Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Age Reduction Breakthrough?

joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 426 posts

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#311

Post by google234123 »

strofcon wrote: post #49
ahupp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the headline was "universal cure for cancer found!", would you also say "I'm missing the good news"?

The announcement of something that (potentially) arbitrarily extends human life is, quite literally, an announcement of "universal dramatic increase in chances of developing cancer found!" If we could all manage to avoid "normal natural causes" death for everyone under 1000 years old, we'd still all die of cancer well in advance of that age.

Cancer is very correlated with aging though so that might not be so true. Cancer is complicated, you can see Peto's paradox for a nice example.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#313

Post by cambalache »

yodon wrote: post #148
eganist wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

> 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? I was routinely told I looked 25 at the age of 45, and can assure you I felt no need to start accumulating secret identities.

Internet is full of these stories, I believe none. For one, even if there are people who look younger (say, Selena Gomez, or Lucy Liu) even them cannot pass to be 10+ years younger than they are, after looking at them in person. Have you actually met a 30+ year old person who could pass consistently as a teenager? I have never met one. The second thing is that if you are "routinely" told that you look XX or YY years old , either you are going around people telling your actual age, or they are being gracious in their compliment. You dont approach a teenager to tell them that they look young.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#314

Post by google234123 »

mdszy wrote: post #273
smegma2 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do rich people leech and from who?

If you think someone can become worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars without exploiting anyone then boy howdy do I have news for you.

You do know that it is possible to create value? For example, let's say I invent a pill that increases the average life span of a human by 5 years. It costs 1$ to make and I sell it to every person on earth for 4$ each. Who is exploited in this example?

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#315

Post by James_Henry »

riggins wrote: post #283
tantalor wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140520-the-girls-who-ne... > A handful of girls seem to defy one of the biggest certainties in life: ageing. He has identified four girls with this condition, marked by what seems to be a permanent state of infancy, a dramatic developmental arrest. He suspects that the disease is caused by a glitch somewhere in the girls’ DNA. His quest for immortality depends on finding it.

I'm sad this comment hasn't been upvoted higher. The comment explain how the mutation could be possible. The key is that the mutation would prevent reproduction. If you never age, you never reproduce. You can think about different cancers. A mutation that causes fatal childhood cancer doesn't get passed on. A mutation that causes prostate cancer can spread.

Aging/death and reproduction seem to be closely related. I suppose maxander would counter that some mutation, given the many people who have lived before, should preserve reproducibility and youthfulness if fractional plasma is able to, but I'd counter that maxander is measuring (or guessing really) the probabilities wrong.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#316

Post by James_Henry »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #89
putlake wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

On a long enough timeline, can't we assume that pretty much everyone is going to die of cancer?

The body, when it is healthy, generally kills cancerous cells on its own. This is, from what I understand why many cancers come with sickness/age, because your body doesn't react as robustly to broken cells as it did in health and youth. Something like "age reduction" could end up being a cure for many cancers, one could think.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#317

Post by TMWNN »

gotrythis wrote: post #230
steelframe wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone I work with looks very youthful for their actual age, and that isn't always a good thing. When the team went on an offsite morale event jet skiing, he was told by the proprietor that he couldn't participate because their policy requires you to be at least 16 years old. He was 27 at the time. He never lived that down with his peers. When he tries to go to a bar with friends, he's sometimes accused of trying to…

I think people age at different rates. My Dad is in his mid 80's and plays four hours of sports a day, or at least he was before the pandemic hit. When I was in my mid-20's I had to impress the hell out of potential clients to get work, as I looked like I was 15, and girls my own age wouldn't look at me as I was too young. I never drank, so bars weren't an issue. When I was in my early forties, 15-20 year old girls w…

>When I was in my early forties, 15-20 year old girls were still coming on to me. I will be 50 next year

I've read that when Scott McNealy met his future wife (they married when he was 40) she thought that he was a Stanford undergraduate.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#318

Post by topspin »

eganist wrote: post #70
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. I…

I think this is unlikely because at some point there would be an large cohort of such persons; discipline among 25 year olds (your figure) regarding reproduction cannot be relied upon. :)

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#319

Post by lend000 »

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…

While the article mentions the current paradigm (accumulated DNA damage as the prevailing view of why our cells slow down), it doesn't address how it is wrong. In which case, cells with the right signals will behave more actively, but this could also lead to faster onset of cancer.

A more interesting approach to me seems almost feasible with current technology, assuming CRISPR will soon be able to replace DNA without causing more side effect DNA damage than it fixes.

Take a healthy human blastocyst, derived from healthy young relatives of the patient (likely to have compatible mitochondrial DNA). Now, determine the patient's original DNA structure. This would occur by sampling various cell lineages and using a statistical model to estimate the original DNA of the patient as a baby. Now, take some stem cells from the blastocyst and replace the DNA with the patient's DNA. Generate a culture of different stem cells and inject them throughout the patient's body. The patient now has cell lineages with fresh telomeres that will be actively dividing for another 6 decades. Perhaps additional signaling regulation would be necessary to prevent types of growth that would be unwanted in adults.

Any experts want to poke holes at this idea? I have no formal training in biotech but I always thought this seemed like the cure to non-structural age related diseases. The harder part seems like cleaning and regrowing new veins and arteries, and brain repair.

Re: Age Reduction Breakthrough?

#320

Post by James_Henry »

platz wrote: post #112
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…

So you can live longer, but what about cancer?

Maybe living longer means you don't get cancer. There are animals with extremely low or even zero rates of cancer.
Post reply on HN