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We will be able to live to 1,000

news.bbc.co.uk

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Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#31

Post by pingswept »

teilo wrote: post #13

I just have to shake my head at this. The only adequate word for this is arrogance. The arrogance to believe that we know enough about the processes of life to extend them indefinitely. We don't even know what we don't know. How many times have we been at this place in the history of biology, where we honestly believe that we are just "that" close to figuring out the processes of life. We were wrong then, and we are…

From TFA: "And each method to do this is either already working in a preliminary form (in clinical trials) or is based on technologies that already exist and just need to be combined."

Totally agreed-- it's insane to think that because you can do some stuff in isolated cases, the combination is a trivial extension.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#32

Post by [deleted] »

MikeCapone wrote: post #2

We might or might not defeat the diseases of aging anytime soon, but if you want to help the people who are trying to make it happen, consider donating to the SENS Foundation (money goes directly to research): http://www.sens.org/ Sadly, because aging isn't considered a disease by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, there is actually very little research being done on it if you take into consideration the fact that…

[deleted]

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#33

Post by gte910h »

sshumaker wrote: post #16
rmorrison wrote: post #4

I don't see how humanity could handle something like mass distribution of a magic treatment that allowed people to live to 1,000. The world would quickly get over crowded, resources would dry up, world wars would follow, and who knows what else.

This is silly. Everyone was worried in the 1970's that the 1990's would have massive overcrowding and famines, but it didn't happen. Instead, the world population growth rate has begun to level off. Why? In affluent countries, people no longer have children out of necessity, but of desire. In fact, many first-world nations are actually now undergoing population contraction (Japan, much of Europe). If you eliminate ag…

It's not just the first world. Women in even the poorest countries are simply just choosing to have less children.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#34

Post by MikeCapone »

jules wrote: post #11
MikeCapone wrote: post #2

We might or might not defeat the diseases of aging anytime soon, but if you want to help the people who are trying to make it happen, consider donating to the SENS Foundation (money goes directly to research): http://www.sens.org/ Sadly, because aging isn't considered a disease by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, there is actually very little research being done on it if you take into consideration the fact that…

Before donating you should ask yourself whether Aubrey de Grey is a crackpot or not. I'm not sure myself. Can somebody shed some light on this?

He used to be a lot more controversial a few years ago (Technology Review even had a challenge, asking biogerontologists to debunk his claims, though none really did a convincing job). He's slowly but surely making his ideas more mainstream by tirelessly speaking, debating anyone who wants to, organising conferences and editing a respected peer reviewed journal (Rejuvenation Research, iirc).

If you think you have a good argument that would invalidate his theories, please first make sure that he hasn't answered it a thousand times first.

As usual, Wikipedia has mostly neutral info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#35

Post by ck2 »

That article is from 2004 (from top of page)

Last Updated: Friday, 3 December, 2004, 00:01 GMT

This kind of sensationalism is silly.

http://xkcd.com/678/

Falls under: It has not been conclusively proven impossible.

We don't know what kind of roadblocks there will be for this kind of development, we can't even guess - claims of 10-20 years are beyond silly, they are crazy and ignoring the concept of "what we don't know".

ps. Can you imagine how overpopulated the world would be?

How we would strip every resource bare?

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#36

Post by biggitybones »

sshumaker wrote: post #16
rmorrison wrote: post #4

I don't see how humanity could handle something like mass distribution of a magic treatment that allowed people to live to 1,000. The world would quickly get over crowded, resources would dry up, world wars would follow, and who knows what else.

This is silly. Everyone was worried in the 1970's that the 1990's would have massive overcrowding and famines, but it didn't happen. Instead, the world population growth rate has begun to level off. Why? In affluent countries, people no longer have children out of necessity, but of desire. In fact, many first-world nations are actually now undergoing population contraction (Japan, much of Europe). If you eliminate ag…

If people lived 10x longer than they do now, the birth rate would have to drop dramatically (my rudimentary math would assume that it would require 10% of the amount of births we have now) or you'd risk overcrowding.

We'd end up with government controlling the number of children, possibly even a lottery system. The overcrowding worries of the 70s and 90s were not because of a 1200% increase, rather a 10-20% increase.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#38

Post by MikeCapone »

[deleted] wrote: post #32
MikeCapone wrote: post #2

We might or might not defeat the diseases of aging anytime soon, but if you want to help the people who are trying to make it happen, consider donating to the SENS Foundation (money goes directly to research): http://www.sens.org/ Sadly, because aging isn't considered a disease by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, there is actually very little research being done on it if you take into consideration the fact that…

[deleted]

Could you please be specific in your criticism? Why would the engineering approach that he advocate not work? Why specifically is he a hack in your opinion?

Otherwise, it's just ad hominem.

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#39

Post by jrockway »

Can I bet on the opposite side of this? I bet that nobody who is 60 now will live to 1000.

Don't get me wrong, I would like to live to 1000... but I would be pretty surprised if my kids live past 150. I will be surprised if I live to 100. It's sad to think about, but our bodies wear out over time (cosmic rays and whatnot), and we don't have the technology to repair them efficiently yet. People still die from the flu!

Re: We will be able to live to 1,000

#40

Post by gte910h »

jules wrote: post #11
MikeCapone wrote: post #2

We might or might not defeat the diseases of aging anytime soon, but if you want to help the people who are trying to make it happen, consider donating to the SENS Foundation (money goes directly to research): http://www.sens.org/ Sadly, because aging isn't considered a disease by the FDA and other regulatory bodies, there is actually very little research being done on it if you take into consideration the fact that…

Before donating you should ask yourself whether Aubrey de Grey is a crackpot or not. I'm not sure myself. Can somebody shed some light on this?

He's looking for cures to issues that are real problems. If you fix any of the problems, even partially, they show great promise for helping older people to be decrepit, even if they don't actually extend lifespan. His hope is curing these types of damage will cause humans to functionally stop aging, but curing these types of damage are useful in and of themselves:

Cell loss, tissue atrophy

Nuclear [epi]mutations

Mutant mitochondria

Death-resistant cells

Tissue stiffening

Extracellular aggregates (Cleaning crap out of our bodies that shouldn't be there and isn't in cells)

Intracellular aggregates (Cleaning crap out of cells that shouldn't be there and is in cells)

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