Worm Lifespan Extended To Five to Six Times Normal

Trillian_1138 writes "Scientific America has a brief article, only two paragraphs, sumarizing research from a recently released longevity study done on worms. The worms, Caenorhabditis elegans, have been known to live 124 days, "the equivalent of a human reaching his 500th birthday." In addition, in worms which had their insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) altere, "lived six times longer than normal worms and remained active for most of their lives." "These life-span extensions, which are the longest mean life-span extensions every produced in any organism, are particularly intriguing," the team writes, "because the insulin/IGF-1 pathway controls longevity in many species, including mammals." Humans already live significantly longer than only a century ago, in large part simply from hygiene advances. What might the effects on society be if gene therapy or other medical treatement humans lived to be 500?"

Comments

I don't like your chances

[bacon-kidney-pie]

Good luck surviving heart attack, cancer and road accidents for 500 years.

Long life means greater fear of death

[ZoneKagen]

If we can live to be 500, we would want to live more safely as not to throw life away on a technicality. If it would be affordable to only a select few, which it probably will, the rich would take all sorts of measures to protect themselves: secure houses, clean environment and armed bodyguards, not to mention favourable legislation and furtherance of the gab between rich and poor. All in all, it would suck to be poor and to live among those scared shirtless of death methusalems... pardon the spelling...

Re:Long life means greater fear of death

[kasparov]

The obvious solution: spend at least part of your 500 years amassing wealth. Yeah, it's cheesy. Yes, there are far more valuable things to do with your time. But, unfortunately, a lot of those things take some cash (i.e. research, etc.). Be smart, and it shouldn't really take that long. Use the rest of your life (which you would expect to be extended even more--surely, with 500 years they could come up with something) to achieve the things that you really care about.

Or, spend your time trying to design ways for money to be irrelevant. Cheap/limitless energy and some kind of replicator-type technology come to mind. Just think what you could accomplish with all of that time! Mankind really has trouble working on really long-term goals because, well, we don't have all that long to individually work on them.

it is good, but let it be for all

[Madcapjack]

Although I have heard and once thought that if we develop medications to radically extend our life spans it would be primarily the rich who recieve such treatments. Naturally, since it would probably be expensive.

HOWEVER, I don't think it would work that way. I believe that after about 5-20 years of it being only for the rich, there would be such a movement to make the operation and freely available to all, that governments would do so for fear of revolution.

I don't think that the short-lived poor would tolerate the long-lived rich for very long. Mortals don't dig the immortals who deny mortals immortality.

Low-cal vs. low-CARB

[hlh_nospam]

As mentioned in the article, one of the researchers is personally following a low-carbohydrate diet after she saw that removing sugar from the worms' diet substantially increased lifespan. She also reported that it was MUCH more tolerable than low-calorie. I can personally vouch for that.

Of course, low-carb is still politically incorrect. Quacks like Ornish and McDougal still rule the so-called 'medical' establishment, although some actual research seems to be surfacing in support of low-carb despite the efforts of low-fat supporters trying to dismiss it (or shout it down -- after all "everybody knows" that fat is evil, right?). Interestingly, I have been unable to find any study in which reduction of sugar and starch in the diet did NOT lead to substantial health improvements -- and I have looked hard.

I personally have lost more than 110 lbs on a luxurious high-fat, low-carb diet (after years of torturing myself with low-fat!). Low-carb also reduced my blood pressure, cured my 'arthritis', controlled my blood sugar, and improved my blood lipids, among other pleasant side effects (like the absence of constant gnawing hunger). Now that I am substantially healthier, the possibility that it might significantly extend my lifespan is even more appealing.

Of course, low-carb won't prevent accidental death, nor will it cure or prevent every disease (which low-fat supporters use to attack the notion, ignoring that the same is true of low-fat).

