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A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

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Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#61

Post by garg »

salimmadjd wrote: post #58

Anti-aging divide? I'm all for anti-aging, I was obsessed by it since my teens and got a degree in molecular biology thinking I want to dedicate my life to it, I even own dontage.com. However, I'm concerned about implications of potentially high-price anti-aging treatments. Till now, death has been the great equalizer. Life is inherently unfair. If you are born in poverty there is high chances you'll stay there, but…

Were scientists from the past worried about this when they worked to improve medicines and public health that has increased the global average lifespan from 31 years to 70 years in the past century?

No one knows the answers to your questions, but I think there will be solutions to those problems. Birth rates are averaging out and hopefully starting to go down. Automation of work is going up. The reach of education has increased.

Also even if everyone was immune to death by aging, some actuaries showed that humans will still be limited to 400 years due to accidental death.

I think that people in different parts of the world today have life spans that are 1/2 to 1/3rd of other countries. Maybe if we're not losing all our most experienced and knowledgeable people to senility, old age, and death, we may come up with solutions more quickly.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#62

Post by waps »

Retric wrote: post #48
wozer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you live long enough, you will get cancer Is this true, though? The really old rarely die from cancer, it seems. http://z3.invisionfree.com/The_110_Club/index.php?showtopic=...

It's not that the risk of cancer goes down it's that all the other risks goes up. Remember really old people have a 50/50 chance of death per year risk and your cancer risk is lower than that. But long term even a 1 in 200 risk of death per year will still kill you. Anyway, I don't really see the problem with rich people living longer lives. Dynastic wealth still lingers around and ends up in the hands of incompetent…

This is a book about the tradeoffs (if you're God/Darwin) of death. Really, really interesting book :

http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Origins-Death-William-Clark/dp/019...

He first frames the problem. Firstly pointing out that not all parts of the human body are subject to death. Every cell in your body was alive 180000 years ago when the human race first emerged, and even 3 billion years ago when the first cells really started happening. Every cell in your body and, indeed, you yourself are part of the original cell's lifespan.

Second he goes over a lot of experiments that indeed point out the trade-off that God is making here : either you die, or you become a cancerous blob, over time. Not creating the situation where cancer will eventually win is also a no-go, for other reasons.

Thirdly, he points out, mathematically, what death is and isn't for a human. It isn't nearly as clear-cut as you might think. He also gives the philosophical reasons why death may indeed not be the end of existence (well it isn't, if you have kids, for obvious reasons, but it may also not be the end of your conscious existence for other reasons).

Really, this book will change your thinking on death a lot, and after reading it you will understand that not dieing is something that will come with massive consequences.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#63

Post by delinquentme »

salimmadjd wrote: post #58

Anti-aging divide? I'm all for anti-aging, I was obsessed by it since my teens and got a degree in molecular biology thinking I want to dedicate my life to it, I even own dontage.com. However, I'm concerned about implications of potentially high-price anti-aging treatments. Till now, death has been the great equalizer. Life is inherently unfair. If you are born in poverty there is high chances you'll stay there, but…

You're missing the point. Sure suffer in the minutiae of all the implications / implementation. End of story its a single question: Do we want to have this "problem" ? Yes.

To phrase differently: Lets NOT have planes because they might burst into flames once in a while. Do you see the absurdity ?

Want to know a good way to pull yourself out of squalor? Fix aging.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#64

Post by lcnmrn »

salimmadjd wrote: post #58

Anti-aging divide? I'm all for anti-aging, I was obsessed by it since my teens and got a degree in molecular biology thinking I want to dedicate my life to it, I even own dontage.com. However, I'm concerned about implications of potentially high-price anti-aging treatments. Till now, death has been the great equalizer. Life is inherently unfair. If you are born in poverty there is high chances you'll stay there, but…

You're assumption that people want to retire is wrong. People are retiring because the aren't capable of full work hours. With right medicine people would work more, maybe in the future there won't be such thing as "retirement funds".

