What I actually wanted to do with my life is make a difference to the world. That led me into science very quickly.

I don't work on longevity, I work on keeping people healthy.

Ever since we invented fire and the wheel, we've been demonstrating both our ability and our inherent desire to fix things that we don't like about ourselves and our environment.

Basically, the body does have a vast amount of inbuilt anti-ageing machinery; it's just not 100% comprehensive, so it allows a small number of different types of molecular and cellular damage to happen and accumulate.

Wikipedia was a big help for science, especially science communication, and it shows no sign of diminishing in importance.

[Anti-aging therapies will] never be perfect, but we'll be able to fix the things that 200-year-olds die of before we have any 200-year-olds, and the same for 300 and 400 and so on.

Public enthusiasm for new advances is a key ingredient in influencing policy-makers to stimulate follow-up work with suitable funding, and it can be achieved far faster now that interested non-specialists can explore new research autonomously and can also be appealed to directly by scientists.