Prize to End Aging Gets First Media Sponsor

Methuselah Mouse Prize teams up with Betterhumans to promote real longevity-enhancing medicine

TORONTO March 12, 2004--As the well-known X PRIZE comes close to awarding a winner in the private space race, a new prize to spur real antiaging breakthroughs is picking up momentum with its first media sponsor.

The $10 million X PRIZE will be awarded to the first nongovernmental organization to launch three people into space, return them to Earth and repeat the feat with the same ship in two weeks. More than 20 teams are competing for the prize, with a winner expected soon.

Created by the Methuselah Foundation, the Methuselah Mouse Prize aims to do for antiaging medicine what the X PRIZE has done for affordable space travel: Spur investment in an area that has seen little serious funding.

"The public is not adequately aware of the serious, science-based life extension research that is going on worldwide at this moment. That low profile is holding the research back by limiting its funding," says Dr. Aubrey de Grey, the main architect of the Methuselah Mouse Prize structure and a biologist and computer scientist in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, UK. "The public identifies with world records, prizes and competitions, so we hope that the Methuselah Mouse Prize will bring such research more into the public eye."

To help inform the public of the prize and its potential, the Methuselah Foundation has teamed up with Betterhumans, a leading source of news, features and resources on aging and longevity.

An editorial production company covering issues and developments in advancing science and technology, Betterhumans will work with the Methuselah Foundation in several ways, including:

1) Promoting the prize to its global audience.
2) Providing a live prize tally board on its main Internet portal, Betterhumans.com, to give readers updates on the prize's progress and an easy link to make donations.
3) Providing syndicated news headlines for the prize's downloadable toteboard, to keep users informed of developments in aging and life extension.

"Most people are not aware of serious antiaging research, research that could dramatically reduce diseases of aging such as most cases of Alzheimer's and many cancers," says Betterhumans Editor-in-Chief Simon Smith. "By supporting the Methuselah Mouse Prize and working with the Methuselah Foundation, we hope to help spread the word: Aging can be and should be beaten."

ABOUT BETTERHUMANS (http://www.betterhumans.com)

Betterhumans is an editorial production company that covers issues and developments in advancing science and technology. With one of the Internet's leading science and technology portals at Betterhumans.com, Betterhumans provides news, features and resources on such topics as aging and life extension, working to connect people to the future so that they can create it.

Contact: Simon Smith, Editor-in-chief. E: e-mail protected from spam bots. P: 416-690-0679.

ABOUT THE METHUSELAH MOUSE PRIZE AND METHUSELAH FOUNDATION (http://www.methuselahfoundation.org)

The Methuselah Mouse Prize is the premier effort of the Methuselah Foundation. It is designed to accelerate the discovery of aging interventions by providing a financial incentive to researchers. Discoveries fostered by the competition for the prize will raise public awareness of the fact that controlling aging is foreseeable and that increased resources for aging research are needed.

Contact: Dave Gobel, CEO. E: e-mail protected from spam bots.