Raiany Romanni @RaianyRomanni Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Raiany Romanni

@RaianyRomanni

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920

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Writer, humanist, bioethicist. 🪷 | + Life 🧬 Prev: Harvard, Brown, XPRIZE.

Boston, MA

https://t.co/j1OM5QTJh3

Joined August 2021

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

Why do we tell ourselves aging is good, when it is clearly bad? Can we decouple our increase in wisdom from disheartening diagnoses? Why have we made so little progress on improving how we age?🧵 For months, I worked on this piece for @palladiummag . It’s about the comforting

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

2 years

In my new @Quillette piece, I lay out the socioeconomic implications of viewing aging as abnormal. "There is hardly a belief more harmful than that biological decay is a mystical, kind, or dialectical force, guiding humanity towards its unalterable telos."

Should We Consider Aging a Disease?

Rethinking human “enhancement” in an era of sick-care.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

Why care about human longevity? 🧵 Aren’t programmable drugs for future pandemics more pressing? What about childhood cancers—or preventing existential risks to extend our longevity as a species? Aren’t humans a burden on the planet? Doesn’t science advance one funeral at a

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

Want to live to 150? The world needs more humans. Believe it or not, we have an underpopulation problem to solve — and there’s good reason to believe aging isn’t inevitable. TLDR: 1. More humans = more ideas = more resources. 2. Solve aging = solve most

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

The biggest science prize in history has been launched with a $101M purse. 🧬 The goal? To improve human aging by at least 10 years, with a focus on cognitive, immune, and muscle function. This is huge. Read my take on what it means for humanity with quotes by @elonmusk ,

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

Front page of the Boston Globe Ideas section! 🎉 Elevating #longevity into the public discourse, one writing piece at a time. ✍️ So very grateful to @BrianBergstein & all the editors at the Globe, who put up with my endless pitches.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

“We mustn’t improve our biology Despite all its limits and pains If God had approved of technology He would have endowed us with brains” Felicia Nimue Ackerman, 2022

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@palladiummag Why would the U.S. invest only 0.54% of all NIH funds into the biology of aging, if it’s the underlying cause of almost 80% of all the dollars we spend on healthcare?

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

11 months

Death is horrible.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

2 years

Some 50M Americans—predominantly women—are unpaid caretakers of older adults, at a $500B/y opportunity cost. By 2029, the US will spend $3T/y on adults 65+, with retroactive measures like Alzheimer’s care and retirement. It’s ethically imperative that we learn to treat aging.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

2 years

What, exactly, is death? Is it ethical to pursue life-extending technologies, if they risk worsening health disparities? My new piece for the @washingtonpost “The practice as forestalling death is as old as it is undivorceable from the concept of medicine”

Perspective | Technology promises to change the meaning of death — at least for some

New research shows that we might be able to revive bodies we once thought beyond repair. That could increase medical inequities, but it's still worth pursuing.

www.washingtonpost.com

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

From humanoid robots to 3D-printed rockets and flying humans, this year’s A360 Summit was a stunning reminder of the world we’re about to live in. A world of abundance isn’t yet available for all. But it’s our job to build it. 🤓🦾🚀 @PeterDiamandis

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

What if we could tackle not just neurodegenerative diseases, but also the predictable decline of brain function with age? In February 2023, Amaranth brought together many of the brightest minds in neuroscience for a workshop in San Francisco to discuss some of the major

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@jamesfickel

James Fickel 🪷

10 months

Past the age of 35, our brains shrink between 0.2-0.5% every year. We gathered leading neuroscientists to evaluate the most promising avenues for addressing brain aging:

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@palladiummag Several animals age far more favorably than we do, living to be centuries old without the devastating loss of function and disease we experience with age. In mammalian models, approaches like inhibiting mTOR activity often result in increased function and median survival rates.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

3 years

Thrilled to share my new piece on the ethics behind longevity technologies for ABC’s Religion & Ethics section:

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Should we engineer ourselves out of aging? - ABC Religion & Ethics

The COVID-19 pandemic has not just changed the way we live, it also represents a form of dying that is no longer considered “natural” today. For the first time in history, humans die more often from...

