Humans Could Live For 1000 Years

Maajid wrote to mention an article on the Chronicle of Higher Education site about a biogerontologist who thinks he can kill death. From the article: "The 42-year-old English biogerontologist has made his name by claiming that some people alive right now could live for 1,000 years or longer. Maybe much longer. Growing old is not, in his view, an inevitable consequence of the human condition; rather, it is the result of accumulated damage at the cellular and molecular levels that medical advances will soon be able to prevent -- or even reverse -- allowing people to go on living pretty much indefinitely. We'll still have to worry about angry bears and falling pianos, but aging, the biggest killer of all, will cease to be a threat. Death, as we know it, will die."

Comments

Dying of old age?

[jkauzlar]

This is great, but I've never known anybody who's died of 'old age,' but always from cancer, heart failure, complications of diabetes, etc.. Wouldn't you have to cure all of these things as well or are they mostly a result of an aged body? In this case, maybe this guy's discovery, if it's actually real (I give it a 0% chance) might slow down or stop the onset of these diseases.

Further more, would we all have to look like Yoda after awhile?

Re:Dying of old age?

[FidelCatsro]

A human right now could potentially live to about 130 , we likely will succumb to another condition about 50 years before that though.

The chance of contracting many of these conditions is greatly increased with age , if we can limit the decay associated with that then chances of contracting these conditions is also limited .
Though the 1000 year target is not taking into account environmental damage , it seems reasonable figure for perfect conditions .
  limiting the cellular ageing will also help us to look a lot more youthful for a great deal longer

Re:Dying of old age?

[Omniscientist]

I always presumed that a lot of causes of death were a result of an aged body, among other things. As far as I know the most common types of death happen to folks who are usually older instead of younger folks, like heart disease. So I think having a young healthy body prevents a lot of diseases from occurring, but as far as I know cancer doesn't depend on your age at all. Judging from what I read from TFA, it appears that he has specific goals to prevent many kinds of diseases with his therapy, like Alzheimers.

As far as cancer goes...since cancer is caused by uncontrolled cell division (and the fact that these cells can invade other tissues) and in my understanding, pretty much sporadic or random if outside environmental issues (smoking, etc) are ignored, it seems like it is only a matter of time before someone gets cancer. If you could actually live to be 1000 until your body just gave out, the likelihood of having cancer in those years would have to be extremely high. However, it appears that curing cancer is one of Aubrey's goals...so that's not a problem either.

Interestingly enough, before he started working with biology, he was trained in computer science.

Re:Dying of old age?

[drgonzo59]

Well, cancer, heart failure, diabetes come with old age. There is no medical "old age" diagnosis. The claimed ability to reverse cell damage will also reverse cancer since it is technically a damaged cell with the celluar replication mechanism gone out of control.

That said, at the expense of burning my karma I will call "bullshit" on this story. Claims for aging cures are made every year by someone, and yet we still "kick the bucket" like everyone before us. Better hygiene and better drugs and procedures is what helps us live slighlty longer than our parents and grandparents, not some kind of magical cure-all aging panacea.

But of course the thought of death is a terrible thing so people buy into all these "finally we found cure for aging". It is like selling penis enhancement pills, it is just a clever play on people's insecurities and fears. If someone does want a good cure for aging, better try Alex Chiu's site . You can just buy yourself two nice little rings and of course live forever (...until you die of stupidity or cancer, of course).

Re:Dying of old age?

[tchdab1]

