Astral Codex Ten

David Sinclair

5 min read

David Sinclair

Article

David Sinclair is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between March 02, 2021 and July 06, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Continuum Biosciences, an ambitious-looking biotech startup including anti-aging expert David Sinclair”; “David Sinclair - Harvard professor, celebrity biologist, and author of Lifespan”; “David Sinclair was caught in the middle and got accused of being a Big Resveratrol shill”. It most often appears alongside Harvard, Lifespan, 1938 FDA.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: March 02, 2021
  • Last seen: July 06, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Shilling For Big Mitochondria
March 02, 2021 · Original source
Last year, an Australian team published a paper about a new mitochondrial uncoupler, BAM-15. They claim it’s non-toxic, doesn’t explode, and doesn’t increase body temperature (all uncouplers produce heat, but the body has a certain capacity to adjust for that, and if the heat produced is below the body’s adjustment capacity there’s no fever). Everyone involved works for Continuum Biosciences, an ambitious-looking biotech startup including anti-aging expert David Sinclair, so I’m sure they’re not missing the implications. But I haven’t seen any clear signs of where they’re going with this.
Inline links: published a paper, Continuum Biosciences
Book Review: Lifespan
December 02, 2021 · Original source
David Sinclair - Harvard professor, celebrity biologist, and author of Lifespan - thinks solving aging will be easy. “Aging is going to be remarkably easy to tackle. Easier than cancer” are his exact words, which is maybe less encouraging than he thinks.
Inline links: Lifespan
But there are two other pills that might work. One is resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine (though not in high enough doses to be meaningful for sirtuin activation). Resveratrol definitely activates sirtuins in test tubes, and seems to be good for lab animals: some of them live longer on it, others at least seem healthier. But the lab animal studies were never 100% conclusive, and arguably humans absorb it too poorly to be able to get an effective dose (I’m confused about some details here, like whether animals absorb it better, or whether IV formulations would work). There was a big mess surrounding claims by resveratrol supplement companies, whether their products might have worked or whether they couldn’t possibly have. David Sinclair was caught in the middle and got accused of being a Big Resveratrol shill, and scientific opinion seems to have settled as most against it. I think some people are now experimenting with pterostilbene, a more bioavailable resveratrol relative.
Sinclair himself takes well above what other people would consider the maximum dose every day, and apparently looks like this at age 50. Can sirtuins make us immortal? All of Sinclair’s examples involve slowing aging by 10 - 20%. I don’t quite understand why - if aging is just epigenetic damage, and epigenetic damage can be repaired, can’t you just increase the repair rate until it’s faster than the damage rate, then live forever? If Lifespan gave an explanation for this, I missed it.
Obscure Pregnancy Interventions: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
April 13, 2022 · Original source
David Sinclair claims that nicotinamide mononucleotide supplementation can rewind the epigenetic clock. Would this reverse paternal age effects? I think no, for two reasons. First, paternal age effects are more likely to be because of genetic damage than epigenetic damage. Second, in the one mouse experiment where they tried this, NMN “reduced sperm count, vitality and increased sperm oxidative DNA damage, which was associated with increased NAD+ in testes”, though not consistently.
Inline links: David Sinclair claims, more likely, the one mouse experiment
Links For July 2023
July 06, 2023 · Original source
6: Derek Lowe explains the current consensus that sirtuins don’t work for longevity. This doesn’t directly invalidate all of David Sinclair’s work (which I wrote about in my review of his book Lifespan) but it sure does indirectly undermine it.
Inline links: sirtuins don’t work for longevity, my review of his book