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#65

Post by argumentum »

rz2k wrote: post #46
argumentum wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure if possible, serious anti-aging technogy will drop in price due to incredible market demand. It's highly unlikely the compound relies on resources that are extremely rare. Even if that were the case, someone would quickly find a way to replicate the procedure without the rare resources. Likely the things in the way would be governments and corporations trying to profit through IP. In that case, black…

Just to be clear, increasing demand implies shifting the demand curve rightward, and increases the price. The dynamics of economies of scale that we are familiar with are related to chance that suppliers can lower their marginal costs if demand also justifies a fixed cost in suitable technology. And furthermore, if there is a big enough market and enough suppliers, the market price will approach the marginal cost of…

I didn't say mere "increased" demand, I said "incredible" demand. I meant to imply that economies of scale would develop, as I imagine most will pay everything they have for the ability to live forever. (At least I would, as long as I was purely rational. I can imagine getting bored of life in 500 years or so, but I doubt it).

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#66

Post by salimmadjd »

lcnmrn wrote: post #64
salimmadjd wrote: post #58

Anti-aging divide? I'm all for anti-aging, I was obsessed by it since my teens and got a degree in molecular biology thinking I want to dedicate my life to it, I even own dontage.com. However, I'm concerned about implications of potentially high-price anti-aging treatments. Till now, death has been the great equalizer. Life is inherently unfair. If you are born in poverty there is high chances you'll stay there, but…

You're assumption that people want to retire is wrong. People are retiring because the aren't capable of full work hours. With right medicine people would work more, maybe in the future there won't be such thing as "retirement funds".

I'm talking about right now. Most people are retired by 65. Now we suddenly extend their lives to 100. You think anyone would hire them again after being out of work force for 10-15 years?

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#67

Post by haldujai »

exratione wrote: post #60
haldujai wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like a pragmatist and not a scientist. Your argument is the equivalent of arguing no one should bother with low level programming knowledge or understanding how functions work in Ruby/Python/etc. You're also talking like someone who has no experience with life sciences research at all and is an armchair expert. As someone who has dedicated a significant portion of my life and time to research in medical scienc…

Working to do something about aging in advance of full understanding of aging is absolutely the pragmatic approach. It is engineering. It is the building of fine bridges by Romans and Victorians in advance of material science and computer simulation. To pick one example from the SENS portfolio - by which I mean the list of techniques developed in the scientific community for other reasons and adopted as useful by the…

"It is the building of fine bridges by Romans and Victorians in advance of material science and computer simulation."

Not really - it is the equivalent of Romans building bridges by sticking dirt together without figuring out the correct composition of building materials, why/how materials can cement, and so forth.

"allotopic expression of mitochondrial genes is absolutely a way to fix protein expression issues."

You are actively presenting bleeding edge research as a definite solution in spite of how primitive it is [1]. It is not immediately clear that allotopic expression is the answer, just because it worked in mice for one specific example it is not necessarily true that it translates to humans or other diseases. In fact, findings in mice often do not translate to humans [2].

"SENS is supported by a number of noted figures in the life sciences, including George Church, Anthony Atala, Judith Campisi, and so forth:"

While I respect Campisi's work on senescence and aging there is obviously conflict here where one of the pioneers of the field is supportive of a theory that promotes her field. For this reason I think it is best that we do not defer to authority figures on this matter as you will find reputable authorities on both sides of this debate.

"You are behind the times on calorie restriction research. It works very well on all measures of health in primates except for longevity."

See [3] from de Cabo's group (who is one of the authors on the paper in the OP). If you're talking about increasing lifespan (one of the lofty goals of SENS) is longevity not the most important thing here? From this (respected) paper de Cabo points out many flaws in the studies on caloric restriction due to differing methodologies and genetic variation that resulted in adverse effects in some murine experiments. This is far from 'working well'.

