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Age Reduction Breakthrough?

joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com

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Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#61

Post by troughway »

I wonder if HN would have a viscerally negative knee jerk reaction if this was about a cancer treatment breakthrough, that could have saved someone they know or love if it was discovered in due time.

This whole “fuck the billionaires” attitude on a website that is supposed to uphold some kind of techno-progressiveness is just so tiresome.

We get it, you don’t like people with money and you consider them vampires because they want to avoid dying for as long as possible.

Go and be insufferable elsewhere.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#63

Post by maxander »

Since it seems like the upshot of all of this is that Katcher is claiming to have discovered a set of signalling molecules which, when injected, rejuvenate tissue and presumably lengthen life, it runs into one of the most fundamental objections that can be leveled at theory of aging (or cure thereof): of the billions of humans that have existed, how is it that none of them have possessed a mutation which (in this case) endogenously produced the signalling molecules which Katcher is proposing as treatment? In the case of this proposal this sort of objection is particularly strong, since (though the blog post is silent as to what the treatment is) it's given that they are fractions from blood, so they're substances which the body produces in some quantity anyway, and which are sufficiently non-dose-specific that Katcher, with limited resources, could devise a reasonably effective regimen.

Parabiosis is one of the most striking (and just weird) phenomena in aging research, so efforts to understand what's going on with it are liable to bear interesting fruit. I'm just pointing out that there's good reason to doubt that this particular "breakthrough" is the "cure."

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#64

Post by dwaltrip »

strofcon wrote: post #21
throw1234651234 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with not wanting to die?

It's a pretty mentally unhealthy way to live, mostly.

There are some animals that don't "age" like we do. These animals can live indefinitely, until they are eaten or die in some accidental way.

Aging is a set of complex bio-physical-chemical processes. We have actually made a lot of progress in recent decades understanding how this happens. There is no fundamental reason we won't be able to better understand these processes and then mitigate them heavily, if not entirely.

Aubrey de Grey is one of the scientists leading these efforts and his work, along with others, is very interesting. It seems to me there is real potential here. There are many difficult hurdles, but I find it plausible we might overcome them to an extent where it is possible to significantly extend the human lifespan.

If course, if this actually happens, there will be massive social, political, and economic consequences. I'm not exactly sure how that would play out. I'm a bit of an optimist, so I imagine there would be some sort of new non-dystopic paradigm that arises.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#65

Post by logfromblammo »

Invictus0 wrote: post #18

Does this lend credence to the idea that blood transfusions from young people could make one healthier or extend one's life?

Yes, it does.

The hypothesis is that "clock molecules" in the bloodstream provide a global age-clock for about five other tissue-specific age-clocks in the body. Spoofing the global clock signal for a long enough period tricks the subsystem clocks into thinking they are younger than they really are, including the native global age-clock mechanism.

Completely replacing your own blood with a young person's blood, repeating if necessary, would also accomplish the same trick, more expensively.

The real question is whether old tissues can function like young tissues when tricked into trying.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#67

Post by putlake »

maxander wrote: post #63

Since it seems like the upshot of all of this is that Katcher is claiming to have discovered a set of signalling molecules which, when injected, rejuvenate tissue and presumably lengthen life, it runs into one of the most fundamental objections that can be leveled at theory of aging (or cure thereof): of the billions of humans that have existed, how is it that none of them have possessed a mutation which (in this cas…

People who had this mutation could have died of causes other than aging.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#70

Post by eganist »

maxander wrote: post #63

Since it seems like the upshot of all of this is that Katcher is claiming to have discovered a set of signalling molecules which, when injected, rejuvenate tissue and presumably lengthen life, it runs into one of the most fundamental objections that can be leveled at theory of aging (or cure thereof): of the billions of humans that have existed, how is it that none of them have possessed a mutation which (in this cas…

At risk of sounding absolutely insane:

There's probably no way to prove that this hasn't happened. Anyone who realizes they're not aging normally would likely have taken on a new identity elsewhere for fear of:

1. being burned at the stake

2. being trialed in repeated experiments

3. being deified, and then subsequently being burned at the stake.

---

I realize my comment sounds like a joke, but I'm entirely serious. If you or I found out we're not aging normally and look e.g. 25 by the time we reach 40, or 30 by the time we reach 45, would either of us remain in our current lives?

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