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Gee, lets do the same with everything. No government regulation for anything. After all, you can choose what is an acceptable risk. So what if you didn't know that Uber drivers aren't properly insured? Why not unregulated food manufacturers who can sell you bacteria-laced meat? Why not unregulated cars that are unsafe at any speed?

Yes, food & automobile manufacturers have a strong incentive to kill their customers. It's good for long-term profits.

Why not unregulated medicines that are as likely to kill as to cure?

Vioxx was FDA approved, and killed 60,000 people. Meanwhile, effective drugs are unnecessarily kept off of the market by the FDA, like Provenge. And those are only 2 examples.

And unregulated banks that can take your money and run?

Or the regulated banks that can do that legally.

Hey, go all the way - allow the issuing of unregulated currencies

Why not? The Fed has done such a bang-up job.

the use of non-credentialed teachers from the local state pen, and everything else?

Yes, credentialed pedophiles that the teachers' union support are much better.

The fact is that regulations are supposed to ensure that the consumer doesn't have to spend hours investigation who is and who isn't competent themselves, as well as provide a feedback mechanism when the regulations are broken.

There are a boatload of ways to find out about what products are good and which businesses provide competent employees, such as the Better Business Bureau, Consumer Reports, Underwriters Laboratory, as well as review web sites, etc. I'm not saying unregulated markets would be perfect, but I believe that they would by and large be a better solution than the current regulatory morass we have in this country.

http://www.tbimedlegal.com/

And people are dying early now due to the rich-poor divide. So why not fix that now?
http://overpopulationisamyth.c...

Also, such research ignores the low-hanging fruit of better nutrition as I mention here: http://science.slashdot.org/co...

How to get healthier for most people in the Western world: https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
http://www.bluezones.com/
http://www.motherjones.com/env...
http://www.grassrootshealth.ne...
https://www.lef.org/magazine/m...

But it is hard to make huge profits from suggesting people live well and clean up their environment and thus prevent and cure disease... There are a lot more profits to keeping people on patented drugs by just treating chronic "conditions" or reducing the pains associated with them.

To be clear, I'm not against anti-aging research or genomics. I'm just saying, we as a society and scientific community are often ignoring the obvious well-proven paths to better health and extended life-span and diminished "frail span" for most people.

Of course, genomics also has a dark side -- the potential for customized plagues that may destroy humanity in the next few decades, like I worry about here: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

So, I'd suggest we build healthier and more secure and equitable communities for everyone right now, before the plague potential of genomics fully emerges, in order to have the community spirit needed to deal with the dark side of such innovation.

Put away your red flag. All of the products formulated by Life Extension are produced in accordance with Good Manufacturing Practice (or GMP) as set forth in 21 CFR Part 111 of the Food Drug and Cosmetics act.

Not all "vitamins" are equal. For one thing, Recommended Daily Allowances are set to prevent known diseases: e.g., if you don't have scurvy, establishment medicine says you must be getting enough vitamin C. Rarely is research done to discover an optimum level of supplementation. So studies that involve giving people the RDA or a little more aren't as dispositive as they might be.

Second, vitamins vary in quality. Cheapo supermarket multivitamins might have the same quantities listed on the label as something from a high-quality source like LEF, but they won't use the highest-quality sources, the most bio-available kinds, etc.

So my guess is that these "debunking" studies involved people taking Centrum multivitamins or whatever and they didn't see much in the way of results. I'd like to see a study done with LEF multivitamins, which I've taken for years and been happy with.

Let us also not forget that high-carbohydrate foods are addictive and fattening, and yet we [Americans] were told by our government that fat is what makes you fat. The same FDA that has claimed that Walnuts are illegal pharmaceuticals on the basis of factual health claims and forced dairy producers who advertise a lack of rBGH/rBST to carry a notice that the FDA has detected no difference in such products even though it is a blatant lie also promoted "diet" foods which were low in fat and high in carbohydrates. The government literally promoted obesity.