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

2 years

On set for the upcoming Longevity Hackers documentary. Exciting times for aging research! 🧬📖📝🔬 #science #ethics #technology

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

Got to pitch longevity to an awesome crowd at the Imagination in Action event at MIT — hosted by the inimitable @johnkwerner Speakers included @lexfridman , @vkhosla , and @sama

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

In Boston this summer and curious about longevity research? Join me at the Harvard Innovation Labs at 6pm, Jul 20th, for a casual chat. We’ll talk all things aging & life extension: from how to maximize your impact in the field to why work on it in the first place. DM me to

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@palladiummag We’re living longer as a civilization, but the gap between health & life expectancy is increasing.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

Aging is not a blessing, and it was not designed for the good of our species. Aging is the source of gut-wrenching pain for billions of humans, and it’s a set of biological processes that can be targeted.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@palladiummag A more honest response is to consider why — for something that breaks no law of physics and is so central to our economies, our health, and our people — we have so few labs, founders, investors, and thinkers.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

Grateful to @rootsofprogress mentors and peers @sapinker @jasoncrawford @tylercowen @Atelfo @jacobrintamaki @mboudry @cojobrien @MTabarrok @finmoorhouse (& others) for helping me think through my arguments for aging science; to @SamoBurja for the excellent edits; and for the

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@palladiummag One reason why we haven’t improved the biology of aging is it’s technically difficult. But this explanation alone is circular. (“We failed to improve aging because we failed to improve aging.”)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@palladiummag It isn’t rare for market incentives to be misaligned to social needs. But why aren’t public funds closing our pressing healthspan gap? Why do we target the diseases of aging, but not their root cause?

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

Counterintuitively, the ideal recipe for economic growth, human welfare, and innovation may be more births as well as more long-lived adults with younger brains and sprightlier limbs.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

Since 1980, the global population nearly doubled. Yet in 2022, the Earth was 420% more abundant than it was in 1980. Progress doesn’t magically unfold when funerals take place. Most often, it is architected by the living.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

Aging research also suffers from a tragedy of the commons where everyone would benefit from long-term health, but individual agents (e.g. 1 health insurer) don't have enough incentives to shoulder the costs, say, of validating aging biomarkers.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

From Hollywood dystopias to philosophies like Heidegger's Being-towards-death to Christian-inspired narratives, stories that portray the pursuit of more life on Earth in a negative light are everywhere. The idea that humans can — and should — improve their biology is new. We

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

But a lack of human-relevant results hasn’t stopped us from allocating funds to research, say, on Alzheimer’s disease.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

The first ever recorded work of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh (~2000 BC), tells the story of a vain king's fruitless search for the fountain of life. The king dies of old age, and learns to accept his frail biology as a source of meaning.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@palladiummag No clinical trial is underway to test if a therapeutic can improve human aging — in part because with current regulations, these trials can be costly, lengthy, and prone to false-fails.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

Stories have the overlooked power to inform the limits of our science. From Karl Marx to Carl Sagan—and from the U.S. dollar to the U.S. flag—the beliefs we subscribe to greatly shape the world we live in. And the prevailing story outside bubbles like Boston and SF is that aging

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

What's a less circular explanation for why, in 2024, we still age like we did in 300 BC? The comforting stories we've learned to tell ourselves about aging and death. 💡

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@CharlesMBrenner Humans have tried to engineer heavier-than-air flight for centuries. It's a childish dream. Humans can't fly, and even if we could, we'd stop breathing at 30,000 feet, and our lungs would collapse. Didn't you know that?

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@elonmusk @waitbutwhy "If we solve aging, we may well solve our underpopulation crisis. And we have, I will suggest, an ethical imperative to do both."