Many types of cancer arise from the results of cumulative errors introducd in the duplication of your DNA prior to cell division.
      When a cell of yours duplicates the 6 trillion base pairs in your DNA, after the duplication errors result in mistakes (average one in 10,000) and the correction mechanisms clean up as many as they can, there is an average of 1 mistake per cell per dupication. 95% of your DNA is (near as we can tell so far) non-coding; it is not used to build proteins. So every once in a while, in cells that divide often (like skin or surface cells in the gut, not nervous cells) errors accumulate. Toxins (chemicals) and mutagens can introduce still other DNA mistakes.
      Over time, one of those mistakes breaks the code for a protein that the cell needs to fight cancer (or to kill itself, or to stop replication). There could be hundreds of those crucial proteins, and sometimes several of them need to be disabled serially before the function they perform goes haywire. But over time, given enough chances and over enough cells, the normal regulation functions of some small number of cells breaks down due to mutations, the cell does not commit suicide or stop replicating, and you get cancer. While it happens more often over longer periods of time, it can also happen quickly to younger people. Or some people are born with one or more mutations in a sequence and just need a single error to kill a crucial cell function and initiate cancer.
Then there are the teleomeres - the repeated sequences at the end of chromosomes that delete one repetition every time the cell divides. There is enough teleomere sequence in most cells for several dozen (couple hundred?) divisions, then it doesn't divide right any more.
And the genetic problems people are born with - is your code for a crucial protein faulty? Depending on the bad protein and the fault in it, you might get cystic fibrosis, an increased risk for breast cancer, etc. etc.

These things can be detected and, in theory, fixed using techniques known today. Fixing those kinds of problems may be what this dude means when he says we can dispense with the consequences of cellular "disease" and live forever. Maybe, but there's still lots of work to do.

only one problem

[iLogiK]

and it's an issue evan today with our current lifespan: over population...
ofcourse, a lifespan of 1000 years can open doors to interstellar voyages...but still

Great.

[Morgalyn]

Let the overpopulation commence!

Seriously, human society will never be able to tolerate considerable anti-aging treatments until the general populace is accepting of birth control measures.

How many times...

[Chuckstar]

How many times do you think you'd be able to say "B.S." in 1000 years.

Sure we will...

[Scrameustache]

And we'll be driving our flying cars all the while.

Got more to worry about than disease, Old Age

[Marxist Hacker 42]

In 500 years, you've got a 100% chance of being struck by a bus.

Re:Got more to worry about than disease, Old Age

[Scrameustache]

In 500 years, you've got a 100% chance of being struck by a bus.

Ah, you too have foreseen the murderous roboBus revolt of 2505!
The horror...

Re:Got more to worry about than disease, Old Age

[N3Bruce]

Though the parent was modded funny, there is a lot of truth in that sage comment. At present time, the average person in the first world has about an annual lifetime risk of dying due to accidental trauma in the range from 1 in 500 to about 1 in 1000. People who work in certain professions/occupations have a higher risk as well. Infantrymen in Iraq might have an annual risk of violent death of about 1 percent, but people who work as commercial fishermen, in construction trades, drive trucks, or work as policemen or firemen also face above average risks as well.

Another factor not to be discounted lightly is the risk of disabling injuries. I saw few if any grey heads working on the roof of my recently constructed house in the crew of about 8 or 9 guys out there. People tend to abandon risky occupations as they get older if they can, either they suffer physically disabling injuries themselves, or see enough of their friends get hurt that they decide to find a safer way to make a living. Even as lifespans have increased by the relatively modest amounts over the last 50 years or so, one of the biggest problems will be finding help to put new roofs on their houses, take down overgrown trees, etc.

If life spans increase 10 fold, the amount of dangerous work will not go down that much, but the pool of people willing to do that kind of work will diminish to nearly the vanishing point. If people live to be 1,000, occupations such as truck drivers, roofers, cops, and many of the construction trades will either be a death sentence, or something that most people will be unable to do for more than a few decades before being disabled or forced to seek safer employment. People may become too risk-averse for society to function.

For me and mine

[Schezar]

I'm absolutely fascinated by the idea, but it raises several important questions...

Imagine a world where the vast majority of skilled people live effectively forever. What opportunity will there be for the young, if the elders have had a centuries-long head start?

How could we possibly provide the resources necessary to feed an effectively undying yet still growing population? Would famine become the determiner or longevity?

Can the human brain retain the sheer volume of information and experience achievable in a millenia of living? Would we forget the past, or become unable to learn the future?

Not all of the questions are negative, either. Would longer-lived decision makers take longer-term factors into account? Would humanity be more inclined to space travel if time were no longer the limiting factor?

