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Age A Byproduct of Cancer Defense?
A reader writes "The International Herald Tribune has an article which says, in brief: they have discovered that aging in mice seems to be a byproduct of the chemicals that prevent cancer" If true, that's quite a double edged sword - avoid death, to cause it later.
If true, that's quite a double edged sword - avoid death, to cause it later.
Shouldn't that be to cause it sooner?
Man o man are these guys in for a surprise:
:-)
http://www.google.com/search?q=anti-aging+pills
Especially these folks:
http://www.pure-milk-calcium.com/immunocal.htm
This product is supposed to prevent cancer by extending your life
Spork Spork Spork, and Spork again!
In the environment where we did most of our evolving very few people lived to "old age" before succumbing to a number of other dangers, so something that kept cancer at bay for a while at the price of guaranteeing death after a few decades probably seemed like a good deal. Kind of like the 640k limit. "That ought to be enough for everybody."
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
"Nuts to your white mice" -- Zaphod Beeblebrox
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Chemicals that prevent or help prevent cancer usually tamper with cell division. If cellular division is in some way interrupted or affected by anti-cancer agents, then aging more than normal can easily occur. It goes back to one's preference. Long, suffering life or short, fulfilled life?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Hmm, die painfully, or die eventually. I think I'll take the latter.
-AlPhAbEt
Maybe that's why we age at all. We could have evolved to reduce the chances of developing cancer with the result of aging. Might explain all those ancient texts that have people thousands of years old.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
This sort of puts a whole new spin on this whole "Cure for Cancer" thing. The study seems to suggest that cancer is inevitable, and any attempts by our body to avoid it result in our own death.
Seems to me that if this is the case, it would have some serious repurcussions on how we currently understand how our bodies work. What is it about our physiologies that makes cancer such an irresitible force?
It hurts when I pee.
We aren't mice. However if this (as other things are) is something we have in common with mice, cancer research may be impeded by it. Age faster, or die by cancer?
Is Alex Chiu's miracle Eternal Life Device going to give me cancer now? I can't believe it! The man is a fraud!
This goes against everything I've ever been taught. I'm beginning to put more and more stock in that time cube thingy every day....
"Too much p53 and you get this aging effect. Too little and you get cancer. My guess is that evolution has evolved just the right level."
Would somebody explain to me how evolution would play in this finely-tuned scenario? In the U.S. our average lifespan is over 70 years, yet most women pass menopause around age 45. There's a 25 year lifespan discrepancy, in which evolution has no effect, because the population (at least of women) can't reproduce!
Would rather die a normal death because of old age instead of a long and excruciating death because of cancer.
die while I'm living than be dead while alive....Bring on the Prime Rib, the Marlboros, a good Shiraz. I may die sooner than later, but at least I will have lived..
When I look at pictures of my grandparents as they were my age, I have to wonder what they were like in person. What if I could meet them today, with them looking like that instead of some old people?
I believe that eventually the aging process will be conquered, only to have more complex problems eventually cause our deaths (such as cancer).
Imagine living to 100, but had stopped aging at 30. That would be so incredible, and would make a lifetime much more enjoyable overall. Yet, there is probably no way we could live forever, because something would eventually kill us. Heart failure or cancer would be the most likely candidates, because those are pretty much inevitable.
Right now, I would give up everything I have to stop aging. At 22, I fear getting old...
I'm 27 but I look like I'm 37, but the good thing about it, is that I can probably light up my Marlboro's without feeling worried!
Way to go p53!
Age A Byproduct of Cancer Defense?
Or is that cancer defence a byproduct of age?
Does this mean that since modern day man has increased contact with carcinogens, evolution will now favor those with higher cancer resistance and therefore shorter life-spans?
"when the going get's wierd the wierd turn pro." -hst
Stretching a bit here (and of course playing the devil's advocate), but are we seeing perhaps a result of how tampering with the natural process can affect us adversely?
If we assume cancer is a naturally occuring phenomena (aside from cases caused by smoking, life habits, environment, etc..) against which we defend ourselves, is it not also possible that nature has found a way to defend ITSELF by hastening the death of the organism which is attacking it?
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
The average lifespan is only that long thanks to modern advances in medicine, disease cures, etc. Without them, the average human could expect to live maybe 50 years, although menopause might also come a little earlier.
But you can't think of those years as being wasted. After all, if a woman has children as late as 40, she'd certainly like to raise them to adulthood (and then help them learn to raise their own children) before she dies.
