Slashdot Mirror

The way we do medicine today isn't very different than what we did 100 years ago. We find a chemical that does things, test said chemical and prey the side effect doesn't kill the patient. Surgery and our understanding of the human body is 1000x better than what we did 100 years ago but what we do is surface level treatment. You get sick and we find a way to fix said sickness. Heart has clog? Thin the blood like crazy with medicine. Stents to expand veins to keep them open and working. But that's like your engine leaks oil but instead of fixing the core of the problem lets put in thicker oil to slow the leak.

About 2/3 of deaths to people are age related. Heart disease, cancer, Diabetes, and etc are all age related diseases. And yes you can get them young but the moment you're born you're aging. What is aging? Aging is the process of the human body slowly building up damage, and there's 7 of them. People won't live past 80 or 90 if we don't fix aging first, and a lot of other diseases like Alzheimer is dependent on our ability to cure it. Cancer itself is caused by aging cells. We know the core cause of cancer is telomeres which protect the cell from damage. Most cells in your body don't extend these but cancer cells do and indefinitely and become immortal.

There's already discoveries found that help with aging and health significantly. For example back in 2003 they found a chemical called Resveratrol. This stuff is so amazing that it doubles the life of mice, which don't live for very long. They're younger and healthier for a longer time, and don't develop sicknesses easily like diabetes, especially on a western diet which is very bad for you. Resveratrol doesn't stop or reverse aging but it does significantly slow it down and you can buy it right now off online stores. It's proven to work, but everyone is trying to make a more concentrated and potent version of Resveratrol. There's compounds which are proven to extend telomeres which many people consider the holy grail of age reversal for humans and our best defense against cancer. The compounds are unfortunately only 5% effective so people who took the compounds didn't look or feel younger but their cells did look younger. Now they're trying to find compounds that are more potent and they have, but they'll kill you.

My point is that if we're to make people live healthier and better lives than we need to look into aging itself, and my prediction is that within 15 years we'll have methods to drastically slow aging. About 20-25 years from now we'll be able to stop aging but not reverse it. Within 30-40 years we can actually reverse aging mostly. I say mostly cause you may look 20-30 years old and feel 20-30 years old but you'll still have some age related issues to deal with. I'm not sure when and if we'll be able to fix Mitochondrial mutations or even DNA mutations, but it might not be a real issue. Human body is really good at repairing DNA. For now I would avoid high sugar foods, and cooked foods that have lots of carcinogens. Resveratrol works and is on sale as a vitamin. People on raw vegan diets don't age. Though that means eating uncooked food and no meat which many people probably won't do.

It's also a big problem that we don't look at aging as a disease when it causes so many and effects people of all ages, it just effects older people more so than younger.

http://www.sens.org/research/i...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

A more ethical approach would involve not having the clone's head be there at all, just don't have it develop, replaced with some computer interface that exercises the body and the nerves that go into the rest of the body.

Though this is not a long-term solution, in any case, because the brain will deteriorate with age. Having it attached to a healthy body will surely help, but it won't be enough. Something like sens is what's required, and thankfully it does not involve transplanting heads. :) This is more a solution for handicaps and stuff like that.

I find that many people claiming aging is absolutely inevitable are suffering from a case of sour grapes. SENS is a very real, very realizable goal. The human body is of limited complexity and we're putting the pieces of the puzzle together fast. Skepticism is understandable, after all people have been promising cures for aging ever since the emperor of China ate mercury. But recent advances show real promise and are based on real research.

It's popular to say one wishes for death at an arbitrary age... until one is that age and it's time to try to live or try to die. The upshot of recent newsis there's a very real chance that the first person to reach escape velocity is already alive. Here's to hope for a prosperous and very long life for each of us.

Stuff like this can help, but keep in mind that nutrition is, in the long run, a dead end. Even the best of nutrition and exercise will see you very lucky indeed to reach one hundred years old; for an indefinite lifespan, we will need actual repair and maintenance techniques. http://sens.org has more information on what will be necessary, and areas where research is (at the moment) particularly weak.

I want to know how exactly changing out the electrode material type is supposed to get a 10k multiplier on plasma focus density. The web site and what I could find were remarkably short on detail, and I'm inclined to believe that while the beryllium electrodes are important, there's some serious confusion about what is being funded and the problems that funding is supposed to solve.

Either way, I'd much rather the money be donated to the SENS project instead. We don't currently have a power crisis, so to speak - however, we do have a hundred thousand people dying per day of age related diseases, and that seems a smidgen more important to me than dropping the cost of electricity.

What do you think will come first, immortality through repair technology like SENS, or immortality through mind uploading?