Just for fun, here's a test ( "Vitamin-D-25-Hydroxy-Blood-Test" ) for about $60.
test writeup excerpt: "You should know your Vitamin D blood level. Life Extension offers a reliable vitamin D blood test at a fraction of what most commercial blood labs charge. Optimal blood levels of vitamin D are often far greater than the standard reference range."
Just as an aside, in case you haven't had your bloodwork done, it can be a useful benchmark health-wise. "Blood Tests A to Z"
Ordering a test this way may be less headache than talking a doctor or insurance company into doing the same.
Some things to consider for Women and Men.

btw - I have no stake in LEF.ORG, I just find their tests and articles useful. Since we are talking Vitamin-D, for example, if you know anyone supplementing calcium then this is worth reading: "Brittle Bones and Hardened Arteries: The Hidden Link".

Just for fun, here's a test ( "Vitamin-D-25-Hydroxy-Blood-Test" ) for about $60.
test writeup excerpt: "You should know your Vitamin D blood level. Life Extension offers a reliable vitamin D blood test at a fraction of what most commercial blood labs charge. Optimal blood levels of vitamin D are often far greater than the standard reference range."
Just as an aside, in case you haven't had your bloodwork done, it can be a useful benchmark health-wise. "Blood Tests A to Z"
Ordering a test this way may be less headache than talking a doctor or insurance company into doing the same.
Some things to consider for Women and Men.

btw - I have no stake in LEF.ORG, I just find their tests and articles useful. Since we are talking Vitamin-D, for example, if you know anyone supplementing calcium then this is worth reading: "Brittle Bones and Hardened Arteries: The Hidden Link".

Just for fun, here's a test ( "Vitamin-D-25-Hydroxy-Blood-Test" ) for about $60.
test writeup excerpt: "You should know your Vitamin D blood level. Life Extension offers a reliable vitamin D blood test at a fraction of what most commercial blood labs charge. Optimal blood levels of vitamin D are often far greater than the standard reference range."
Just as an aside, in case you haven't had your bloodwork done, it can be a useful benchmark health-wise. "Blood Tests A to Z"
Ordering a test this way may be less headache than talking a doctor or insurance company into doing the same.
Some things to consider for Women and Men.

btw - I have no stake in LEF.ORG, I just find their tests and articles useful. Since we are talking Vitamin-D, for example, if you know anyone supplementing calcium then this is worth reading: "Brittle Bones and Hardened Arteries: The Hidden Link".

Just for fun, here's a test ( "Vitamin-D-25-Hydroxy-Blood-Test" ) for about $60.
test writeup excerpt: "You should know your Vitamin D blood level. Life Extension offers a reliable vitamin D blood test at a fraction of what most commercial blood labs charge. Optimal blood levels of vitamin D are often far greater than the standard reference range."
Just as an aside, in case you haven't had your bloodwork done, it can be a useful benchmark health-wise. "Blood Tests A to Z"
Ordering a test this way may be less headache than talking a doctor or insurance company into doing the same.
Some things to consider for Women and Men.

btw - I have no stake in LEF.ORG, I just find their tests and articles useful. Since we are talking Vitamin-D, for example, if you know anyone supplementing calcium then this is worth reading: "Brittle Bones and Hardened Arteries: The Hidden Link".

Just for fun, here's a test ( "Vitamin-D-25-Hydroxy-Blood-Test" ) for about $60.
test writeup excerpt: "You should know your Vitamin D blood level. Life Extension offers a reliable vitamin D blood test at a fraction of what most commercial blood labs charge. Optimal blood levels of vitamin D are often far greater than the standard reference range."
Just as an aside, in case you haven't had your bloodwork done, it can be a useful benchmark health-wise. "Blood Tests A to Z"
Ordering a test this way may be less headache than talking a doctor or insurance company into doing the same.
Some things to consider for Women and Men.

btw - I have no stake in LEF.ORG, I just find their tests and articles useful. Since we are talking Vitamin-D, for example, if you know anyone supplementing calcium then this is worth reading: "Brittle Bones and Hardened Arteries: The Hidden Link".

Difficult conversations,yes. And here is an even more difficult aspect, because there is no profit in it for the mainstream cancer industry: http://www.lef.org/protocols/cancer/brain_tumor_01.htm
"Vitamin D3, the chemical form of vitamin D made in the skin and sold as a nutritional supplement, calcitriol (1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D), the active form of vitamin D, and various chemical analogs and metabolites of vitamin D, have all been shown to inhibit growth and trigger apoptosis in neuroblastoma and glioma cells (Naveilhan P et al 1994, Baudet C et al 1996, Elias J et al 2003, van Ginkel PR et al 2007)."

