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

theguardian.com

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

#171

Post by tiatia »

olalonde wrote: post #16
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…

The same is true of artificial intelligence. For example, articles always mention that brain simulation would help us understand brain diseases (alzheimer, schizophrenia, etc.) better and barely mention the much bigger implications of strong AI (like that it might be the last thing humans ever need to invent).

Well, something like a "technical singularity"?

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

#173

Post by wpietri »

chc wrote: post #72
wpietri wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Eben Byers was a victim of quack medicine, much like people nowadays who try to use magnets and sugar water to cure cancer. Bringing him up in a discussion of real medicine is frankly an insult to the researchers who do this stuff.

Once you're done stroking your outrage gland, you might note that I didn't suggest an equivalence between these researchers and, well, anybody. I was talking about ideas made appealing by ignorance, ones that are dumb only in retrospect.

The patent medicine Byers took was legal. Indeed his doctor recommended it to him. Unsurprising given that its seller, William J. A. Bailey, offered doctors a 17% kickback to prescribe the stuff. Even after this product was banned (because it finally killed a rich guy?), Bailey was never prosecuted, and continued to sell radium-related products after this. He died wealthy and free at the age of 64, nearly 14 years after killing Byers, and who knows how many other people.

It's a fine example of what I was talking about, where erring on the side of the shiny and new was not a good heuristic; the people who stuck with the traditional and natural did better for themselves despite Bailey and Byers surely scoffing at them.

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

#174

Post by wpietri »

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…

I sure have. Ethicists are immensely helpful in discussing these topics, especially bioethicists.

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

#175

Post by XorNot »

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…

Inhibiting or preventing dementia isn't a "lifestyle drug". It would solve a very serious issue we have with aging populations, or indeed any population, where we have a huge number of people who are very much alive but incapable of managing basic life functions.

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

#176

Post by heed »

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…

You were likely downvoted for your rudeness, and fallaciousness. How he looks has no relevance to his ideas, his work or this thread.

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

#177

Post by brador »

kolev wrote: post #25
mrfusion wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I do see this quote: "Turner said a “magic pill” that reverses ageing is several years away, partially due to the cost of the compound, which would be about $50,000 a day for a human." So in guessing there's some special processing of the compound or a special way to get it into each cell somehow.

Currently, you can buy NADH, which seem different, or NAD+ precursors (Niacin, Niacinamide) or Niagen ( https://chromadex.com/Ingredients/NIAGEN.html ), which is proprietary and suppoedly increasing NAD+ levels. It's pretty expensive as of now compared to Niacin, but, still, $50/month isn't that much. Combining Niagen with Resveratrol should do the trick.

Any expected or potential side effects?

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

#179

Post by 31reasons »

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…

With your attitude I don't think we would ever invent or discover any medicine or treatment. Agreed, natural systems are complicated and delicately balanced, but we have Physics, Math, Chemistry and Computer Science to help us understand those delicately balanced and complicated systems. Please give some credit to Human Intelligence that itself is a product of millions of years of evolution. I often hear people saying "X can't be done because evolution perfected it". I call it bullshit. Evolutionary systems are not perfect and can be improved with right tools and we do have the tools.

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

#180

Post by intenex »

johndevor wrote: post #89
maratd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. You have absolutely no clue what a future with a "25-year-old health until the age of about 90" would look like. Not even close. There are literally millions of things, from the economy to social structure, that would be impacted. It's not possible to even remotely predict.

Neither do you! So stop trying to predict that it's necessarily a bad or "selfish" thing.

Boom. This was a great rebuttal, I just needed to say that.
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