I'm still waiting for the Longevity Vaccine ala Kim Robinson's Red Mars or Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Then they could age me all they want to prevent cancer, re-engineer all my cells with the L.V., and boom, I'm a Slashdot Karma Whore 2500 A.D. edition baby!
I wonder if too much p53 is the cause of progeria (the sydrome whereby a person's body ages decades in only a few years)? Interesting to think that this serendipitus discovery could help those poor kids, maybe.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
The way I learned it in biology class, all cells have these "telomers", which are a bunch of extra segments the end of the DNA. Every time the cells split they cut off a segment. When all the segments are gone, the cell doesn't split anymore. All cells eventually die. Cancer is caused when cells figure out how to pad extra telomers on the end of the DNA so they can keep splitting.
So, you get cancer if you remove the mechanism for aging? Didn't we know that already?
she's been 35 years old for about 10 years now.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It has now been discovered that the leading cause of cancer in labratory mice is.....
Scientists!
Please take note and live you life accordingly.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Cancer is defined by the process of uncontrolled cellular division. As a person ages, fewer and fewer cells can divide. If they could divide forever, how would you know which cells are the cancerous ones?
X-Files had an episode with a guy that was basically immortal because he was nothing more than cancer cells. He also never aged. Interesting episode.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
It'd be nice to be a nice, young, chunk of cancerous cells. At least that way I'd still look not a day older than 20.
I think Asimov has a short story where he hypothesizes about something like this. I can't remember the name of the story but it involved some symbiotic life that shortened our lives, and also stopped us from growing forever.
When you go to the article, please notice that there are 5 pages (I didn't think that was obvious).
n id=FVCJFXYQCJMD0CRBAEOCFEYKEEARKIWD?type=sciencene ws&StoryID=488483
Some other articles on the subject:
Like Parent, but without the confusing Next Page thing: http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessio
Background on Protein P53: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/disease/p53.html
A little more on P53: http://www.bioscience.org/news/scientis/p53.htm
Kind thoughts do not change the world
You could think of death as the end of cell growth, whereas cancer is cell growth gone out of control.
That is the prevailing opinion among those who have no imagination. I used to eat "bad" food and was pretty miserable--now I eat "good" food and enjoy life so much more.
Silly mortals! I propose that whomever designed us intentionally created these apparent paradoxes to force all doubters to eventually believe.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Cancer is, basically, uncontrolled growth of cell tissue. And aging is the natural death of cell tissue. So if you somehow halt the natural cell death process, there would be nothing that could stop a runaway cancer growth.
Without the confusing Next Page thing
Background on protein P53
A little more on P53
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
...similar research suggests that stress in sysadmins seems to be a byproduct of the patches that plug Microsoft security holes.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I can't help but think of that scene in the Matrix where "Agent Smith" says "Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure."
So, does this mean that the Matrix is aging the planet much quicker?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The easier the life we lead, the longer we live.
Stress comes in many forms; work, disease, environment.
All of which are harder on the body, leading to a shorter lifespan.
In Geoff Ryman's novel The Child Garden, people have made the
trade thru bioengineering and nanotech. Read this excellent
novel for a view of the consequences.
that would be natural selection, operating at the cellular level, ultimately producing cells that are capable of working around the substantial machinery that is in place to identify and destroy aberrant cells.
...)
:)
however, avoiding cancer does not necessarily lead to death. biology reuses parts: p53 is involved in programmed cell death and cell-cycling, and probably other things i'm not aware of. fortunately, big proteins often have disjoint functional domains, meaning mutations can affect different functions discretely, meaning, we may be able to tweak p53 to keep the programmed cell death w/o the aging (which around here we're guessing is the result of interaction between p53 and TEP which is involved in telomerases which are like little timers ticking down in the cell
if we can't tweak p53, we'll selectively tweak whatever it's touching causing the aging problem, w/o disturbing its interactions in apoptosis.
cancer is tough, but in the long run there's no need for despair. don't you people watch enterprise? they cured metastatic interstitial lung tumors without breathing hard a few episodes ago
If I recall correctly a lecture I heard back in 1995 or so presented research results according to which cancer cells, unlike other body cells, can exist (or reproduce? I dont recall.) without time limit in lab conditions. There seems to be no built-in time bomb for cancer cells.