Iodine is another thing to consider for helping with cure and prevention, and again is very cheap and not patentable so has few advocates in the cancer industry:
http://brain-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/2011/12/could-iodine-kill-cancer-cells.html

As Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Upton Sinclair also wrote a book on using fasting to heal cancer, btw, but what profit is their in advising patients to fast compared to advising them to buy $10K bottles of pills every month?
http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/fasting-cure-for-health.html

But once you have cancer, getting rid of it is iffy no matter what you do. The best thing to do is to prevent it, which again is fairly inexpensive, without much profit for the mainstream medical industry:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx

The USA even subsidizes creating cancer through its agricultural policies:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramidsâ"subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

I doubt this level of alleged fraud is common, but it does show the risk of conflict of interest in oncology, where the same doctor prescribing the treatments profits from carrying them out:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/07/1229570/-Michigan-doctor-arrested-for-purposely-misdiagnosing-cancer
"In the course of the scheme, prosecutors say Dr. Fata falsified and directed others to falsify documents. MHO billed Medicare for approximately $35 million dollars over a two-year period, approximately $25 of which is attributable to Dr. Fata, federal officials said The complaint further alleges that Dr. Fata directed the administration of unnecessary chemotherapy to patients in remission; deliberate misdiagnosis of patients as having cancer to justify unnecessary cancer treatment; administration of chemotherapy to end-of-life patients who will not benefit from the treatment; deliberate misdiagnosis of patients without cancer to justify expensive testing; fabrication of other diagnoses such as anemia and fatigue to justify unnecessary hematology treatments, and distribution of controlled substances to patients without medical necessity or are administered at dangerous levels."

Conflicts of interest apply to research as well:
"Financial conflicts of interest in economic analyses in oncology."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21441858
"Some financial conf

Some proponents of vitamins predicted the outcome of this study. For en explanation of this flawed study see: http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2012/mar2012_Synthetic-Alpha-Tocopherol-Shown-Increase_01.htm

Twould be a shame if people started doing these experiments on humans, and then find out that it accelerates aging in the donor.

They only did shared circulation in the first part of the experiment. Once they isolated the effective compound, shared circulation was no longer necessary. If this proves to be beneficial in humans, then most likely, the GDF-11 could be manufactured using GMO, but if it is extracted from human blood, it will almost certainly be extracted from donated blood that is not reinjected into the donor. We already know that donating blood is good for you

Aspirin is the leading cause of liver failure in the civilized world. Ban it too?

Central bankers caused this world economic catastrophe. Kill them all?

You forgot the link

I have an older friend on Medicare who recently went through some prostate troubles. The doctor prescribed one of those chemical neutering drugs. He took it for a couple days, then went on the internet to find out what it was really doing.

He eventually found a herbal liquid something-or-other which he thinks works 1000x better than the prescription, and his willie still works with the herbal formula to boot.

There's lots of information online about natural approaches to prostate health. I don't know which direction to point you, 'cause I've never searched on that subject.

But the life extension foundation usually has good information that's backed with research. Maybe start there, or send me an email & I'll ask about the specific formula my friend uses.

The bottom line is, if a health benefit is claimed, the FDA classifies it as a drug and regulates it.

Last time I looked, lemons prevent scurvy. Are you telling me vegetables are regulated by the FDA?

First, vegetables are regulated by the FDA. They're regulated as foods. They're not regulated as drugs because they're not drugs. They're foods that happen to contain beneficial chemicals. If you make claims about treating preventing, or curing any disease with a product, the FDA does consider that a drug.

Here you can see an example of a product for which specific claims were made to cure a disease:

Redco Foods: Salada Naturally Decaffeinated Green Tea (promoted for conditions that cause the product to be a drug; unapproved nutrient claim; unapproved health claim); [Emphasis added.]

Foods are not drugs, and if you make treatment claims on a food, it's going to be regulated as a drug (or you'd better remove the claim.