As for losing the 'nads, I'm past the age when I do my thinking with them, so losing them might be a reasonable tradeoff for a longer and healthier life. There really are other things in life besides sex, and I don't want any more offspring. Plus, losing the gonads does NOT necessarily mean the end of a satisfying sex life.

Not a good idea to extend human life yet

[Confessed Geek]

Hey, great for me to be Lazerous Long, but I don't want that jerk down the street to live forever.

Seriously though, while the article is facinating and may eventually lead to some great breakthroughs in life extention, I don't think humanity as civilization is socially ready for such huge extentions in the lifespan. As was pointed out we are already living about twice as long as we did 500 years ago, and what has happened? We have overpopulated. The great majority of our current world problems come from too many people.

Famine, war, plauge, class inequality, poverty, pollution, environmental damage, you name it, it relates directly or indirectly to population. Our technology has been able to barely keep our heads above water, but look around and you will see that while we are fighting the good fight we are aren't winning just doing a losing holding action. Multiply lifespans by 5 and the total population would quickly overcome all efforts, or worse.

How worse? Say the process is very expensive. If you think class wars and the struggle between the haves and have-nots is bad now, just wait till the Bill Gates or Kim Jong-Ils of the future not only have more money than you ever will, but will have more years of life than you can aspire to. Say hello to your new imortal overlord...

While we will probably eventually discover how to extend the human life span indefinatly we will have to change our world society in regards to reproduction before it will spell anything but our doom if we succeed.

The "proof" of this can be examined in the following lines of thought.

People are a resource. The more of a resource that is available the less value of that resource. Thus the more people the less they are worth. So the value of human life, and the value of human labor goes down with each increase in the human population. In the past geography and cultural barriers have ment that seperated cultures could develop "independently" leaving "under" populated areas like the United States or Europe to thrive and produce high qualities of living and an abundance of natural resources - letting them dominate other regions that did not have the same advantages. As the world "shrinks" due to easy access to fast transportation and communication these benefits are dilluted and the world becomes more of one community, creating a greater equality. Unfortunatly for some, equality will mean moving down if you were on the top. This means that population issues are not the problem of "Those people" , "That ethnic group" or "That Country," but of all citizens of the planet who will share the responsibility.

Do you like democracy? The existance of the middle class? Technology? Then you should thank heaven for the Black Plauge. The black plauge made the rise of the middle class possilbe and increased the value of human life throughout Europe. The plauge wiped out huge swaths of the population in europe. While horribly tragic for those who lost their lives or the lives of loved ones this huge reduction in population of europe made people and human labor worth significantly more than it was before. This meant that those who wanted to use that labor (nobles/kings/economicly powerful) had to "pay" more for the resouce. The coin of exchange was not only material resources but the end of serfdom and an increase of human rights and a greater restriction on the power of the Kings/Nobles/Landowners/CEOs. This led eventually to rise of the middle class, representitive government (of one form or another), and the idea that non elite were more than cattle. Also with this increase in the cost of human labor it became more advantageous to develop technology to make better use of the labor and increase the abilities /longlevity of the resouces. The Aztecs developed the wheel, and used it in toys for children, but never implemented it as a tool because human labor was so cheap that there was no reason to.

Perhaps it makes more sense now why unemployment is so high, wa

What good is longevity?

[BurningTyger]

What good is longevity if you are not rejuvenated?

Living up to 500yr old, does that mean you live as an adolescent for the first 100 years?

Or does that mean you become old by age 60, and live the rest of the 440 years as grumpy grandpa Simpson in an old folks home ??

Moreover, how many more years do you have to work to make enough money for the retirement saving now that you can live up to 500 years ??

Drink to forget

[Doc Ruby]

Once our bodies can live 500 years, barring accident, the obstacle to longevity will be our minds. With 500 years of memories, role models, lovers, enemies, how can we keep it together, running our current model of individual personality? Reinventing yourself will be a survival requirement. I liked Greg Egan's treatment of immortals in Diaspora and John Varley's Steel Beach. What's your strategy for the long term?