So it shouldn't be too surprising if further evidence shows for strong links between the aging process and natural cancer prevention.
To my knowledge (IANA Biologist) Sharks do not get cancer so they do not need to fight it hence they live forever, or at least a large percentage longer than all other mammals? Hmm.. I think not.
That was some crazy stuff. Especially the time cube. Aside from hurting my eyes and brain, it was strangely hilarious.
The enemies of Democracy are
Maybe it's a little bit more like this:
Age In Mice A Byproduct of Cancer Defense
Age In Humans A Byproduct of A Dodgy Marriage, Three Whining Kids, A Mortgage, A Dead End Job.
:)
I thought I might stop to let you all know one simple thing:
No one is making it out of this life alive.
Understanding that tomorrow, or 70 years from now, you WILL die, is key to fulfilling your role in life. I stand by this, because those whose role in life is to sit around, drink, jackoff and sleep, need to get to it right now so they will die sooner (good ol' survival of the fittest). This, naturally, makes more room for the rest of us that really have something to accomplish before we move on. And if you are one of the ones that have something to accomplish, you probably have something better to do than to be sitting around being afraid of something that is unknown yet inevitable. When you finally get to death's doorstep, no conversation you ever had about it is going to mean anything to you anyway...
Spread your legs and get immoral with me. I don't even care if you do have cancer.
n sooner rather than later. He promotes that sort of stuff
I've read that in cancerous cells, the telomeres don't shorten each time the cell divides, so there's no system in place to stop the cell from dividing forever (and all of it's children cells, etc.).
A reasonable hypothesis for why controlled growth through telomeres is necessary is to prevent mutations from a long series of copies (copies of copies, etc). This way, a "series" of cells only last for a fixed number of generations. After so many, the series stops. Then the stem cell(s) can take over and start a new "first generation" cell which can be the start of a new series of cells.
As we get older, perhaps the stem cells themselves start to degrade or become mutated (possibly causing cancer), and are no longer able to produce good "first generation" cells. As an example, this could be why we develop skin blemishes as we get older. Just imagine what's happening to other genetic attributes.
It's my personal theory that the process of aging is actually just the process of various parts of our body mutating to a small degree. For example, one little DNA pair mutated in a skin stem cell, and suddenly you have a freckle.
I always figured that given the knowledge that's taught in regular high-school biology, most people could figure out that the tradeoff of preventing aging is the increased risk of cancer (since cancer cells could go on forever if supplied with the nutrients necessary for cells to live).
*shrug* I dunno...
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Anyone want to jump and and make a few points?
It'll happen, but only for transcendant humanity (in the Alpha Centurai sense).
Of course, you may not be able to appreciate how well preserved they are until you join them.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I assume that how this could actually be applied, would be specifically to work out more about what function of the P53 protein actually prevents cancer and what function leads to the aging process and attempt to synthesise a protein only with the first function, (maybe different parts of the p51 protein bind to different active sites), To create a cancer prevention drug. Of course if you could do this you might also be able to use genetic engineering to prevent an organism from producing p53 and instead make it synthesise the subsititute protein and as such maybe live longer.
Thats right, this is on topic.
/. (or is that \.) readers about the effects (or is that affects) of "sperm swallowing". The link is here (or is that here).
Here is a link informing
BTW moderators, this is ontopic, and... have I ever told you how great you look in your Think Geek t-shirts?
Safe processes.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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Read "The Computer Connection". It's a story about people who become immortal by having a near-death experience...and the one thing they fear most is rampant cancer induced by physical injury (since, as Bester put it, there's a thin line between cells replacing themselves normally and cancer).
-----------------------
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
The earlier report has been discounted.
Shark cancer, however, is uncommon.
Perhaps you should check out Alex Chiu's solutions to your problem. However, wouldn't the magnetism damage critical components of such a complex, sentient ATM? :)
Do you like German cars?
Single cell organisms pretty much live forever
until they are eaten, starve, or encounter an
enviromental hazard. Multi-cellular bodies,
pre-programmed death, and sex pretty much evolved
together about 700 million years ago.
The Atlantic Monthly had an article that documented research that stated that human biology is set up to maximize a person's health at age 20 at the expense of later years.
Certain trade-offs are made that sacrifice the health of the future you just to keep the "child-bearing" you at 110%.
This suggested that an individual human would live significantly longer if these trade-offs were not made, but a population group would surive longer and have more/better children otherwise.
This research seems to be more of the same.
