The Oldest Mouse Contest

Shipud writes "Nature reports a contest that was launched in Britain today, to produce the oldest laboratory mouse. Current record in 5 years -- 150 in human years. From the page : ``Researchers can use any technique to boost longevity, including genetic manipulation and stem-cell therapy''. Winners will receive cash for every day beyond the current record. The Methuselah Mouse contest was created in an effort to boost research into human longevity."

Comments

Three words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cry Oh Genix. I Am the Immortal Mousie!

I Win!

[akadruid]

I've had my mouse for nearly 10 years!
All they need is a little care and attention, and maybe cleaning the ball every now and again.
Of course, many people just go rushing after new toys, like PS2 and scollwheels and second buttons...

Well some one was gonna say it anyway I guess

Re:I Win!

[rnd()]

As I read the headline all I could think was I sure am glad I insisted that my mom not throw out my old Apple //c and peripherals...

Re:I Win!

[dcw3]

Not even close...look here: http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/Archive/patent /Mouse.html

What about Mickey Mouse?

[adeyadey]

Doesnt he hold the record?

Re:What about Mickey Mouse?

[richie2000]

Yes, he probably does. And if he doesn't, it's just a matter of time since congress just keep adding years to his economical life...

Re:Test for side-effects

[mrjb]

Before pushing the longevity drug, please make sure that it does not make the user infertile.
Actually, after a certain age, that might be a desireable side effect.

Why?

[Max Romantschuk]

I see the obvious scientific benefits in research like this. What I don't see is if we really would like to live much longer. I for one feel that imortality would be more of a curse than a blessing. Thoughts?

Then again, if we get hints on dementia and other comparable illnesses I'm all for it!

Re:Why?

[Eponymous Cowboy]

The need for immortality is obvious. Given an infinite lifespan--with all of its infinite possibilities--there will finally be a non-zero probability that the average Slashdot reader will be able to lose his virginity.

Re:Why?

[LeoDV]

I think we tell ourselves that immortality would be a curse to make ourselves feel better about not having it. Think about it, it takes years, maybe even a lifetime, to know just a big city, or a country. If you were to go backpacking round the world, without paying heed to the time passing (and for good reason), by the time you'd make it back to where you started, everything will have changed so much you could as well go round again.

And if you get tired of that, it'd take at least a few centuries to read all the great literature, watch all the great movies, listen to all the great music... There is so much humanity produced and is producing, that not only is a lifetime not enough, but probably not even eternity. Entropy would take its toll on you before you'd be done with everything you had wanted to do.

Re:Why?

[pubjames]

I for one feel that imortality would be more of a curse than a blessing. Thoughts?

My take on this is that people who fear death are often those that don't make full use of the life they have. People that live full and rich lives don't fear death.

There is a memorable scene in a classic old movie, The Man Who Would Be King with Michael Caine and Sean Connery. Facing death due to an avalanche in the Himalayas, one turns to the other and says something like "we may have lived half the time of most men, but we've lived twice the life". Thus, they face death with humour and with their heads held high, without regret or worry.

Re:Why?

[jawtheshark]

if we get hints on dementia

That is the whole problem. My mom works in an elderly home and she told me that most of them have signs of dementia. The problem is not that our bodies cannot live very long, the problem is that the brain usually starts malfunctioning first.
Sad, but true....

Re:Why?

[SlamMan]

Having a grandfather who spent 4 years in a home after a stroke and a heart attack, I know exactly what you mean. I do wonder if thats not a very good representative sample though. There are hoards of elderly people that are just fine out in the world. I wonder if being treated as an invalid as most people in a home are is more a cause of dementia than a symptom.

Re:Why?

[Gyan]

Except that the novelty would wear out.

After I've completely known 100 cities, the 101st would be a drag, despite it being a new experience. You'll have learnt enough to see the 101st city as just another instance with different specifics. After reading 10001 books, you will start predicting plots and other elements of literature much better. There won't be much excitement of anticipation left. The root behind all this would be that since you've lived for centuries/millenia, your understanding of human behaviour would be sufficiently mature to dull the curiousity related to the fruits of human creativity.

