Aubrey de Grey, Methuselah Foundation chair, recently presented at the Global Investors Forum hosted by UBS. Our COO, David Chambers, was also there and writes:

On Thursday I attended the UBS Global Asset Management "Global Investors Forum" held at the Intercontinental in London. The event was attended by somewhat more than 100 quite senior people from pension fund management, life assurance and wholesalers of long duration investments to institutional clients.

Aubrey de Grey was one of three speakers to open the event, addressing the whole audience. His warm-up man was Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel Prize Economics 2001) and he was followed by Sir Christopher Hum (formerly HM Ambassador to PRC).

My impressions:

• Stiglitz and Hum were of course erudite and polished speakers, but what they said was necessarily quite superficial, and the sort of thing that say any reader of the Economist would already be familiar with.

• By contrast Aubrey delivered "new news". Overall the audience did not seem to find the ideas expounded ludicrous. There were some titters at the "1000 year lifespan" slide. I asked people around me afterwards what they thought, and nobody denied the plausibility/desirability of the notion. My neighbour unprompted told me that the rich would find the prospect of more life irresistible. Questions from the floor concerned timescale and current indications of progress.

• Aubrey's manifesto was a bit of a shock to such a sober and mainstream audience. I'm rather impressed that UBS took the bold step of inviting us.

As you may be aware, the industries most exposed to financial risk and gain as a result of rapid changes in life span are further ahead than the man in the street in appreciating the possibilities for new technologies of medicine and extended longevity in the next few decades. Billions of dollars owned by investors and clients hang in the balance if industry leaders are wrong, such as by failing to account for the development of SENS technologies for repairing the damage of aging over the next 20 years.

David Chambers went on to note:

Aubrey told me that this was the first time he had been asked to appear in front of such a heavy duty super-straight mainstream audience. To be clear: nobody drank the Kool Aid there and then. But neither were the ideas of SENS and greatly increasing healthy life spans rejected. UBS itself - a sober sided Swiss bank - decided that de Grey belonged up there with Stiglitz and Hum. This is how true mainstream acceptance and understanding will slowly accumulate: those with a large stake in the future will take the time to evaluate the prospects for longer lives, and go on to educate others. This meeting was a leading indicator, showing that the idea of dramatic longevity gains is beginning to enter the mainstream.