Researchers Claim To Produce Stem Cells From Adult Cells

coljac writes: "An article in The Times on Monday details the claims of British researcher Ilham Abuljadayel who says she can produce stem cells from adult cells (in this case, white blood cells). Stem cells, the main source of which is currently human embryos, are undifferentiated cells which under the right biochemical conditions can grow into any kind of tissue cell. Stem cell research promises breakthroughs in many areas of disease (and even aging) research, but until now has been dogged by controversy because of the use of human embryos. If verified, this is a pretty exciting development."

Comments

The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[Whyte Wolf]

What's really interesting about this story is how sure the scientific community is that this is impossible.

Could this be another cold-fusion, or are we looking at a revolution in bio-sciences that the current scientists fear?

And what of the ethics? Could this be used to reverse ageing? (unlikely, but if it could, what are the ethics of keeping entire generations around just so they can oppress their descendants).

Thoughts as I teach a class....

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[HeghmoH]

Could this be used to reverse ageing? (unlikely, but if it could, what are the ethics of keeping entire generations around just so they can oppress their descendants).

Uh... what?

Why would artifically un-aged people oppress their descendants? This fear doesn't make much sense. I think the main fear is the overpopulation that could result from a massive decrease in the human death rate, which we're already seeing due to current medical technology. How many people we need before we have a problem is, of course, up for serious debate.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[glebite]

And what of the ethics? Could this be used to reverse ageing? (unlikely, but if it could, what are the ethics of keeping entire generations around just so they can oppress their descendants).

One big benefit would be a few generations who actually start to think, and still be usefull in a physical sense. As a point, very few young people listen to their elders for advice. As a result, they go and do stupid things, but by the time they are reasonably seasoned/experienced in the world, nobody listens to them anymore.

As for other factors, this would be the first few generations who would have to begin to live with the ramifications of decisions made when they were younger. Politicians should be frightened of this. If it is possible to live 200 years, then they might find themselves in jail for actions that would not normally get a senior imprisoned on compassionate grounds.

Personally I think this would be interesting.

As for disease battling - by all means, this would certainly reduce the need for blood and organ donors - eventually you could have stem cells generated for you to replace organs that have worn out or have been injured.

But yeah, the biggest ramifications will be what to do with a larger population of healthy people - I guess there's the incentive to move to space. Why worry about the damages with radiation when you can replace the damaged parts later?

Oh yeah - this is one future I'm looking forward to.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[Microsift]

And what of the ethics? Could this be used to reverse ageing? (unlikely, but if it could, what are the ethics of keeping entire generations around just so they can oppress their descendants).

Actually, if people did not die the earth might be a better place. Altruism is a great thing, but it would pale in comparison to self-interest. Would we be so careless with non-renewable resources if we knew we'd be around when the supplies ran out? Given that the world population is doubling every thirty years, keeping one extra generation around would only be the difference of thirty years population growth.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[puck01]

What's really interesting about this story is how sure the scientific community is that this is impossible

Perhaps you should read the article again.

"So unlikely does the claim seem to many biologists that she has found it impossible to have it published in leading journals."

My interpretation of this is that the claim is unlikely so it was impossible for her to publish in reputable journals. Considering it had been pretty much presumed for years one could not undiffereniate a differentiated cell, the skepticism is warrented. Many have tried, none have appeared to succeed until now. If these are indeed stem cells that were produced, this will truely be revolutionary.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[ch-chuck]

Why would artifically un-aged people oppress their descendants?

Retire at 70 and collect social security for the next 250 years?

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[Bluesee]

I don't know, my impression of old people today is that they apparently were planning for retirement on a golf course "spending their children's inheritence", as it were.

We are truly getting further and further from the meaning of life, and I am not kidding. The kiddies don't respect their elders and are not taught to revere them; they don't think there is much an old person can teach them, either. When Mom and Dad get old they get put in a home and visited once a month.

The oldsters become disenfranchised, lonely, and embittered by the neglect of their children. They feel ripped-off and unappreciated, so when it comes to consideration of any 'legacy' they might leave their children, they are loathe to provide them with a damn thing. They paid their Social Security so even if they still enjoy six figure incomes, they will be damned if they will give up one red cent of the - what, 60k? - they get from the govt.

And now we are going to prolong their miserable life? If I were that age, my attitude would be "don't do me any favors".

We don't really want them around anyway...

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[clary]

And what of the ethics? Could this be used to reverse ageing? (unlikely, but if it could, what are the ethics of keeping entire generations around just so they can oppress their descendants).

I don't see a problem here. Do you think one has an ethical obligation to age and die? I'd be interested in hearing an argument for that. If you assume some mystical problem in "messing with Mother Nature" or "playing God" then maybe you can get a start. But beware that down that road lie objections to vaccines, heart surgery, blood transfusions, etc.

Now, "oppressing one's descendants" is certainly not ethical. As something of a libertarian, I like to save my ethical condemnations for those acts which directly hurt someone.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[HeghmoH]

Why would artifically un-aged people oppress their descendants?

Retire at 70 and collect social security for the next 250 years?

That would be a failure of Social Security, not a necessary consequence of anti-aging. If we retard or reverse a person's aging, that person can damn well keep right on working until the point where his physical condition no longer permits it. Or he could retire, but off his savings, not my hard work. Social Security's retirement age is already looking fairly silly. If life spans were to increase to, just to throw a number out, 200 years, the age where one begins to collect benefits must increase accordingly.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[kenthorvath]

what are the ethics of keeping entire generations around just so they can oppress their descendants?

Well consider this: as the amount of knowledge that humans aquire continues to grow, so too does the time it takes to aquire that knowledge. This may be a life saver for human achievement. How long before people have to go to school well into their fifties and sixties just to have a working knowledge of things? As for the opression, I think that you'll find as one generations average life expectancy expands, so does the next generations and the generation beyond that. If anything, this technology could bring humanity into places that have never been dreamed of. It makes me all teary eyed... =)

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

As one that's gone through the science journal publishing cycle, you've sorta got one possible picture, but other possibilities exist. If I send in an article to the peer-reviewed journals, it will be looked at by 3 or so other scientists in the field and judged for quality of research: does the conclusions reached make sense given the data and experiments performed? Were those the only conclusions that could be derived, or is further experimentation needed to prove those conclusions from the other ones that are possible. And are the experiments performed in a satisifactory manner?

So what's possibly happening here is that the conclusion reached is very questionable, so the peer reviewers are critiquing every bit of the paper. And they might find that some results obtained are not sufficient enough to prove the given conclusion, and they are very relucent to put up their reputation to accredit the research at this point, so they are not allowing the paper to be accepted, or at least until more experiments are done.

You also have to add the time delay from 6 to 12 months for a submitted paper to sometimes get this far in the review process -- she might have several publications in the works until she finds one that accepts it.

I think the important thing right now is to get independant confirmation of the results from several other labs, similar to how cold fusion was reported repeated by many labs, but more reputable ones were able to disprove the results.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Old people are angry, disenfranchised, and generally crotchety because of failing health and a lack of vigor normally associated with youth.

If you asked me "Would you like to live to 200 years?" I would reply that I'd only want to do that if my body would be young/vital, or at least not nearly so bad as that of an average 70 year old.

It's not just old people who think prolonging life is no big favor... I just read an article about a diabetic who has decided, after numerous amputations, surgical procedures and ailments, that he will no longer seek any kind of medical attention for anything, that he wants to die without artifice keeping him alive. He is 38 years old.

People who argue against longevity on the grounds that living longer, but in poor health, is not good are missing the entire point. This isn't a greek myth; this isn't a parable about the hubris of mankind; this isn't about some fable where a person gets a wish and asks for immortality but forgets to also ask for eternal youth as well. This is about keeping a body healthy enough that quality of life can be maintained as well as increasing longevity.

One last thing... Of the old folks I know who are bitter: most were bitter when they were younger, too. Of the ones I know who are upbeat, they are known for having been upbeat all their lives. What it comes down to is that if your basic personality is that of an asshole, you're gonna be an asshole at 60 just as you were at 20, and getting older just means you get louder about it.

What we need more than extreme longevity is something that'll make people lighten the fuck up.

It's just life.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[NonSequor]

I believe that was a joke. Though there is a grain of truth to it. Imagine if you knew that your parents would always be around to nag you forever with nothing short of murder that could end the torment.

"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[IronChef]

>Could this be used to reverse ageing?

Well, maybe, but a more direct genetic tinkering approach is more likely to yield progress there.

As we understand more and more of the human genome, and biochemistry in general, we will be able to do some amazing things. Like sci-fi amazing.

We're close to some amazing things already, with prototypes of plants that produce plastic. But someday in the not too distant future we're going to learn how to manipulate our aging and self-repair mechanisms. We'll also be able to twiddle with our kids, just like they were doing in the movie Gattaca. And we'll be able to create some new, awful diseases.

This stuff is right around the corner, folks. Biotech has great potential for good, and ill. And we thought our NUCLEAR adolescence was bad -- we ain't seen nothin' yet.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[FunnyBunny]

Could this be another cold-fusion, or are we looking at a revolution in bio-sciences that the current scientists fear?

It could be another cold-fusion, but we won't know until more work has been done. A scientist who is actually concientious isn't going to fear being shown that something they thought was impossible is acually possible. I can see a great amount of concern regarding ethical problems with this, and the ever popular problem with misinterpretation. Then there will also be the choruses of conspiracy theorists who will claim that scientists are keeping immortality for themselves.

In short, I don't see problems with the science, just with people.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[BradleyUffner]

"One big benefit would be a few generations who actually start to think, and still be usefull in a physical sense. As a point, very few young people listen to their elders for advice. As a result, they go and do stupid things, but by the time they are reasonably seasoned/experienced in the world, nobody listens to them anymore."

The reason elders are so wise is because they learned things by going out and doing stupid things when they were young.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[will_code_for_beer]

Interviewing for a developer position in the year 2050: I have been a Developer, for 70 years. I am an expert in... everything, I Graduated school at 70 years of age, I wanted to take some time off after highschool...

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[Jeremi]

Why would artifically un-aged people oppress their descendants?

Why do many states and counties impose term limits on their politicians? They do it because an incumbent politician can become so powerful and so entrenched that it becomes impossible for any other candidates to compete.

Now think of death a sort of "term limit" for everybody... remove the term limit and the immortal people will begin to accumulate wealth, knowledge, and experience without limit.

I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but a healthy 400-year-old will probably have a number of advantages over your average 20-year old.

Re:The Pseudo-science Conspiracy

[Bluesee]

I think I actually missed my own point here... maybe I am in a bad mood today...? Imagine when my teeth start falling out.

Anyway, I have a philosophy that we try too hard to alter our nature, and we lose something in the process. Prolonging our lives will stave off the inevitable so long but it doesn't necessarily make a thing more meaningful in the process. It just makes it longer. It's like my dog: if my dog gets cancer it's 'hasta, baby' and she dies with dignity. But we people are so determined to prolong life at any cost that we are willing to turn a once dignified being into a decrepit hulking, shaky and drooling shell of their former selves. And for what purpose? To line the pockets of specialists and pharmacists. Perhaps I will feel different when I am on my last few miles of this vale of tears, but I hope not.

The advances in genomics - as well as the topic of this story - bring this question into stark relief. You now have the ability to tell - without a doubt - if you have Huntington's disease, a crippling and debilitating disease for which there is no cure and which will make you insane for years before it will kill you.

Do you want to know if you have it? I don't. Then again, my Dad was found to have just one kidney a few years back. That means I might have just the one, too. I still don't want to know!

But that's just me.