It seems unlikely that this sort of thing would go only to the rich. Historically, medical treatments that have started in the rich have quickly spread to the general population. Look for example at plastic surgery. Moreover, many of the proposed treatments that would reduce aging are things like resveratrol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol or chemically similar compounds. Once we hit on a specific compound that works effectively, it will be likely patented for a few years and quite expensive then. Once the patent runs out or once similar other compounds are patented, there will be the usual drop in drug prices that occurs at that stage in the process.

Your comment about copyright extensions isn't quite accurate though- if anything the situation is worse than that. Most countries have copyrights of the form "life of the author + k years" for some fixed k. If the authors start living a lot longer, the practical minimum copyright for works will get much longer.

Incidentally, if people want to see this sort of thing happen in their lifetimes, the best thing is to probably give money to the SENS Foundation http://sens.org/ which works to find age reducing and anti-aging medicines. They aren't very large but they spend their money very efficiently. They just recently got a set of grants to work on technology that will help filter white blood cells in old people and help remove the older, less functioning cells, and replace them with young cells. If this works out it is possible that the classical weakened immune systems of the elderly will be a thing of the past.

Hmm, with all the advances recently in biotech/nanotech, we should really cut back on the worlds military budgets (a world-wide tax so as to level the playing field perhaps?)....AND we take a small amount of this money and put it into funding projects like the SENS project and the Mprize and open cures projects.....these projects are working to control and reverse aging through research into the mechanisms of aging and cell repair and the development of therapies to boos the exsting stem cell repair envieroments of our bodies and also things like growing replacement, printing replacement organs, the developement of exsting nanotechnologies to control and eliminate cancers, the development of advanced programmable methods of reprogramming our cellular dna programs in our cells, the development of advanced programmable nanobots to diagnose and repair our cells from the inside out. Good sites to stay informed....http://www.kurzweilai.net/ http://www.fightaging.org/ http://www.sens.org/ http://www.mprize.org/

This is really StarTreck futurism: considering huge improvements in spacefaring techs but with humans beings still stagnating in present biological and cultural levels ... IVF and ectogenesis would be efficient by this time. Even better, extreme longevity would be also granted since it is a precursor to the techs allowing bone loss regeneration and resistance to increased ionizing radiations damage. Space is for transhumans & robots ... Not the likes of captain Kirk guys.

But you're free to have your beliefs, I'll be checking out SENS instead.

I guess it's going to be a true test of ideals as Republican conservatives move to block stem cell research ... as they approach age 75.

This is why there will probably be genuine life extension, because the elderly and soon-to-be elderly in our society control so many resources.

Once there is an upsurge in life extension, this should be followed by an upsurge in curing cancer. Why? Because if you extend the lifespan of a mammal long enough, it's going to die of cancer.

http://www.sens.org/

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html

This is actually a very valid point.
Stem Cells play an important part in the closest thing we have to an engineering roadmap to cure aging.

They're not a silver bullet, and shouldn't be treated as such, but it's a crucial piece that both directly addresses some of the causes of aging, and significantly complements our biomolecular toolbox, which in turn we are and will be using to solve a miriad of other problems.

Most strident atheist world-views center around coping strategies for dealing with this particular bit of Bad News.

If you're really a scientist, then surely you recognize the fallacy of shaping your data to match your desired conclusion. That's exactly what you're doing, though: "I can't figure out what to live for if there isn't a God, and I want to live for something, so therefore there's a God."

Your life could actually be 100% meaningless if "meaning" must by definition be supplied by some cosmic superuser and that entity doesn't actually exist -- or if it exists and created you just for the hell of it, no particular purpose in mind. The fact that you don't like that possibility has very little bearing on whether or not it's true. (Which isn't an argument that God doesn't exist, by the way; just that your desire one way or the other is irrelevant to the question.)

I also wonder how strong the "God exists because I am going to die and I don't like it" idea would be if the SENS guys turned out to be right and one could become very very old indeed without becoming the least bit decrepit.

Perhaps someone already brought up these clarifications, but here goes:

1. The full amount was $3.5 million, not $3 million. Thiel will be donating $500,000 in direct funds; the other $3 million is in the form of matching funds.

2. The $3.5 million will only count towards SENS research. It will not be included in the MPrize fund, which is a separate (though related) initiative. The MPrize will be awarded for creating strains of mice, or medical interventions for mice, that result in significant increases in mouse lifespan. SENS research is focussed on treating seven known contributing factors to aging. The two can go hand in hand (SENS research may produce an MPrize-winning mouse), but they are separate. Thiel's money can only be used for SENS research (conducted under the auspices of the Methuselah Foundation, the same organization that sponsors the MPrize, hence the probable basis for the confusion).

More information about SENS can be found here:
http://sens.org/

Man, I am astounded by the negativeness of the slashdot community as exhibited in the comments. We all want to live longer, healthier lives. This $3M is going to fund research which might help us do that. As such, it's a great thing!