Now, you're free to say, in the abstract, "Lemons prevent scurvy", but if you try to sell lemons with that claim, the FDA will get involved.

Life Extension article on previous ginkgo study (probably related to this study too):

In this article, Life Extension reviews what the scientific literature says about ginkgo biloba extract,
  a potential flaw in the JAMA study, and why people seeking to slow brain aging are taking ginkgo.

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2002/nov2002_report_ginkgo_01.html

Check out this brand new study on Irvingia:

http://www.lef.org/LEFCMS/aspx/PrintVersionMagic.aspx?CmsID=116132

You'll be able to continue eating normally while shedding pounds. It's slow to get the process going, so I would recommend trying it for 2 - 3 months at a minimum to see if it works for you.

While this would work for most goods on the black market, prices wouldn't change much for illegal drugs. It's cheaper to buy some illegal drugs than legal ones because of massive regulation and liability. Just wait until a heroin user's family sues because their kid OD'd. The drug industry as a whole is screwed up, legal or illegal

The price of prescription drugs is primarily high because of the monopoly caused by patents. Just look at how many generic drugs are available at Walmart for about 10 cents a day. Also check out http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2002/apr2002_awsi_01.html This website gives information on the markup for many common currently patented drugs. There are markups of over 5000 times the cost of the active ingredients. Of course, the cost of active ingredients for the currently illegal drugs is very low.

Obviously, there would be no patents on the currently illegal drugs. In addition, liability would be minimized because the only legal advertisement for these drugs would be negative government advertisement. The liability of tobacco was caused by misinformation from the tobacco companies. In addition, decriminalization/legalization of drugs does not mean they have to be sold out of vending machines or even liquor stores. There are many ways to destroy the black market and control addiction such as clinics for heroin users.

Some drugs would be sold to adults through government approved stores. I assume the main component of their price would be tax based. However, it is easy for the government to control the taxes to eliminate the black market. The price might even be slightly higher than a potential black market, but I assume most consumers would prefer to buy from a source of know quality with no legal ramifications. (Consider alcohol as an example.) This would effectively put the black market out of business, and generate a new revenue stream for the government instead of funding organized crime, gangs, and terrorists.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss any concerns about the negative effects of cellular phone usage or the microwave radiation.

There have been studies which have shown changes in the expression of proteins due to microwave radiation.

http://www.mobiledia.com/news/65142.html

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2007/aug2007_report_cellphone_radiation_01.htm

Other studies have indicated that there is a link between increased microwave radiation and the dramatic decrease in the population of sparrows.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/bline/2003/12/01/stories/2003120100431400.htm/

I have to agree with the GP. Medicine, in many ways, seems very primitive compared to other sciences. Despite it's tremendous importance and the amount of money we spend on research, progress seems very slow. The problem is that there is little consistent theory to tie together the ideas. Unlike physics or chemistry, which have depth, medicine looks very flat with lots of little discoveries that are not obviously connected. Perhaps that's just the nature of the beast, but it seems the human mind isn't good at comprehending all these little facts that interact in unobvious ways.

As a physician I feel qualified to respond. Care to lend parts of your body for experimentation? I can't promise you that you'll survive. I can't promise that you won't be disfigured. And I can't promise that you won't die from the consequences of some unforeseen side-effect. No? I didn't think so somehow. We're bound by ethics to try things only when we're almost completely sure they will work and "do no harm".

While it would speed up things to work with humans, medicine has always had animal models. While not identical to humans, they have much of the same cellular machinery that we still don't understand...

I find it amusing how you can compare say coronary artery bypass grafting, or a laparoscopic hernia reduction, with Egyptians drilling holes in people's heads. They did it, yes. Now how many people survived the procedure?

No doubt we have made progress, but there is so much that is still a mystery. A large part of medicine is still based primarily on experimentation. Create a bunch of chemicals and experiment to see if any have interesting properties. Take those and experiment with them on animals. If any of those work start experimenting on humans. Yes rational drug discovery is making some headway, but things still seem pretty primitive. Check out this article to see how many people are killed by modern medicine.

