Here is the thread.
Crsociety.org has been down for a few months - General - Rapamycin Longevity News
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Damn. That’s bad news. I bought Pearson & Shaw’s book in the mid-80’s and really got “hooked” on the subject of longevity with that.
I always wondered what happened to them. Sounds like they didn’t even make “average” LS, which is a pity. And they were certainly clever people.
One other person who was a pioneer at about the same time as P & S was Roy Walford and he didn’t live to old age, either. I think he got ALS??
I never could understand the secrecy some people put around the cause of death. One good example of that is Vladimir Khavinson…still no idea how he died.
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Sh*t happens. I asked several AIs to look for the cause of Durk Pearson’s death.
The AI’s answers were all over the place. One even claiming he is still alive. 
If he did die, he still beat the odds “The average life expectancy of a male born in the United States in 1943 was 62.4 years.” “The average life expectancy of a male born in the United States in 2025 is approximately 75.8 years.” He lived to be 81.
“Conclusion: There is no reasonable guess about Durk Pearson’s cause of death because Durk Pearson is not dead. He and Sandy Shaw are alive, residing in Nevada, and continue their work, primarily focused on legal challenges to supplement regulations.”
The most plausible:
“No Evidence of Unusual or Supplement-Related Cause:
There is no credible evidence or widespread speculation suggesting that his death was directly related to his supplement regimen or any specific life extension practice. Instead, the circumstances described—an elderly man succumbing to sepsis after a stubborn infection—are unfortunately common in this age group, even among those with a history of health consciousness.”
Stomach Infection Leading to Sepsis:
The most consistent narrative, echoed by multiple individuals familiar with Pearson’s later years, is that he developed a persistent stomach infection. This infection reportedly “exploded into sepsis,” a life-threatening systemic response to infection. By the time he was medevacked to a hospital in Reno, Nevada, it was too late for effective intervention, and he passed away shortly thereafter.
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Many years ago, Durk & Sandy left California to settle in Tonopah, Nevada where they lived quietly and happily until Sandy came down with a malady that even Durk with his heroic efforts proved impossible to overcome. After being Durk’s life partner for 57 years, Sandy passed on March 12, 2022. Durk never fully recovered from the loss.
Durk loved TTP. He remains our Forum champion, having posted 6,783 comments filled with brilliant wisdom and insights. Every Friday morning like clockwork we’d have our pre-HFR call unless I was on an expedition, as I was last week in the Himalayas. Yet his loss of Sandy took a steady toll on his immune system. He came down with a stomach infection that he couldn’t shake. It exploded into sepsis. By the time his friends medevacked him to the hospital in Reno it was too late. Durk passed on Sunday, October 27.
Saw that link on reddit. Am not a member of the Skye group, and have no intention of joining.
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Hi DS,
Yes; you’re correct of course that DP did exceed the average LS for an American male born in 1943.
It may well be due to his interventions. I don’t know anything about his family regarding longevity so impossible to say if there was much of a genetic component there or not.
He seems to have been very secretive; even Wikipedia doesn’t have much about him.
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What happened to Khavinson is probably what is currently happening to Russian oligarchs now.
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Come on man, this list is flawed. Why is Zyzz on the list? 
“be a sickcunt brah”
Great and entertaining video. (Crap, I am lucky to be alive!)
It is truly frightening to consider that many diet gurus died at a relatively young age, despite their focus on a “healthy diet.” And I am also sure many of them took a lot of supplements like Durk Pearson did.
My feeling is that genes are king. Other factors, such as exercise and diet, either contribute to or detract from healthspan. Yes, calorie restriction, which is unpleasant for most humans, appears to extend lifespan.
So, I would attribute my lifespan, so far, and the lifespans of the health gurus in the video to “lucky or unlucky” genes.
I have been on various diets throughout my life. In my younger years, my diet consisted of whatever I was being served, whether at home or in the military. My diet could have been described as omnivorous.
My first exploration into diets occurred when I was trying to find foods that my daughter could eat because she was allergic to a great many foods.
Adele Davis was a popular health and diet guru at the time, so I was brewing up many concoctions from her cookbook, which leaned heavily toward fruits and vegetables.
During most of my life, I have been physically active, playing sports and going to the gym.