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

In the 2030’s, aging science can either join the ranks of germ theory, antibiotics, and cardiac surgery to transform medicine, or it can turn out more useless supplements with few serious results in between. Which future is built depends largely on you, whether you’re in

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@William_Kiely The future isn’t predetermined in any way — it’s our job to build it :)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@davidasinclair Thank you, David! As you say, just 5 years ago speaking of age reversal was heresy. Thanks for all the work you've done towards enabling people like me to think & write about this necessary topic. 🙂

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

With enough talent, capital, and good policy choices, we can ensure that people everywhere benefit from improved biological aging—from humans struggling with infertility or menopause or unpaid caregiving or organ shortages to governments tackling a growing debt crisis.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

Late 20th-century science has shown that biological aging is malleable. Cell, tissue, and organ replacement hold particular promise for humans in the near term, coupled with intracellular therapies. (Think replacing aged cells + a safer & more effective version of, say,

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

We should value human life because human brains are the single most valuable & wondrous resource of our time. And they may well continue to be, if we work towards a biosingularity where we evolve together with increasingly intelligent machines.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@ttrumpet63 @palladiummag Yes! Also my favorite short story, by Nick Bostrom 🤓

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

The world is aging. This means that the disease burden is shifting, in the Global North and South. In Brazil, where I come from, non-communicable diseases now make up 75% of all deaths.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

Biological aging is also the biggest risk factor for severe infection by several communicable diseases, like COVID-19. The death rate by COVID-19 for people under 40 in the U.S. was around 0.2%.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

With scarce resources, we may think we only get 1 priority. Prioritize our longevity as a species, or our health as unique human beings. But if we compress the timeline for aging drugs, we’ll have more resources & talent to build solutions that extend our longevity as a

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

The median age for a cancer diagnosis is 66. And accelerated, premature aging is a major health issue for patients suffering from childhood cancers, from rare diseases like progeria, and from thousands of other medical conditions.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

Aging science is a neglected lever to grow & maintain human talent. Treatments for biological aging could save the U.S. alone trillions of dollars with alternative uses. Just creating more humans would solve some of our problems. But newborns don’t work; they soon grow

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

Yet R&D on the biology of aging seems too risky for most short-termist investors. And long-termist investors worry that improving biological aging is not just a hard technical problem, but a vain one. An asteroid could hit the Earth and make a focus on improving healthcare seem

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

In 2024, health funding seems not to have caught up with the fact that biological aging is a major underlying factor in population health — and in the health of federal budgets.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

As a result, the effects of existing therapeutics on human aging remain largely speculative. But funding often precedes technically ambitious results. This has so far been the case for AI alignment and neurodegenerative diseases, and it was the case for COVID vaccines.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

But so far, most commercial incentives in longevity have optimized for unproven supplements, unsafe experimental therapies, and cosmetics. Clinical trials for multiple diseases—let alone health & lifespan—are costly, lengthy, and difficult to translate between species.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

Today, Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest in the world, in no small part because of its aging and shrinking demographic.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

In just 11 years — between 2018 and 2029 — the U.S. mandatory spending on Social Security and Medicare will more than double, from $1.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion per year.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@CJHandmer Yes! Thank you for sharing :)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

In the coming decades, we may slowly decouple ourselves from our production value, and work towards a new type of Enlightenment-inspired, inherent self-worth. But to build this future of abundance, we’ll need to more effectively allocate today’s scarce resources.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@AlexJColville Wohooo!!! Congrats, Alex! Such a needed fund. 🦾

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

@maggie_1i Excellent piece, Maggie!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@KKajderowicz @PDSoros @MIT @mitbrainandcog @WhiteheadInst @hrvatin_sinisa @JswLab @YuanchengLu @HeatherKPhD @Harvard @_emmarosewest @Cornell @CornellBirds Congrats, Kat!!!! 🎈