Practically any stressor will make you age faster.
I'm a 34 year old programmer whose been fighting cancer vigorously for the past 6 years, including losing 2/3rd of my liver, having a stem cell transplant, massive chemotherapy, radiation therapy, etc. If any or all of my treatments reduce my overall life span by 20 years, I'll gladly take that trade off. Simply living another 5 years and seeing my young daughter at her first school dance would be worth any amount of damage caused by my treatments.
That said, I can also pass on through my findings with various hospitals and oncologists, that it's not so much of if you might get cancer, but when will you get cancer. Given time and old age, the body begins deteriorating to the point that cancer becomes a fairly natural process, whether it is the more deadly forms or milder forms (such as treatable skin cancer). Of course, for those folks lucky enough to make it to 80+, considering radical therapys that have extreme side effects is usually not worth the agony just to extend life a year or two.
Reminds me of that Star Trek NG episode where these genetically engineered kids cause everyone else to age because their genes seek out diseases and destroy them.
I'm speaking here as founder and president of what was the 2nd largest biotechnology company in the U.S. focused on the molecular biology of aging during the mid-'90s. So we will assume for the sake of improving the discussion I'm moderately well informed in this arcane branch of knowledge.
Point #1: If you read something scientific or technical in the "popular" press, never assume that they managed to interpret it properly. If reporters don't have an education in a particular discipline, they are not likely to understand the subtleties of what is being discussed. Always go back to the most scientific sources you can get access to. Most of the readers are presumably qualified to evaluate arguments on technical merits (this is the /. forum!). Learn the jargon and if you don't understand something find an expert and ask questions (or post to the forum -- you never know when an expert might be lurking).
Point #2: Never assume a /. poster knows what they are talking about (or has verified what they may have copied or concluded from popular press). Case in point: "aging in mice seems to be the byproduct of the chemicals that prevent cancer". The material under discussion is a mutant p53 protein which is the byproduct of a modified p53 gene. It is not by anyone familiar with discussions in this field a "chemical". The p53 protein weighs tens of thousands of daltons and has multiple "active" functions -- most molecules considered "chemicals" weigh less than a few thousand daltons and have few, if any, "active" functions.
From the Nature news report: "they created mice with a chunk missing from one copy of the gene". Translating this into "programmer" terms -- this is in effect replacing 1 of 2 instantiations of an essential subroutine in an ~30,000 subroutine system with a subroutine that has had some of its lines deleted. How do you draw conclusions as to what is going on in that situation? Unless you know what lines were deleted and what the purpose of those lines was you have relatively little hope of drawing conclusions that would allow you to debug the system (at least IMHO). You certainly cannot discuss what the situation means in any intelligent fashion.
All of that being said, I'll provide my "spin" on the results. The normal p53 protein is a "gatekeeper" protein. Its purpose is to determine whether or not DNA damage is present (i.e. whether your program has been corrupted). If too much damage is present it induces cells to commit apoptosis (cellular suicide). If less damage is present, it delays cellular replication (copying) until the damage that is present can be repaired (calling the ECC subroutines). So it acts as a brake on the replication of mutated/damaged DNA and an executioner for cells that are so far beyond the error-correction subroutines that they represent a threat to the entire organism. In larger organisms (which have more cells and are therefore at greater risk of developing a "mutant" program and therefore cancer [which is unregulated cellular replication]) it is important to constrain replication. So humans, in contrast to mice may have a p53 which strongly constrains cellular replication. { Alternatively they may have "redundant" subroutines like telomere shortening (mice have very long telomeres, humans do not) which function as "backup" programs that function to limit cellular division and therefore the development of cancer. (This is based on the concept that short telomeres inform cells to "stop dividing" just as "damaged DNA" [through the p53 protein] cause cells to stop dividing.) } The extent to which short telomeres may resemble "damaged" DNA (and therefore activate the p53 "subroutines") is unclear (to me) at this point. [This is a fairly hot topic of scientific debate.]
If we view cancer and aging as complementary ends of the see-saw -- allow too much cellular replication and one gets cancer -- allow too little cellular replication and those parts that wear out are not replaced, resulting in aging, and one may be able to interpret the results of this study. The part of the p53 gene that was deleted probably served to function to "remove" the block against replication or "enable" the replication function. So what may be occuring is that the mutant p53 gene may be detecting damage, blocking replication, but then when the damage is repaired the defective p53 may not be allowing replication to proceed. Thus you have very effective anti-cancer properties but as one gets older there are fewer and fewer cells available to replace those that are lost. Net result: accelerated aging.
