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Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

washington.edu

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Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#31

Post by jonknee »

avodonosov wrote: post #26
jonknee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If somehow we can stay alive as a species long enough we very well might be able to discover the secret to regeneration and immortality in some way. Hopefully we won't figure that out before we figure out how to not overcrowd Earth.

Forbid procreation for those who chosen immortality. If you decided to spawn children, then free space for them - die. (Or go cryopreservation and be kept in a small box occupying little space. In this case you and your decedents can live in turns: they live for one century while you sleep frozen; next century other way around).

You can't let people choose because even a small percentage of people choosing immortality a generation will end up overcrowding the planet given enough time.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#32

Post by avodonosov »

jonknee wrote: post #31
avodonosov wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forbid procreation for those who chosen immortality. If you decided to spawn children, then free space for them - die. (Or go cryopreservation and be kept in a small box occupying little space. In this case you and your decedents can live in turns: they live for one century while you sleep frozen; next century other way around).

You can't let people choose because even a small percentage of people choosing immortality a generation will end up overcrowding the planet given enough time.

This depends on the reproduction rate. If it's > 1 then you're right. BTW, controlling reproduction rate is a way to not overcrowd Earth.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#33

Post by flukus »

Ygg2 wrote: post #11
awqrre wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you got cancer, just cut that piece off and eat more?

Yeah, just regrow that brain, liver, thyroid gland. It could be those genes raise chance of cancer everywhere. Not just limbs.

Are there animals that regrow their brain after a partial labotomy? In any case, humans can live with large chunk of brain removed, under the right circumstances.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#34

Post by trentmb »

PeterisP wrote: post #2

Well, a plausible answer is that if we (or random mutations) re-enable those genes then the end result is simply a lot of cancer. A reasonable default assumption is that each switch in our "genetic configuration" is set to a quite good value. The only exception is if we see a feature that is beneficial at a high calorie cost - those features have been (reasonably) optimized away during our evolution, but would be use…

> A reasonable default assumption is that each switch in our "genetic configuration" is set to a quite good value.

Least awful sounds more correct.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#36

Post by badminton1 »

Probably because limb regeneration wasn't a favored trait during our evolution. e.g: we managed to survive and be fertile without it.

Rather than limb regeneration we evolved pain and fear to prevent losing a limb in the first place.

A similar question would be why aren't fruit toxic so animals stop eating them? Because they pass their genes anyways. Rather than that, animals that were too good at eating fruit, destroyed their own food source and died.

Another interesting phenomenon are lemmings. Why lemmings kill themselves en-masse? Because they're too fertile. And as a population their own way to control their size is to mass suicide.

The hawk and dove model game in game theory attempts to explain a bit of this.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#37

Post by JumpCrisscross »

avodonosov wrote: post #26
jonknee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If somehow we can stay alive as a species long enough we very well might be able to discover the secret to regeneration and immortality in some way. Hopefully we won't figure that out before we figure out how to not overcrowd Earth.

Forbid procreation for those who chosen immortality. If you decided to spawn children, then free space for them - die. (Or go cryopreservation and be kept in a small box occupying little space. In this case you and your decedents can live in turns: they live for one century while you sleep frozen; next century other way around).

> Forbid recreation for those who chosen immortality

How do you police sex in a democracy?

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#38

Post by trentmb »

ryandvm wrote: post #20
PeterisP wrote: post #2

Well, a plausible answer is that if we (or random mutations) re-enable those genes then the end result is simply a lot of cancer. A reasonable default assumption is that each switch in our "genetic configuration" is set to a quite good value. The only exception is if we see a feature that is beneficial at a high calorie cost - those features have been (reasonably) optimized away during our evolution, but would be use…

The ability to regenerate body parts and cancer are not inextricably linked. Take the axolotl. It has the ability to regenerate entire limbs. It's also estimated to be a couple orders of magnitude more resistant to cancer than humans.

> Take the axolotl. It has the ability to regenerate entire limbs. It's also estimated to be a couple orders of magnitude more resistant to cancer than humans.

The lifespan of of the axolotl is 10-15 years. I'd love to see the cancer rates for 71 year old axolotls.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#39

Post by BurningFrog »

PeterisP wrote: post #2

Well, a plausible answer is that if we (or random mutations) re-enable those genes then the end result is simply a lot of cancer. A reasonable default assumption is that each switch in our "genetic configuration" is set to a quite good value. The only exception is if we see a feature that is beneficial at a high calorie cost - those features have been (reasonably) optimized away during our evolution, but would be use…

Another exception would be if a limb has fallen off or otherwise failed.

Then it would be great to be able to turn regeneration on, for that limb only. Any added risk should be much smaller than the always-on version.

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