Re:Why?

[Monk[Deviant Form]]

yes WHY??
am i the only one thats wondering WHY we have to torture maim and inprison fellow beings?
immortality?
we do enough damage in the short lives we already have. I don't see much point in longer lives untill we have grown enough to do positive things with that time.

Re:Why?

[Jugalator]

... unless he is occupied with playing Duke Nukem Forever all the time.

Re:Why?

[zerocool^]

I for one feel that imortality would be more of a curse than a blessing. ...You could fly around the galaxy and insult every creature in it, in Alphabetical order.

~Will

Re:Why?

[Zachary Kessin]

I personally would like to live a very long time, after all who would not want that. On the other hand I understand that at some point I will need to stand down and let the next generation step up to bat. If my generation were to be able to live forever (or just a lot longer than any before), what chance would my children have?

Someday I will have children, and I want them to be able to step out of the shadow of my generation at some point. After all every generation before ours has gotten out of the way when the time is right.

Re:Why?

[vvikram]

hi there. very interesting point. didn't occur to me. but i did think about it after your post.

don't you think that you should also extend exploration three-dimensionally if our age increases? in other words won't we have new planets and stars and asteroids to go around ; just not plain dull cities on the earth.

personally i think we will always have curiosity. the argument that things become dull is akin to the famous statements that everything that has to be invented has been [by some patent office officiando in the late 1800's]

human curiosity is infinite. if we don't get something tangible/physical to look we have enough brains to evolve virtual complex worlds [think math formulae, matrix etc] in our tiny little minds

thanks

Re:Why?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Silliness. Nobody's talking about immortality in terms of keeping old people as such alive longer; it's about slowing down, stopping, or even reversing the aging process itself. I'll take any of those, please, and despited the grumblings one always hears when this subject comes up, I suspect the vast majority of people would do the same.

I've noticed that those who object most vehemently to the idea are usually the very young, because death isn't really real to them yet anyway, and because they're easily bored; and the very old, because they've pretty much adjusted to the idea that they're going to die soon. But for those of us in the vast middle -- old enough to understand mortality, but young enough that life is in most ways still a pleasure to live -- the idea of an anti-aging pill is incredibly seductive.

Look, if such a pill came on the market tomorrow, you could always refuse to take it; and if you took it, and later decided that you didn't want to go on forever, you could always kill yourself (which would probably, given the nature of medical treatment, be as simple as "stop taking the pill.") But I've always kind of suspected that most of the neo-Luddites who bleat about how terrible immortality would be will be the first in line at the pharmacy once Ageastatin(tm) goes on sale.

Re:Why?

[4of12]

if being treated as an invalid as most people in a home

From what I understand, long term care in places of last resort is not nice. Care is generally minimal, to reduce cost.

A financial advisor I had once suggested that I go visit some of these homes and then decide how much to save for retirement.

In his words,

"I wouldn't keep chickens in the conditions of some of those places."

i predict

[bongobongo]

some team will back a mouse that never dies. but within 10 years every part of its body will have been replaced at one time or another....

mousenstein.

(you can welcome our undead mouse overlords if you want but i won't be held responsible for lost karma)

Really an Award for Best Ear Transplant Technique

[Eponymous Cowboy]

From the Methuselah Mouse FAQ on how they will prove the mice are as old as is claimed:

Our approach is to use special identification tags. ... attached to the ear in such a way that they cannot be undetectably re-attached after breakage, so it is impossible to attach one to a younger mouse.

Obviously, therefore, the way to win this contest is to develop a way to successfully transplant mouse ears without leaving a noticeable scar.

I know how to win, with no changes to the mouse!

[Wacky_Wookie]

Bits List:

1x Mouse
1X Space Ship

Insturctions:

Insert mouse A into Space Ship B. Launch Space Ship B into orbit around the sun. Speed up space ship B to near the speed of light. Allow relitivity to do it's work. Bring space ship back to earth at desired point, and remove very old mouse A.