Now, this result need not be pessimistic. As Tom Kirkwood, one of the world's leading gerontologists pointed out in the Nature article, "We could be able to pick a path through the molecular mechanisms of ageing without making cells more tumour-prone. 'There's no reason why you shouldn't get greater defence against cancer and greater longevity.'"
As a once upon a time programmer -- I encourage people in the software industry -- "View genomes as programs -- lets figure out where the bugs are and then lets go fix them."
I mean... isn't it sorta obvious?
A person with too much p53 ages too fast to reproduce.
A person without enough p53 gets cancer and dies before reproduction. These too extremes are quickly dropped from the gene pool.
Where aging is loss of muscle tone, brittle bones, loss of coordination, skin elasticity, etc.
If you're asking about our lifespan vs the age of menopause?
If people only lived to the age of 50, then the genes that retard menopause to 60 never ever express themselves. They never really get selected for except at chance.
Enter medical science and improved lifestyle. People now regularly live to 70, meaning that only women with the genes to retard menopause until 55 can bear children at age 50. If there is any benefit for bearing children at 50, such as increased resources, then there's a positive effect on those genes that retard menopause. As more people chose to delay (if people choose to delay) childbirth due to economic reasons, then more selective pressure is placed on menopause retarding genes, until eventually the lifespan discrepancy disappears.
In the meantime, we prescribe drugs and lifestyle changes to women suffering from menopause.
GPL Deconstructed
Lack of food causes starvation.
Cells are dividing into more cells in our body at every given moment (e.g., skin sloughs off and more is "remade"). For a cell to divide, it's DNA must be replicated (i.e., copied). The molecular mechanisms that replicate DNA are very precise, but not perfect, even with the so called "error-correcting enzymes". This leads to maybe 1 error every 100,000 base pair copied.
Don't worry, most mistakes, or mutations, are trivial, or if dangerous, will cause that cell to die or be unable to reproduce, so that mutation never gets passed on. But because so much DNA replication is going on in the body, somewhere, somehow, a mistake will lead to a mutant cell that has a slight advantage. This new cell might be able to divide fast, or resist molecules that check for fast dividers, or be able to live without being next to similar cells.
In fact, many cancers seem to require a few distinct mutations before it can grow fast, split off, swim around in the bloodstream and still live, and finally be able to live off of whatever new cells it attaches to -- this endstage is called metastasized cancer, cancer that has traveled to the rest of the body.
So the reason why we get cancers is almost because of Darwinan selection in the body: eventually, the most fit mutations will be able to survive and grow irregardles of how our normal body wants to function, and thus that cancer overtakes and drains our body's normal resources.
So it actually makes sense that the longer you live, the more likely you will die of cancer, even without this new discovery of a potential mechanism. In fact, for adults over 55 years of age, the most common cause of death is cancer (even greater than heart disease, which is second). There is a subset of cancers known as "childhood cancers" that affect children, usually because of a genetic defect at birth that dooms them early. For "genetically normal" people, it is the stochastic process of accumulated mutations that, almost inevitably, resolves in cancer. In other words, everyone will get cancer if they lived long enough to get it.
"A related idea is to attribute the current financial pressures on Social Security to a supposed dramatic increase in life expectancy in recent years. Since average life expectancy at birth is now about 76, this is interpreted as implying that people collect benefits for 14 to18 years longer than they used to. However, as Table 1 indicates, the average life expectancy at age 65 (i.e., the number of years a person could be expected to receive unreduced Social Security retirement benefits) has only increased a modest 5 years (on average) since 1940. So, for example, men attaining 65 in 1990 can expect to live for 15.3 years compared to 12.7 years for men attaining 65 back in 1940. So the actual increase in time that males can anticipate receiving Social Security is closer to 3 years than to 14."
The reason being that thermodynamics (or chaos theory, or whatever) says that you're wrong. Any system as complex as a living cell, even something so simple as a yeast cell or E coli can not maintain that level of organisation for long. The cell is very thrifty with its organization, to be sure, but it is not infinitely so. That's why reproduction and evolution are so critical, because no single system can survive by itself for too long, so it must rebuild itself from scratch. Yes, you can put these systems in to hibernation, but that isn't really life functioning in any way shape or form until it's revived.