As for the X rays and film, I believe I can introduce you to the CT scanner, a device now so affordable that most hospitals have several - even one _inside_ the ER. The film is still used for a hard copy, but it's printed by computer. Oh speaking of X-rays, I suggest you have a look at all the virtual endoscopy that's being done now, with 3-D modelling software. I can see inside your blood vessels without even touching your body. Let's not mention MRI's or PET scans shall we? No X-rays involved there at all. Quite a bit of progress since 1800. Radiology is one of the fields that is booming. Those radiologists are going to put us all out of work, I tell you.

While these are nice technical achievements they don't directly lead to better understanding. Hopefully, the better images we get from these tools will lead to achieve better understanding and not just more empirical results. For example, the MRI research on brain function doesn't seem to be leading to a better understanding of how the brain works. However, maybe it's a important early step.

The most common method for curing infections? Actually penicillin is hardly used nowadays, at least not at home. I invite you to look into penicillin derived synthetics such as the cephalosporins, aminopenicillins, ureidopenicillins. Then we have entire new classes of antibiotics, from macrolides to fluoroquinolones to aminoglucosides. Never heard of imipenem and meropenem? Most people haven't. How about vancomycin, or linezolid for that matter? I just named almost a dozen different families of antibiotics, each with different biochemical mechanisms.

Well brawn (evolution) just might beat out brains. The number of drug resistant bacteria are increasing. Doesn't seem like a success story.

P

These guys injected AMP into mice, which dropped their body temperatures by 10 degrees in just 10 minutes, triggering hibernation. Sounds like the ultimate sleeping pill! http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=32 93&Section=DISEASE

I'll take my chances with terrorists any day. The odds of death from terrorism is much lower than the odds of death from our own medical industry:

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_d eath_01.htm

``The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. (By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the number of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.5)''

Compare that to the number of deaths in the United States of America due to terrorism. How many people have died in the past 10 years due to terrorism in America?

Eliminate taxes, not throw more on!

While we may be having increased life expectancy, life quality and our level of health is decreasing.

Most food people consume is no longer organic, most people know nothing at all about supplements and how to stay healthy.

We should be focused on life extention and not waiting for government or corporations to come in with the cure for diseases like cancer and diabetes.

If you want a cure, start a business to fund the search for it. The life extension foundation does this. Life extension foundation

Life expectancy is not important. Only quality is important. We are not as healthy as we once were, and every 10 years more of us are dying from heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other illnesses due to the foods we are consuming. It is time for us to take control of our own destiny, become our own doctors, create our own supplements and treatments, and finally start supporting the organic food industry.

We can complain about the results (obesity, diabetes, cancer) of consumption of low quality products, but the only way to improve our health is to stop consuming products designed to ruin our health. This means we need to both fund research for cures while also focus on prevention by offering alternatives to Coke, Pepsi, and high fructose corn syrup which are actually safe. We need to be consuming products like green tea, with natural organic sugar, not high fructose corn syrup and dextrose mixed with acid.

We should thank the Life Extension Foundation and the supplement industry for funding the anti anging initiative.

They offer a membership for anyone who wants to help fund the anti aging movement. We all should get involved with this and get memberships, its our lives we are protecting.

Food supplements are making inroads into various health issues. However, the drug industry is fighting them tooth and nail with the help of the FDA -- because they hurt profits.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist wacko, just look at the hatchet job they attempted on the Life Extension Foundation. I don't have the exact link, you'll have to do some digging to find it.

I find it interesting that no one seems to even be hinting that nutrition plays an INTEGRAL role in most, if not all, medical (including mental) illnesses. Having suffered from chronic depression for several years and receiving NO RELIEF from any Medical/Psychiatric Dr. I finally found true relief when I began taking St. John's Wort and a super green food called Barley Green. My mood improved overnight and I was finally able to get back into the public and rebuild my life. Of course everyone's body is different and requires constant nutritional "tweaking" to stay at an optimal level. I no longer need the St. John's Wort but have added Coral Calcium because of the high acidity of my body. More information on the affects of nutrition on schizophrenia can be found at The Life Extension Foundation an excellent source of nutritional information IMHO. There is a wealth of information that cannot begin to be tapped in this forum. My prayers are with your family in this endeavor.

melatonin (extracted from bovine pineal gland commonly, prion diseases anyone?)