Out of the IBM support database

[Anonymous Coward]

ESD PRODUCT SERVICE SUPPORT SUBJECT:NEW RETAIN TIP

Record number: H031944
Device: D/T8550
Model: M
Hit count: UHC00000
Success count: USC00000
Publication code: PC50
Tip key: 025
Date created: O89/02/14
Date last altered: A89/02/15
Owning B.U.: USA

Abstract: MOUSE BALLS NOW AVAILABLE AS FRU (Field Replaceable Unit)

TEXT:

Mouse balls are now available as a FRU. If a mouse fails to operate,or should perform erratically, it may be in need of ball replacement. Because of the delicate nature of this procedure, replacement of mouse balls should be attempted by trained personnel only.

Before ordering,determine type of mouse balls required by examining the underside of each mouse. Domestic balls will be larger and harder than foreign balls. Ball removal procedures differ,depending upon manufacturer of the mouse. Foreign balls can be replaced using the pop-off method, and domestic balls replaced using the twist-off method. Mouse balls are not usually static sensitive, however, excessive handling can result in sudden discharge. Upon completion of ball replacement, the mouse may be used immediately.

It is recommended that each servicer have a pair of balls for maintaining optimum customer satisfaction,and that any customer missing his balls should suspect local personnel of removing these necessary functional items.

P/N33F8462--DOMESTIC MOUSE BALLS
P/N33F8461--FOREIGN MOUSE BALLS

Re:Out of the IBM support database

[rjch]

...I firmly believe that this (extremely) old joke probably contributed more than anything to the invention of the optical mouse...

Don't need genetically altered food

[Moderation abuser]

The world is more than able to feed itself with current crops.

The problem is political instability; wars, local conflicts, corruption, ethnic genocide etc etc. If there were stable governments everywhere using conventional crops, starvation would be eliminated completely.

Genetically modified crops will make absolutely no difference to famines because yield is not the problem.

Re:Don't need genetically altered food

[HarryCallahan]

That may be true, but just wait till we get all these geriatric mice living well beyond their normal years, who's gonna feed them?

Re:Don't need genetically altered food

[Walkiry]

>>The problem is political instability

And one way GM foods can help solve that is by allowing crops to grow in less favourable conditions. All that instability is, at the end of the day, just a hinderance to distribution. If we can make it easier to better grow crops locally, so much the better.

Also GM food can help in some other ways. You might have heard about the Golden Rice, a variety of rice that contains a high amount of A-vitamin and could be a great help to prevent its deficiency (which is quite a bit of a problem in many areas of Africa and South-East Asia).

We might not need it per se, but it sure is a nifty and useful tool to more easily solve certain problems.

Re:Don't need genetically altered food

[Hognoxious]

all these geriatric mice living well beyond their normal years

and wittering on about how the cats in their days were twice as big, three times as fast and had 98 claws.
And they had to make their own cheese. That's if they were lucky...

Re:Don't need genetically altered food

[replicant108]

It is interesting that many slashdotters often warn against the encroachment of IP laws on software development, yet seem to be blind to the same issue with regard to agriculture.

Isn't the right to grow food as important as the rigth to develop software?

If a program can be contaminated with foreign IP, does the same problem not also apply to a field of crops?

How beneficial is it to the third world to have the IP rights to the food they grow owned by multi-nationals?

"We should commercially introduce GM crops, they say, because we need to feed the poor.

When this argument was first used aggressively by Monsanto in the late 1990s, the poor had other ideas. African delegates from Ethiopia to Burundi, Senegal and Mozambique, at special negotiations of the UN food and agriculture organisation "strongly" objected that "the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly, nor economically beneficial to us""

Re:Test for side-effects

[ameoba]

Actually, a much better idea would be to make the user infertile UNTIL a specified age. I'm just turning 25 and I'd love to be sterile for the next 5yr, as long as it was trivially reversible.