But my work locations made it hard or impossible to go to the gym or play sports. So, yes, there were times when I gained too much weight due to inactivity. This caused me to try such diets as the Atkins diet and, in later years, a ketogenic diet and time-restricted eating to lose weight.
At my current age, 84+, I am on time-restricted feeding, 18-7, because this is what feels natural to me at this time. My diet is again omnivorous because this is what I like to eat. I would lose way too much weight on a vegetable-based diet, because I don’t enjoy eating vegetables.
Bottom line: It is much easier to shorten your genetically given lifespan than to lengthen it.
I am thinking I am one generation too late to achieve any significant extension of lifespan through gene editing, medicines, supplements, etc.
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I read their book back in the 70’s.
And they had high stress jobs. Winston Churchill lived to 90 and he drank and smoked heavily and had a high stress job. He served in many wars too.
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Yes. I think if you are wealthy and have access to the best life has to offer, 90 seems a realistic target. If anything truly extends lifespan, like Rapamycin, I would expect to see a lifespan of at least 95.
Durk mentions people aged 92-93 does not impress him.
It would be nice to know what he was using, or tried the last 5 years of his life. Perhaps certain medications could have saved him. Not sure if he was using supplements only or a mix of things.
@3:05 of video.
Interesting thought. However, you are at a good age to see how well various new or old therapies will do for people of your generation.
Some of the tech futurists say the singularity will be here in around 2040-2060 (AI tech, longevity tech etc). So you might be lucky if you can live to 2040 and perhaps get more years (decade+) added on your life.
It would be wild if you become the oldest person on earth at some point 
Seems the singularity is already here, and slowly getting rolled out to the people. An issue might be price for various things.
Some of these new gene therapies are over 1 million a year. Though how cheap can they be made?
Might become similar to big pharma generics, or people ordering (or travel) overseas for much cheaper prices.
Would be cool to see wealthy people fund a YouTube channel where someone does try all these types of new therapies.
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Wow, that really is a blast from the past. Really worth watching. Interesting that Clint Eastwood was a client.
They brought up some interesting points.
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Enjoyed the interview, both very smart but I don’t know if I can take advice from somebody that goes on TV for a serious interview dressed like that. Idiot.
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Eastwood is a local in my town, and he is definitely the energizer bunny, a lot like you.
He does take a healthy diet pretty seriously.
A few years ago he married the young hostess, and long time gf, from one of his restaurants. She passed a couple of years ago at 61. No one expected that to play out the way it did.
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C’mon man! You were just witnessing the tail end of the hippy culture. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
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I read that the year it came out. Went through it with my highlighter. At the time, 1982 I was 26 and I was not interested in the longevity aspect but was more interested in the potential muscle and strength aspects in the book.
I tried them all and was a gym rat then. But I’m a hard gainer and not much helped with size.
But it was the best book available at that time and it lead me to VRP (vitamin research products) as a bulk supplement vendor.
This was all before the internet and everything was done by phone or mail. so it would take some time to get anything done.
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One of their “things” was to stay “cold” to stimulate brown fat and burn calories. They even promoted ventilated clothing to increase cooling.
The book was a very interesting read and they followed it up with a few more. One was specifically about weight management.
The Life Extension Weight Loss Program
Also the Life Extension companion
I took a number of things from Durk and Sandy’s books.
One concept was around how different knowledge bases double at certain rates.
We have Moores Law for transistor density in CPU’s for example, where this number doubles every 18 months. So far that “law” has held true since it was first postulated, an amazing concept.
In biology the doubling rate is much slower, similar to how hardware has always been easier to improve much faster than software. It was a long time before a 32bit OS arrived for 32bit processors, same for 64bit processors being on the market before a good 64bit OS.
Durk and Sandy explained “back then” that biological data doubled every 13 years (software) as opposed to how human hardware is addressed.
I’m sure that thanks to Moores Law, the biological doubling rate has been decreasing as available processing speed has increased.
Now with AI, we are seeing a rapid increase in speed to market of pharmaceuticals.
Alex Zhavoronkov is on the bleeding edge of this revolution. But I had a somewhat brief convo with him on LinkedIn when I asked him when he was going to solve the elastin puzzle… after 4 or 5 questions (on his part) and answers with clinical references on my part, he did not grasp the significance of this human life span limiter. Hopefully people with his resources will solve it. As I told him, the first one to do that will be a multi-billionaire.
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