Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice • Hacker News Board

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#141

Post by agumonkey » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:01 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #66

sliverstorm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if they are successful (which I hope they are) then we're talking about pushing back retirement until 90 or maybe 95 right? Which I would be totally OK with. Imagine how much more scientific progress we could make if we had 70-year veterans of their field with the sharp mind of a 27-year-old!

Who says their minds will be sharp? This discovery is about muscle aging.

Good point indeed, that said, even physical health can be a toll on your mind. Freed from that you can spend more time thinking instead of aching.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#142

Post by Mizza » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:08 AM UTC

yawz wrote: post #101

Hmm... As I'm new here I'm a little confused. I posted the same article yesterday but this one posted by Mizza got picked up quite heavily. Does the poster's "karma" have something to do with it? Or is it just a coincidence?

Sundays typically are more accepting of this kind of content. I also posted a link to the article in Cell as a comment with the submission.

shrug

It's really just timing though.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#143

Post by aggie » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:13 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #36

ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

I always wonder about this quote, “Whether that means we’ll all live to 150, I don’t know, but the important part is that we don’t spend the last 20 to 30 years of our lives in bad health.” Imagine a process that makes you feel like you are 25 right up until you body gives up at a physical age of 100 or something. Do you end up doing riskier things because you don't "feel" old? And if you did would you die sooner? It…

if they are successful (which I hope they are) then we're talking about pushing back retirement until 90 or maybe 95 right? Which I would be totally OK with. Imagine how much more scientific progress we could make if we had 70-year veterans of their field with the sharp mind of a 27-year-old!

That's an interesting question, but I think it could be less helpful for scientific progress than you might imagine. It could even be a hindrance. As Max Planck put it, "A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Extending scientific careers could effectively slow the rate of Kuhnian revolution.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#144

Post by sliverstorm » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:17 AM UTC

aggie wrote: post #143

sliverstorm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if they are successful (which I hope they are) then we're talking about pushing back retirement until 90 or maybe 95 right? Which I would be totally OK with. Imagine how much more scientific progress we could make if we had 70-year veterans of their field with the sharp mind of a 27-year-old!

That's an interesting question, but I think it could be less helpful for scientific progress than you might imagine. It could even be a hindrance. As Max Planck put it, "A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Extending scientific careers could effectively slo…

Alright, maybe I'm more excited specifically for engineering then. I'm an engineer, really, not a scientist, and I'm always blown away by some of the old stalwarts in my field.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#145

Post by dferlemann » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:26 AM UTC

maratd wrote: post #21

fragsworth wrote: post #8

> "with scientists set to look at how the theory of age reversal can be used to treat diseases such as cancer, dementia and diabetes." Alzheimer's medications can generally improve cognition. Age-reversal medications might work even better if used at an early age. I always see articles, media, and papers focusing on how something new can be used to treat some existing disease. But what I'm always thinking is "can I u…

> It's a strange disconnect. I know everyone is thinking what I'm thinking, but you never see this in the articles. Is it some kind of taboo? Sure. It's ridiculously selfish. As you age, you realize your success in all things eventually boils down to experience and ability to execute. Ability to execute wanes with age, as experience is accumulated, so it balances out. Now imagine a spry 20 year old with 60 years of e…

As a man in my 20s, I welcome the challenge. What's fair or not fair about it? I'd be thrilled to work in a world with more competent people around.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#146

Post by sethammons » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:31 AM UTC

rtfeldman wrote: post #49

pvnick wrote: post #37

Researchers injected a chemical called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD, which reduces in the body as we age. The addition of this compound led to the radical reversal in the ageing of the mice. While this is pretty cool, it seems that the most immediate effect would be a higher availability of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), meaning more energy "currency" for the body's machinery to work with [1] [2] (someone…

Anti-aging has nothing more to do with immortality than does, say, curing a particular disease. Aging is only one of many causes of death; if we solve that one, there's still heart disease, stroke, getting hit by a bus...