Works by maintaining/increasing telomere length

[Gyan]

When DNA is replicated, the transcription occurs not from the start of a strand, but a few "words" into the sequence. Since, this might cut off valuable/active genes, there are telemores "prefixed" to the start of these sequence. These are useless bits of genes that can be safely cut off during cell copying. But as the instance of DNA gets copied more and more, in each succeeding generation, the telomere gets reduced. Eventually coming to the point where during copying, active genes get clipped. The limit is around 50 cell divisions, IIRC. Someone by the age of 60 has roughly 40% of telomere length as compared to birth. There's a gene called telomerase that synthesizes these telomeres at the ends of chromosones. Mice in which telomerase has been re-activated post-infancy have lived thrice as long!!! But there are ill-effects of activating telomerase post-infancy. Cancer tumors require telomerase to work as well. So, it's a double-edged sword. Hope someone figures out a good alternative.

Re:Works by maintaining/increasing telomere length

[jemfinch]

There's a gene called telomerase that synthesizes these telomeres at the ends of chromosones.

Telomerase is an enzyme, not a gene. And it prevents the shortening of the telomeres; it doesn't actually lengthen them after they've been shortened.

Jeremy

Re:Works by maintaining/increasing telomere length

[Dr. Manhattan]

Telomeres are not the 'secret' of immortality. There are a lot of things that gradually wear down or accumulate in the human body (e.g. heavy metals) that cannot be dealth with by normal metabolic function, even in youthful bodies.

Real immortatlity is going to require active, artificial repair and maintenance systems.

Bwaahhaha

[simpleguy]

Fsck that! I have a brand new Logiteh MX .. oh wait, never mind.

New Overlords

[fucksl4shd0t]

I, for one, welcome our new Methuselah Mouse overlords.

Re:New Overlords

[fucksl4shd0t]

For what it's worth, next time I have modpoints I'm using every single one of them to mod down any of these I see. I suggest anyone else feeling the same do so as well. At least the soviet russia jokes were at times clever, the overlord jokes could be produced with a tiny script and are just annoying. Ironically, the hitchikers overlord joke is the first one I've seen that required any actual thought at all...and so of course it's not been rated up while the script-like one is +5.

I, for one, welcome our new Modding-down-without-a-sense-of-humor Overlords!

This is the kind of research I like to see.

[ahfoo]

I've long been disappointed that biotech is so damn conservative about trying to just go for it and take some chances. We're all dying after all. It's like the absurdity of cancer therapies that can't be tried on terminally patients because they might have side effects. Jesus Christ on a crutch, that's like some kind of absurd joke
Indeed, I'm testing the waters of bionformatics myself lately so I can stop compaining and do something about it. But that's another story.
What caught my eye was the thing about being able to use stem cells. The whole stem cell story is so amazing and yet it seems that there's this amazing potential and nobody wants to try anything amazing with it. The attitude is like, yes this is amazing but we can't use it in amazing ways because it's experimental and we don't know what might happen.
If I had a research budget and I was in this competition, my idea would be to create embryonic stem cells of my mouse and just inject them into the thing like it was a pin cushion. Damn the torpedos.
So what's the worse things that's going to happen? A dead lab rat? What if the thing stays young forever? Let's pick up the pace people!

Re:This is the kind of research I like to see.

[evrybodygonsurfin]

It's like the absurdity of cancer therapies that can't be tried on terminally patients because they might have side effects.

Insightful point indeed. Presumably you make this from the perspective of someone who has watched a loved one suffering from terminal cancer be pumped full of toxic chemicals to the very limit of their mortal capabilities and then subjected to near-fatal doses of radiation in an attempt to lengthen their existance?

Given these circumstances, it is baffling that patients aren't queuing up to be guniea-pigs for the less `conservative' experimental therapies.

Re:This is the kind of research I like to see.