But of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

most of those doing research will still insist upon using embryo cells. We have known for some time that adult cells could be used to create stem cells (although not quite as easy) but all of the focus has been on the controversial method of using embryos as the source. I don't see that changing. Too bad 'cause I think a great deal of progress could be made if so much time and energy wasn't wasted fighting a battle that shouldn't even exist. Why try to break the door down when the window is wide open?! Duh!

Re:But of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright. There is a reason that embryo stem cells are preferred: they are different. "Stem cells" derived from differentiated cells are not the same as true embryo stem cells. You just can't get true stem cells from adult cells. Because they behave similarly does not mean they are the same. Sorry to have to tell you this, but your information is wrong. I agree with you that "Too bad 'cause I think a great deal of progress could be made if so much time and energy wasn't wasted fighting a battle that shouldn't even exist." So-called pro-lifers should keep out of forcing the passage of laws which restrict embryo stem cell research. They are killing people whose disease and manner of death would be cured by this completely harmless research. And, yes, the research is completely harmless: there is tight set of medical ethics already in place, without the law, which insures this. If you don't believe it, you've been had.

Michael J. Fox has a disease which needs embryo stem cell research to cure. I hope you will support his fight against a deadly disease.

Re:But of course...

[Pooua]

So-called pro-lifers should keep out of forcing the passage of laws which restrict embryo stem cell research. They are killing people whose disease and manner of death would be cured by this completely harmless research.

The ultimate moral authority has spoken. No need to keep asking all these pesky ethical questions; he has thought it all out and decided once for all that it is ethical to use human bodies any way he deems necessary to save people's lives.

Re:But of course...

[Pooua]

refutation of your claim Duh!

You are in no position to be condescending.

Re:But of course...

[Guppy]

"We have known for some time that adult cells could be used to create stem cells (although not quite as easy)"

That quite true. For those interested in reading further, the NIH has published an article, "Stem Cells: A Primer". You may be especially interested about the section towards the end about stem cells in adults, especially the section, "Why not just pursue research with adult stem cells?"

"...but all of the focus has been on the controversial method of using embryos as the source. I don't see that changing."

Mind if I borrow your sentence and rearrange it a bit? I'd instead say all of the controversy has been focused on the method of using embryos as the source. If you look around, you'll find that adult stem cell research is going on, busily and quietly. Since there's nobody attacking the research, there's also nobody hyping as part of a defense. Embryo stem cell were discovered first, so of course the research is further along. What's more, it's both promising and threatened, so that's where the resources are going first.

Adult Stem cell research is NOT BEING IGNORED. Rather, it is impossible to predict which avenues of research will eventually pan out, and so scientists are loathe to close off any possibilities. One, maybe both of these paths may prove to be a dead end. But we won't know until we look.

Leaves and petals

[tewwetruggur]

How dissappointing. I was hoping that the article was about the ability to convert adult cells into stem cells to grow actual stems, then leaves and pretty flowers. Have my own photosynthesis, produce some of my own oxygen, and have nice smelling flowers instead of the need for deodorant.

I can always keep dreaming...

Re:Leaves and petals

[JCMay]

I usually don't respond to the way postings are moderated, but I certianly am not going to let this go by.

This should have been moderated funny, and not offtopic. If I had points I'd have undone this travesty.

When the mod points come my way, I think before using them. Perhaps that's the problem. People don't think enough around here.

After further consideration, that's too easy. Obvious even :)

Tom Baker Regenerates Into Time Lord

[jd]

Seriously, this could resolve the aging problem -without- having to solve all those complicated issues over cell death & cell protection mechanisms.

Just keep generating a supply of stem cells, and build over any failed component. The existing material could easily be reprocessed as a source of building material.

Regeneration, rather than age prevention, may be the real secret of longetivity.

Re:Tom Baker Regenerates Into Time Lord

[Borealis]

Might have to wait for nano-scrubbers. To the best of my knowledge stem cells won't reduce vein/artery blockage. Over time the circulatory system would probably get blocked up. Might be time to start that low cholesterol diet... could add another century or two to your life :)

Re:Tom Baker Regenerates Into Time Lord

[Jason Levine]

Just keep generating a supply of stem cells, and build over any failed component.

And what do you do once something is wrong with the person's brain. You can't just rip out a chunk of it and drop in some stem cells. This isn't a "live forever" thing. It's a "possible way to reap the rich medical harvest that stem cells can provide without the annoying ethical questions surrounding fetuses." (Meaning, a lukemia treatment that would have previously needed a fetus' stem cells might now be able to be done with a person's own cells.)

Re:Tom Baker Regenerates Into Time Lord

[jd]

Why not? It's exactly how they treat Alzeimer's Disease today, and could be used to treat any brain disorder which involved non-critical sections of the brain.

Brain cells are just like any other cells. The only difference is the neural connections, and those form themselves, given time.

Yes, if you lose a section of brain that was used to handle long-term memory, you'd lose THOSE memories. Oh, wah. As if you'd not have built up more memories than you'd know what to do with, by that time. By replacing the damaged/dead segment, you'd at least be assured that new memories could take their place.

Those segments of the brain dealing with the concious mind are perhaps the most complex. If you believe that the mind is Turing in nature, then all you'd have to do is run a regular backup of the configuration of those cells, and then restore from backup once the cells had been replaced.

(If you're more spiritually inclined, then the configuration is irrelevent. The important stuff just runs on it. So handling those as you would any other cell would be just fine.)

The point of regeneration is that it is NOT "living forever", because you aren't guaranteed to be exactly the same person afterwards. Rather, it is a self-repairing/self-maintaining partially-closed system, which may end up hosting multiple "conciouses" within the same body and memory set.

Re:Tom Baker Regenerates Into Time Lord

[ethereal]

Yes, if you lose a section of brain that was used to handle long-term memory, you'd lose THOSE memories. Oh, wah. As if you'd not have built up more memories than you'd know what to do with, by that time. By replacing the damaged/dead segment, you'd at least be assured that new memories could take their place.

Unless it turns out that memory is holographic, as some results have indicated. In that case, all of your memories get a little fuzzier, and some of the oldest ones may be gone.

Those segments of the brain dealing with the concious mind are perhaps the most complex. If you believe that the mind is Turing in nature, then all you'd have to do is run a regular backup of the configuration of those cells, and then restore from backup once the cells had been replaced.

This is the riskiest part - you're really messing with your "self" (assuming that changing your memories of the past isn't enough to seriously change your "self", which may or may not be the case). I think it might be best to always be adding some new cells so that they could be learning your thought patterns, and then periodically scrub out the old dead cells. Of course the new cells won't ever perfectly replace the old ones, so I imagine that over time your consciousness really would change as a result of the underlying cellular replacement. On the other hand, this probably wouldn't have to be any more drastic than the other consciousness-altering events of your life, like drugs, religious ecstasies, or a midlife crisis.

The periodic maintenance approach might be a little safer than just downloading from backups onto a tabula rasa mind. After all, I'm sure there are folks here who don't always verify their backups :)

Re:Tom Baker Regenerates Into Time Lord

[Cyclopatra]

Seriously, this could resolve the aging problem

What I always find interesting is that so many people make this assumption - the aging problem. In the scheme of things, it's really not a problem, it's sort of planned obsolescence. A species that didn't get old and die would outgrow its food supply pretty fast.

I'm as much in favor of not getting old as anyone, but in general, I really don't think humans are ready or that sort of thing. In reality, it's not the aging problem that we have to worry about, but the not aging problem we'll have when we have a cure for getting old. I mean, come on - we're not exactly devoted as a society to looking ahead and considering the future. I get a little frightened when I think about people having 200 years or more to not think about the consequences of their actions.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's really goddamn amazing that we can even seriously consider being able to do these things, and I don't for a minute suggest that we shouldn't try to achieve them. But I don't think they're the solution to a problem - they're just a whole other kettle of worms.

-Cyclopatra

"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore

Re:Tom Baker Regenerates Into Time Lord

[ukscott]

Radiation is the issue if you are a 200 year old. There is a measured level of atmospheric radiation asorbed by the body every year. I cant get rid of the image of the 350 year old cyberpunk vampire that glowed in the dark.

Re:Tom Baker Regenerates Into Time Lord

[jd]

I see what you're saying, but I have a suspicion that if people had a high probability of living to see those consequences of their actions, they might be more inclined to think first.

IMHO, that's one of the reasons nobody is really doing anything about global warming. Nobody alive today is likely to live long enough to see the long-term consequences of atmospheric pollution, so why should they do anything?

Now, if your average major industrialist had a few more centuries tagged onto their life-expectency, their world view is likely to go through a major overhaul. One day's profits aren't going to make a big impact on someone likely to live into their third or fourth centuries.

On the other hand, if your ultra-expensive coastal Villa is likely to vanish into the rising oceans before you've had a chance to even live there, then you might do something about the cause of said rise in oceans.

(This is covered in more depth, and with a better grasp of English, in John Wyndam's novel "Trouble with Lichen".)

No, that's turning stem cells into adult cells

[Derek Pomery]

Specifically, skeletal. We've been doing that with all types of cells for some time now. This article in Times claims they have found a way to turn adult differntiated cells into stem cells. Completely different matter.

well it sure looks like i'm going to live forever.

[pezpunk]

either Verner Vinge's Singularity or this stem cell research ... either way, it looks like i've got a decent shot at immortality. cool. this whole religion thing may become deprecated yet.

Re:End of Aging/Death?

[Coward, Anonymous]

does this mean the end of hospitals/morgues/doctors? Cancer of the liver? Just cut it out, and grow a new one.

If it means the end of doctors, who will put the new liver in you? Besides, there are many ways to die other than organ failure. You can grow all the brains you want, but that's not going to help the person who had a bullet tunnel through theirs.

Anyone see a population problem here???

[swordgeek]

Maybe it's because I'm just finishing up reading Bill Joy's remarkable article over at Wired (go find it for yourself!), but producing stem cells definitely leans towards eventual immortality, and the only way to survive that on earth is to completely stop reproducing.

Do people ever stop and think about whether a given development is a good thing or not, before pushing forward on it?

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[the_other_one]

A Simple solution.

Provide everyone with an adequate supply of hazardous materials.

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[swordgeek]

Heh.

Problem is, we've already done it, and they're not working fast enough. The hazardous materials that REALLY would work well are rapidly coming to the point where they might eliminate the whole race. Oops!

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[gwjc]

Not at all, living forever would be great. We should not be content to merely survive on earth. Population is only a limiting factor in a limited environment; it's time to live our destiny, go out and look for strange new worlds, boldly go where no man has gone before... It is utterly insane to expect to stay here on this little planet living our little life death cycle until the planet itself is wiped out or deprived of life. Life extension, space exploration, carpe universe! Don't be such a neophobe.

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[SirWhoopass]

Of course it would cause huge population problems. I guess we'd better speed up research on terraforming.

On the other hand, there's a whole lot we don't know about life. We have made great strides in advancing life expectancy, but the quality of those extra years may not be all that great. If this technology could let people live to be 100 without nursing homes and hospitals it could have huge benefits for society.

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[nathanh]

Do people ever stop and think about whether a given development is a good thing or not, before pushing forward on it?

Science isn't a "good" thing nor a "bad" thing, anymore than knowledge is a "good" thing or a "bad" thing. Science and knowledge and "pushing forwards" the boundaries of understanding are entirely orthogonal to concepts like "good" and "bad".

It's what people do with the knowledge that we can judge as being "good" or "bad".

Occasionally the way the science is conducted can also be seen as "good" or "bad".

But never make the mistake of thinking that science itself is "good" or "bad".

I'd hate to think that our ability to gain knowledge was restricted by anything other than intelligence and dedication.

