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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?"
I've no doubt that we can cleverly shift the pace of the aging clock, but can we tweak the biochemical algorithms of the brain to handle life and learning over a 500 year span. If a person takes this drug when they are young, do they need to learn (or can they learn as easily as children learn) until they are 50 or 100? Will having too many 400 year-olds in the population hold back progess because they will veiw all the inventions of the last 380 years with suspicion? What about having 500 years of accumulated heartbreaks, lost friends, daily frustrations, etc?
Its one thing to physically live for 500 years, its another thing to mentally thrive for that long. Even if our bodies can be tweaked to last, its not clear that our minds can.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Hey, great for me to be Lazerous Long, but I don't want that jerk down the street to live forever.
/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.
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
Perhaps it makes more sense now why unemployment is so high, wa
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 ??