[bundaegi]

Keywords are palliative treatment, quality of life.
Need to be balanced with patient's choice (or their relatives?) but if the prognosis is bleak then maybe it's more important to spend quality time with your loved ones rather than enduring agressive treatment that's not going to be effective anyway.

Oh yeah... trials on terminal patients. Maybe people like grandparent (and those who modded him up) don't see the ethical issues involved. Sad it came from somebody involved in bioinformatics. Don't you guys have any philosophy lectures anymore? even basic stuff?
Simply put, what next? you are given permission to start trials on patients who are going to die after all, then what? trials on prisoners? soldiers? random population sample? Thinking about it, it's not like this hasn't been tried before...

Re:This is the kind of research I like to see.

[kinnell]

So what's the worse things that's going to happen?

A giant, carniverous, mutant super mouse, bent on world domination and the enslavement of the human race to work in it's underground cheese mines.

Re:This is the kind of research I like to see.

[Hittite Creosote]

So what's the worse things that's going to happen? A dead lab rat?

They might take your budget away for showing that you didn't really have a clue about biology? They aren't a magic wand. Take stem cell treatment for hearts for example - you have to have highly specific growth conditions in the laboratory culturure dishes to coax stem cells into developing as vascular cells. They're not just going to have a look round and think 'when in the heart, do as the heart cells do'.

Re:This is the kind of research I like to see.

[Rich0]

If the patient is of sound mind then they should be provided enough information to make an informed decision. Then leave it up to them. If they want to just die in peace that is fine. If they want to pump themselves full of every concoction imaginable by men, that should be fine as well as long as somebody is willing to foot the bill.

As far as testing prisoner or soldiers, etc, goes, I'm all for testing anyone provided they are given a choice.

What starts getting interesting is when a prisoner is given a choice like "if you volunteer for this clinical trial we'll knock 10 years off your time". Society is trading the risk of the prisoner killing somebody once they get out 10 years earlier for the reward of potential medical benefits. The prisoner is trading personal health risk for a lighter sentence.

Narrrf!

[spumoni_fettuccini]

Errr... What are we gonna do tonight Brain? The same thing we do every night Pinky... keep up with the Jones rabbits.

I raised mice for several years and they [small gene pool] got more and more inbred resulting in cancers and other problems. I would think to avoid tumors and short life spans [which I had problems with], one would need a large breeding stock and keep a new influx of genetic material.

what about this genius?

[Unominous Coward]

Does it count?

How about this apple mouse?

any technique ?

[selderrr]

Researchers can use any technique to boost longevity

Flash freezing ?

Re:any technique ?

[Hittite Creosote]

Freezing the mouse is easy. Getting it to go for a walk after you've defrosted it is a little more problematical. I think they'd want to see it move before they'd give you the money.

here it is

[ch-chuck]

At lease here's Doug Engelbart's patent on the mouse - don't know if a 1964 prototype still exists or not.

Re:Methuselah Joke

[watzinaneihm]

No. Snopes says its true. But even IBM meant it as a joke.

Re:How about NOT experimenting on them for a while

[Maddog Batty]

That would seem to help with your average lab rat's life expectancy...

Unfortunately not. Half starving them does seem to improve life expectancy.

dogs monkeys

Human Immortality

[Famatra]

Human immortality sounds good, but the human population is already exploding and thats *with* people dying off. If a large number of people are going to become immortal then we need population controls in place, or at least teaching how birth control is used in school ;).

Re:Human Immortality

[tid242]

Human immortality sounds good, but the human population is already exploding and thats *with* people dying off. If a large number of people are going to become immortal then we need population controls in place, or at least teaching how birth control is used in school ;).

this is the kind of rhetoric i hear all of the time, as if people who live to be 1000 years old will still think it's necessary to start having kids when they're 20 and keep having them until they die (actually, in certain religious circles they might, which is pretty damn scary for us apostates).