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[swordgeek]

It took a few minutes to bite back the truly nasty replies forming in my head. Instead, I'll just ask this: WHY does anyone who commits the heresy of questioning powerful and double-edged technology get branded a "neophobe?" Are you incapable of looking beyond the end of your nose, or are you just too excited by this week's nifty discovery?

WHY would living forever be great? Where does your idea of our destiny come from?

Technology _will_ advance, whether we like it or not. Trying to avoid it seems pointless, and that's certainly not my goal here. However, ageless humans would (will?) have vast and profound consequences on the entire race. Let's try to sort out those consequences now, before we end up saying, "oh shit, why didn't we do this 50 years ago, before it was too late?"

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[Masem]

Actually, you probably would die from brain-related problems at some point. You cannot reproduce *that* organ, particularly some of the fundamental system controls built into it.

But if this is not a hoax or a false result, we are probably looking at 10 to 20 years into the future the ability to replace organs with no concerns on compatibility. I certainly hope this is a sign for the human race to significantly think about ZPG. I don't think we need to go as strict as China (one child per family, forcing negative population growth), but, for example in the states, start taking away tax credits for any children beyond the second, or taxing MORE for those (include list of exclusions for this here). Enough sci-fi books have tried to predict what the over-population of earth would be like, and in most cases, that point occured AFTER we had colonized the moon or another planet.

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[NonSequor]

That's why we need to be the conquering species rather than the conquered species. In movies it's always the alien race that is trying to conquer us. We need to be just as amoral as they are and conquer them first to get the resources to support our expanding population.

What was that line in Independence Day? "They're like locusts!" We should be that way, looting and pillaging the universe.

"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[gwjc]

I honestly think that people who think we are destined to die are the ones whos focal distance ends at the tip of their nose. Living forever would be great because death sucks. If you disagree with this then by all means... I agree it will be a profound change.. for a species to achieve immortality; that will be the first step to our next evolution - Homo Eternus

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[swordgeek]

Ah, now THAT's the sort of thing I was hoping to hear! ZPG is a possible option. So is mandatory death at a certain age. Can you just imagine it? "Happy 140th! *BLAM!!!*"

OK, that was a little sick. :-)

But you're looking at the options, instead of screaming "neophobe!" at anyone who doesn't blindly embrace new technology. It's heartening.

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[swordgeek]

You know, I'm not so convinced that this is true anymore. Here's my rationale.

Eventually people will do _everything_, both good and bad, with science and knowledge. Anything that's phsically possible will be realised eventually.

Given that premise, I see the potential for knowledge and/or discoveries that have MUCH more severe negative consequences than positive. Maybe they have no positive consequences at all. Those negative consequences will still be exploited. Is knowledge still neutral?

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[Psychotext]

Yesm Yes, Yes! I was truly starting to believe that I was the only person that belived in this sort of thing, however - I believe in taking it just that one step further...

We need licences to shoot, drive, practice medicine etc, so why is it that two of the least responsible people on the planet are allowed to create children with no tests before hand? Your example of using benefits to discourage over population could also be used as a means of discouraging people who are not suitable from having children.

The theory is simple, the couple is tested in a number of fields (Not intelligence related.) and then their results are panel judged. If they fail the tests (Re-testing is possible) and then go on to have children anyway; they lose massive amount in benefits / have their taxes increased up until the point when they have enough money to get along on, but no more.

A pretty hardcore opinion obviously, but if you look at the things children are being put through by incompetant / abusive parents, then I believe it would be worth it. Any life saved would be worth it.

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[BrotherPope]

>Eventually people will do _everything_, both good and bad, with science and knowledge.

'everything' is an infinite set, limited first by imagination and second by physical laws. Someone still has to think up the 'bad' ways to use the knowledge and then lack the morals that would otherwise prevent them from harming someone.

In other words, I just don't buy what you're saying. For many reasons, this among them.

pluripotent vs. totipotent

[nowan]

One thing worth noting is that they're not talking about what most people mean when they say "stem cell," i.e., totipotent cells.

Totipotent cells can become any type of tissue found in the human body. They're the cells found in embryos & (female) reproductive tissues.

Pluripotent cells are much more common, found in bone marrow and (I believe) other places as well. They can become some types of tissues, but not others.

Re:pluripotent vs. totipotent

[Pooua]

Totipotent cells can become any type of tissue found in the human body. They're the cells found in embryos & (female) reproductive tissues.

Actually, the stem cells in human embryoes are only totipotent for about 4 days after fertilization; after that point, they specialize into pluripotent stem cells. The stem cells harvested from embryoes are pluripotent, not totipotent.

"When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the product is a single cell that has the potential to form an entire organism. This fertilized egg is a totipotent stem cell, which has the potential to develop into a complete organism. In the first hours and days after fertilization, this cell begins to divide into identical totipotent stem cells. Then, approximately four days after fertilization, these totipotent stem cells begin to specialize, forming a hollow sphere of cells called a blastocyst. One part of the blastocyst is a cluster of cells called the inner cell mass, which are the stem cells that will go on to form most of the cells and tissues of the human body. These are pluripotent stem cells, which are different than totipotent stem cells -- pluripotent stem cells do not develop into a complete organism.

"Recently, human pluripotent stem cells have been isolated from two sources: the inner cell mass of human embryos at the blastocyst stage and from fetal tissue obtained from terminated pregnancies. Because these cells are capable of limitless division and self-renewal, they can be maintained indefinitely in tissue culture, making them a vital resource for research."

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/about_ninds/spieg_fisch_t estimony.htm#Why%20are%20human%20pluripotent%20ste m%20cells%20important

Re:pluripotent vs. totipotent

[poo203]

...so how do these cells then decide they want to be liver, brain, heart cells etc? Do we know how to make a cell do that yet?

Re:pluripotent vs. totipotent

[Pooua]

...so how do these cells then decide they want to be liver, brain, heart cells etc? Do we know how to make a cell do that yet?

I'm not sure if you are referring to totipotent or pluripotent cells. I do not know what triggers the transformation from totipotent to pluripotent, but one important influence that transforms pluripotent cells into organs in the embryo appears to be the distribution of a hormone along the length of the embryo. The farther from head of the embryo, the more diffuse the hormone. Experiments in controlling the concentration of the hormone resulted in predictable changes in organ development.

Stanford Reports has an article describing yet another control mechanism in the differentiation of pluripotent cells into organs.

"The research, which was conducted primarily
by doctoral student Amy Kiger in Fuller's
laboratory, was published last week in the
journal Nature. Their study revealed
that stem cell reproduction is controlled in
part by special surrounding support cells in
the body that play a guardian role. These
guardian cells send key information that
ensures that at least one of the two daughters
of a stem cell division differentiates instead
of retaining stem cell identity. 'Under the
influence of the guardian cells, the stem cell
divides to produce one stem cell and one
specialized cell, rather than two stem cells,'
Fuller said.

(Stanford Report, October 18, 2000)
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/octo ber18/stem_cells-101800.html

Excellent news

[Kryptonomic]

This is most excellent news.

There is evidence for the regrowth of nerve cells but the problem has that only stem cells seem to be able to replace the damaged cells.

This is very promising. Soon fixing spinal injuries and brain damage will be possible.

Would you say that now is the time to panic?

[OlympicSponsor]

Yes I would, Kent.

I see a lot of Luddites (yes, Luddites) who are ready to run for the hills because of the perils of "playing God" (some of the slightly more rational are instead fearing about population growth instead of nebulous mythological concepts).

Back up the truck, Nellie. What we have here is a claim about a procedure that may be the first step on the road towards a treatment that could turn out to have some negative sides. Let's don't any of us panic until we have something to panic about.

Do we really think that a species that can conquer aging (once we do) will let a little thing like population size stop us?
--
MailOne

New tissue = No tofu

[thex23]

Beyond being able to rejuvenate existing tissue (which is Very Big, don't get me wrong), this could also mean we can skip over using living beings (ie: animals) as mediums for growing tissue. We could grow replacement organs (skin, bones, muscle, etc.) without using pigs and monkeys to be the host. Just produce them in "vats" that are constantly supplied with the nutrients and drugs required.

The non-obvious importance is that we can start "growing" meat and other kinds of animal tissue (perhaps vegetable as well?) on an industrial scale...

It won't be a hundred years before we stop raising cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. and start eating artificial food that can be engineered to spec. I'm sure it would be more efficient from a thermodynamic viewpoint.

The bad news is that the rich will live forever. The good news is that you won't have to eat tofu.

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I'm sorry this isn't correct. The jump going from stem cells (which are already available anyway although there are ethical as well as technical considerations) to growing replacement organs is actually very large.

In order to do that it is necessary to get the chemical, physical and electrical environment correct for the particular organ that you are trying to grow. You need the recipes. We don't have the recipes yet.

That's the first problem. Then there's the time problem. How long is it going to take to grow an organ big enough that you can use it?

As for living forever, that isn't clear at all. For one thing the brain cells aren't designed to reproduce at all, and once enough of them are dead you are too. Adding reproducing brain cells to an adult may well have side effects. But there are signs that it might help in some cases e.g. parkinsons but even then it doesn't seem to be a cure.

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[Hard_Code]

Is there something I missed in the article? It seems to me there is a world of difference between being able to coerce some animal cells back into stem cells, and being able to mass produce animal-like food. We already have ways of obtaining all the nutrients we need. But people don't *want* do pop food pills, or eat human kibble. Our bodies *want* to bite into a steak or a leg of chicken. Hell, even my poor body does, and I'm a vegetarian. Unless we can exactly reproduce the entire physiology of an animal in a little vat, I don't see how we could grow mass quantities of this type of food. At least animals come with the machinary to go out and grab grass, and sun, and water, and all the things it needs to live (until we kill it)...we'd simply be having to do that *ourselves*.

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[lizrd]

While it's true that this research is nowhere near making it possible to grow chicken legs in a vat it does not seem that such a thing will remain impossible forever. I'm directing this at you because you claim to be a vegetarian and I find it an interesting topic.

Suppose that we do become able to grow T-bones in a vat, not only that but really good, boneless, fatless, gristle free T-bones and cheap too. Wouldn't this remove pretty much all objections that vegetarians have to eating flesh? After all, it's now much healthier than our current meat products and didn't involve the slaughter of any animals to produce it, is it now a vegetable?

I'm not trying to be a jackass here, I'm just genuinely interested in the complex changes that are occuring due to genetic engineering.
_____________

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[ethereal]

Not that this is my feeling, but to play the devil's advocate: it seems like a lot of vegetarians take the position that the exploitation of animals for food, clothing, etc. is wrong. How much more exploitative then to take a creature's very essence, and grow it in a tank to feed people? In a certain sense, this is the ultimate exploitation of the animal. I'm sure there will be some folks who will take this position and avoid tank-grown meat to eat tank-grown vegetables instead.

Me? I expect we'll all be eating food made from single-celled organisms sometime soon. My hope is that it's more like Asimov's Trantor than like The Matrix, but either way single-celled is the way to go.

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[Chalst]

Exploitative? I thought the issue was about animal suffering.

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[selfsimilar]

As for living forever, that isn't clear at all. For one thing the brain cells aren't designed to reproduce at all, and once enough of them are dead you are too.

False. All recent literature indicates that brain cells do reproduce. They just reproduce in one part of the brain and then migrate to where they need to go. Brain tissue doesn't grow as fast as other tissue, but it does grow. see http://www.skally.net/ppsc/nerve.html

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[fluffhead]

Not necessarily. See e.g. the Jains. Although it is debatable whether a purely chemically synthesized substance is/has "life".