[1] http://www.genetics.org/content/165/2/707.short [2] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/02/07/1222878110.abst... [3] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/full/nature1...

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#68

Post by ggreer »

salimmadjd wrote: post #58

Anti-aging divide? I'm all for anti-aging, I was obsessed by it since my teens and got a degree in molecular biology thinking I want to dedicate my life to it, I even own dontage.com. However, I'm concerned about implications of potentially high-price anti-aging treatments. Till now, death has been the great equalizer. Life is inherently unfair. If you are born in poverty there is high chances you'll stay there, but…

There are many downsides to curing aging, but none of them are as bad as the current situation: 100,000 deaths every day. It's worse than you can imagine; those 100,000 people experienced decades of mental and physical decline before they died.

I think you are confused about the economics of the situation. Who will pay for retirement benefits? Aging is why we retire. If we never got old, we could work as long as we wanted.

Even if anti-aging treatments remain expensive for decades after they're invented, it will still be economically worthwhile to treat everyone. This is because age-related diseases are more expensive. Alzheimer's. Cancer. Heart disease. Dementia. COPD. These diseases slowly kill their victims, causing immense suffering. Treatments for most of them are ineffectual and cost millions for each patient. When it comes to cost, rejuvenation therapies have a low bar to get over.

My grandmother died this month. She had a form of rheumatoid arthritis that slowly turned her lungs into scar tissue. My only consolation is that her mind didn't go before she died. If only rich people could avoid her fate, I wouldn't mind a bit. The fewer people who suffer as she did, the better.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#69

Post by simonsquiff »

One thing I'd really like to understand re: ageing is why a newborn is essentially 'reset' from an ageing perspective. I appreciate that egg cells aren't constantly dividing during a mothers life but they are still a product of division and contain DNA that can suffer from time based mutations. So if aging is due to mistakes accumulated during either divisions or time then why are children born young? I don't think this is as simple as non-viable embryos are miscarried, there must be something different in the formation of embryos that means they don't carry the aging of their parents...and what clue does that give to cure aging?

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#70

Post by Retric »

waps wrote: post #62
Retric wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that the risk of cancer goes down it's that all the other risks goes up. Remember really old people have a 50/50 chance of death per year risk and your cancer risk is lower than that. But long term even a 1 in 200 risk of death per year will still kill you. Anyway, I don't really see the problem with rich people living longer lives. Dynastic wealth still lingers around and ends up in the hands of incompetent…

This is a book about the tradeoffs (if you're God/Darwin) of death. Really, really interesting book : http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Origins-Death-William-Clark/dp/019... He first frames the problem. Firstly pointing out that not all parts of the human body are subject to death. Every cell in your body was alive 180000 years ago when the human race first emerged, and even 3 billion years ago when the first cells really st…

Your falling pray to survivors bias. If you pick a cell and after each time it reproduces you pick just one of it's decedents as the 'original' then they don't actually last all that long on average. Sure, single celled organisms don't have a built in lifespan but without reproduction anything can wipe them out and you can easily find an average lifespan that's not all that long.

As to redefining things so there is only a single cell on the planet that's meaningless. Transcription errors occur all the time to the point where most of the cells in your body don't share the same DNA. Some people even contain a large number of their siblings cells to the point where DNA tests are less reliable than you might think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)

Multi celled organisms are best thought of like a country it's an agreement between a group of similar cells. As such theirs plenty of edge cases where something is both a viable single celled organism and part of an a collective. Specialization is more efficient but not really necessary. As such it's easy to see just how multi celled organisms evolve, but also how cancer is basically inevitable because breaking that agreement does not prevent a cell from being viable in the short term. It also demonstrates that sharing DNA is not really nessiary as for example gut bacteria play a vary useful role dispite sharing any DNA with their host.

PS: In the life sciences edge cases can get really strange. As in the closest genetic species to humans is a bunch of single celled organisms not monkey's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

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