Search for "non-bovine melatonin" in google. One large supplement company also makes a melatonin that says its suitable for vegetarians, an indication to me that its derived from non-animal sources.

ephedra (cardiac arrest anyone?)

Ephedra was incidentally discovered by the Chinese, its indicated for colds and flu in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and is obviously meant for short term use. TCM doctors are actually horrified by the idea of using Ephedra (ma huang) for weightloss.

Aristolochia fangchi (kidney damage or cancer anyone?)

According to this article AF was put into weightloss pills by mistake, due to the fact that the chinese name is similar to another herb. It is not indicated for anything.

shark cartilage (simply a lighter wallet anyone?)
Shark cartilage has indeed been rejected as a possible treatment for cancer.

these sorts of public proclamations are troublesome... any other unproven (not a troll, I am a scientist folks, so I want proof)

Though not juxtaposed, the lines above are odd next to each other, after all, this was not a random proclamation, this was indeed a scientific study, and I'm sure more will follow. You had some good examples, but they could be fairly easily explained (you missed one or two which are much uglier. :-)

But even then, I think that the modern record on supplements/herbs is very good. The injuries caused by supplements pales in comparison to those caused by derived pharmaceuticals, which are pretty strictly regulated.

In emergencies, European doctors inject hydergine directly into the carotid artery to protect the brain. Hydergine's mechanisms of actions include the reduction in the rate of lipofuscin deposition in brain cells, increased metabolism of brain cells by improving ATP synthesis and protection to the brain from free radical damage. [1]

Notes:
1
2 *formerly known as Sandoz
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 (google cache)

Sorry, but I don't think you can tell people this. People progress through states of mind that allow more "intense" realizations to occur. A primitive tribe is extremely hesitant to outsiders because of the overwhelming amount of change they introduce. It takes an extremely open mind to allow such a transition. That needs to be broken down first, so, how?

Questions. People need to be able to construct internal dialog or at least intelligent dialog between others. The important thing is being able to answer your own questions. This creates double the amount of work. Not only are you doubting "stuff", but you are trying to figure out that same "stuff" you're doubting.

Hence, introduce only things you believe your intended audience is ready to hear. Posting on /. more than likely fulfills that, but keep in mind when discussing such things in the real life(tm). ;)

Why are we spending billions and billions of dollars and as many man hours every year, intentionally extending the lifespan of our individuals, instead of the collective species?

Creating 'super mice' might be a great novelty at first, and a boon to science, but what we learn from them certainly wont benefit our species. Just ourselves. Seems a bit selfish, ignoring the decline in quality of life many generations in the future will be faced with.

These questions are extremely short-sighted. We extend lifespans indefinitely everyday; heart, liver, and kidney transplants, immunizations (preventive measure), vaccinations, CPR, blood transfusions, diabetic shots, or even those daily vitamins you take. All are either directly, or indirectly extending your life. It's easier to see the benefit of swapping organs when your's fails to operate properly, but all those other things are more of thinking in advance. You know of another life extension tip? Eat balanced diets and exercise. Holy shit! That may as well just save your life from tragic organ failures and cause you victim of brain disease. You see my point? If you are just going to die anyway why take the further preventive measure?

By spending money on life extension, we are really understanding just more about the body. What is cancer? An abnormal cell. Why does that cell become abnormal? Well, what happens is we get a broader understanding of what is really going on. That is what I wish more people understood, knowledge is interconnected in ways we can't even imagine. If it were any other way, it would be just one person coming up with all the solutions to life.

This is getting involved, but try and think of Leonardo da Vinci. This man is a pivotal subject in my theory. His quest was for knowledge. What may come of interest is he was just as wary of the whole "blood thing" as anyone else. He insisted that it is paramount to disregard this discomfort if you ever truly wanted to understand anatomy. For the obvious few who are aware of his works, one might want to pickup Leonardo: The Artist and the Man by Dover books. Note that Dover books are excellent books, but typically only to get you thinking about a subject, not so much a reference volume.

