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Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

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Re: Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

#41

Post by TamDenholm »

lukev wrote: post #23
TamDenholm wrote: post #21

I wish we could leave people like this alone, why does this kid have to endure a life of being a lab rat? Also, giving "mankind the gift of eternal life" is a flawed idea. Simply by improving our medical science which has given people a longer lifespan has caused a ridiculous amount of problems. There are too many people on this planet and by creating more and more that live longer and longer we are sacrificing the l…

Disagree strongly. At risk of sounding too metaphorical, death is the greatest enemy of the human race. It represents the loss of unique and worthwhile personalities, and places a strict upper bound on mortal human achievement. Of course we'll have to deal with the sociological and economic ramifications of that in the scope of limited resources. But it is entirely appropriate to rage against the dying of the light.

I suppose i was taking a contrarian stance but i still believe that right now humans living longer is causing many problems that just arent being addressed at all.

Taking social problems as an example, governments are scared to do anything about it because they'd have to do things like raising the retirement age, which is what France had major problems with recently.

The people that dont want things to change for the older population are the older population and that is the demographic that is already huge and getting larger and larger and because their against it, nothing will get done.

This is a very specific argument but my point applies to the broader problem.

Re: Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

#42

Post by aperiodic »

stagas wrote: post #18

Who knows for sure that this isn't even a rare condition? In theory, there could be people living among us that are centuries old and might look like 20-30. If I was, I wasn't going to tell everybody. If you travel a lot people won't notice your condition. I believe this is just proof that the condition exists, not the magnitude of it.

There's no proof that she's going to live any longer than a normal human. She's just developing much more slowly than normal.

She's also had many severe medical conditions which required intensive medical care. She still has to be fed via a gastric feeding tube. I doubt anyone with a similar condition would have survived the first 5 years of their life as short as 60 years ago.

Re: Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

#43

Post by DennisP »

guynamedloren wrote: post #16

I've always wondered about the human body. Right now I am studying engineering, but eventually I would like to delve deep into anatomy and biology. An automobile can theoretically run forever as long as it is properly maintained, even if that means replacing major parts - engine, transmission, even frame (but at a certain point the repairs are no longer financially feasible). Why then, can't the human body last forev…

You just described the SENS approach advocated by Aubrey de Grey. They're interested in getting help from engineers: http://www.sens.org/take-action/other-ways-to-help

De Grey published a book about their approach a couple years ago, and wikipedia has a basic overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negli...

Re: Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

#44

Post by rdzah »

astine wrote: post #17
reasonattlm wrote: post #14

This case has no application in aging research, and is of no interest to the biogerontology community. It's an interesting developmental abnormality, but nothing more. Aging is caused by accumulated biochemical damage, and this person is apparently aging normally at the level of cells and macromolecules.

Exactly. Failing to go through puberty is a developmental problem and it is doubtful that this child will live any longer than an ordinary human being, assuming her condition doesn't present complications that kill her long before that. I don't know anything about this Walker fellow, but from what I get from this article, he strikes me as a charlitan.

He's extremely lucky, but certainly no charlatan. He's stumbled across the human equivalent of a master developmental control gene knockout mouse.

Someday you may get a replacement organ in time due to r&d stemming from this girl's DNA.

Re: Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

#45

Post by ugh »

grellas wrote: post #32

The human race has a problem or two to solve before it can lay claim to "immortality." For example: 1. The 20th century brought us the "war to end all wars," followed by a "lost generation" that essentially turned to boozing and high living as a way of escaping the loss of joy and the mass death of trench warfare; it brought us the mechanized warfare of WWII, by which devastation and death rained from the skies upon…

While I agree with you in general I must say that I think your view of the 20th century is a bit too dystopian. Humanity has improved in the last one hundred years, and measurably so.

Re: Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

#47

Post by extension »

seanalltogether wrote: post #38
reasonattlm wrote: post #14

This case has no application in aging research, and is of no interest to the biogerontology community. It's an interesting developmental abnormality, but nothing more. Aging is caused by accumulated biochemical damage, and this person is apparently aging normally at the level of cells and macromolecules.

From the article "Her teeth, including her baby teeth, are like those of an eight-year-old. The length of the telomeres, on the other hand, corresponds to her actual age." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayflick_limit "The Hayflick limit was discovered by Leonard Hayflick in 1961,[1] at the Wistar Institute (Philadelphia), when Hayflick demonstrated that a population of normal human fetal cells in a cell culture divide…

Telomeres prevent cancer by limiting cell division and Brooke's are normal. Other aspects of aging cause cancer but she is supposedly immune to those.

But if her telomeres are shortening, doesn't that mean her aging will eventually catch up to normal because her cells stop regenerating?

Re: Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

#48

Post by orangecat »

guynamedloren wrote: post #16

I've always wondered about the human body. Right now I am studying engineering, but eventually I would like to delve deep into anatomy and biology. An automobile can theoretically run forever as long as it is properly maintained, even if that means replacing major parts - engine, transmission, even frame (but at a certain point the repairs are no longer financially feasible). Why then, can't the human body last forev…

Am I the only one that thinks about these things?

No, but there's fewer of us than there should be. Which is sort of understandable; aging is terrible and until recently there wasn't much hope of doing anything about it, so not thinking about it may have been best. But today that strategy is counterproductive; we're spending trillions of dollars to slightly extend the lifespans of old people, but we won't spend even one percent of that investigating ways to prevent or repair the underlying damage done by aging.

FWIW I've started making semi-regular donations to the SENS Foundation. I believe their work has the potential to be tremendously valuable in terms of both economics and quality of life.

Re: Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

#49

Post by meric »

reasonattlm wrote: post #14

This case has no application in aging research, and is of no interest to the biogerontology community. It's an interesting developmental abnormality, but nothing more. Aging is caused by accumulated biochemical damage, and this person is apparently aging normally at the level of cells and macromolecules.

It does look like she will get to keep her baby smooth skin though; Supermodels might be interested in that.

Re: Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

#50

Post by corprew »

ugh wrote: post #45
grellas wrote: post #32

The human race has a problem or two to solve before it can lay claim to "immortality." For example: 1. The 20th century brought us the "war to end all wars," followed by a "lost generation" that essentially turned to boozing and high living as a way of escaping the loss of joy and the mass death of trench warfare; it brought us the mechanized warfare of WWII, by which devastation and death rained from the skies upon…

While I agree with you in general I must say that I think your view of the 20th century is a bit too dystopian. Humanity has improved in the last one hundred years, and measurably so.

With what measurement, out of curiousity?
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