#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[Chalst]

The reference you cite states compassion as the root of Jain vegetarianism, which is the response to suffering.

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[Hard_Code]

I don't take issue with the ethical ramifications (hey, it'd be great if we could produce animal-like foods, without having to kill actual animals), but with the technical aspect. For a T-bone to grow in a vat, it still needs all the nutrients and environment of a T-bone on a real animal. We'd have to collect all those resources ourselves, and then make them available in the vat. On the other hand, animals them selves are virtually autonomous meat factories. I mean, they have legs and walk around and obtain all the resources they want all by themselves. We don't have to do it for them, which is very convenient. My question is just whether growing animal substances in vats is even ultimately thermodynamically feasible. I mean, we'd ultimately have to be doing the analogue of grazing and basking in the sun for that T-bone, whereas it could do it itself if it were attached to an animal ;)

To answer your concerns though - If everybody raised animals in an ethical manner, I wouldn't see much fault in using them for food. After all, people, not to mention plenty of other animals, have been doing that very thing for millenia. But the issue is respect and care for the animals. If my eating of chickens is promoting an industry which takes chickens, rips their beaks off, stuffs a tube in their face, and cages them up in racks and racks, and squeezes as many eggs out of them until they die, or are killed for meat, I don't want to participate in that. If it means boxing up meat cattle in a space they can't even move in, for their entire premature lives, separating offspring at birth, etc, I don't want to participate in that. It is impractical, and in many cases impossible, to buy completely ethically raised animal food, simply because economies of scale make it much more economical to raise animals in an unethical manner. So I abstain. The secondary reason is that we eat proportionally way too much meat than we were designed to anyway, and a mostly, or totally vegetarian diet (that is with high quality vegetarian food) is a better diet anyway (less risk of cancer, food poisening, wierd hormones, blah blah blah). The third reason, I suppose, is that after a while I've become sort of sicked by the idea of eating some thing that was living and running around before, although that is not really a practical reason.

So if either 1) everybody starts ethically raising animals, so that I can be assured that the meat I'm stuffing in my face at least came from something that had a decent life, or 2) we come up with some neato technology that allows us to grow artificial animal meat, I can see un-vegetarianizing (especially for the omega-3 in fish, etc.).

Re:End of Aging/Death?

[puck01]

If this is true, and the technology becomes cheap/popular enough, does this mean the end of hospitals/morgues/doctors? Cancer of the liver? Just cut it out, and grow a new one.

The answer, no, no, and no.

1. One would require a hospital to administer treatments. First, not all diseases will be cured by this. Second, there will always be emergencies requiring immediate care.

2. Read #1. Emergencies (car accidents, bullets) and other diseases will still cause death.

3. I don't know about you, but if some one is going to administer pluiripotent cells to me, I sure as hell want them to know where to administer them and how. For example, a patient may have congestive heart failure (CHF). If a doc is to administer pluipotential cells to a heart to regrow cardiac muscle, he/she better know what their doing because the stem cells will become the cell they are surrounded by. A heart in CHF will typically be considerably fibrosed so injecting the cells haphazardly could potentially cause them to take up around fibroblasts (the cells that produce the fibrosis) and become fibroblasts. That'll only make matters worse.

Re:Bill Gates Regenerates Into Time Lord

[big_groo]

Fast forward:

Year: 2566
Location: Redmond, Washington.
1 Microsoft Way
Floor: 399

Plebe: "My Lord...we CAN'T release the biotoxins yet..You haven't had your stem cell injections"

Big G.:"gurrrgle - 11011100101110111010111011" (vanishes)

Plebe: (nervously) "Yes m'Lord. Yes...right away!"

Re:Guess what?

[SuperguyA1]

Yes you do!

Point of order

[The NT Christ]

Stem cells refers to any cell which produces dissimilar daughter cells. The human body is full of stem cells.

It's good.

[Gorimek]

Nothing can give us immortality. What is possible is that we won't age. We would still die from non age related diseases, accidents, wars etc.

And the planet can easily take 20 billion people.

So relax and try to get some sleep, OK?

Re:It's good.

[swordgeek]

OK, immortality was the wrong word. Elimination of death from aging, though.

If we managed that in say ten years, 20 billion should carry us another decade beyond that if we're lucky. What do you propose we do when we're at 120 billion in 40 years from now?

Re:It's good.

[dschuetz]

If we managed that in say ten years, 20 billion should carry us another decade beyond that if we're lucky. What do you propose we do when we're at 120 billion in 40 years from now?

If we achieve "near-immortality," then the birth rate WILL decrease. It simply will, that's been fairly well documented as standards of living increase. And there's still attrition through accidents, suicides, people who couldn't get to the hospital in time for the replacement heart during a major MI, etc.

Re:It's good.

[RareHeintz]

Nothing can give us immortality.

I dunno... If it gets so I can keep a spare body or personalized organ bank around, and if someone thinks up a way for me to make weekly backups of my brain/memories/personality... Well, I can come close, now can't I?

Admittedly, it would take a whole lot of infrastructure, not a little wealth, and a number of scientific advances that nobody knows for a fact are possible (or impossible). Still, I hold out hope.

OK,
- B
--

Re:It's good.

[Random Utinni]

Well, this gets into some philosophical quandraries...

Who are you? If you die, but your spare body is filled with your memories, are you now alive? Or is it someone else with your memories in a duplicate body? I'd argue the latter...

From everyone elses perspective, you'd still be there... it'd be the same person they're interacting with, but it wouldn't be you... You're dead. Think about it this way: if you don't die, but someone activates your spare body with a current copy of your memories, are you now in two places at the same time? No. You effectively have a twin brother (or sister) with the same memories as you. If you die, he lives... you do not continue to live through him. It doesn't change if you die first.

Having the ability to create backup organs can help you live longer, and help you survive massive injury... but if you die, you're dead... that's life (er... death).

Re:It's good.

[Funky Jester]

And the planet can easily take 20 billion people.

take != sustain

Re:It's good.

[RareHeintz]

That's a legit perspective - the "twin brother" argument is compelling - but I maintain that subjectively I'd be alive.

(Hmm... How does one pursue this without horribly abusing the first person singular subjective pronoun? This is a sign that this would be a Very Big Development - the structure of our language can't handle it.)

Anyway, in the case of prematurely activating my clone with a copy of my memories, there would then exist two people who subjectively (and I contend legitimately) believe themselves to be me. Each would have (and feel) the full body of my experiences and memories continuous until the last backup. Certainly, they'd be diverging as individuals starting from the first picosecond, but I still say they're both (hypothetically) me.

It also brings up an interesting hypothetical question of who gets to use "my" driver's license, SSN, etc., in the case of premature clone activation...

OK,
- B
--

Re:It's good.

[swordgeek]

Right. Birth rate goes down as standards of living, health, and education increase. (Although there's usually a lag of many years between the two.) That's the thing we've seen time and time again as third world nations develop and move towards first world status.

That doesn't have any bearing on what would happen when a greatly increased lifespan gets introduced into a society that's already got low mortality, low birth rate, and high standard of living. It's never been done, we have no experience with it, and any predictions are bound to be complete guesses.

Re:It's good.

[peeping_Thomist]

If it gets so I can keep a spare body or personalized organ bank around, and if someone thinks up a way for me to make weekly backups of my brain/memories/personality... Well, I can come close, now can't I?

No. You wouldn't survive your first brain transplant. Someone qualitatively indistinguishable from you but numerically distinct might survive, but that prospect undermines the possibility of _your_ survival.

Re:It's good.

[powerlord]

Okay... but who says the treatment will be availble in the Third world? (except to the rich and powerfull) I'm not saying that this is how it SHOULD be, but how it probably will be. Heck, who says the treatment would be available to everyone in the First World? (except to the rich and powerful)

Re:It's good.

[RareHeintz]

Indeed - this discussion was had on a parallel thread.

OK,
- B
--

Re:It's good.

[swordgeek]

Um, maybe I wasn't too clear. I wasn't saying that it would (or should, or whatever) necessarily be available in the third world. I meant to say that in the first world, there's no presuming that an increase in lifespan would necessarily be followed in a decrease in birth rate. That's all.

Re:It's good.

[swordgeek]

"(Hmm... How does one pursue this without horribly abusing the first person singular subjective pronoun? This is a sign that this would be a Very Big Development - the structure of our language can't handle it.)"

<p>Oh that's easy, as anyone in the British Commonwealth will tell you. Use the Royal We.
:-)

Re:It's good.

[Peaker]

According to QM there is no identity.
I.E: If you switch all the ircon atoms in a car with identical iron atoms, it would still be the *SAME* car.

Therefore, there is actually no concept of identity. Destroy something, create it somewhere else, identically, and you actually moved the thing, not created an identical one.

That's what QM seems to claim, at least.

Re:It's good.

[RareHeintz]

Oh. Ouch...

Wish I could mod this up as funny. ;)

OK,
- B
--

Re:It's good.

[Gorimek]

We're 6 billion now. You seem to be claiming a far higher birthrate than I think reasonable.

But that's beside your main point. We might reach those numbers in twice the time, but the question what to do about it remains.

And while I'm not particularly worried, I can't say I have an answer. Such a world would be so radically different from ours that it's hard to imagine, and you probably would be very wrong in most predictions. Think about what people predicted about how previous big changes would affect society. Reality tends to surprise. But it also tends to sort itself out, and the doomsayers are routinely proven wrong.

There would clearly have to be some major changes in how societies function. If living space and resources like water and air becomes real scarce they will have to be managed very tightly, either as private property or rationed by government. There might be restrictions on breeding. We might colonize the planets and the oceans. We'll certainly invent new better ways to produce food and products. It may turn out that even with aging beaten, people only live to 150 on average, so we'll just be twice as many. I could go on and on, but I already have.

If it happens, it'll be an interesting ride!

Re:It's good.

[RareHeintz]

Yes, but I don't think anyone's talking about an atom-for-atom copy here. Though that would certainly be interesting - instead of backing up my brain, what if I could back up my entire self? Now that has some weird implications, and would be an exception to the twin brother argument.

OK,
- B
--

Scottish == British?

[Taliesin]

Isn't Scotland part of Britain? Wouldn't all Scottish, Welsh, and English persons all be British? IOW, each set is a subset of Britains.

Re:Scottish == British?

[tiefling]

No, think of them as states. Scotland and Wales both have their own educational systems and regional government. Some people predict that Scotland could become independant in the next decade.

Re:Scottish == British?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scotland is in Britain. Britain is an Island. Ireland is another Island.

England, Scotland and Wales are countries on the island of Britain (Britannia).

Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are countries on the Island of Ireland (Hibernia)

The United Kingdom is the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland.

Re:Scottish == British?

[Taliesin]

No, but they are all "Americans". While those in the USA think of "America" as the "United States of America", "America" (or at least "The Americas") is a lot more. Similarly, while we often think England == The United Kingdom, England is actually a part of Britain, which itself is a part of the United Kingdom.

Bad Troll, no doughnut.

[Gen-GNU]

Hrmmm, where to start. Firstly, most of the comments I have read which are pointing out problems with population growth are rational, well-constructed lines of thought which are well worth considering. And none of them use the phrase "Back up the truck, Nellie."

Just because you don't believe that population growth is going to be a problem is not a reason to discount those people who do.

Here's a thought...reply to them, with a logical, well thought out reason on why it WONT be a problem, or what can be done to remedy it, etc, rather than just name calling (Luddites) and dismissing other peoples opinions out of hand.

Re:well it sure looks like i'm going to live forev

[Bearpaw]

1) Longevity != immortality. (Though it may help you live long enough to take advantage of more advances which may help you live long enough to ... etc etc ... which may help you live long enough to need to think seriously about how to dodge the death of the universe.)