Back on topic, and why do we extend these lives everyday. To improve the collective well-being of all involved with that person. Just think of the web of relationships that individuals are usually enroped (is that a word) to. Continuing that one life is adding value to easily a hundred lives. That value may even be small keeping in mind I am thinking of second-order persons as well. You can't limit the effect of one person's death on just those directly affected by it. It should be easy to see that the creation of "good" is a worthwhile cause. Keep in mind the int

Perhaps the media is at fault for people making this conclusion, but the point of such research is not "Shame on all of you for eating too much -- if you stop eating so much you will live longer."

The point is more like this: "We've noticed that in controlled lab environments, feeding animals a restricted calorie diet lengthens their life. Our goal is to find out what body process is involved in this so that we can potentially come up with a way to lengthen the life of humans, without having to put ourselves on such a diet."

For example, here is an article about research into using the drug metformin (which is used to treat diabetes) to reproduce the anti-aging effects of a calorie-restricted diet. The article goes into much more technical detail than the NY Times article.

This abstract from the Sep 2002 issue of Life Extension Magazine reported:

[...] All these findings pinpoint to a close correlation between the functional capacity of the creatine kinase/phosphorylcreatine/creatine system and proper brain function. They also offer a starting-point for novel means of delaying neurodegenerative disease, and/or for strengthening memory function and intellectual capabilities.

"Patients with AD had an average daily caffeine intake of 73.9 +/- 97.9 mg during the 20 years that preceded diagnosis of AD, whereas the controls had an average daily caffeine intake of 198.7 +/- 135.7 mg during the corresponding 20 years of their lifetimes"

Have they accounted for the possibility that the heavy caffeine consumption is actually linked to a more mentally active lifestyle? In my experience, people who drink a lot of caffeinated drinks do so because they're doing mentally taxing work - coding, writing essays, studying - and they find the stimulant effects help their concentration. On the other hand, when was the last time you heard of someone brewing a fresh pot of coffee before sitting down to watch Springer or a football game?

I'd guess someone who spends 20 years using their brains in a problem-solving capacity daily - coding, designing bridges, balancing accounts, whatever - will probably drink a lot more coffee than someone who spends 20 years working on checkouts, answering phones or watching TV. There's also evidence suggesting that staying mentally active can have beneficial effects on mental health in later life. Which makes me wonder if caffeine has any specific effect on mental health, or is there just a correlation between caffeine intake, daily mental activity and subsequent mental health?

I used to be involved in pharmaceutical marketing project, and these companies spend most of their time racing to make new products to get everyone to use so that when the patent on their previous drug runs out, everyone will switch to the new stuff rather than going generic.

Look at Nexium. It came out right when the patent for Prilosec was set to expire. Or Glucovance and Glucophage XR came out right when the patent for Glucophage expired.

The point is that the patents last just long enough to make the invention useless. Perhaps one solution would be to simply shorten the duration of patents, since R&D efforts happen on a much faster scale now.

Corrected link is
here

Possible the author is right, we do seem to
be quite close to reducing aging. We now know
that there a two main causes of aging, chemical
wear and tear, (free radical damage, glycosation
of proteins, etc), and secondly programmed
shutdown of varies hormones and growth factors.
The programmed shutdown evolved to reduce the
risk of cancer as we get older, increasing the
hormone levels can cause cancer if not balanced
out with cancer preventives.

So if you take cancer preventives, free radical
suppressers and hormone replacement, you should
be able to live much longer. Companys and
Organisations like the Life Extension Foundation,
http://www.lef.org/, sell a range of products
to do this, most interesting is a mixture of
anti-oxidants, anti-glycosation drug, and mitochondria
boosters here.

That said, you have to start somewhere. And if it can be shown that those who are cryopreserved have a decent chance of good recovery, then I think offering cryonic suspension/recovery services will be a very lucrative business. After all, if it works, cryonics will vastly increase the one resource that's strictly limited for everyone, no matter how wealthy they are--time. How much would you pay for an extra 100 years of healthy life?

With such large amounts of money involved, it seems to me that cryonics organizations will have a strong incentive to come up with mechanisms for ensuring successful (very) long term care and recovery of their patients.

I saw a presentation by Stephen Valentine on the TimeShip idea. The $180 million price tag is the expected price for the final completed project. Although it is not mentioned in the article, the TimeShip is designed to be modular. Initially, the Timeship will be much smaller than its final dimensions--only the core services will be constructed (research facility, one storage module). As demand increases, more modules can be added until eventually it reaches its final dimensions.

