Activities

1 Symposium

During 2008-09 we had occasion to play a summary role, at an important symposium on aging held by the U.S. National Academy of Science.  Dr. Butler has also been asked to be the chair of the Council on Aging for the Davos Economic Forum.

2 Programs

We continue to receive support for initiatives in caregiving, a worldwide problem, age discrimination and human rights. 

In the United States there are fifteen thousand senior centers but they are outmoded and should be transformed to be important public health institutions to help maintain balance and muscle strength to avoid falls, to advance computer capability of older people and the like.  We are very hopeful of receiving a grant from the National Institute on Aging under President Obama’s Stimulus Package. 

Stanley Prusiner, Nobel Prize winner, and Dr. Butler have been engaged in an effort to create a National Council on Neurodegenerative Diseases.  We have billions of neurons and billions more of synapses yet we know so little about the brain, about language, perception, attention, comprehension, memory and the like.  We have made little progress regarding neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. 
I wish the ILC Global Alliance would create an international database and have the next symposium address our healthcare systems.

3 Others

• We are deeply invested in efforts to establish a Declaration and then a Convention on Human Rights for Older Persons within the U.N.
• We continue to run our consultation service run by Harrison Bloom. 
• Finally, we have been writing about the findings of biological aging, suggesting slowing of aging and decrease of age-related diseases.  We have called for major new funding to pursue these findings.