James W. Clement (1955) is an American lawyer, entrepreneur, and transhumanist. Clement is best known for organizing the Supercentenarian Research Study, which analyzed the DNA of supercentenarians from 14 states and seven countries over a period of six years.
Clement is currently the President and director of the U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit Betterhumans Inc, which promotes transhumanist biomedical research, including life extension. [1]
James Clement was born in Sioux City, IA, on November 1, 1955. He received his Bachelor of Arts in political science and psychology from Truman State University, Kirksville, MO in 1978; a juris doctor from the University of California, Hastings College of Law, San Francisco, CA, in 1982; and a Master’s degree in taxation from the New York University School of Law, New York, NY, in 1986. [2]
In 1988, he founded the Chapter House Brewpub in Ithaca, NY, a gathering spot for Cornell University and Ithaca College students and faculty, where he served as brew master and manager until 1997. [3]
Clement was the Executive Director of Humanity+ from 2007-2008. He also founded and co-published an online and print transhumansist magazine, h+ Magazine, from 2008 to 2009, with R.U. Sirius as the Editor; and is the author of The Switch: Ignite Your Metabolism with Intermittent Fasting, Protein Cycling and Keto. [4] [5]
In 2010 he initiated the Supercentenarian Research study with the support of Harvard geneticist George Church. The aim of the study is to identify the genetic advantages that supercentenarians may have that have enabled them to live longer, healthier lives. Even though the study was preliminary with a small sample size (approximately 60 individuals), Church was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “The farther out you go on the bell curve, the more likely you are to find something, even with a small sample size.” [6]
He founded h+ Magazine in order to provide a “voice” for Human Enhancement (HET) technologies and to encourage nanotechnology, biology, cognitive, and AI DIYers in pursuit of transhumanism’s goals. [7]
James Dewey Watson is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
Molecular biology is a branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions.
Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition.
Oswald Theodore Avery Jr. was a Canadian-American physician and medical researcher. The major part of his career was spent at the Rockefeller Hospital in New York City. Avery was one of the first molecular biologists and a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for the experiment that isolated DNA as the material of which genes and chromosomes are made.
Leroy "Lee" Edward Hood is an American biologist who has served on the faculties at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Washington. Hood has developed ground-breaking scientific instruments which made possible major advances in the biological sciences and the medical sciences. These include the first gas phase protein sequencer (1982), for determining the sequence of amino acids in a given protein; a DNA synthesizer (1983), to synthesize short sections of DNA; a peptide synthesizer (1984), to combine amino acids into longer peptides and short proteins; the first automated DNA sequencer (1986), to identify the order of nucleotides in DNA; ink-jet oligonucleotide technology for synthesizing DNA and nanostring technology for analyzing single molecules of DNA and RNA.
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist and Nobel laureate whose research spanned multiple areas of physics and biophysics, contributing to the scientific understanding of phosphorescence, isotope separation, optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction, and to the development of radar. He is known for his work at King's College London on the structure of DNA.
David Pearce is a British transhumanist philosopher. He is the co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, currently rebranded and incorporated as Humanity+. Pearce approaches ethical issues from a lexical negative utilitarian perspective.
Humanity+ is a non-profit international educational organization that advocates the ethical use of technologies and evidence-based science to improve the human condition. This condition includes the health of physiological and neurological functions affected by aging and disease, the ecological health and well-being for all life forms, and the future advancements for a more human humanity. Its work includes:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and quantitative biology.
The booted eagle is a medium-sized mostly migratory bird of prey with a wide distribution in the Palearctic and southern Asia, wintering in the tropics of Africa and Asia, with a small, disjunct breeding population in south-western Africa. Like all eagles, it belongs to the family Accipitridae.
The New York State College of Human Ecologyat Cornell University (HumEc) is a statutory college and one of four New York State contract colleges located on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. The College of Human Ecology is compilation of study areas such as design, design thinking, consumer science, nutrition, health economics, public policy, human development and textiles, each through the perspective of human ecology.
George McDonald Church is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist, serial entrepreneur, and pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic biology. He is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard. Through his Harvard lab Church has co-founded around 50 biotech companies pushing the boundaries of innovation in the world of life sciences and making his lab as a hotbed of biotech startup activity in Boston. In 2018, the Church lab at Harvard made a record by spinning off 16 biotech companies in one year. The Church lab works on research projects that are distributed in diverse areas of modern biology like developmental biology, neurobiology, info processing, medical genetics, genomics, gene therapy, diagnostics, chemistry & bioengineering, space biology & space genetics, and ecosystem. Research and technology developments at the Church lab have impacted or made direct contributions to nearly all "next-generation sequencing (NGS)" methods and companies. In 2017, Time magazine listed him in Time 100, the list of 100 most influential people in the world. In 2022, he was featured among the most influential people in biopharma by Fierce Pharma, and was listed among the top 8 famous geneticists of all time in human history. As of January 2023, Church serves as a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors, established by Albert Einstein.
The Campbell albatross or Campbell mollymawk, is a medium-sized mollymawk in the albatross family. It breeds only on Campbell Island and the associated islet of Jeanette Marie, in a small New Zealand island group in the South Pacific. It is sometimes considered a subspecies of the black-browed albatross. It is a medium-sized black and white albatross with a pale yellow iris.
Nancy Hopkins, an American molecular biologist, is the Amgen, Inc. Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is known for her research identifying genes required for zebrafish development, and for her earlier research on gene expression in the bacterial virus, lambda, and on mouse RNA tumor viruses. She is also known for her work promoting equality of opportunity for women scientists in academia.
Bruce William Stillman, AO, FAA, FRS is a biochemist and cancer researcher who has served as the Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) since 1994 and President since 2003. He also served as the Director of its NCI-designated Cancer Center for 25 years from 1992 to 2016. During his leadership, CSHL has been ranked as the No. 1 institution in molecular biology and genetics research by Thomson Reuters. Stillman's research focuses on how chromosomes are duplicated in human cells and in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae; the mechanisms that ensure accurate inheritance of genetic material from one generation to the next; and how missteps in this process lead to cancer. For his accomplishments, Stillman has received numerous awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize in 2004 and the 2010 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, both of which he shared with Thomas J. Kelly of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, as well as the 2019 Canada Gairdner International Award for biomedical research, which he shared with John Diffley.
John Tooze FRS was a British research scientist, research administrator, author, science journalist, former executive director of EMBO/EMBC, director of research services at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute and a vice president at The Rockefeller University.
Aspects of genetics including mutation, hybridisation, cloning, genetic engineering, and eugenics have appeared in fiction since the 19th century.
George Stark is an American chemist and biochemist. His research interests include protein and enzyme function and modification, interferons and cytokines, signal transduction, and gene expression.