However, in my opinion, cryonics will remain a small, financially precarious community of true believers until it has been demonstrated to work. It's going to take a lot of research to demonstrate that it will work.

Therefore, if you're interested in helping cryonics succeed (even if you're skeptical of the TimeShip project) here are some suggestions:

• Learn more about the practice of cryonics. You can find links to most of the available online information from the Cryonet home page.
• Donate money to the Life Extension Foundation (LEF), with the proviso that it be earmarked for cryonics research. Saul Kent is also the co-founder of the LEF.
• Join Alcor or the Cryonics Institute or the American Cryonics Society. All of these organizations are small, and a single activist can have a big influence. Help raise funds for scientific research.
• Write a polite letter to the president of the Society for Cryobiology, urging him to strike the blanket ban, barring individuals who support cryonics from membership in the society. (See Section 2.04 from their bylaws.

Diabetic retinopathy is easily preventable in all diabetics. Information can be found at the Life Extension Foundation site, the LEF forum site, and on the Medline database:

http://lef.org
http://forum.lef.org
http://medportal.com

Diabetic retinopathy is easily preventable in all diabetics. Information can be found at the Life Extension Foundation site, the LEF forum site, and on the Medline database:

http://lef.org
http://forum.lef.org
http://medportal.com

It's not just pure caloric restriction that causes the marked effect in extension of ones life span. CRaN (Calorie Restriction and Nutrient suplementation) is a highly specialized dietary regime where your caloric intake is greatly reduced and controlled while at the same time the nutrient intake is increased so that all essential vitamins and mineral levels are maintained. Note that most CR practitioners that I know strive to avoid the need for additional supplementation of thier vitamins, minerals and nutrients by makeing sure there are 'complete' meals intake not through the use of Vitamin supplements. (all do use some supplements btw but the goal is to make sure everything you need is in your food)If you restrict without additional nutrients you will end up malnourished/starved and eventually you will die way before your median lifespan. Research has proven that this works in various lab animals where life span (I am using mice here as an example) of an adlib group of animals is rougly 36 months and a CRAN group of these animals may live 45-55 months. Primate research is underway at a few universities but the results may take 45-50 years to be fully realized. The mechanism that causes this is probably a lack of free radical damage due to the limited caloric intake but more research will need to be done to prove this as such. The estimates by many noteable gerontologists such as Dr. Roy Walford tends to place the maximum lifespan of man at roughly 120 years. It could be possible for people to attain 130-140 years on this lifestyle if they start early enough (post puberty by say 2-3 years with a 20% degree or greater restriction).More information can be found at some of these links: Calorie Restriction Via Non-Gourmet Cooking
CR Society Mailing list Archive
Stealing Time Article on PBS
Life Extension Magazine CR is NOT for the undisciplined folks out there. It is a very difficult and possibly dangerous regime with many fantastic benefits but it takes a LOT of hard work to do and to do right. My wife and I have been practicing CR on and off for the past two years. When we are doing it correctly I can honestly say I feel awesome(and not very hungry btw) but when we mess up our bodies let us know very quickly that we are eating incorrectly. Back to topic... The interesting thing about the discovery of this particular gene is the potential for use as gene therapy etc.of course none of this matters if you get hit by a bus while crossing the street ;-)

The Life Extension Foundation Forum is a good place to go for science-based discussions of supplements. The main LEF website isn't so helpful. Either go to the main LEF website and click on "Forums" or simply go straight to the forums.

Please register and log in before posting.

The two best places to purchase supplements (something you shouldn't do until you have done substantial research at the LEF Forum and especially on MEDLINE) I have found are Beyond-a-Century (as in "live and be healthy over 100 years") and iherb.

The Life Extension Foundation Forum is a good place to go for science-based discussions of supplements. The main LEF website isn't so helpful. Either go to the main LEF website and click on "Forums" or simply go straight to the forums.

Please register and log in before posting.

The two best places to purchase supplements (something you shouldn't do until you have done substantial research at the LEF Forum and especially on MEDLINE) I have found are Beyond-a-Century (as in "live and be healthy over 100 years") and iherb.