41–50 of 192 posts
no need to have Alzheimer to see these poor old guy / women that can't do anything. We should die sooner, waste less resource and enjoy more.
It's completely toxic to the green movement.
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The reason doesn't really matter, this is still incredibly valuable work. Death is terrible, and should be eradicated, but Alzheimer's is a few steps above that. There's nothing worse than seeing a loved one be slowly destroyed by that horrific disease, and I'm so glad there are people willing to work on it.
"Death is terrible, and should be eradicated" We are sensitive to death but it is the only mechanism I know that would control overconsumption of natural resources. If nobody dies, then we would deplete the resources in a few decades.
The idea of those wanting that is to perpetuate themselves (and their current generation) in eternity, screw successors.
>Most of the major pharmaceutical companies continue to pursue the amyloid and tau pathways. Dementia Discovery Fund complements their work by supporting startups as they explore less mainstream approaches to treating dementia. That's very encouraging. Because what if it's something else?
The amyloid and tau pathways are our best hope of finding a simple solution, something we can reasonably fix with drugs. If it's something else, then chances are good it'll be far harder to fix, perhaps even requiring genetic engineering or medical nanotechnology. Finding out is still valuable, of course...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parent merely stated that we are already over-consuming with rather high death rates, not having any deaths at all most certainly wouldn't help with our current unsustainable ways, as we'd most likely overpopulate the planet pretty quickly with all it's resulting woes (even more pollution, killing off the rest of the biosphere). Imho it'd only work the other way around: For us to beat death, we first have to solve ou…
You're making the mistake of changing one parameter, but not projecting the entire world forwards. Immortality would be impossible without massive technological improvements that certainly would have other benefits; you can pretty well assume that both molecular nanotechnology and genetic engineering will be mature by then. In combination, those should dramatically increase the carrying capacity of the world. Ignorin…
I don't think we'll see anything like increased exponential progress of the kind that has been (and has already slowed down) during the industrial age. All low hanging fruit have been gathered, and at this point there are diminishing returns.
We will have a few breakthroughs here and there but nothing to write home about the way the steam engine, electricity or the computer have been.
>Ignoring all of that, though... Don't you think it's likely that people will start caring more about the future once they know they'll live to see it?
Most people are terrible managing their own lives a few years ahead, much less decades ahead. So no reason to think they'll be any more apt when its something so vague as centuries ahead.
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It'd be great to be able to pull glucose, hydration and more out of urine samples real time, so long as we stay away from say live telemetry to insurers or something like SmartPipe[1] it'd be enormously beneficial. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
In health this would be massively beneficial. Imagine a digital hospital where you monitor excrements for every patient during their stay. When my father was in the stroke unit recently they had him drink a shitload of water and they monitored water intake by making him write down how much he drank and when. Stupid thing is I need a 100M exit first to sponsor this kind of thing.
It's interesting to note that tetrahydrocannabinol and other compounds found in marijuana may reduce the amount of beta amyloid in the brain. Beta amyloid is commonly thought to cause Alzheimer's disease. see: https://www.nature.com/articles/npjamd201612 Last I heard in the US, the Federal government was still making it difficult to run clinical trials for Alzheimer's using marijuana. I think any federally funded med…
It's more complex than just that. At CTAD just a couple of weeks ago there was a presentation on drugs that managed to reduce AB (biomarker was inferred by a PET scan) and it did not result in increased cognition.
Cynical answer: "because I'm getting old" :) Whatever the reason, this has the potential of being life-changing for a lot of people. Would love to see more billionaires involved with this kind of initiative.
There is nothing wrong with self-interest. It's why all the people posting in this thread are still alive. A given person's spending in the developed world on their food budget in a year, is a scaled equivalent in resources to what Gates is probably going to spend on Alzheimer's. The difference is, if his investment pays off it helps millions of people. That's the best kind of self-interest.
I think Bezos must be applying some of these hacks on himself; he got recently in shape while in previous decades he seemed to let himself go. Bill might think about the same as he is visibly deteriorating and his liver seems to be not functioning well (spots on his skin everywhere). They should add calorie restriction/frequent fasting as well. It's unlikely they will beat the death, but might make their final moments less horrible.
It's interesting to note that tetrahydrocannabinol and other compounds found in marijuana may reduce the amount of beta amyloid in the brain. Beta amyloid is commonly thought to cause Alzheimer's disease. see: https://www.nature.com/articles/npjamd201612 Last I heard in the US, the Federal government was still making it difficult to run clinical trials for Alzheimer's using marijuana. I think any federally funded med…
It's more complex than just that. At CTAD just a couple of weeks ago there was a presentation on drugs that managed to reduce AB (biomarker was inferred by a PET scan) and it did not result in increased cognition.
I would expect this test (and therefore the hypothesis) to fail if the plaques themselves are a byproduct rather than the cause of degradation in brain function. That said, I'm surprised I haven't read much in Gates' Notes or other funding sources on potential ties to HSV1 considering all the increasingly supportive research between the two.
Heh, the blog fails to load in Firefox 57...
Same thing (the text does not appear) happens if you have Ghostery on blocking all the trackers.
edit: oh, there it is, 25 lines beginning at line 8201.