the most obvious fallicy in all of this is that immortality will be available for everyone. Compare treatments for HIV with what you can probably (and rightly) assume about any hypothetical immortality-treatments - who has access to antiretroviral therapy? - allow me to name countries: USA, Japan, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, etc, etc,. Notice anything odd about said selection of countries? Perhaps that they house about 10% of the world's population, have less than 5% of the world's HIV(+) population, and oh, by the way, they also control about 90% of the world's wealth. Now think of a hypothetical anti-aging pill (about the least-likely route of administration of anti-aging therapy, if you ask me), who do you suppose will have it first? - i'd guess the US and Western Europe (who pretty much all have negative population growths as it is (excluding immigration)), guess who'll own the rights to said therapy? - i'd guess US and/or Western European companies, Guess how much it'll cost? - i'd guess probably a whole lot more than most people in the US and Western Europe can afford, let alone people dying of diarrhea in 3rd world countries. Sure the price might eventually come down to levels affordable by "everyone" but that doesn't change the fact that most people world-wide die of nothing that has much at all to do with ageing.

Even in the US, it is questionable whether many of the biggest killers are really directly caused by ageing, cancer is really the only one that comes to mind that probably is. Heart disease, Diabetes, suicide, accidents, and almost all of the others on the top 10 (for any age group apart from cancer) can't be said to be caused by being old, they may be time-dependent processes, but it doesn't mean that the physiological changes associated with ageing causes them...

anyway, just a thought (or two).

-tid242

The Oldest Mouse Contest

[NanoGator]

"On your mark... Get set.... age!"

Re:But the basic assumption is flawed

[Zog The Undeniable]

Any "free" rat or mouse in my garden has a life expectancy of about 30 seconds, once the resident feline AWACS detects its presence.

Because

[varjag]

What I don't see is if we really would like to live much longer. I for one feel that imortality would be more of a curse than a blessing.

One nice thing of immortality is that you always can opt-out.

Seriously, I don't mind living a spare century or two. YMMV, of course.

150 human years?

[plumby]

This is something that's often puzzled me. Who decided how many 'human years' there are in one mouse year (or cat/dog year for that matter)?

Re:150 human years?

[Kjella]

Take average human lifespan and divide by average cat/dog/mouse lifespan. That is the factor, nothing more, nothing less. Ok maybe somebody made that guesstimate into an "official" factor, but I couldn't really care who did that.

Kjella

Re:I know how to win, with no changes to the mouse

[RogerWilco]

having something orbiting the sun at near light speed will squish
mouse A as the angular velocity will induce a centrifugal force
high enough to.
Maybe if you'd send it to some distant galaxy at near light speed, and then back again? You'll also have to keep de acceleration limited, like 2G otherwise your mouse will also get squished.
Oh, and don't mind the near infinite energy needed to approach even 0.9 c.

Mouse Howard Foundation?

[island_earth]

The hidden party behind the experiment was clearly a wealthy mouse who found himself dying young, and started this contest as a way to extend mouse lives. Now, members of the experiment just need a way to get in touch with each other...

"Ears are short."

"But tails are long..."

"Not 'while the evil D-Con comes not'"

Re:Just What We Need

[Hittite Creosote]

Maybe we could make leaving the planet a requirement for treatment. Anyone for a Mars colony?

This is the kind of

[jcsehak]

So what's the worse things that's going to happen?

The worst thing is that you shouldn't be fucking around with life unless you're very serious about doing it for the express purpose of helping other, better (arguably), kinds of life. I can't stand PETA as much as the next guy, but shooting a mouse full of cells just to see what happens is irresponsible, and downright mean.

Re:This is the kind of

[jcsehak]

That's what I'm saying -- fucking around with lab mice is a Good Thing, because it lets us better all mankind. But we need to keep in mind that at the end of the day, we're still (sometimes, at least) killing things, and it should be done with reverence and maybe a little regret. Making messing-around-with-rodent-lives a contest with prize money seems a little in bad taste, to me.