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@SpillaneMj @greatauntsheila @palladiummag Thank you :)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@utopiannotions Nice argument. Thanks for sharing!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

9 months

@RickEcon @UChicago @BeckerFriedman @UChi_CompSocSci @jupyterbook @ExecutableBooks Congrats, Rick! 🎉

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

@vincentweisser @elonmusk Thanks so much, Vincent!! And thanks for being a partner & ally of the prize and mission :)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@ydeigin Great piece, Yuri!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

@mihir_0_ @jamesfickel Priorities #2 , #3 , and #5 in our Bottlenecks document may be relevant, but we're very open to proposals that sit outside this list. Our website is a good overall guide:

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Amaranth Foundation - Longevity and Neuroscience

Amaranth Foundation's groundbreaking work by experts like James Fickel, Joanne Peng, Raiany Romanni, and Rohan Krajeski, in longevity and neuroscience. Learn more about our grants, projects, and team...

amaranth.foundation

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@adamgries My bet for the most popular answer, which you’re not going to get, is: E) I’ve never seriously considered it because the aging field mostly communicates with itself.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

@SumnerLN @jamesfickel Thank you, Sumner!!🦾🎈

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@AdamasNemesis @SamoBurja @palladiummag Thanks! 🙏🏻

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@BoxerCloverand @palladiummag Yes!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

@yangranat @MikhailBatin @jamesfickel 100% agree. See priorities #11 and #12 in the Bottlenecks document.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

11 months

@SumnerLN @ForestNeurotech @ButterflyNetInc Wohooo! 🦾🎉 happy for you, Sumner :)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@STYBpod Thank you!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@SCPioneer @palladiummag Thank you!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

9 months

@KKajderowicz ❤️

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@jenngarrison @FLOTUS @mariashriver @SenWarren @XavierBecerra @EdMarkey @GCRLE1 🎉

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

@MikhailBatin @jamesfickel I wouldn’t undermine our ability to align market incentives with what’s best for us as a species. It’s a bottleneck, to be sure; but solvable.

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@vita_dao Thank you!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@agingdoc1 @TheBostonGlobe5 @davidasinclair @biogerontology @geochurch @PeterDiamandis @xprize @sapinker Thanks for sharing!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@neuro__crit @BrianBergstein Thank you so much for reading!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@Fabrice1963633 @palladiummag Thank you!!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

@JoanneZPeng Thanks, Joanne! :) 🪷

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@Vad20053011 @palladiummag Спасибо!!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

@MikhailBatin @jamesfickel Ethics can’t be divorced from economics. Pertinent bit from Marc Andreessen’s recent manifesto: “Economic growth is not a cure-all, but lack of growth is a kill-all.” (Paul Collier)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

9 months

@salonium Always a treat reading you, Saloni!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@STYBpod @AgingBiology Thanks so much! 🙏🏻

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

7 months

@TheAnnaGat @palladiummag Yes! Thank you for sharing :)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@WonkalandWizard @BrianBergstein Thank you! 🚀

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

9 months

@alexkesin @LauraDeming @_LilyClayton @_Carol_Mag @adanguyenx @MannickJoan Great to see it out there! :)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

@DaneGobel @jamesfickel Thanks, Dane!!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

6 months

@CJHandmer Me too!

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

1 year

@JoanneZPeng @kulesatony @RohanKrajeski @JoanneZPeng @RohanKrajeski @kulesatony Awesome initiative! Pre-requisite idea for a happy, bio-inspired future: let's clone ourselves so we can find the time for all our lovely projects 😂🪷

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

@tkalil2050 @jamesfickel 🎈

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

10 months

@tGaoTeng @NatureGenet Yay! Happy to see your PhD work inch closer & closer to aging :)

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@RaianyRomanni

Raiany Romanni

2 years

@adamgries 4. Health disparities are surmountable. Ethics demands we help democratize access to new medical technologies—not that we critique them as if our existing healthcare solutions were sufficient. :)

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