2) I'm not sure why you think this may "deprecate" "this whole religion thing". It would probably effect how at least some people think about religious and spiritual issues, but deprecate it? I really doubt it.

A few notable points...

[AstynaxX]

1. Longevity can be achieved, eventually, through this, but not immortality. Severe truama to the brain or other vital organ will likely still be fatal [though all organs beside the brain will depend on proximity to a proper treatment center]

2. There may be some unforeseen limit on this that we will only discover after implementing it [maybe these stem cells have some maximum ability to regenerate tissues, at which point nothing an bring it back, sort of like a rechargable battery]

3. Repairing brain damage will enable full function, but not recovery of memories, personality, etc. So a tumor/shot to the head will still be very life altering.

-={(Astynax)}=-

Re:A few notable points...

[Omnifarious]

I suspect that once you have a technology that can, say, extend your lifespan to double it's current limitations, you have a good chance of achieving immortality. It's likely, for example, that there would be advances that would allow stem cells to be regenerated, and if you lived longer because of tissues grown from stem cells, it's all the more likely that you'd live to see it.

Not new news, but newsworthy...

[Brand X]

This isn't the first I've seen of this... I got wind of the (repeatable) work that was going on in the UK on this issue a few months ago... but it's a really huge deal.

It's not so much a huge matter scientifically, aside from the novelty of actually triggering differentiation in adult cells that had been (to a far lesser degree than the majority of adult cells, but to some degree, inevitably, nonetheless) differentiated already... it's the scientific ethics (and avoidance of the smack up-face with the so-called "moral majority" in the US, and probably similar issues abroad) advantage of being able to produce undifferentiated human cell culture (generic blastosphere-like cells?) without actually going through a fertilization-and-extraction stage.

Long term, this could be the key to cloning organs from the same individual, maybe with added gene therapy and some telemerase baths on the organ in question, for surgical replacement. "Your heart's bad? Let's take a look at your records... oh, you've got a weak valve from a developmental shortage of hormone G... we'll just clone you up a new one without the bad valve. Come back in three months for the surgery..."

Short term, it means more capacity for researching into human aging, desease, and genetics without running afoul of morality laws, or genuine ethical issues.

It's nice to think there might be a good side, someday, to the tech that's railroading us toward a Gattaga situation...

I keep wondering about the barely-differentiated cells mentioned in the first paper I read on this. It seems to me that an undifferentiated cell in an adult human, without the correct hormonal elements of gestation, would likely be cancerous... perhaps they don't have whatever triggers cause cell division firing yet. at this level, human biology is so complex... I keep wishing I'd done my grad work in biomedical science or human genetics... solid state physics doesn't really delve far enough into the subject matter to give any expertise...

What?!

[Bearpaw]

Think about the consequences of a development?! What are you, some kinda tree-huggin' liberal commie Luddite?

Progress Is Go(o)d.

(Except for the blink tag. That was Bad. That was the only exception, though. Really. Here, have a dish of algea bloom ice cream with depleted uranium sprinkles. Yummy!)

Re:Want News Faster?

[werdna]

everyone says "drudge is full of shit". well guess what fuckface, nobody has been able to prove that yet.

Everyone? Full of Shit? Perhaps the overgeneralization and escatology is a substitute for an inability to make reasoned argument?

The criticisms I have seen of Drudge and his website is that he does not comport with certain traditional journalistic practices. (Verifying stories from primary sources whenever possible; obtaining confirmation from second and sometimes third sources prior to reporting statements from unnamed sources; careful attribution of the nature of unnamed sources). Drudge doesn't deny this -- indeed he embraces the difference between himself and the fourth estate, claiming that his form of reporting is better and fresher precisely because he does not carefully vet the information he reports. Such a style is more likely to scoop others, but is also more likely to result in reporting of false or misleading information.

The critics who accurately accuse him of being a non-journalist miss the point, just as supporters who wrongly glorify his gossip as "great" journalism.

Notwithstanding all of that, his site is, however, a pretty decent collection of links to political commentary.

go back and read history again

[brokeninside]

Luddites have no fear of playing God, but of letting too-powerful capitalists wreck the local economy. Luddites weren't fearful of new technology, they just didn't like technology putting them out of work.

The proper term for someone that is fearful of technology would be a technophobe.

have a day,

-l

Some Life expectancy Stats...

[Hegemony Cricket]

Although random threats of immortality and stem cell research should be taken with a pound of salt, here's a sobering piece of info for any of you with delusions of seeing the Sun blow up one day...

Just so everyone know, the US has a huge aging research center that takes up what was formerly a chemical weapons lab...

Their research shows that if you remove all of the inherent pitfalls of being crammed in a meatsuit (cancer, stroke, etc.) that it is statistically improbable for anyone to live past 200,000 years.

In that time period one of the many millions of fatal accidents waiting to happen are most likely going to get you. Being eaten by cats, crushed by a slushy machine, or choking on a hunk of thumb cooked into meat-pie being several unimaginative possibilities.

Mod This Up (Insightful!)

[Microsift]

The world's population will double in the next 30 years, if no one died in that time period, the affect on the population would be minor (20%). Consider that most women will not be able/willing to have children indefinitely, the percentage of people on the planet's fertility/fecundity rate would decrease as the population aged. In short, long term you could have decreased population growth.(Plus, don't rule out war to control population!)

population

[*weasel]

i guess no generation will ever have to worry about growing up in a world without Strom Thurman in office.

i mean, i personally think that one of the major problems with our society now, is that common sense and logic are no longer required for survival. hence, the preponderance of people who probably shouldn't be alive - trying to negotiate an urban center in a canyonero.

but now, when they finally are about to shuffle off this mortal coil - we'll go and grow em a new lung, or liver, or spine.

well, at least maybe with immortality people will get over their quibblings about not sending willing participants on colonizing missions to distant planets.

maybe we will explore the cosmos - not by creating wormholes or by breaking the universal speed limit, but by slowly and surely plodding along. who cares how many light years till we get to alpha centauri! we've got the time.

just as five minutes seem like a lifetime to children, just as hours go by without adults really noticing them; perhaps someday we'll patiently read quadrillion page novels between solar systems.

well shit, we'll have to go somewhere to get away from all these immortal mental midgits!

Hmm... this might be a good time to sell short

[El]

Time to get rid of that CBR stock... I guess it's just as well I didn't shell out $800 to save my newborn's cord blood, isn't it?

Old news is new news

[hanishn]

As per _The Body Electric_, wasn't Robert O'Becker doing this ~30 years ago?

Oh really?

[Isldeur]

I've done a "decent" amount of reading in hematology (being a 3rd med) and I can't seem to reconcile some things. Some things just don't stand up.

In blood, there are (as the article points out) a number of stem cells which, while they retain their ability to differentiate, also give off progeny as needed. These progeny are then directed, by various growth factors in turn directed by the biological needs, to differentiate into the various cells. Theoretically, all blood cells (with the exception of red blood cells or erythrocytes) retain the complete genetic code.

But I can't see how it can really be reversed. White blood cells aquire a bunch of different organelles within them depending on their decided function. Do they loose these organelles too? Or do they just regain the ability to differentiate?

What might happen is that certain regulators which prevent certain things from happening in cells may be removed.

But does anyone really think that "just" the needed things are removed? If the cells in your heart or skin suddenly regained the ability to differentiate into anything, they would still first be respective cells of those parts. My (limited) guess is that they've just removed regulating factors and that probably brings the cells closer to neoplastic (a.k.a. uncontrolled cell growth) and that's about it.

Also, some of the top hematologists would be reviewing this paper before it was "not accepted" in a number of journals. Don't you think that these journals would be aching to be the ones to publish something so legendary? In the end, I can't see how "forgetting" to add something to the media suddenly would do this. I wish they'd let out more information.

Re:Oh really?

[Negadecimal]

I agree with you that these guys should have given more information. I'm wary of the fact that they've published in the media before scientific journals.

The level of differentiation between hemopoetic stem cells and their fates isn't that great (certainly not like a totipotent stem cell and say a nerve cell), especially depending on the what type of white blood cell is formed. I really wish the article were more specific on this point.

In the case of B and T lymphocytes, the differentiation effectively consists of splicing a random antibody and MHC pattern (for expression on the cell surface), and budding off a few more lysosomes to help the cell digest stuff it internalizes. The key here is that genetic information is lost during the splicing process... something that can't be reversed.

Monocytes theoretically are reversable, however, since they 1) exist naturally in circulation, 2) aren't specific to antigens, and 3) aren't fully differentiated yet.

Something is fishy about all of this.

Re:Oh really?

[Pooua]

In the end, I can't see how "forgetting" to add something to the media suddenly would do this.

That bothers me a lot, also. I might wonder what the person had in mind who first proscribed the addition of that agent? I can see him thinking, after his first experiments,

"The cells are still alive and acting strangly. Better add this *other* agent to finish them off!"

It sounds a bit like a bad Saturday morning children's show.

There were a lot of little comments like that in the newspaper's account that bothered me. Maybe it's just the way the English write?

Re:Oh really?

[SmellMyTeenSpirit]

"i don't see how this can be done" i know nothing at all about this, but tha fact that people are thinking about how it can be done leads me to belive that, by human nature, it will be done.

Re:veganism?

[netmeister]

Will it taste like Soylent Green?

For full organs, maybe

[chainsaw1]

Developing a full organ replacement would still be a ways away. Organs require a lot of organazation in order to develop properly. For instance take the heart. Some cells form the aorti, some ventricals, others form heart valves, etc. It's not just a ball of cellls that have the same type. In fact, some of the heart cells are different amongst themselves. However different organs require different levels of complexity

Aangstrom Biosciences in Michigan, for instance, is in the process of testing a method for producing bone marrow from stem cells. I think they get their stem cells from in the marrow itself, and use a patented method to culture it (which had been impossible before)

I think producing marrow, skin, generic nerve cells (?--may be more complicated), lymph, etc. may be much more within current technological limits than kidneys, hearts, and livers.

Patent(tm)

[cdgod]

"He says that the first trials, on individual patients, might start in the next six months.The company plans to seek partners among the big drug and biotech companies to develop the business. The invention is patented. " ------

Yup, only the rich will live forever...
(hint: start saving NOW!)

Re:well it sure looks like i'm going to live forev

[powerlord]

Longevity!=Immortality

Bah... I plan on living forever...
So far, So good :)

end of vegitarians...not likely

[tiefling]

See the thing about growing the meat in containers is that it would not have the same flavour as the kind taken from animals. The reason that your steak or hamburger meat has flavour is that it is saturated with uric acid and other biproducts that it is saturated with by the blood. Just the nutrients won't do any good. Now you may ask how it would be different. Just try Kosher beef, and you'll understand the difference. Besides after you stop eating meat for a while, you notice that if you try it again it hasn't got much taste.

Re:end of vegitarians...not likely

[nnnneedles]

Well, just saturate that steak with some genetically engineered uric acid before you hand it to me then.

Re:end of vegitarians...not likely

[Jaeden]

Last time I checked, cows didn't produce uric acid so unless something fishy (or perhaps birdy/insecty/reptilian) is going on in the butcher shop, my steak isn't saturated in it.

Re:end of vegitarians...not likely

[tiefling]

So what you're saying is that cows don't produce waste products? And they don't urinate? Wow pretty amazing beasts they are.

Bio Med scam?

[G-Force]

Hmm, I, like most of you, find this revolutionary and hopeful, but the report is just a wee bit fishy. firstly, her colleague admittedly doesn't essentially believe it, saying that there is probably another explanation. Couple it with the company Tristem, which has been opened for this specifically, is owned by the good Dr's husband. Perhaps this is all just circumstantial, but it also sets off a little red capitalist flag that says to keep fraud in mind...

