About Rod D. Martin
Praise for Rod D. Martin
Book Rod to Speak
Politics & Economics
Technology & Markets
Faith & Culture
by Patrick Cox
August 15, 2018
For years, I’ve predicted that Japan would be the first nation to wake up to the seriousness of continually increasing lifespans. The unexpected success of the book, The 100-Year Life—Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, in Japan indicates to me that a tipping point has finally been reached.
And its impact will be felt all over the world.
The 100-Year Life was first published in English in 2016. Like my book, The Methuselah Effect, it deals with some of the consequences of an aging society. Also like my book, it didn’t attract a lot of attention.
That changed, however, when the translated version was published in Japan as LifeShift. The Japanese quickly embraced the central message of the book: that individuals, businesses, institutions, and government desperately needed to adapt to the reality of 100-year lifespans.
According to Leo Lewis of the Financial Times, the book transformed public debate and crystallized what had been a murky discussion of demography-themed hopes and fears.
I’ve written in the past about the transformation longer lifespans and low birthrates are causing in Japan. We see abandoned rural towns and urban properties. Prisons convert to assisted-living facilities as the aged commit nonviolent crimes for the sole purpose of being incarcerated. As dementia rates increase with population age, authorities have proposed implanting RFID chips in the toenails of older people who wander around unable to remember their own addresses.
Polls from 2014 showed that almost 90% of Japanese consider aging a problem, compared to only about a quarter of Americans. The need to increase the fertility rate has become standard joke material in the Japanese media.
Most important, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare deregulated the drug approval process for regenerative medicine, specifically to improve health and healthcare costs for older people. It seems that the Japanese people are not oblivious to the problems of aging, though until recently, the topic was limited mostly to policy makers.
Now aging and methods for dealing with age are mainstream public conversations. The Japanese cultural and psychological revolution I’ve been predicting is happening now. Most significantly, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has absorbed and integrated the lessons into his economic program, and politicians all over Japan have begun to talk about the need to adapt to longer lives.
Unfortunately, they haven’t made a complete transition.
Get Ready for 200-Year Lifespans
The Japanese have recognized the continual increase in lifespans that began in the 1800s, but they haven’t yet realized that the rate of increase is exponential. We’re on the verge of solving the issues that have kept maximum lifespans at about 120 years, meaning the end of senescence as we know it today.
Preparing for 100-year lifespans is not enough.
As financial analysts absorb the reality of 100-year lives, many recommend that people work into their 80s if they want a secure future through age 100. The big question, which almost nobody is addressing, is how long you’ll have to work if lifespans are 150, 200, or more years.
Is that crazy talk?
In the last few weeks, there have been major developments in biogerontology. Some of them, I’m even allowed to talk about.
For example, two of the most important people in the field of anti-aging medicine struck a deal that could reshape history. Let’s start with scientist Michael West, sometimes called the father of regenerative medicine. In his career, he’s made the essential discoveries that led to senolytics, telomerase therapy, and pluripotent stem cell therapies.
Now he has founded a new company, AgeX, specifically to reverse aging. Digest that information if you can. He intends to do it by activating the embryonic gene pathways associated with cellular immortality and healing.
The second person is Jim Mellon, the self-made British billionaire and biotech investor. Mellon had already put about $5 million into West’s age-reversal company, but his investment company, Juvenescence Limited, just bought another $43 million from AgeX’s parent company BioTime.
Mellon has assembled a team of superstar scientists and executives for his company Juvenescence that I wager will outperform anything Silicon Valley has put together. Here is a short video of Mellon talking about the science of aging.
The fact that he has put so much faith and money in West’s science after extensive due diligence makes me confident that my own analysis is correct.
The timing is also perfect. Japan’s overhauled regulatory system could bring regenerative medicine to its population in a single year, compared to the decade or so it can take in the US and Europe.
I’ve been lobbying West and Mellon to take some breakthrough therapy through the Japanese regulatory system. Japan not only has the oldest demographic in the world, its population is educated, hardworking, and economically and technologically advanced. And now the Japanese public has woken up to its own emergency.
This is great news for the US, Europe, and the rest of the world, which is headed in the same demographic direction as Japan.
— Japan Wakes Up to Its Aging Apocalypse originally appeared at Mauldin Economics.
Rod is one of our nation’s leading minds. He’s smart, original, and very committed—a combination that one rarely finds.
Rod Martin is a Reaganite-Thatcherite conservative…[and] a man who has spent much of his life ministering to and working for the benefit of others. I know Rod as an advocate for freedom, a leader who understands the real changes we need in Washington, and who has the drive and ability to make those changes happen.
Rod Martin is the kind of dynamic leader who has the knowledge, ability and experience to lead us successfully into the 21st Century. His vision for America is compelling.
Rod Martin literally wrote the book on excellence. Humble yet brilliant, a man of love and compassion, with penetrating clarity he illuminates the world around us, and we are both stirred and enlightened.
Rod Martin is a born leader and an outstanding political mind. Anyone who takes him on is going to have a serious fight on their hands.
Rod Martin is a man of uncommon vision and character. Ever since I first worked alongside Rod in the early days of PayPal, I’ve been struck by his powerful vision for the future. Rod understands the intersection of technology, politics and culture in a way that few others do.
Rod Martin wears with uncommon grace an uncanny ability to link his vigorous faith to the practical challenges of both the business world and the political arena. Yet the respect he shows for others carries a warmth and modesty that are both too rare among those who are strong advocates of feisty positions.
America badly needs more leaders who really get the future. We need more Rod Martins.
Rod Martin is a modern day philosopher-statesman. He is a capitalist intellectual, a conservative iconoclast, a gentle adversary and a kind prophet. He inspires us towards a fresh national vision built upon the original founding principles.
Rod Martin is not only effective and efficient, but he is also perceptive, wise and gracious. He gets things done. He is a great friend and a great ally.
Rod is one of the sharpest, most gracious men I know, and one of the most gifted political thinkers today. His ability to analyze issues and communicate thoughtful insights on them have earned him the respect of people across the political spectrum.
I am proud to have been Rod Martin’s friend for a quarter century, and I can tell you that he is one of the finest men and most outstanding leaders in our church and in our country today. He has a knack for turning everything he touches to success.
Rod Martin is a cornucopian entrepreneur and eutropic thinker whose influence radiates through an array of companies, institutions, movements and churches. A renaissance American, he is also a prolific friend of freedom and faith around the globe.
If Rod Martin represents the next generation of leaders, America has nothing to worry about.
A leader and a servant, in public life and in private, Rod Martin strides at the top of his profession, and has nowhere to go but up. He is in the truest sense of the word ‘outstanding’.
Rod Martin is undoubtedly one of the most accomplished thought leaders today. He is a wonderful mentor, a humble role model, and a deep inspiration for the next generation of scientific innovators and entrepreneurs.
Rod’s achievements pale beside his character and his brilliance. He sees what others can’t. He leads when others won’t.
Rod Martin is one of America’s finest young minds.
The future of technology is the future of America. Rod Martin sees that future clearly, and also sees how to shape it for the betterment of all. He is firmly rooted in the traditions of faith and patriotism that have made America great. That’s why he has made, and will make, so many outstanding contributions in so many areas.