The SENS project is an effort to fight the causes of aging, not the symptoms, such as increased chance of heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, etc. etc. As such, a primary result of SENS would be what's been called "the longevity dividend": a slowing of aging equivalent to an extra 7 years of life HALVES the rate all of these deadly diseases at any given age, resulting in trillions of dollars of savings for the medical system as a whole. In a sense, it points out the insanity of our current system, where we spend trillions fighting things after they happen but are unwilling to spend even a few million bucks on research which might delay all of those things for a least a few years, if not indefinably.

Again, I just want to say that slashdotters should be ashamed of themselves for speaking out against something which could have such hugely positive results. When your mom (grandma, uncle, etc) dies even though this type research might have saved her, then maybe you to will understand that postponing aging and death is the great moral cause of our time. We have the technology, all we need is the will!

http://fightaging.org/ http://www.sens.org/ http://digitalcrusader.ca/archives/2006/03/anti-ag ing_the.html

The best thing to do is to visit http://www.sens.org/concerns.htm

It will answer most all of these repeat questions I'm seeing posted here.

"Putting it another way: there is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we're giving people the chance of more life. To say that we shouldn't cure aging is ageism, saying that old people are unworthy of medical care. Old people are people too."

...and the related SENS effort, ideally _before_ ranting. :)

All here discussed counter-arguments and more, have been dealt with here:
http://www.sens.org/concerns.htm

(Well except for the non-infinite porn supply during eternity, perhaps.)

The -very interesting and diverse- reasons why both projects are carried out:
http://www.sens.org/ENSdef.htm

First off, you don't have to get the treatment(s) if you'll really decide
don't want to, whenever available. If you try to look at the arguments
behind the links without bias, here is one thing, you might realize from it:

This IS also about improving quality of life along the way, by increasingly
minimizing most serious degenerative diseases including heart disease/obesity
at the cellular level (even without extremely healthy lifestyles), that are
so much cause of suffering and inefficiencies in our society. So this definitely
will do the public a lot of good. It's about indefinite postponement of morbidity
from degenerative disease; I know one of the SENS researchers: many seriously ill,
but not old, people (heart disease, cancer, autoimmune) are also waiting for very
first successes of the studies. The MPrize goal of sustained life extension does
inevitably include mitigation of degenerative diseases in the long-term.

...and the related SENS effort, ideally _before_ ranting. :)

All here discussed counter-arguments and more, have been dealt with here:
http://www.sens.org/concerns.htm

(Well except for the non-infinite porn supply during eternity, perhaps.)

The -very interesting and diverse- reasons why both projects are carried out:
http://www.sens.org/ENSdef.htm

First off, you don't have to get the treatment(s) if you'll really decide
don't want to, whenever available. If you try to look at the arguments
behind the links without bias, here is one thing, you might realize from it:

This IS also about improving quality of life along the way, by increasingly
minimizing most serious degenerative diseases including heart disease/obesity
at the cellular level (even without extremely healthy lifestyles), that are
so much cause of suffering and inefficiencies in our society. So this definitely
will do the public a lot of good. It's about indefinite postponement of morbidity
from degenerative disease; I know one of the SENS researchers: many seriously ill,
but not old, people (heart disease, cancer, autoimmune) are also waiting for very
first successes of the studies. The MPrize goal of sustained life extension does
inevitably include mitigation of degenerative diseases in the long-term.

Would you extend your wish to live longer to 6 billion other people on the planet?
YES.
Could the world continue to feed enough oil and gas and out-of-season food to 300 million Americans who are hundred plus years old?
YES, You can use thorium to sustain all our energy needs for thousands of years to come. I find your question about the availability of food amusing in light of your country's obesity epidemic. Seriously, we've reached the stage where food in any quantity is abundant and cheap. Space is also abundant for the near and mid-term. I believe the biggest resource issue will be power, but like I said, we have enough thorium to sustain us for a long time yet, and by the time it runs out new power sources will have been tapped.

>> Would you send 19-year-olds to fight in Iraq (or wherever) while you lounged about in your 60th year of retirement?
No. For the protocol, I'm an aussie, but we have our 19-year-olds in Iraq as well, and I strongly oppose it regardless of where I spend my retirement. I think it's neither within our national interest nor yours.
I'd use the same dollar in pushing things like this kind of research rather than "liberate" Iraq from exporting oil in Euros.

>> I'd rather learn to live well and put up with my 75 or 80 years (i hope!) and then let someone else have a chance.

