There may have been some confusion when speaker Aubrey de Grey came to the stage at the TED conference for the talk Aubrey de Grey: Why we age and how we can avoid it. The British researcher on aging declared that aging can be avoided or at least slowed down. Although de Grey sports a Gandolf-like beard and has a name that sounds like it would fit comfortably in the late middle ages there is no truth to the rumor that de Grey was speaking of himself when he said that he is confident that individuals that may live to 1000 years old have already been born.

In a shocking challenge to conventional wisdom, Cambridge researcher Aubrey de Grey argues that the process of aging is merely a disease — and a curable one at that. De Grey, a computer scientist and biogerontologist, believes humans could live for centuries, if only we approach the aging process as “an engineering problem.” He outlines the seven basic ways people age, and how to “solve” each one. And if we get to work now, he says, humans alive today could live to be 1,000.