Realistically, we do not have the capability as a civilization to cope with this sort of thing as we stand. Individuals could take advantage of it and live long, and believe me when I say that I'd be the first one in line, but to provide something of this magnitude to the masses would be suicidal.

Ideals aside, I would want this for myself, but not for my neighbors. Selfish, yes, but better some than all or none.

Of course, scientists have said as much before, and little has come of it, so it may be a moot point for centuries yet to come.

Re:For me and mine

[Frumious Wombat]

IMHO, the real problem is that our societies would stagnate. You may think that you're hip and forward thinking, just as I'm sure Francis Bacon did back in 1584 (though he probably was, "hippe and forwarde thinking"), but how will you be, comparitavely in 2385? Death doesn't just get the physically old out of the way, it also gets the old ideas. Sir Francis lived in a world of absolute monarchs where torturing and killing people over interpretation of the same scriptures was considered acceptable and desirable. Picture a world in which a man who amassed billions using 1970s technology in the 1990s, still had enough money to control computing in 2200. Picture Richard Nixon at 324, still with a secret plan to end the war on Proxima Centauri, the 600 year old Fuggers understanding money only in the sense of little disks of gold, or Benedict the 16th, worried in the 24th century that the church will have surrendered its soul if it accepts the social mores of 1974.

Personally, I'd be much happier if these people would work on a way for people to be healthy and capable (physically and mentally) up until 70 or 80, then still die. The 1000 year life span, besides being a nice round number, is about 10x our maximum current age. What's the point of outliving Methusaleh if the last several centuries are spent in a wheelchair (even if it is Luke Garner's flying one) ogling the cute, young, 300 year olds who sashay by and pat you on the head occasionally?

I cannot find the author, so insert someone suitably cynical, "all wish to live long, but none wishes to grow old". I think we should be working on improving the quality of our life, rather than extending it out of some fear of dying. Let's get cancer and heart-disease first, and deteriorating immune systems first, then worry about outliving Methuselah.

Re:For me and mine

[kenthorvath]

Imagine a world where the vast majority of skilled people live effectively forever. What opportunity will there be for the young, if the elders have had a centuries-long head start?

Speaking from an economics standpoint, there will always be people who need things, they are called consumers. In order for consumers to acquire the things that they need, they must produce things that others need, etc... Perhaps one day there will be a small subset of humanity that can produce enough goods and services to supply the whole, if that were to happen, then it wouldn't matter much if everybody had a job or not. People would just get what they wanted. The worst that would happen in that case is that there would be a dramatic surplus of goods.

The other scenario is that there are not enough producers to supply the world's population, in which case there should be boatloads of opportunity for the young to succeed. They need only learn how and what to do to provide themselves with the goods they desire. In any case, so far this has not been an issue - even as the average life expectancy has more than doubled from what it once was.

How could we possibly provide the resources necessary to feed an effectively undying yet still growing population? Would famine become the determiner or longevity?

Resources would likely determine the maximum stable population size. Any more than the maximum and people would start dying, any less and the population would grow. It stands to reason that at some point, it will become necessary for people to stop having offspring. But then, people produce offspring for a variety of reasons, many of which are unplanned, and some of which are psychologically related to leaving a piece of themselves behind after they have died. Once people stop dying, I expect there to be less of a driving force behind having children. Government subsidized (or incentives for) sterilization are also quite likely.

Can the human brain retain the sheer volume of information and experience achievable in a millennia of living? Would we forget the past, or become unable to learn the future?

I would be happy with a 10-20 year memory span. Phase the old useless info out and the new info in. Personality changes quite a bit over time, and I can't say that I remember much from even 5 years ago - just a few select memories here and there that I have some emotional attachment to, the rest gets filled in from facts and records when I see them. The current research suggests that memories are not stored like data, but rather reconstructed from cues. People have even been quite easily tricked into having false memories by mere suggestion. I would hazard to guess that memory would not be any more of an issue than it is today.