This is sad, regrettable news...

[GeneralEmergency]

..because it heralds an age where it will become impossible to outlive one's enemies.

Moderate me now, baby.

"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --

How long do YOU want to live?

[Foo-Dawg]

I think there is a part of all this increased life expectancy, live longer issue we arn't looking at. Do you really want to live for 150 years?

Currently (at least in the US) as the elderly grow older and older and live longer and longer, a significant increase in depression as well as other stress-related sicknesses were found amoung the elderly population. I have found my life to (so far) verry long, yet I am still a teenager. Living to be anywhere near 100 seems like such a longtime. I myself could never last that long or live that long.

I do realize that possbily in the future an 80year old will be equivelant to an 30 year old of today, but for now living past 80, where you are usually either to tired to do much, or just to grumpy, for another 20 years would be pure torture.

I kinda lost my own train of though, but I hope you can see where i am coming from. Living 200 years doing nothing for 70 of them, is much less exciting then living for 70 and spending every year to its fullest.

Re:How long do YOU want to live?

[Rinikusu]

Anne Rice somewhat addressed this in her Vampire novels. Basically, you live for so long and you get so bored with life that you just want to curl up and die.

However

I know this is stretching it, but imagine the space program with people capable of not only living long enough to make the huge interseller journeys between systems, but still able to do meaningful research and work once they get there.

You think your job sucks now, imagine waking up every day for the next 500 years on the same can, seeing the same scene.....

:)

Re:How long do YOU want to live?

[spiro_killglance]

Depression is not really about how good your life is, its sometimes about failing to meet the goals what you set for you self, and sometimes is just plain chemical. People in poverty conditions can still be happy. And people you'd think would be on top of the world, sometimes kill themselves. Kurt Cobain, Micheal Huchance, where what millions of kids expired to and yet they couldn't live with themselves. Mother Thressa leaved in poverty all her life, and yet was happy. If your miserable and don't want to live much longer go see a psychoanalyst. Me I'm tend towards manic depression, and so know how little to do with reality depression or happiness can be. But just look at the size of the world, how much there is to learn, how many people there are to talk to, how many things you could choose to do. People can live for ever exactly the same way as they live for 70 years, one day at a time. Provided you are health in mind and body. Their is exactly the same reason to wake up in the morning in 100 years as this is to wake up tommorrow.

Sophistry? Science? Bad Journalism? so much blame

[Kibo]

First of all, the primary source of stem cells may be fetuses, but it is certainly far from the only. Witness the 2/2001 issue of Scientific American. We all have stem cells, bunches of them. Long ago they collectivly decided to take up slacker culture and listen to Seattle garage bands, roll blunts and snack on twinkies. They won't turn water into wine, or usher in a millenium of light without darkness, but they might make life a little better, and for some worth living. Stem cells have been collected from adult marrow, and even skin. Certainly some aspects of stem cell behavior are exciting (such as neurons coaxed from stem cells seem to home in and repair damaged areas of the brain and spinal cord), but stem cells aren't the fountain of youth. (Everything I've seen on aging seems to place the blame on collections of errors in our DNA)

Perhaps it was bad science. The researchers thought they isolated only white blood cells and managed to trap some astrocyes. It wouldn't be the first scientific trap that caught something other than intended. Perhaps it was bad journalism. What kind of person wrote the article, from what resources, with what background with what purpose? I remember when the MIR space station lost pressure and the CNN science correspondant had to look up how much pressure a Torr was (maybe CNN can't afford interns).

Then the last possability (I'll bother with). It was good science and good enuff reporting. In my experience pure researchers have this insane laser like focus on their specialty. They literally don't see anything else of the world. Their time table estimates are wildly inaccurate with an optimistic bias. Perhaps that's a necessary character trait, to maintain the relentless intensity and make the breakthough. Without a good perspective on how well and how poorly researchers tend to see the world can a writer really present an accurate depiction? Given a researchers appearent success should a journalist hold a that scientists predictions as highly suspect? If they did, what would the reader think?

I think I've done enough preaching, but I'll make one final remark ala Jerry Springer. At the end of the day, we all make our own judgements as to what the objective truth really is, factoring out other peoples prejudices and factoring our own. And don't pay prostitutes with a personal check if you're the mayor of a major city.

This does NOT overcome DNA aging

[Goldenhawk]

There's a little problem nobody here seems to have mentioned yet.

Experiments with Dolly (baaaaaaa) indicate that while she is a genetic copy of her "parent" donor sheep, so is the "genetic age" of her DNA.

As it turns out, DNA ages just like the rest of the body. Over time, it deteriorates and genetic errors build up. At some point (known to be around 120 years in humans) the decay begins to trigger the cell self-destruction mechanisms, even if those cells are otherwise healthy. The body begins to die one way or the other.

So the "fear" is that even perfectly cloned bodies (or body parts) are not immortal.

Who knows what dying in that fashion would be like - perfectly healthy organs, and then things begin to fail rapidly and suddenly - with little chance of repair.

Don't count on playing God - He's a lot sneakier than we suspected just a couple years ago.
* ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
* Split Infinity Music

Re:This does NOT overcome DNA aging

[IamLarryboy]

"known to be around 120 years in humans"

Just a thought.

Genesis 6:3 - And Jehovah said, My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh: yet shall his days be a hundred and twenty years.(ASV)

Re:Guess what?

[motardo]

no tofu for you!

Re:veganism?

[beefjerky_com]

Depends on the Veggie. Political Veggies would loose their objections. Health-nut veggies would be split, even if they made 0% fat meat.

Cultured meat could be started from human muscle, bringing back canabalisim, in a way. What would the morality-imposers think of that?

Still, the best beef jerky available today, is at http://www.beefjerky.com ---shameless plug.

So they can become a different Cell...

[kevlar]

But what about the DNA? The DNA is still denatured from age as far as I can tell. Now I'm no biologist, but turning a skin cell into a liver cell would just make it a liver cell of the same age. It wouldn't be a liver cell at day 0. We're still reliant on taking stem cells from feticies if we want brand-spanking-new genes.

"Magic Bullet" deals with this

[devphil]

There is a short story by Greg Bear (I think it's Greg Bear) titled something like "The Magic Bullet" (forgive my memory).

A genetic researcher discovers a way to make existing cells "cannibalize" oocytes in egg cells, making the host effectively immortal. Slight hitch: only half of the human race produces egg cells, and the researcher doesn't belong to that half. :-)

In an attempt to save mankind (literally), the male researcher tries to hide the results. However, he had experimented on mice first, and one of his (female) lab assistants noticed that some of the mice weren't dying...

Re:well it sure looks like i'm going to live forev

[pezpunk]

ok sorry yes i still have to make sure and not get run over, yeah, is there a word for being immune to old age? as for the religion thing .. well, if everyone lives more or less forever, what purpose does it serve? for all its' telling you how to live in the present, really what it's about is what happens to you when you die. if we don't care about THAT anymore, i can't see us caring too much about heaven, hell, stuff like that.

No tofu = that's the good news

[supruzr]

I'm sorry this isn't correct. Brain cells are grown in bone marrow. This is relatively old news. There have been some quite interesting experiments in which rats are injected with something radioactive in the bone marrow, and later their skulls are opened to find half the brain glowing. The phrase 'once enough of them are dead you are too' is correct no matter what bodily agent you are talking about.

As for living forever, brain cell death was never the barrier to a longer life anyway, it was the body that usually couldn't hold out, not the mind. Things like Alzheimers are exceptions, of course. This breakthrough will be a huge step in creating facilities that will allow a person to live for as long as they want. As far as these 'recipes' you speak of, we built the first atomic bomb through trial and error, so I don't know why you don't have more faith in the scientific community. That was sarcasm.

wouldn't reverse or prevent aging

[HomerJ]

With the execption of our teeth and eyes. We are only about 30 days old. All your old cells die, and new ones take their place. The real question on aging is, why do we even age at all? Dispite the fact that we competely replace our cells about one a month, we still age.

This could go a long way to heal things like heart disease, cancer, etc. Where the problems are they cells can't regenerate like they should. But this won't save you from aging.

NOTE: this is just what I remember from what biology I've had in the past. Anyone wants to prove me wrong, feel free.

Re:wouldn't reverse or prevent aging

[otis wildflower]

With the execption of our teeth and eyes. We are only about 30 days old. All your old cells die, and new ones take their place. The real question on aging is, why do we even age at all? Dispite the fact that we competely replace our cells about one a month, we still age.

Look into telomerase for the answer.. If only we could figure out how to have our bodies automagically tell the difference between benign telomerase (used to rejuvenate cells) and cancerous telomerase (which creates unchecked cell reproduction, aka cancer). That's why there's billions in them thar hills...

Your Working Boy,

Re:wouldn't reverse or prevent aging

[Omnifarious]

That and cumulative damage from metabolic processes. That's why anti-oxidants are such popular dietary supplements. They supposedly reduce metabolic damage by mopping up spare oxidizing agents. That's also why a very low calorie diet increases lifespan as well.

Re:wouldn't reverse or prevent aging

[EhWhat]

I prefer the approach to reverseing aging put forward by Kim Stanley Robinson in the Red/Green/Blue Mars books - Use a DNA store and wait until gene splicing techniques are advanced enough to repair your aged genes to an earlier state.

Store some of your DNA now!

Re:wouldn't reverse or prevent aging

[aswang]

That's the problem. There is no difference from "normal" telomerase and "cancerous" telomerase. In fact, almost all cells in the human body stop making telomerase once they've differentiated.

The effects of aging that the original poster is talking about have almost nothing to do with DNA anyway. Even if all your DNA was free from catastrophic errors, there's almost no way for the body to fix non-cellular elements that have degenerated, like connective tissue. Or most of your eye.

The Silence Conspiracy

[lrichardson]

A couple of years back, there was a small article regarding telomeres (a little sequence at the ends of DNA strands), and their role in aging. Essentially, as cells replicate, this sequence shrinks, and eventually reaches a threshold level where replication stops (senescence). At this point aging kicks in. What was interesting was that using rat cells in a petri dish, they were able to reverse the process.

Even more interesting was how hard they got jumped on.

Since then, they've replicated the process with human cells (our cells have ~ 75 replications in them: applying the appropriate chemicals (telomerase)) the number has been pushed to 225 with no signs of degradation). And the steps that are involved are being charted backwards, to find out what either a/ triggers aging, or b/ stops the non-aging process. It's actually rather hard to find out much on the issue; many companies are playing it close, in hopes of a huge payout; and seemingly legitimate fears of hordes of pitchfork, torch and injuction waving religious nuts (membership in the Christian Right qualifies) and Luddites.

Theoretically, there may be a simple chemical trigger we could take, like a daily pill, that would reverse/halt the aging process.

I don't see stem cells as the route to immortality (as in, unaging). They are and will continue to be vital in fundamental research, and the treatment of injuries/disease.

And I'd highly recommend an old classic, The Trouble with Lichen, as covering many problems that a greatly extended lifespan will cause society.

Re:well it sure looks like i'm going to live forev

[foobar jones]

Vinge's ideas about the Singluarity showed up in "Marooned in Realtime", the sequel to "The Peace War." In the first book, billions of people died from bio-engineered plagues before the Singularity ever occurred. So yeah, I'd say you have a really decent shot.

Yep, It Would Remove All Objections, But...