This is a hard problem

[Jon Abbott]

According to this article, scientists are going to have a hard time getting their mice to live longer. Because cancer tends to "take over" as an animal's age increases, scientists have tried using cancer-preventing proteins to prevent this. The problem they found, however, was that it accelerated the aging process for mice. That's not to say that some other method may find a way around this, but scientists do still seem to be grappling with the issue.

Besides, didn't anyone read Brave New World Revisited? Overpopulation is not the answer. :^)

Golden Rice.

[Grendel Drago]

The third world needs patents on its food supply like a moose needs a hatrack.

Are there conceivable benefits? Sure. Is it worth having a single multinational owning---in what sense, exactly, is the rice grown owned by Monsanto? I'm not exactly clear on this---the food stock of an impoverished nation, capable of threatening famine to beat another few bucks out of the country.

--grendel drago

Re:Golden Rice.

[Rich0]

So is your complaint about GM food, or intellectual property law?

In theory some foundation could come up with a GM food product which is free of IP baggage. Such a food could be freely grown by anyone. Since we aren't talking about experiments on humans the costs of research are much lower than in, say, drug design.

Usually the IP issues are a red herring - most GM protesters oppose GM food, and they're looking for any argument they can get. I don't think that the IP issues are at the heart of the matter for most people.

I thought low cal diet increased life by 3 times?

[clusterix]

My pet mouse lived for 2.5 years (before getting the deadly neurological/arthritis problem most mice get at that age) and I have seen others live that long easily. I thought mice were the animals that were tested with the low cal diet that made them live 3 times longer. I remember the news film having mice.

Shouldn't it be at least 7 years if mice were in that test? Something is strange here.

Are mice a good subject?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mice have very short life spans. They die of old age within a few years. So I question how much can be learned about increasing human longevity by trying to create a Methuselah mouse. Bats, on the other hand, are about the same size as mice and naturally live for three decades or more. It would be more useful to know why a bat can live to age 30 "out of the box" than how we can manufacture a mouse that lives to the ripe old age of 6.

Oh, please.

[Dr. Manhattan]

Except that the novelty would wear out.

Tell you what. After I've stood on an airless planetoid in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, and watched the Milky Way rise over its horizon, then you can ask me if I've seen everything worth seeing.

The root behind all this would be that since you've lived for centuries/millenia, your understanding of human behaviour would be sufficiently mature to dull the curiousity related to the fruits of human creativity.

So, a citizen of the Roman Empire circa 0 A.D. wouldn't be a bit surprised at the world of 2003? In any sphere; not just science, but art, politics, culture, etc.?

Just because you can't imagine that genuinely new things will come up...

Rich Immortals

[JuiceBySarah]

Tha chance of you or I becoming immortal superhumans with the help of this mouse-tested science seems less likely than just a handful of rich guys becoming immortal superhumans. The bumper sticker "Cure AIDS: Infect the Rich" makes me laugh. Then it makes me think, then it makes me frown a bit.

It's analogous to a TTL field in a packet.

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

If a packet gets routed too many times, it's probably a loop. The TTL field gets decremented on each hop and the packet dies when it reaches 0.

If a cell divides too many times, it's probably cancerous (if it's not a reproductive cell), the telemores get shortened on each division, and the cell goes senescent when they're gone.

This is the mechanism behind the "Hayflick Limit" (q.v.). Last I read, nobody including Dr. Hayflick was sure how much this phenomenon had to do with real-life aging.

Playing God with mice and men.

[fishnuts]

Most people would call me an atheist, because I don't believe in a supreme entity whom has complete power over us and our world, but I just realized something.
We are God.
We've already stopped our own evolution. Before we developed the ability to heal ourselves, kill off or obsolete our only natural predators and shield ourselves from any natural threat, we were HAPPY to live to a ripe age of 30-40 years. It was plenty of time to raise a family and pass on our general knowledge of our simple little world.

200 years ago, we didn't know what cancer was. Not because we had no way to SEE it or diagnose it, but because it simply didn't happen (short of the very low rates of actual cancer manifestations.) When someone got sick from a terminal disease, it was just accepted as a fact of life, and those people became a statistic of Darwin's laws.

