt that we live in a Death Society as The ImmorTalist Manifesto points out?

A society in which the economy’s next month’s performance is much more important than the lives of perhaps 50,000 American children?

Whatever the final death toll, it is likely to be much more than the roughly 3,000 deaths of 9/11.   And it will be in large part due to the regime refusing to treat swine flu for what it is: a national health emergency of the first magnitude.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33239736/ns/health-swine_flu/

 That’s one-third of the world’s population.  This projection is based on past pandemics.

http://www.breitbart.com/print.php?id=D981HHTO3&show_article=1

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-ia-china-porkban,0,869333.story

As the Washington Post points out, “The pathogen that has seized the world’s attention has an official name (swine-origin influenza A H1N1).”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/01/AR2009050101777.html

But the U.S. pork industry demands it be called something else.  Lest one pound less of pork be sold.  And heavens forbid it extends this economic collapse by even one day.  And the White House and much of the media jumped to comply.

World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the alert to Level 5.  Just one short of an outright international pandemic.  It has spread to every corner of Europe.  Including Sweden.  And yet we are told to keep flying in planes to ground-zero places like the U.S. of A. and Mexico.

Overnight, the U.S. media is telling us the normal rules of hygiene and flu-prevention have suddenly become “not effective.”

You know, avoiding obviously flu-ridden persons.  Avoiding crowds where the virus can breed. Somehow face masks — a staple in Maoist China and Japan — are totally “not effective.”

Such fatalism has not been seen since the Dark Age when the plagues were seen as “acts of God.” And to be submitted to.

Just as in Global Warming, we are distracted by reckless and lethal propaganda dutifully served up by Big Media.  Which knows better.  But is part of Big Business.  This time around it’s not Exxon.  But the pesky pork industry.  (And I swear I ain’t no veggan.  In fact, love pork once in a while.)  And also the airlines and tourism industries.  Nervous nellies all about their next quarterly reports.

They demonize Joe Biden (Obama’s VP) for daring to say on TV what a pre-schooler should know about the basics of flu prevention.  Avoid crowded places if you can.  Don’t travel in planes where you have nowhere to run if there is one passenger with Swine Flu on board.

The U.S. media gang up on countries taking the most prudent and responsible precautions to protect their populations.  Countries like China who are doing the right thing.  Having learned bitter lessons from the SARS crisis.  And having been castigated then for not being proactive and quick enough!

Maybe we are extremely lucky.  But it is too early to gloat and claim victory and breed complacency.  All we know is this is a new virus we humans have no immunity to.  And that our arsenal of antiviral drugs is almost at zero.  As the Bush regime, having been warned about the imminence of something like this, went out of its merry way to slash the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and for desperate research to come up with new effective antiviral drugs.

If you cannot call such a regime The Death Society, what can you call it?

In an ImmorTalist Society, human lives are an absolute priority over the demands of the pork industry.  Or the airlines industry.  Or the tourist industry.

An ImmorTalist Society is the real Pro-Life Society.

We can afford to err on the side of prudence.  If this is indeed not the lethal epidemic that is long overdue, then the economy can recover from temporarily less travelers in the air and less swines being slaughtered and eaten.

But if the “skeptics” are wrong, and we pull our punches.  And don’t do everything we can at this point to try to stamp it out and let the virus die, then we are looking at millions of needless, preventable deaths.

And a thousand times, perhaps a million times more havoc, wreaked on the U.S. and world economy than the pork and airline and tourism industries can ever imagine.

It’s clear that the calculations made in The Death Society are radically Anti-Life.  And inherently different from the calculations which will be made in a rational, prudent, responsible, and yes, Pro-Life ImmorTalist Society.

– David S.

If you can look youthful at 120, you’ll be making history.  And this is what Elixxir, the anti-aging guru and philosopher, is aiming at.  And in his performance, Elixxir is inviting you to join him.

No, you don’t have to be a bloody psychopathic conqueror like Napoleon or Hitler to be a world-historical figure.  You don’t have to kill millions to win posthumous immortality.

You can just stay young.  And bonus: your immortality won’t be pie-in-the-sky.

This is the Elixxir track.  The ImmorTalist track.

Fortune, Fame, Family, Children, Power.  These are the traditional Mortalist tracks.

Which track or combination of tracks are you on until now?  What has been your goal?  What drives you? Are you treading water in The Rat Race?

Are you running on empty? Don’t blame yourself.

It’s the goals our Death Society has set for you.  They don’t satisfy.  They will never satisfy.  For you cannot never have enough of Fame, Fortune, Family, Power.  Since they are mere substitutes for what you really desire.  Substitutes for the only thing which can satisfy you.

Immortality.

Almost everyone in our Death Society sweat, toil and bleed for either Fortune, Fame, Family & Children, or Power.  These are the Substitute Immortality and Surrogate Immortality that The Death Society offers us.

And they are not just inadequate, they are pathetic.  This is why we’re drowing in a sea of depression, frustration, unhappiness.

In its Capitalistic form, The Death Society (aka Mortalist Society) lures us with the siren songs of Fortune and Fame.

This is one of the original, profound, and, yes, provocative insights from The ImmorTalist Manifesto by Elixxir.

You won’t find this in any of the verbose, juvenile, sophomoric writings of the Pseudo-Immortalists, rest assured.

D Spence

Copyright All Rights Reserved.

An Extraordinary Book challenges the belief that we must grow old and die— Life Extension Magazine

A Classic — Brian Alexander, MSNBC Correspondent, Wired magazine biotech columnist

I was immediately taken…ensorceled…(The life-saving breakthroughs) won’t just happen, argues the Manifesto: it must be made to happen.—Michael Rae, co-author and Associate of Aubrey de Grey

A Paradigm Shift…powerful, original, profound, movingly right! — Rudi Hoffman, Cryonics Book Reviewer

Discover why they’re raving about The ImmorTalist Manifesto.  And why some fear it.  And don’t want you to read it.

The Powers that Be in The Death Society we live in.  The Vatican.  The Religious Right.  The Christian Fundamentalists.  And last but not least, the Pseudo-Immortalists.  They don’t want you to read The ImmorTalist Manifesto. 

We challenge you to read and decide for yourself.

Your life — and that of the planet — depends on it.

Your free excerpt is spread out in this webblog’s Pages.

Share the life-saving word.  Spread the eternal meme.  Link to http://www.immortalism.com

EXCERPT FROM THE IMMORTALIST MANIFESTO

Our goal is simple:  Kill Disease, Old Age and Death.

We demand that the conquest of Disease, Old Age & Death be the Number One Priority of every society on the planet.

We demand a dramatic increase in funding for disease-curing anti-aging life-extension research since otherwise Disease, Old Age & Death (D.O.D.) will surely kill every one of us.

The rationale behind The ImmorTalist Agenda:  Humanity cannot be truly happy until it has banished Disease, Old Age & Death (D.O.D.)

The Death Ideology, the ideology which worships a changeable biological reality as immutable ontological essence, must be overthrown.  This Mortalism which makes us submit and grovel to Disease, Old Age and Death must fall like the walls of Jericho.

In the beginning was The Dream.  The conquest of Disease, Old Age and Death.  The attainment of the elixir of youth.  The advent of physical immortality.  

The Dream is about to come true.   xxxx