And of course pre-programmed cell death wasn't present in single cell organisms, it'd be counterproductive for an E coli to simply kill itself. Preprogrammed cell death does not kill the entire organism, and it obviously be detrimental if it did.
And as for sex and evolution evolving together, there are single celled organisms that have sex via plasmids. Granted, it might not be the "one chromosome from each parent" that we are used to in humans, but it is still genetic exchange by conjugation. There is no apoptosis here either.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
That's what I thought too, but the stuff was highly active in the womb when a baby is growing fastest, which seems to indicate that it dosen't directly slow cell replication. Or at least, not all cells.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
That report's logic is fallacious. Consider the case of case of two similar individuals: one who lives to a to a bit less than 65 in 1940, and another who lives a bit past 65 in 1990. People whose life expectencies have increased from below 65 to just above 65 will reduce "average life expectancy of people at age 65" just by their living past 65. Their negative life expectancy past 65 in 1940 was not counted, but there marginally positive life expectancy past 65 in 1990 is.
That was a sarcastic comment.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Apparently this should have been expected.
t m
This link
http://www.asco.org/prof/oc/html/m_kanaya0800.h
explains how p53 inhibits telomerase activity. Telomerase is the enzyme that puts the telomeres back on the ends of DNA. Eroded telomeres have
been considered a primary cause of aging.
What I don't understand is why single celled Eukaryotes aren't a lot more active in producing telomerase, thus making themselves immortal.
After all, if you're just one cell you don't have much to lose from cancer, do you? But Eukaryotes can 'age' and die like humans can. It makes no sense.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Sensitive? Isn't that just another name for faggot?
if sharks, or certian sharks, cannot get cancer..what is thier adverage lifespan, and would it be longer if they could get cancer?
But are babies good food or bad food?
Dudes, any one... how do I use spaces in the VPATH
area in the makefile, the stupid piece of shit cant do it. What an oversight.
Or maybe he just had too much p53...
that modded the previous post down, the 'overrated' tag is supposed to be used in situations where a person is supposed to 'pick the 5 or so best comments to answer' and one of them dosen't deserve it.
Modding down posts that you just don't like just because you don't like them abuses the moderation system.
For a population genetics class I took in school, I wrote a draft research grant for a project studying if there were age limiting factors positively selected by nature to limit the age of certain populations. Although my professor did get a good chuckle before "d"ing me, he did say something that caught my ear as blatent established science ego. "That anything would act to limit age goes against the whole understanding of life, that those who live the longest win, produce more young, provide better for them and reflect more of their own genes through greater numbers of offspring". Ok...well, now lets look at cancer. Although the greatest hype (and greatest understanding) of cancer findings revolve around "defective" proteins that cause greater occurances of cancer, the base assumptions about the manner in which cancer forms lies far from the "defective/working copy" model of the body's working.
Copying DNA causes errors, and the body can fix an amazing number of them (end rates: 1 error per 10^9-10^10 bases), although it can't ever fix them all. The more times a cell needs to reproduce to replace damaged or non-functional cells, the more likely it is to lose function in a portion of its working copy of DNA. Cancer forms when these errors occur in specific places, but the general principle is that eventually a certain cell line will accululate enough errors to make it non-functional towards its intended purpose. Does P53 prevent cancer, sure, it lowers the error rate, but as the article mentions, too much p53 and you have other effects. The balance exists and has been selected for because it makes a working body capable of reproducing and caring for its young and then goes away. The premise that there is this one thing, this one chemical or protein or substance that will "unlock" another 50 years of human life is based on the premise that everything else in the human body will remain functioning were it not for that one thing. Evolution has crafted our bodies for their purposes, and none of it has been "tested" after 100 years. So where are we? We prevent a "disease", if you can call something like cancer or heart disease the same as a bacterial infection, only to find...Lo! there's something else that doesn't work after its been churning through our bodies for 80 years.
Geneticists especially are learning the lesson of our war against disease, stemming in large part from the telomerase hype. Hey, look what I found, the cellular time bomb! If we can keep these puppies long, we'll have immortal cells and we'll all live forever! Well, guess what, cell death isn't why we die. Also research into menopausal woman is showing us the same path. Replace estrogen when the body stops making it and we prevent osteoperosis, but estrogen's presense raises rates of heart disease, breast and ovarian cancer. In the end, its all the same message... we die from our bodies falling apart, functioning way past their warranty. And we're just now begining to realize this as we find more and more reasons why one substance doesn't do it all.
