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Does the human lifespan have a limit?

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Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#201

Post by nradov »

starwind wrote: post #121
ttcbj wrote: post #105

My grandparents are now 95 and 96 (just shy of their 75th wedding anniversary). They are wonderful people, but it is clear that life is hard for them now. They have chronic pain and nothing can really be done about it. They have very limited opportunities for enjoyment or activity. Watching them, and also my mother struggle with health issues at 73, has really changed my perspective on aging. I am very focused on enj…

That's where my grandparents are right now. They retired in their early 60s, and they have a solid income between ss, pension, and 401k, but their healthcare takes up more-and-more of that money and they still struggle with their health. And just what have they done with their 30-odd years since they retired? They didn’t travel, pick up new hobbies, or finish their educations. Retirement isn’t my goal. I want to work…

A lot of retired people I know have essentially taken on second careers as professional medical patients.

Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#202

Post by nnoitra »

ck2 wrote: post #126

Extending life is a fantasy of the middle-aged who are still feeling great and imagine it forever. You won't get it until you pass a certain year, where like an old car, things suddenly start failing one at a time where everything was fine for years. Diseases, illnesses like Covid can cause radical aging, one year you are turning 55 but Covid now makes it like you are 65 because all your organs, body and brain have b…

Yup, best to die young to avoid these issues!

Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#203

Post by nradov »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #156
ttcbj wrote: post #105

My grandparents are now 95 and 96 (just shy of their 75th wedding anniversary). They are wonderful people, but it is clear that life is hard for them now. They have chronic pain and nothing can really be done about it. They have very limited opportunities for enjoyment or activity. Watching them, and also my mother struggle with health issues at 73, has really changed my perspective on aging. I am very focused on enj…

Eventually we will fix all these issues. The only deaths will be freak accidents or killings/suicides. Youth forever. We're less than a hundred years away from that kind of tech, I believe.

That is essentially a religious belief with no scientific basis.

Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#204

Post by swayvil »

czbond wrote: post #141
swayvil wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that 6 days is a metaphor. Metaphors taken literally. Literality taken metaphorically. Esoterica interpreted conventionally. Guiding the hand of the translator. Mistranslation compounding over the iterations. Any useful knowledge must get lost like dust in the wind.

You hit on the 'specifics' of religion that I've always found funny in humantiy. Why does it matter to most people if it is 6 days or 15 billion years? How does that change anything in actuality? Most religious texts can just be accepted as "good human practices summed up in 4 pages".... but instead they have to be made into movements, and groups who believe 'my team is right and yours is wrong'. My view is that - ju…

I think that reality is largely a story-based thing for many of us. There are as many stories as there are authorities. Science offers a story. So do the various religions. So do various other cultures.

Some stories can be called prettier, more compelling, more useful than others...

Most are consumed unconsciously. In childhood. And form the foundation of reality. So to mess with it can be ... disturbing.

Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#205

Post by xenadu02 »

allisdust wrote: post #31
ALittleLight wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably that doesn't apply if your cells are continuously reproducing creating new copies of DNA. In some sense your DNA comes from your parents and extending back through those lineages has lasted vastly longer than 512 years.

Wow that's actually quite insightful. There are theories on cell death after some generations, dna damage etc. But I'm not sure how they explain the refresh during birth/zygote formation. Could it be that birth is nothing but a glorified error correction with two unrelated dna to ensure probability of damage is low. If so, can the same be done with two unrelated dna pairs again again and the result applied back to a…

No, cells have active DNA repair mechanisms working all the time. They also have transcription ECC that attempts to detect and/or correct transcription errors. Some critical protein coding sequences are arranged to make some errors harmless, or are duplicated, etc.

Selection pressure plays a large part here. Waterbears (tardigrades) have exceptional DNA repair mechanisms — far superior to ours in some ways — because they must survive constant dehydration and rehydration cycles. Without the ability to repair what we would consider catastrophic DNA damage they'd have gone extinct long ago.

Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#206

Post by adwi »

imagin8or wrote: post #194
ttcbj wrote: post #105

My grandparents are now 95 and 96 (just shy of their 75th wedding anniversary). They are wonderful people, but it is clear that life is hard for them now. They have chronic pain and nothing can really be done about it. They have very limited opportunities for enjoyment or activity. Watching them, and also my mother struggle with health issues at 73, has really changed my perspective on aging. I am very focused on enj…

I have a gut feeling that as physical medicine has advanced faster than neuro or psychiatric medicine, people will live long enough to want to die, and euthanasia (self or pre arranged) will become acceptable, even normal. I would choose to give my children financial benefits instead of years of late life medicine, even if I could afford to live over 100.

If you’re as good a parent as your comment suggests, I bet they’d trade the money for more time with you.

Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#207

Post by ben_w »

nradov wrote: post #203
bufferoverflow wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually we will fix all these issues. The only deaths will be freak accidents or killings/suicides. Youth forever. We're less than a hundred years away from that kind of tech, I believe.

That is essentially a religious belief with no scientific basis.

It may be excessively optimistic, but it’s hardly unscientific or without foundation. There are animals whose biology does not age in the sense ours does, and we have done some incredible work increasing the healthy lifespan of lab rats/mice.

Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#208

Post by nradov »

cheese_goddess wrote: post #192
piyh wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've only had organ transplants for 60 years. I'd like to know how far we could push it in a world where we have a donor organ pool grown to order and a preventative approach to organ replacement. Take the guy with a pig heart and extend that tech 60 years out, then take the richest man on earth who will spare no expense for him and his statistically significant pool of people willing to undergo this experiment with…

Keep in mind that transplanted organ recipients must take immunosuppresants for life and that transplanted orgrans eventually fail, usually within a decade or so. Being on immunosuppressants means even a common cold can kill you without medical care. This is probably more of a limiting factor for long-term survival by continuous transplants than the availability of donors.

The next big step in organ transplantation will be custom grown personalized organs which don't trigger an immune response, and thus don't require immunosuppressants. This might be available in a limited form for some organs in our lifetimes.

However, I'm skeptical that this will extend maximum human lifespans. The transplant surgery itself is extremely risky for elderly people. Consider the risks of cognitive decline caused by general anesthesia, post-surgical infections, blood clots, sarcopenia caused by bed rest, etc.

Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#209

Post by brnaftr361 »

verve_rat wrote: post #65
brnaftr361 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're effectively switching the track to "Strangulate the whole planet with humans and their downstream effects!", very cool, or y'know any other disasterous permutation. We've already got population issues if that isn't compelling enough for you.

Because an immortal human won't change their thinking re long term impacts on the planet. Sure buddy. You want people to die. I think that is horrendous. Our world views seem to be fundamentally different, is there any point continuing this conversation?

You're allowed to impute whatever you may wish. My aims are the maintenance of the single rock in the known universe capable and currently sustaining life, and intelligent life at that.

Re: Does the human lifespan have a limit?

#210

Post by thaw13579 »

tim333 wrote: post #196
thaw13579 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only rational if you ignore the secondary effects on others. It could increase community spread and ICU usage and thus increase the risk of death for others who didn't make that choice. The other likely causes of death (heart disease, cancer, and stroke) do not spread.

The people doing most community spreading weren't the 90 year olds.

Statistically, there are more people younger than 90 than older, so I don't dispute your statement, but I don't see your point. Is this to justify them breaking isolation?

My understanding of the parent is that it is rational to break isolation because the likelihood of death from other causes is so high already. If the hypothetical 90 year old lived alone (aside from visiting family), then maybe it might adds up that way. My response is that if the person is a community dweller with other old folks and everyone adopted this individually "rational" choice, then the average risk of death from COVID would be far higher because of the increased likelihood of transmission among the most vulnerable (probably why the parent might have gotten some pushback at the suggestion). (assuming this discussion is about restrictions pre-vaccine). Alternatively, if the hypothetical 90 year old moved in with the family, things might stack things up differently.

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