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A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

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Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#71

Post by orangecat »

buyx wrote: post #11
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

Its a promising result, but a lot of mice experiments don't have the same effects on people. It would be ironic if this technique failed on humans subjected to a lot of exposure to botox :-) The fear is that suddenly not only would the rich get richer, but they would never die. That leads to some fairly depressing scenarios.

The political consequences will be interesting. One of the consolations if living under a tyrant is that they will, eventually die. I wonder if having Robert Mugabe around for another 40 years would excite Zimbabweans. The flip-side is that citizens could get more politically active if they couldn't rely on death to prevent gerontocracies.

North Korea's tyrants eventually die, but that doesn't help as long as they have equally tyrannical descendants ready to take over.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#72

Post by X4 »

stcredzero wrote: post #19
ashray wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich would not get richer. They would stay alive and stick around until they got poorer and eventually died.

In Larry Niven's Known Space books, some of the rich stuck around so long that they became hyper bored and so decided to become super criminals. He has one such minor character who is a woman over two centuries old, with all of the experience and knowledge that entails, with the body of an 18 year old.

Asked a buddy who ain't that smart on what he would do, if he could live 300 years.

He said: "I'd rob a bank, big time."

I asked why he would do that and he said that he could give the money to a trustee and sit his time and become rich afterwards.

So your story sounds legit to me. And I just asked for 300 years. Living 16.000 years like in the movie: "The man from Earth", was way out of his graspable zone. And he started arguing about god would kill you and so on...

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#73

Post by X4 »

Without being an expert in the area, but having some detailed knowledge in the field, it honestly sounds like hype. The statement that it wasn't mentioned anywhere, before is bogus. Take a look at the source [1] that describes how NAD actually has an effect on telomeres.

They really suggest using regular supplements on that url, which I'd call bullshit! I can't tell, if it's the editors fault, a missunderstandin, or if they really mean that. That's because I've no access to the real paper.

--

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotinamide_adenine_dinucleoti...

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#74

Post by X4 »

simonsquiff wrote: post #69

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 t…

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a geneticist, but the logical reason for this sounds as simple as enriching the baby's DNA with that from the mother and father. Also only cells, which are our main building blocks, suffer from death. The death as we know it, is only affecting "bodily" species incl. single-celled life forms. DNA doesn't die, ever (given good conditions). That's why scientists can still extract DNA from animals which have been died thousands or millions of years ago.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#75

Post by BetterLateThan »

Mr Stoyte broke the silence. 'How long do you figure it would take before a person went like that?' he said in a slow, hesitating voice. 'I mean, it wouldn't happen at once ... there'd be a long time while a person ... well, you know; while he wouldn't change any. And once you get over the first shock - well, they look like they were having a pretty good time. I mean in their own way, of course. Don't you think so, Obispo?' he insisted.

- Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.

...But I am sure this news makes banks, bureaucracies and big pharma mega-ecstatic.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#76

Post by asveikau »

jpollock wrote: post #45
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=...

They don't die _from_ cancer, but they tend to _have_ cancer when they die. Tumours in old people grow slowly.

> Tumours in old people grow slowly.

Anyone else read this and fantasize about the world's most ironic cancer treatment? If we could somehow speed up the aging process... (No I'm not serious...)

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#77

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #70
waps wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

[deleted]

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#78

Post by Terr_ »

jpollock wrote: post #45
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=...

They don't die _from_ cancer, but they tend to _have_ cancer when they die. Tumours in old people grow slowly.

More like tumors in old people who did not die from the cancer are tumors which grew slowly.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#79

Post by alanfalcon »

X4 wrote: post #72
stcredzero wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Larry Niven's Known Space books, some of the rich stuck around so long that they became hyper bored and so decided to become super criminals. He has one such minor character who is a woman over two centuries old, with all of the experience and knowledge that entails, with the body of an 18 year old.

Asked a buddy who ain't that smart on what he would do, if he could live 300 years. He said: "I'd rob a bank, big time." I asked why he would do that and he said that he could give the money to a trustee and sit his time and become rich afterwards. So your story sounds legit to me. And I just asked for 300 years. Living 16.000 years like in the movie: "The man from Earth", was way out of his graspable zone. And he st…

When you rob a bank and get caught, they don't let you keep the money.

Re: A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging

#80

Post by stcredzero »

X4 wrote: post #72
stcredzero wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Larry Niven's Known Space books, some of the rich stuck around so long that they became hyper bored and so decided to become super criminals. He has one such minor character who is a woman over two centuries old, with all of the experience and knowledge that entails, with the body of an 18 year old.

Asked a buddy who ain't that smart on what he would do, if he could live 300 years. He said: "I'd rob a bank, big time." I asked why he would do that and he said that he could give the money to a trustee and sit his time and become rich afterwards. So your story sounds legit to me. And I just asked for 300 years. Living 16.000 years like in the movie: "The man from Earth", was way out of his graspable zone. And he st…

Tell your buddy to take a decade out of his life and become a NASCAR driver. Then take another decade to become a top-flight Bluegrass banjo player. I think those trump whatever life experience he'd get from robbing a bank.
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