Would longer-lived decision makers take longer-term factors into account? Would humanity be more inclined to space travel if time were no longer the limiting factor?

At some point, I would imagine that people would look to space travel to acquire more resources and allow for more population and culture. The earth is getting pretty crowded with so many people falling under so few governments. I'd expect that as instant communication and cheap and quick transportation become increasingly available, that the notion of nationality and local law will begin to collapse and the world will slowly enter into the control of one or two governing agencies. When that happens, people will look to colonize space to set up their own independent societies.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[rbarreira]

It's so easy to talk like you did, isn't it?

The fact is that Aubrey de Grey is a respected biologist (despite having a degree in computer science), and participates in many important conferences, according to what I've read. If you find information which contradicts this, please give me a link. In the meantime, perhaps you should check your facts better before posting such things.

TV reference

[Vaevictis666]

We'll still have to worry about angry bears and falling pianos,

Hey, I can spot the 'Dead Like Me' reference in there :)

overpopluation

[uberjoe]

I just had a vasectomy, sign me up!

Cthulhu reference

[mindlessreflex]

Death, as we know it, will die.

First a "Dead Like Me" reference, then a Cthulhu reference. "That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die."

Well, since death will die, I for one, welcome our OLD, many-angled, overlords.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[shawb]

What you just did is nowhere near what this man has done. He identified the major physical reasons behind aging and is working on proposing and coordinating new ideas to fight the causes of aging.

Is he crazy? Probably. Is he wrong? Probably. At least he's got a goal and is formulating a plan to achieve it. If he is wrong, science will probably learn a lot about how the human body works, and other scientific achievements will be made in the process.

By the way... these treatments will only really be available to the extremely wealthy. Considering how difficult it is for many Americans to get basic health insurance as it is, and the fact that most medical treatments are financially out of reach for those who are not covered, this will probably only exaccerbate the situation unless some great social or technological discovery is made which allows anyone who desires it access to this longevity. Is this evil? Not really. Denying something to a priveleged few people simply because the masses (of which I consider myself to be a member) can not achieve it isn't right. Denying this longevity because it causes an undue burden on the rest of society, however, is not morally outrageous.

Kill me

[Piroca]

aging, the biggest killer of all, will cease to be a threat

I'm pretty sure it will be substituted by suicide.

Re:Slashdot Could Give any Crazy Credit!

[Baron_Yam]

I happen to believe de Grey is right - the human body is just a machine. It happens to be an incredibly complicated machine composed of many smaller machine (which, in turn, are supported by even more, even smaller machines) that we barely understand as yet, but overall the body is just a machine.

His major point (as I understand it) is that we don't necessarily have to know the WHYs of the body, as long as we know the WHATs and can correct them when they change. Watch what changes in the body over time (after full maturity) and then periodically undo those changes when they've gone too far. This is also the point on which most biologists argue with him - they want the WHY before they fiddle with the WHAT.

The only thing I'm still very wary of is perfoming such procedures, should they ever be developed) on the brain. I don't want to be the first.

cancer and the effect on the human mind?

[egomaniac]

I accept that we could, in theory, mitigate the cellular damage that leads to aging, and humans could live much longer than they do now. There are, however, two BIG problems, in addition to the overcrowding that everyone else has mentioned.

First is cancer. Cancer is caused by DNA damage which causes cells to begin dividing uncontrollably. Humans, over our mere 100 year lifespan, face a very high risk of dying from cancer. Over a thousand years, it becomes a virtual certainty that at least a handful of your cells would have a very harmful mutation. Unless we also have the technology to periodically "refresh" all the DNA in your body (hint: unlikely), the simple fact is that after a thousand years you would have developed every kind of cancer known to man. I don't believe any medical technology could keep one of us alive that long -- if and when humans manage to extend our lifespans to the thousand year range, we won't be doing it in our current bodies.