And I'd rather "put up" (I actually enjoy life. I like it. I don't just "put up" with it). and then let someone else have a chance too. but without the me dying bit. I don't think I need to die in order to make place for my two munchkins. Neither do I want my old man to die to make space for me. There's plenty space for all of us.
Read the link I put up above. If people stopped dying of old age tomorrow (a very radical case we're not in any danger of seeing soon), the planet's population would grow by one large city per year. Hardly a change we would not have time to adjust to. Besides, in such an extreme case, people's biological clocks would effectively stop ticking and a large percentage of the population would not be pressured into having kids in the first 4 decades of their lives, effectively slowing down the birth rate and mitigating the growth rate. And that's before we suggested introducing more radical (e.g. china) or less radical (e.g. taxation) population growth measures.

>> No doubt the anti-aging researchers will solve this "problem" and you may get your way
No. The anti-aging researchers will simply allow you to live longer, and deteriorate slower. Society as a whole will have to find ways of dealing with the problems that will arise (and have no doubt, some major ones will, and some very fundamental social structures will need to be changed to accomodate this new reality, but it's something we've done so much and so successfully in the last century and before that that particular bit is the one that has me least worried. Our social structures are designed to easily withstand and accomodate radical technologically-driven changes), but that will be out of the hands of the researchers and way out of their depth.

Debating it today, when the possibility to throw big money at it today is there is definitely not a bad thing. And the more attention this subject gets (and the more charity funds that get diverted to treating the problem and not the symptoms), the better.

>> There may even be a handful of gifted people who will benefit the world by having an extra 50 years of time in which to work. But that will be the exception.

That's bull.

Do you have to earn some social merit in order to be allowed access to antibiotics today? (one of the major causes of our current average lifespan being roughly twice and a half again that of people two centuries ago?)

No.

Everyone gets it. Everyone has a right to live. Any other agenda will have its propagator voted out of office by the majority of the public in any free-

Would you extend your wish to live longer to 6 billion other people on the planet?
YES.
Could the world continue to feed enough oil and gas and out-of-season food to 300 million Americans who are hundred plus years old?
YES, You can use thorium to sustain all our energy needs for thousands of years to come. I find your question about the availability of food amusing in light of your country's obesity epidemic. Seriously, we've reached the stage where food in any quantity is abundant and cheap. Space is also abundant for the near and mid-term. I believe the biggest resource issue will be power, but like I said, we have enough thorium to sustain us for a long time yet, and by the time it runs out new power sources will have been tapped.

>> Would you send 19-year-olds to fight in Iraq (or wherever) while you lounged about in your 60th year of retirement?
No. For the protocol, I'm an aussie, but we have our 19-year-olds in Iraq as well, and I strongly oppose it regardless of where I spend my retirement. I think it's neither within our national interest nor yours.
I'd use the same dollar in pushing things like this kind of research rather than "liberate" Iraq from exporting oil in Euros.

>> I'd rather learn to live well and put up with my 75 or 80 years (i hope!) and then let someone else have a chance.

And I'd rather "put up" (I actually enjoy life. I like it. I don't just "put up" with it). and then let someone else have a chance too. but without the me dying bit. I don't think I need to die in order to make place for my two munchkins. Neither do I want my old man to die to make space for me. There's plenty space for all of us.
Read the link I put up above. If people stopped dying of old age tomorrow (a very radical case we're not in any danger of seeing soon), the planet's population would grow by one large city per year. Hardly a change we would not have time to adjust to. Besides, in such an extreme case, people's biological clocks would effectively stop ticking and a large percentage of the population would not be pressured into having kids in the first 4 decades of their lives, effectively slowing down the birth rate and mitigating the growth rate. And that's before we suggested introducing more radical (e.g. china) or less radical (e.g. taxation) population growth measures.

>> No doubt the anti-aging researchers will solve this "problem" and you may get your way
No. The anti-aging researchers will simply allow you to live longer, and deteriorate slower. Society as a whole will have to find ways of dealing with the problems that will arise (and have no doubt, some major ones will, and some very fundamental social structures will need to be changed to accomodate this new reality, but it's something we've done so much and so successfully in the last century and before that that particular bit is the one that has me least worried. Our social structures are designed to easily withstand and accomodate radical technologically-driven changes), but that will be out of the hands of the researchers and way out of their depth.

Debating it today, when the possibility to throw big money at it today is there is definitely not a bad thing. And the more attention this subject gets (and the more charity funds that get diverted to treating the problem and not the symptoms), the better.

>> There may even be a handful of gifted people who will benefit the world by having an extra 50 years of time in which to work. But that will be the exception.

That's bull.

Do you have to earn some social merit in order to be allowed access to antibiotics today? (one of the major causes of our current average lifespan being roughly twice and a half again that of people two centuries ago?)

No.

Everyone gets it. Everyone has a right to live. Any other agenda will have its propagator voted out of office by the majority of the public in any free-