Scientists successfully activate human telomerase • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#31

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Sep 12, 2010, 4:20 PM UTC

dflock wrote: post #5

swwu wrote: post #3

Layperson's explanation - this is a pretty important step to stopping aging in human beings. Telomerase lengthens telomeres, which are end-caps on DNA strands that are slowly whittled away as cells divide; without functioning telomerase human cells can only divide a finite amount of times before dying.

Also, telomeres are largely an anti-cancer defence mechanism, like a surprisingly large number of other things that your cells do all day. When a person 'gets cancer', this just means that one of the many, many potential cancers they've had, slipped through all the defences and got out of hand. At a cellular level, the opposite of ageing isn't longevity, it's cancer.

[deleted]

Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#32

Post by dizzyd » Sun, Sep 12, 2010, 4:37 PM UTC

tonygonz wrote: post #17

dflock wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, telomeres are largely an anti-cancer defence mechanism, like a surprisingly large number of other things that your cells do all day. When a person 'gets cancer', this just means that one of the many, many potential cancers they've had, slipped through all the defences and got out of hand. At a cellular level, the opposite of ageing isn't longevity, it's cancer.

However, our ability to fight cancer is also getting better and better, and likely will not be a serious issue in the long term. I, for one, would be happy to trade longer life for a higher risk of cancer. As a reasonably healthy person today, I'm pretty sure that by the time cancer as a result of longer life became an issue (say, around the year 2040-50 in my case), the cancer itself would be easily treatable by oth…

You've clearly never had cancer. I too considered myself a "reasonably healthy person" and was surprised to get diagnosed at 32 with stage 4 lymphoma. I've had it and done the chemo and come out the other side (for now). My cancer is one of the more treatable ones (>80% survival over 5 years), the chemo one of the lesser ones (R-CHOP). Even so it was one of the most difficult experiences in my life.

Trading a probability of longer life for a higher probability of cancer is just stupid. Most cancer treatments have the potential to (dramatically) shorten your life -- i.e. the combined probabilities probably don't work out in your favor.

Make the time you have count.

Re: Scientists successfully activate human telomerase

#33

Post by reasonattlm » Sun, Sep 12, 2010, 4:53 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #18

This is just an ad masquerading as research, I'm flagging this. I mean, please: "Calvin Harley is one of the inventors of TA-65. He consults for TA Sciences and is personally taking TA-65. He owns stock and stock options in Geron Corporation, a company that is developing telomerase activators for therapeutic purposes and the company that licensed TA-65 to TA Sciences." how transparent can you be. Also, if something i…

Quackwatch is a useful resource, provided that you realize it is overly conservative in anything relating to longevity science. Historically that has been the correct position, but a more careful approach is needed these days.

Personally, I'm disappointed with Sierra Sciences for associating with TA Sciences - the whole TA-65 thing is just a herb-selling operation with a cloud of hype of the sort that brings the whole field into disrepute. This essentially means that Sierra now gets lumped into the same category and anything they have to say in the future is looked at with skepticism. Which is a pity, since up to this point they looked like a sane group doing good, albeit slow, science.