I can't recall the source (probably a special on the Science channel or somesuch), but I heard that if we "cured" aging and no one died from getting old, that the average lifespan would be between 1.5k and 2.5k years where one would die of an accident or disease. I'd take my chances with that :)

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#147

Post by thenerdfiles » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:35 AM UTC

tesseractive wrote: post #108

gaius wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, I have a friend who is a full-time professional philosopher (teaches at a university) and you would not believe the amount of earnest essay writing there was in the philosophy community about Miley Cyrus's performance at the VMAs (something I've not actually seen myself). All sorts of theories about Freud and Hegel and this and that. Look Philos, I said to him, she got up on stage and did a little dance a…

More accurately, professional philosophers don't have any particular standing to discuss "serious philosophical issues." At any point in the discussion on whether people have a right to die, or whether it was ok to use tissue from aborted fetuses for stem cell research or whether we need universal health care, has anyone ever asked, "Well, what do the philosophers think?" (I have nothing against philosophers, btw. I…

"Philosophers" haven't had "serious philosophical issues" with this topic since Spinoza. Heck, even the Stoics. It's theology that has a problem, not philosophy, where theology crafts its ideas, very often, from the architectures of philosophical thought. Outside of a theological context, there isn't much of a debate anyway. Again: the Stoics.

We do ask philosophers about "right to die" and "permissibility of stem cell research from humans". Philosophers outline the conditions under which we rationally approach these things — they obviously do not license or themselves permit such behavior. No one asks a philosopher if that philosopher personally thinks some act is okay or not okay... I'm just not sure what to say here. That's not what philosophy is about, but I have a strange feeling that "it's all personal opinion anyway" really motivates this idea that philosophers do not contribute meaningfully to law and morality.

They inform ultimately what becomes legislation. Bertrand Russell was all over popular science in the 20th century. So was Bernard Williams. Dworkin. HLA Hart. The countless articles on ethics on JSTOR. All the philosophical journals. Stacks and stacks on anthologies collecting debates on abortion. ExPhi puts current opinion in the context of great thinkers of the history of philosophy, and helps us understand why we have the opinions we do have.

We don't ask them to describe the scientific innerworkings of these techniques. We do ask them to explain these things in broader cultural terms, and in that case the Scientist often times plays Philosopher, where that person so too must pick up a great work of Philosophy.

Ethics Committees are real things. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it's radically in error and shockingly misleading...

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#148

Post by DennisP » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:41 AM UTC

morganherlocker wrote: post #130

gaius wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, I have a friend who is a full-time professional philosopher (teaches at a university) and you would not believe the amount of earnest essay writing there was in the philosophy community about Miley Cyrus's performance at the VMAs (something I've not actually seen myself). All sorts of theories about Freud and Hegel and this and that. Look Philos, I said to him, she got up on stage and did a little dance a…

I would just point out that most of modern philosophy is not really like this. I think most people think philosophers spend there time arguing about ethics, when this is only one tiny part of philosophy. A good chunk of the current discussion in philosophy of science, for example, centers around epistemology to varying degrees as it relates to current discoveries in genetics and neuroscience. The top philosophers in…

If I wanted to learn the parts of philosophy that apply to machine learning, and how they apply, where should I look?

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#149

Post by itchitawa » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:48 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #64

rictic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post fills me with questions. Foremost: What makes anti-aging technology unnatural compared to other medical treatments? To take one example, the smallpox vaccine was initially considered unnatural, and an affront to God[1]. [1] http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/whitem10.html

I think it's fair to call most medical treatments unnatural. That doesn't make them bad, but it should make us thoughtful and careful. Natural systems are often, thanks to evolution and adaptation, complicated and delicately balanced. I think reflexive appeals to tradition and novelty are both kind of dumb. But if people are going to err, I'd rather they erred on the side of tradition: at least that shit has been dem…

One of the Therac-25 victims died 3 months later from cancer. Presumably the same cancer they were trying to treat, and thus avoided needing a hip replacement for the radiation damage. If your life is in such extreme danger from the disease itself, it can be worth taking risks with novel treatments. I'm sure some very old people with nothing to lose will be willing to try anti-aging, no matter how risky.

Re: Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice

#150

Post by DennisP » Mon, Dec 23, 2013, 1:49 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #131

KVFinn wrote: post #44

From Aubrey De Grey: Short answer is it’s not all that big a deal in biomedical terms. It’s a great discovery in terms of understanding mitochondria, and it provides a new way to rejuvenate mito function, but it doesn’t tell us that rejuvenating mito function in isolation in an otherwise still-old animal is a good idea -- and there have for many years been other ways to rejuvenate mito function which have not led to…

Aubrey De Grey is younger than I am, but he looks old and haggard, much older than I look (and much older than my younger sister who is almost exactly his age looks). I don't know why people take anti-aging advice from Aubrey De Grey. His advice has meager uptake or support in reliable sources on human medicine. AFTER EDIT: I see the first reaction to this comment was a silent downvote, which evokes my desire to lear…

As far as I know, Aubrey has not claimed to have invented any working anti-aging treatments so far, so I don't see that his personal appearance is relevant. He's promoting scientific research, not marketing a cream.