Menopause exists only in Humans, Pilot whales and a few types of elephant. It is theorized that the reason for this is to provide young with the extra protection of a grandmother. Without menopause, women would eventually die giving birth, leaving young with one less guardian. So, indirectly, menopause does contribute to the passing of genes, in that it allows individual females to care after the product of their genes after they are no longer able to produce offspring.
These things are called "engineering tradeoffs", and they apply to biological organisms as much as to a processor chip. However, this particular tradeoff may not be inevitable: one of the most fundamental engineering tradeoffs in biological organisms is allowing for food scarcity. This not only puts us at risk for obesity, it also means that bodies have to be careful about wasting energy on repairing themselves. With unlimited food available, you may be able to live long, avoid cancer, and not even get fat. How? By having the body more aggressively replace possibly damaged cells, cells that right now are allowed to hang around because it would require too much energy to replace them.
What's the point of prolonging your life? You can never hope to be immortal, so you will die anyway. Why resist the inevitable? A better thing would be to use what life you have to do something useful!
This voodoo logic that I've heard before doesn't seem to explain why the global population continues to increase every year.
So let's say we have a species that produces three types of individuals: Males, Females and "Helpers". The helpers don't reproduce, but let's say they are super protective of the herd and fight off preditors. They're not just going to die off in one generation, because they are produced randomly from the mating of males and females. Ah, but if we get this mutation that causes them to not be produced. Natural selection takes over -- the herd that has the protectors is going to be more successful than the herd without them, and thus is (on average) going to survive better. They will win the war of resources.
Precisely a point made by pedophiles - explaining why pedophilia is both needed and valuable!
But "helpers" can't be produced "randomly". There has to exist genes or combinations of genes which express themselves as "helpers". This will eventually lead to "Free loaders" or members of the species with no "helper genes" reducing the number of helper genes because they'll always leave more copies of their genes than those who need to expend energy creating "helpers" who don't reproduce.
But what if the "helpers" were somehow able to see the "helper-genes" in others, and were more inclined to help those with "helper-genes" (whenever they were in situations were they had to choose between who they should help)?
Life is complex...
~Anonymous for a reason, but no coward
I don't know why anymore but I've known this for years. There's a ancient myth of the three(?) sisters who cut the strings of life. When the string is gone the person dies.
On cells it's the same way. They are these things on cells that as they get shorter the cell begins to die. When they are gone, the cells die.
Cancer cells don't lose their "string."
So it makes sense that forcing cells to not lose their "string" causes cancer as that's exactly what cancer cells are.
This isn't new science. It's just a conclusion based on various facts that have been available for years.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Could this perhaps be why long time smokers tend to look older then non smokers? Premature aging due to the body producing extra cancer fighting chemicals?
..when you think about all the problems that a possibility for some people to become immortal would cause.
I remember that somewhat similar conclusions (that aging and cancer are connected) were drawn after discovering that telomers (structures that 'cap' DNA ends) are shortened during normal cell replication but not in cancer cells.
The answer the scientist got then to 'oh, no, no immortality' was that it was only going to be harder - i.e. you would have to protect telomers artificially trying to avoid uncontrolled replication known as cancer.
So no, it's not the end of dreams of cancer cure and long-evity.
e-mail: karol at tls-technologies.com
www: http://www.tls-technologies.com
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psalms 90 verse 10 in themselves the days of our years are seventy years, and if because of special mightiness they are eighty years. yet their instistance is on trouble and hurtfful things this was pened some 2500 years ago we are not living any longer than we did 2500 years ago
Folks, this is what happens when you think about ONE FUCKING THING for TOO DAMN LONG. Time Cube is as good a discouragement for dwelling on things as any. Hopefully one day its creator will step out of the sci-fi alternate reality he's created in his head long enough to realize that the external universe is best enjoyed without distraction.
(* What is it about our physiologies that makes cancer such an irresitible *)
It is perhaps just regular Darwinian competition. A cell that can take over spreads it genes. Such a powerful force can perhaps only be kept at bay for only so long. Our bodies are a biosphere just like the earth.
Mutations are happening in you as you read this. Most are harmless or slow. Someday they will gang up on you and then your are worm food.
Reproproduction or greatly reduced metabolism is the only way around this it seems.
Table-ized A.I.