Second is psychology. The human mind did not evolve to last a thousand years, and asking it to operate so far outside of its design parameters is bound to have some surprising (and likely unpleasant) effects. In fact, I am very skeptical that anyone could even hold on to sanity for that length of time. We just aren't built for that kind of time scale. We obviously don't know the effects of a truly long life on the human mind, but I just can't imagine an ordinary human lasting for a thousand years without becoming seriously disturbed.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's simple...

[Ibiwan]

I've found a simple solution to rid us of death forever! I can't believe nobody's ever found it! Unfortunately it's a little to long to jot down in this margin, but I'll type up the paper in a couple hours. I've been feeling so streesed late....

HEEEURK! bleaugh...

Re:It's simple...

[ColaMan]

MAYNARD: It reads, [reading] "`I've been feeling so streesed late....HEEEURK! bleaugh...'"
ARTHUR: What?
MAYNARD: [reading] "HEEEURK! bleaugh..."
BEDEVERE: What is that?
MAYNARD: He must have died while typing it.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, come on!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what it says.
ARTHUR: Look, if he was dying, he wouldn't bother to type 'bleaugh'. He'd just say it!
MAYNARD: Well, that's what he posted!
GALAHAD: Perhaps he was dictating.
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up.

Re:Start small, cure cancer

[Neurotoxic666]

We can't even cure hunger

Yes we can. Eat.

Seriously, hunger as you refer to it is not a disease but more of a political problem. Food and other resources are controled and dispatched in such a way that some people do not get any. But we're not lacking food and, again, hunger itself is not a disease.

...diseases caused by natural bodily functions. In cases like this, medicine is all too willing to look at simply interrupting one of the chemical reactions in the body

Again, we're facing and finding solutions to symptoms. Often, we do not have to cure anything as if it's a natural reaction, it will go away. It's the people making the choice of being treated or taking this or that pill so as to not endure the pain while it lasts. And what disease are caused by natural bodily functions?

Great....

[crotherm]

That also means that they will be married to their "ball and chain" wives for 970 years. Have in-laws for that long too. And just how long will your slashdot reading, basement dwelling kids stay with you... gads...

But on the bright side, I fully expect to play Duke Nukem Forever....

exactly so

[Quadraginta]

OK, hot from the CDC we learn the following average death rates (in persons per 100,000 population per year) from causes that have nothing to do with old age:

• accidents: 30.4
• infectious disease: 28.0
• murder: 8.5

Grand total, 66.9 per 100,000 per year. From which it follows that the average person has a 0.0669% chance of dying each year from some reason other than old age. The rough estimate of your life expectancy is then reasonably close to the inverse of this number, i.e. 1500 years.

Nice enough, but hardly forever. More troubling, however, is that these rates are for a population that is quite young. Suppose instead we use the results for old people, 85 and over, who are unfortunately far more susceptible to accidents and disease:

• accidents: 276.2
• infectious disease: 1183.6
• murder: 3.

Grand total of 1462.8, which means your average 85-year-old has a 1.46% chance of dying each year from causes unrelated to chronic "old-age" diseases like heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. The inverse of this is 68 years, for a grand total lifespan of 153 years. Lots shorter. And wet get intermediate results if we use the results for other older age groups, but not the oldest.

Which is to say, you can only get a 1000-year lifespan if you not only defeat the usual diseases of old age (cancer, atherosclerosis, etc.) but also stop the clock on practically every consequence of aging from fading vision to slowing reflexes to slower healing to more brittle bones. A very tall order indeed.

Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[BerntB]

I will call "bullshit" on this story.

Put up, then.

If it is garbage (and YOU aren't full of it yourself!) what are the errors in the arguments??

Just that something hasn't been done is not a serious answer; there has been literally hundreds of "firsts" the last 150 years.

Some of the proposed solutions aren't exactly trivial -- e.g. "simply" moving genes from the mitochondria and then move back finished proteins would be a large change! (Sure, some proteins are made in the cell kernel and moved to the mitochondrias already, but to get the right levels of manufacturing, etc, etc. Not easy.)

To do that modification in living bodies seem ... well, a factor of ten harder still!