[GeekLife.com]

The problem then would most likely shift from not wanting to cause undue suffering to animals over to being scared of Frankenstein foods. (not commenting on the legitimacy of that fear, just mentioning it)
-----

Bear's white blood cell story was "Blood Music"

[AlexWorld]

And richly deserved its Hugo+Nebula, though I found the expanded novel disappointing.

"The Magic Bullet" is by Brian Stableford, who's also a biologist. It's reprinted in the 7th YBSF and well worth reading, as is "Les Fleurs Du Mal" in the 12th. (not a related work, but I thought I'd plug my favourite futuristic gengineering whatdunit)

Re:Bear's white blood cell story was "Blood Music"

[devphil]

Stableford, Bear, Stableford, Bear...

The names are so similar it's easy for me to get confused.

...

Not buying that one? Okay, how about "I've re-read so much of the stuff on my bookshelf in the last two weeks that's it's all blurred together, also, I'm stupid." ?

Re:Bear's white blood cell story was "Blood Music"

[AlexWorld]

Stableford, Bear, Stableford, Bear...
The names are so similar it's easy for me to get confused.

"How is a raven like a writing desk?"
"Neither begins with a B!"

Umm...ObSemiOntopic- If anyone's interested in more "longer living through tech" specfic, I'd say that Brian Stableford's "Mortimer Gray's History of Death" (YBSF 15th or 16th) is a good guess for society once distribution of longevity treatments normalizes.

And then there's always Heinlein, who held that replacing all one's blood every so often was the key to prolonged youth.

Re:Bear's white blood cell story was "Blood Music"

[devphil]

Mortimer's Gray's History of Death was just damn weird.... good story, but weird.

Darwin, and the end of human evolution

[Badassmofo]

Just curious (and I'm not at all comdemning the use of modern medicine or the potential of this new technology), but has anyone considered the fact that the use of these basically spell the end of human evolution? Sure, as a race we gain knowledge, however we stop getting physically stronger and more intelligent (for the most part), but the process of natural selection is essentially halted.

If a child is born with a vulnerability to a certain disease, we may be able to cure it. No one would let a child die if he/she didnt' have to. However, while his weak genes are spread on, the bacteria continues to evolve (this has actually already seen to be taking place) and get stronger. In nature, this individual would have died, thus not spreading his genes, and the species as a whole would have become stronger. The human race, however, has to carry the burden of this gene for as long as medicine can keep up with the evolving bacteria.

Just a thought...

Terrence - Programmer - Student - www.umr.edu/~tcaton

Re:Darwin, and the end of human evolution

[Jagasian]

We will have to replace evolution with genetic engineering. Advancement is allot quicker when you plan things, as opposed to rolling the dice.

Re:End of Aging/Death?

[Pooua]

If this is true, and the technology becomes cheap/popular enough, does this mean the end of hospitals/morgues/doctors? Cancer of the liver? Just cut it out, and grow a new one.

FYI, your liver is naturally able to regrow itself; it is one of the few human organs that have long been known to regenerate themselves. It is possible to remove 3/4 of it, and it can still regrow to full size, under normal conditions. It has to be pretty vivacious to act as the primary waste collector for your blood.

The coming ageless society

[kurt9]

The birthrate will decrease further. When medical technology allows for people to be physiologically 25 years old indifinitely, they will make the kind of life-style choices that 25 year olds make. Most of the people I know who are under 30 are either a) career-oriented professionals or b) laid-back, lonely-planet-style backpackers. Since a) and b) represent the most appealing life-style choices that I can think of, I think that most people will fall into one of these two categories in an ageless society.

People will have kids after they become independently wealthy. Since you will never age, even if it takes you a hundred years to become independently wealthy, you can still do so and still have the youthfullness to enjoy the wealth, have kids, or do whatever. Once a couple is independently wealthy, they can buy a "gentleman's" farm in Drain, Oregon; and have a family without the hassle of having to go to work every weekday morning. The point of agelessness is that it elliminates the factor of time in any of your life decisions.

Since you can still die from accidients, I prefer to use the term agelessness rather than immortality. Agelessness is really about freedom. Freedom to have dozens of careers, to do the "lonely-planet" backpack thing, or to do a combination of both (like I try to do). You can even colonize space (Oniell habitats in our solar system and others) since you'll have the time for it.

Some Links to Pluripotent Stem Cell Info

[Pooua]

It might be handy to refer to some of the research in stem cell plasticity, so here are some links I found:

STEM CELL PLASTICITY IN HEMATOPOIETIC AND NON-HEMATOPOIETIC TISSUE

Release Date: November 13, 2000

RFA: HL-01-007

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

Background

"Stem cell research offers enormous potential for treating devastating malignant and non-malignant diseases. Recently, a number of groups have reported that stem cells derived from adults may be capable of surprising plasticity or versatility. Investigators reported that after bone marrow transplantation, donor-derived cells could be found in non-hematopoietic tissues. These tissues included astroglia in the central nervous system, skeletal muscle, liver oval cells, cardiomyocytes, vascular-endothelial cells, and bone forming osteoblasts. In addition, bone marrow stromal cells from rats and humans can apparently give rise to large numbers of cells with neuronal properties under specific culture conditions. Also, muscle derived material was reported to display hematopoietic activity. In these studies, diagnostic cell surface markers have shown the reconstitution of both myeloid and lymphoid cell lineages after transplantation. Neuronal cells have also been reported to give rise to progenitors of all blood lineages and to demonstrate myogenic potential. Thus, increasing evidence suggests that adult cells could have far greater differentiative plasticity even at advanced stages of their differentiation programs than previously thought. The plasticity concept resembles the documented phenomenon known as transdifferentiation. However, the extent to which the transdifferentiation principle can be generalized to current findings is unknown.

"Findings such as those described above raise many unanswered and intriguing questions regarding the biology of stem cells and the routes they take to express their differentiation potential. This RFA is developed to encourage research to substantiate stem cell plasticity and to characterize cellular, molecular, and genetic mechanisms that allow cells to express plasticity."

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-H L-01-007.html

Stem Cells: What Are They?

"Many types of stem cells exist in the human body. All have the capacity to replicate, to self-renew; and they have the capacity to differentiate in order to produce specific body parts such as muscle cells, skin cells, nerve cells, and such. Yet scientists believe they are organized in a hierarchy according to a scale of specialization. Please watch carefully as I label the steps on the hierarchical staircase.

"On the top we find totipotent (totally potent) stem cells, which are capable of forming every type of body cell. Each totipotent cell could replicate and differentiate and become a human being. All cells within the early embryo are totipotent up until the 16 cell stage or so.

"Next are the pluripotent stem cells which can develop into any of the three major tissue types: endoderm (interior gut lining), mesoderm (muscle, bone, blood), and ectoderm (epidermal tissues and nervous system). Pluripotent stem cells can eventually specialize in any bodily tissue, but they cannot themselves develop into a human being.

"Finally, we have tissue specific stem cells committed to making blood, muscle, nerve, bone, or other tissues. Hematopoietic stem cells, for example, are responsible for all types of blood cells, but no other tissue types. These renew themselves, yet they specialize in the tissue they produce. Their continued presence in an adult person gives the body its repairing and healing ability.

http://www.ctns.org/Information/research/Stem_Cell /stem_cell.html

Pluripotent not totipotent!

[aswang]

If they're just using blood cells to do this, I suspect they really aren't trying to cure Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or anything that requires generating CNS neurons. First of all, there are other scientists who have already claimed that they are able to retrodifferentiate neural crest derivative cells (specifically, cells from your adrenal gland) in order to cure Parkinson's--this would be pretty old news. Secondly, the article really only talks about curing leukemia, which seems completely feasible using only hematopoietic stem cells.

While regenerating stem cells from differentiated cells is a big deal--since it takes forever to isolate stem cells and grow them--it's nowhere near being able to generate a completely cloned human from a single random cell. There's an enormous difference between pluripotent stem cells and the totipotent cells found in a very early embryo. While a pluripotent CFU can generate each and every single blood cell type, it can't generate neurons or striated muscle. While a pluripotent cell from the neural plate could theoretically generate any type of neuron and even cells that color your skin, the cells that help generate your teeth, and the cells in your adrenal glands, you wouldn't be able to make a liver or a pancreas from them. Only cells from before morulation have this kind of totipotency, and there's really no indication that they're actually causing cells to revert back to this level.

It's not an enormous leap to imagine being able to revert some differentiated cells to their stem cell derivatives. Obviously, erthryocytes can't since they've dumped all their DNA, and neither can lymphocytes, since they've spliced out a lot of theirs, but if other leukocytes keep their DNA intact, all it takes is removing certain regulatory proteins. Not a mean feat by far, but it's not magic either. And nowhere in the article do they claim they've retrodifferentiated completely differentiated NK cells, macrophages, or anything like that. For all we know, they could have just retrodifferentiated stem cells that are less pluripotent (like CFU-GM cells, which can only make granulocytes and macrophages) or even just the non-differentiated forms of RBCs or WBCs (For example, polychromatic erythroblasts, while normally committed to erythrocyte production, still have all their DNA and can still divide, so it wouldn't be too hard to get them to revert)

More obviously, they really haven't claimed that they've done anything about the telomere problem, which really puts a damper on the whole immortality idea. Sure, you could just add telomerase to the mix, but that's more likely to generate uncontrollably dividing cells than anything useful.

In other words, this is over-hyped. Sure, it's good news to people suffering from leukemia and other disorders of hematopoiesis, but if you need a new liver, don't get too excited.

Re:Pluripotent not totipotent!

[jatlantis3000]

oh ye of little faith!! people like you said....It will never fly!! why be this way? geez!!!

Re:Pluripotent not totipotent!

[aswang]

I'm not saying that it's 100% impossible to make totipotent cells from differentiated cells. The thing is, I don't think the scientists involved are claiming that they can, either.

Are you for real?

[kurt9]

Are you for real?

Re:well it sure looks like i'm going to live forev

[bobthemonkey13]

People could still die from accidents, murders, war, etc. Even the odds of being killed by space junk, over infinite time, is very high (some would say 100% likely). So religion would not be obsolete.

That's been solved already.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Experiments with Dolly (baaaaaaa) indicate that while she is a genetic copy of her "parent" donor sheep, so is the "genetic age" of her DNA.

As it turns out, DNA ages just like the rest of the body. Over time, it deteriorates and genetic errors build up. At some point (known to be around 120 years in humans) the decay begins to trigger the cell self-destruction mechanisms, even if those cells are otherwise healthy. The body begins to die one way or the other.

You're confusing two mechanisms:

- Error building up.

- The protective (hayflick limit) cell-reproduction counter running out and shutting down the cells.

The site of the counter has been discovered: It's the repeating sequences on the end of the chromosomes (telomeres), which don't copy completely and get shorter with each reproduction. In the absense of an enzyme (telomerase) which adds more repeats to them, the cell reproduction stops after a certain number of copies.

There are several places in the body where the cells contain telomerase and "reset the counter". One of them is a step in producing germ cells (eggs and sperm). So the baby starts out with the counter reset. They procedure they used to make Dolly did NOT reset the counter. But it would be trivial fix that, i.e. by dosing the DNA-sample cell with the enzyme.

(While the degradation of the telomeres is apparently a consequence of the way open-ended chromosomes are copied, the lack of telomerase in most tissues appears to be a protective mechanism to reduce the cancer rate from the geneic errors you mention. To become cancer a cell must acquire errors that BOTH stick its reproduction switch "on" AND switch on the production of telomerase before it has run out the clock. If it misses the second step the tumor stops growing, typically at about the size of a pea, and may then self-destruct.)

Re:That's been solved already.