Now, people with congenital diseases (or diseases inherited from parents, or combinations of parents' genes which give the child a high predisposition for a disease) are surviving longer AND reproducing, causing such diseases and predispositions to prosper. On the other side of the same coin, we're weakening our species' immunities to congestive diseases by artificially suppressing and preventing them with medicine.

Biomedical engineering is also causing as much harm as good. Sure, we've eliminated many Really Bad Diseases. But now there are mutated versions of the same diseases (viral and bacterial) that survived our initial campaigns to eliminate them, which have proven to be much more resistant to our medicines and techniques. Virii and bacteria are still evolving, and there's nothing WE can do to stop that. It's only going to get worse.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm happy and extremely grateful to live a longer, healthier, and safer life than my predecessors. But we're taking this whole "Live Longer!" thing to an extreme that will only be detrimental in the long run. In fact, overpopulation is one of the immediately obvious effects of this. Why are we spending billions and billions of dollars and as many man hours every year, intentionally extending the lifespan of our individuals, instead of the collective species?

God (the one that most people in the world pray to) NEVER intended us to live this long. If God exists, I believe cancer, AIDS, SARS, and Osama bin Laden (sorry, couldn't resist :) are simply His latest attempts to curb the population problem that we've initiated.

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

(Yes, I'm playing the devil's advocate here, but it's a point I REALLY wish more people would consider)

Re:Playing God with mice and men.

[multi io]

God (the one that most people in the world pray to) NEVER intended us to live this long.

If you look at the statistics more closely, you'll probably notice that improved hygienic conditions have increased the average life expectancy more than all medical advantages ever made combined. Life expectancy 200yrs ago was 45 or so, today it's 80, but the standard deviation was much higher then than it is now (that is, there were *many* more 90-year-olds 200yrs ago than there are 160-year-olds today).

This means that "god" probably never intended us to die at 40, it's just that these days more people reach their "pre-defined" life expectancy instead of being wiped out by some minor unpleasantness long before their time has run out.

Re:Playing God with mice and men.

[register_ax]

We are God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You're making this stuff up ...

[cookie_cutter]

... or at least remembering it incorrectly.

I know of no mouse which has been engineered with "re-activated" telomerase, tripling it's life span, nor did a google search find mention of one. I challenge you to provide a link or reference to such a mouse if it exists.

Also, the limit of 50 cell replications you speak of is only for cells in culture, and it is still unknown whether there is such a limit exists for cells still in the body.

Here is a telomerase faq

Re:I know how to win, with no changes to the mouse

[DChristensen]

No, no, no! This will result in a very young mouse! What you need to do is speed the universe up to the speed of light while leaving the mouse stationary.

Voila! Old mouse!

wrongheaded

[YouHaveSnail]

That's nice and all, but the world would be a much better place if science concentrated on finding ways to reduce the world population rather than increasing it. Our planetary resources, natural, human, economic, and otherwise, are limited, and the more people that share this world, the harder it will be to reduce suffering and improve our lot.

What's more, it seems to me that if we're going to work on extending life expectancy, we should focus on populations which have significantly shorter life expectancies than our own: developing nations, inner city minorities, rural poor, people who do very dangerous jobs, etc. We already have all the science and technology we need to solve many of the problems these people face; what's needed now is better policy.

Beyond that, we should think about improving quality of life, rather than quantity of life, for everyone. Here again, we already have plenty of science to help, and we need to instead focus on reforms in the health care and pharmaceutical industries that will reduce suffering and increase happiness.

There may be some merit to building a Methusala Mouse. It may give us insight into the aging process which will help us help people to live better. Helping people to live longer just because we haven't yet come to terms with death seems like a waste of time.

Only Five Years?

[John Hasler]

I had a pet wild mouse that lasted seven.

Douglas Adams had it right

[MichaelDelving]

The puppet strings are showing. The mice are behind everything after all.