But is should be doable theoretically. And probably practically. I haven't read that much biochemistry, but I can't say that any of the points strike me as theoretically impossible.

So what is wrong?? Is the list of needed fixes incomplete?

A serious answer would be appreciated. I'm curious and you seem to be certain in your opinion. You should know, yes?

Re:Put up and show it is "bullshit"?

[beeplet]

So what is wrong?? Is the list of needed fixes incomplete?

My guess is yes, it is. One theory of aging is that we are carrying around many genes which are harmful, but have a serious effect later in life. Such genes were never selected against when expected lifetimes were 35 years or less. Now that we have cured many things that prevented people from getting to 30 or 40, we are seeing new problems that prevent people from getting to 100 or 150. But who's to say that there are not even more aging effects that will only become apparent after 150 or 200 years? It seems shortsighted to assume that the aging processes that are a problem now are the only things we need to overcome in order to live thousands of years.

I also think that a lot of the items on his list amount to replacement of body parts, whether whole organs or DNA. That isn't really reversing aging... That's just repair work which is likely to be needed more and more frequently as the person gets older. It also doesn't address the non-replaceable parts like the brain. Neurons continually die off during a person's adult life, and you don't grow new ones... that's going to be significant after a few hundred years.

If ageing is really to be solved, I think it will be done from the inside, by understanding and altering the functions of harmful genes. That's a long ways in the future, though.

joke-remake

[gyepi]

"Death will die" - Aubrey de Grey.

"Aubrey de Grey will die" - Death.

Uhm, isn't that already discussed?

[BerntB]

But who's to say that there are not even more aging effects that will only become apparent after 150 or 200 years?

That is quite likely.

The argument is that the known list of problems can be solved in a few decades. The next bunch of problems will be solved faster, when there is functioning gene therapy on living humans(!). (-: There might be continous attrition amongst the oldest people living... :-)

I haven't read too carefully (one of the previous times it was posted), but I think that is the "official" argument. Read the web site, most obvious counter arguments are answered.

you don't grow new [Neurons]

Sigh. The brain do grew new ones. Quite old knowledge. If the brains stop doing them, you get a depression. Exercise increases the rate. Google, or something.

The biochemists I studied with had lives, so I guess they have no /. where we can ask? :-)

If ageing is really to be solved, I think it will be done from the inside, by understanding and altering the functions of harmful genes. That's a long ways in the future, though.

See previous argument -- new, unknown effects will be found after a while and cured faster than the previous ones. (Sure, a generation or two might die before something new thing is cured.)

The whole thing seems to hang on (a) if the list of magical solutions are possible and (b) if there are unknown aging changes that can't be fixed.

Netcraft confirms it.

[Polo]

Netcraft confirms it - Death is dying.

Re:Psychologically infeasable.

[Intrigued]

That view is quite narrow.

Psychology isn't an invention to rule the populous, it is only commentary from observation of the populous. The variety of coping abilities among people is virtually infinite. People don't have to constantly look for new things, especially when they don't expect the new things to bring them any kind of satisfaction.

People would continue to live in the same day to day manner that they do now. Suicidal people would tend to not look for longer lives, thrill seekers would get as bored as they are now with their lives, people who look for gratification at the expense of their long term benefit would still try to do the same. Drugs, smoking, overeating, lack of excercise, depression, vices, would have a more profound effect in visibly damaging quality of life.

As cheesy as the movie was, there is some insight to be found in "Groundhog day". Some people will find long term satisfaction in spending time with other people, descendants, doing gardening, research, developing talents, art, new careers.

I personally have way more interests than I have time to ever delve into them. If I could raise my kids and have 2-10 lifetimes after that, I wouldn't have any trouble filling my time and thoroughly enjoying it. If I could spend that time with my wife as well, and enjoy my current health, even more so. People who would turn to the kind of things that were quoted to look for a thrill would quickly find that it didn't satisfy either. Most long lived people would figure it out before ever having to try it.

I would love to see what kind of perspective living a thousand years could give someone. Psychology would have new insight that the paltry 100 years we currently live cannot give.