[aswang]

The original poster isn't necessarily confused. He may not be talking about telomeres at all. Once the telomeres runs out, the cell just stops dividing. It doesn't necessarily die. The mechanism he is suggesting sounds more like the action of a tumor suppressor protein like p53--if it detects that the DNA is damaged beyond repair, it makes the cell commit suicide through apoptosis. But there are also other "clocks" in the cell--complex interactions of regulatory proteins--that scientists haven't completely elucidated yet. There is some indication that the Hayflick limit is actually due to interactions of glycoproteins on the surface membranes of adjacent cells and interactions with elements of the extracellular matrix rather than the telomere problem. So just adding telomerase and disabling p53--apart from being likely to cause cancer--still doesn't guarantee that the cell won't stop dividing and go apoptotic.

No Way Is This Immortality

[krmt]

I'm sorry, even if you've got the ability to make totipotent stem cells (as so many people here seem to be implying, despite the shady qualities of this announcement) it doesn't mean you'll be immortal.

Granted, you could replace a damaged heart, or liver, or whatnot... but your body is constantly undergoing wear and tear and reparation. Basically, your body only keeps itself up as long as it's capable and beneficial to do so. Jared Diamond talks about this in The Third Chimpanzee and I know he's got a ton of sources listed in the back of the book for each chapter. What it amounts to, is that your whole body is aging, and short of growing a new body and dumping your memories in to it "Sixth Day" style ;-) you're not going to be able to remain immortal.

People like to talk about how your cells are constantly being rejuvinated, but they still age as a whole. Why doesn't the skin of an 80 year old look like that of a newborn? Why doesn't the vascular system remain as flexible? Why can't old men get erections without viagra easily? Because everything is aging and you really can't replace it all.

The ability to replace a poor heart or kidney will certaintly extend lives for those who can't get donors, and for things like bad joints, the replacement surgery can be painful and in some ways almost as bad as the problem itself, as is the case with hip replacements in the elderly.

So don't go looking for immortality just yet. I personally don't think we'll be there for a long time, if ever.

"I may not have morals, but I have standards."

And that's why I wonder about this research...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Alright. There is a reason that embryo stem cells are preferred: they are different.

And there are a number of possibilities for what happens as the cells differentiate. (Production of DNA-regulation enzymes, phosphorilation of DNA bases, DNA edits, folding, etc.)

If the cells were anything BUT white cells (by which I assume they mean fully-mature antibody-producing white cells), I'd be less sceptical.

One step in the maturation of white cells is the differentiation of the antibodies. This involves the deletion of two small segments of DNA in the sites corresponding to the hypervariable regions of the antibodies. This is a noisy deletion, happening differently in each of the many cells in which it occurs, leading to the variety of antibodies with which we are blessed (and sometimes cursed).

Deletions like that are NOT reversable. (They correspond to editing out a chunk of a tape recording, and reversing them would consist of figuring out the missing waveform and editing it back IN. The information is LOST, so you don't have it to put back.)

Assuming all the OTHER steps in cell differentiation from totipotent to adult are members of a limited set of easily reversable changes, applying such fixes to an adult white cell would give you something that looked very much like a stem cell, and could fix most tissues of the body. But try to replace the immune system and you find that the splices were already done. Maybe the markers that control the edits are gone, and you get all one type of antibody. Less likely: the edits still happen but the variety is greatly reduced.

Make a clone and the clone has a defective immune system. If it survives to reproduce its offspring inherit the deficit as a nasty recessive.

Nevertheless, this IS very encouraging news. It sounds like the researcher may have found a way to reverse all the non-DNA-edit differentiation steps, producing a cell that "thinks" it's a stem cell. If true, even with an antibody coding problem such a cell could be used to repair many tissue types and grow replacement organs. And once the process is understood it might be adapted to a cell type that DIDN'T have DNA edits in its differentiation history.

That marvelous first time.

[hackus]

The very thought of my fellow human beings living longer than they already do makes me think there is little hope for us all.

Why would we seek to eliminate our most redeeming quality as a species? A gift that destroys evil and makes us strive for good in the short time we have. The child that grows up only to be a child again, eventually? To pass to that place we were before we were born.

We die. Not just the poor or the powerless, or even those who cannot speak. Eventually, but surely as the winter comes, we ALL die. It is a gift to us all, and it is the very reason why our species has survived this long. It is a gift that we cannot refuse.

Most of us are evil, and thankfully all of us who WERE and did evil, are now dead and buried, dust in the wind, with nothing left but bones.

This idea of applying natural philosophy and science to these ends of immortality is evil, I believe. It is just one more example of our species arrogance against the very laws our Universe has set down before us. Believing we can do anything we wish, simply because we feel we need to exert absolute chaos upon the beautiful order I see everynight when I look at the sky.

Most of us are petty, amourous, self seeking creatures that have lives that are too long as is.

What we really need right now is more disease, a biological agent that is capable of wiping us out to numbers that make it a pleasure to walk through the green and vast forests again. To see the wildlife and nature as they were, untouched by the greed of this time. Forests that covered continents from ocean to ocean, which once covered this green, now mostly brown, globe of our!

Thankfully, the people who I have just spoken of, are working on such an agent as we speak, and will be done quite soon, I suspect now that this "great advance" of the human genome project is now complete and the very laws of God are ready to be perverted.

Maybe a drop from 8 billion people to 1.2 million world wide will bring us back to that "wonderful first time" the ancients always talked about.

Then we will start over, as we did before. With great tales of the wonders of old, the men of reknown who walked the earth.

I dream of such a time when I am sleeping. That wonderful first time. In the temples, taking measurements of the sun, moon and stars, knowing each number each calculation brings new knowledge and a sense of perfection. Pefection and a sense of timelessness that technology and the things we built would last between the houses of 12 for all to see and understand for generations. A living testament that obeying the laws of the ONE and the Universe we live in brings immortality not just in the physical, with our temples, but the spiritual as well.

Then I awake to a world built with pitiful concrete and iron materials which can't even last 200 years!

A people who cannot see anything but the moments and thier selfish desires between each which last but seconds!

Technology and understanding so weak that it can't last as long as the things built with them for they are just as contrived as well!!!

Tell me this is all a dream and I will awake to that time once again!

-hackus

-hackus

Re:That marvelous first time.

[caffeinated_bunsen]

Slashdot, science, and $2 crack sure produce interesting results when mixed. Throw in some superstition and nihilism, and things just get wierd.

Re:That marvelous first time.

[Flower]

Yeah, I remember being an angst-ridden cynic after I had my first beer too.

Seriously though, get over being ostricized in high school and move on. The truth is most of us are not evil. The truth is a new dark age isn't going to "heal" Mother Earth.

The truth is the problem has more to do with people like you who "feel" so deeply and wax poetic, badly I might add, then don't do shit about actually implementing change. You're like the person who bitches that the government is going to destroy us all but won't take the time to get informed and vote or write your official about something you want them to do. Instead it's easier to angst like some poseur goth and lament "When will I wake up from this terrible dream!"

Hint. My selfish, evil self has a better chance of helping the environment by informing my congress critter that I don't want Gov. Whitney to head the EPA. I find her opinion that environmental regulation needs to take into account the economy to be wishful thinking.

Then there is Gale Norton who is Bush's nomination for Secretary of the Interior. I'd rather concede Ashcroft's appointment than let her have that job. Property owners do not have the right to pollute. Her previous actions have proven her to be the exact opposite of what that department needs.

But of course, being involved is futile and useless with all the evil humans. My best bet is to pray for a comet to hit the earth and wake me from this ghastly dream.

Not.

Hello, and here's why you may be wrong

[Question Guy]

Hi there. Long time lurker, first time poster. :) As a member of the scientific community, I just wanted to put my thoughts down on this subject. In regards to those people who stated that creating stem cells was looked on as impossible (one of the earlier posts), I would like to point out that this is not so. As can be seen from the research I myself have done on the subject with my fellow workers, we know that not only is it feasible in theory, but also in practice. Although our group has had trouble in creating truly totipotent cells, we have created, from adult living differentiated cells, cells which we can manipulate into other types of cells. i.e. we can take a breast tissue skin cell, and use it as a base model to turn it into any type of of breast cell. This in turn can then be treated, and they will form natural pathways and structures as are seen in natural tissue. http://www.msu.edu/trosko I details some of our work. I know, the front page picture rotation thing is a bit evil, but I didn't make the web page :) To clarify another point made earlier, the technology needed for an artificial womb (a necessary step in making clones of full animals in mass amounts) is still a good while off, and though an interesting idea in replacing food/animal farms with produced meat and such, no one in the scientific community that I know (which admittadly is not everyone) would try just yet to pull that one off, as such a technical procedure is quite difficult. To do so in a mass market way at any time in the near future is just impossible. :( The regulations from the FDA would be quite restrictive, and at the moment, the average person is a bit put-off by the idea of 'simple' modified gene Franken-food. Concerning the whole immortality thing... that's just whack on so many levels, both technically and morally to most anyone in the field. But, there's always someone willing to try that kind of thing. Again though, even with the research going on now with telomeric extensions in active tissue, too many things are conspiring against that to make it feasable in either a technical or legal sense right now, or any time in the near future. Science moves in little bitty steps :) I don't think that anyone who knows what's what is saying it's impossible. It just can't be done yet. :) And that's a big big difference when it comes to scientific endeavours. All this typing to you crazy slashdotters is making me nervous, so I'm going to stop 'informing' and just hit the submit button. Message me personally if you'd like to ask me any other technical questions, or would like to purchase regulated chemicals at discount prices ;) BTW, I have personally worked with all these things, if I didn't make it clear in the main body of text. Yay Science.

Saudi NOT British

[man_tech]

Ilham Abuljadayel is a Saudi Arabian researcher - not British. The discovery was made in Saudi Arabia. It just so happens if you want to market something like this, you have to find a large market!

And what got him to that interview...

[Flower]

Son I think we need to talk. Mom is sick and tired of you drinking milk from the jug. 55 years and you haven't figured out what a glass is for. I do despair.

And by the way, when are you going to get a job? Mom wants a sewing room and I'm getting a little tired of 70 years without any spontaneous "quality" time with your mom. No offense, but you have to go.

Leave morality to politicians, is that it?

[Arkleseizure]

Given that the concepts of "good" and "bad" exist only in human minds (thinks: I wonder how many christians there are on slashdot), you are making a point about your opinions not about the "true" state of things. You are essentially saying "bugger off it's not my problem - scientists and techies just come up with the ideas others can deal with how it eventually gets used". Well if the scientists are too preoccupied to consider the effects of their discoveries, who will? Marketing guys and politicians? - people who make even the most nihilistic, atheistic, hyper-skeptical scientists look like Gandhi.

Other types of WBCs

[aswang]

T and B lymphocytes make up only 20% of the white blood cell population. You're completely right about the splicing problem with these cells, and therefore, they're only interesting if you want to make a certain antibody. But the remaining 80% of white blood cells--granulocytes (mostly neutrophils) and monocytes--have all their DNA intact. Moreover, there is an available (though extremely small) population of less differentiated, less committed forms of all these cells (myelocyte-->granulocyte, monoblast-->monocyte, etc.) Though they aren't as pluripotent as the desired stem cells, they still have all their DNA intact, AND they can still divide.

Re:Anyone see a population problem here??? - No!

[HnT]

As for my point of view, which might be a bit "misanthropic", I do not fear the problem of overpopulation so much because up to a certain maximum, men see to be highly able to live in very small places, close to each other. And if this maximum is reached, there will be new places for living. Just think of the wast area you got at the seaground and the area still covered with rainforest. Sad but true, one day we might be breathing fresh air produced by machines...
Men have the incredible ability to find a way out even in the worst situations.