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Geneticists Claim Aging Breakthrough
Quirk writes "The Science section of The Guardian is reporting on recent experiments by geneticists 'to unlock the secrets of the aging process has created organisms that live six times their usual lifespan, raising hopes that it might be possible to slow ageing in humans.' 'In the experiment, Dr Longo's team took yeast cells and knocked out two key genes, named Sir2 and SCH9. The latter governs the cells' ability to convert nutrients into energy. They found that instead of dying after a week, the cells lived for up to six weeks.''Research has now begun to test whether the effect works in mice.' So it looks like we might soon have near immortal, fearless mice."
I am Mickey McMouse of the clan McMouse, and I am immortal.
We have cells already that are not governed by the normal life/death cell cycle. It's called CANCER. Cancer cells have autononmous growth and multiply indefinitely.
sig here
i know exactly when these amazing age-related breakthroughs will come to fruition for humanity
exactly at the age at which i am too old to partake of any of it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
..real crowded in the world if we're all immortal.
At this rate I'm never gonna get to sit at the big table on Thanksgiving
Where we can get fearless, immortal, FLYING mice, then I'll be excited.
Especially if they can also sing "Here I come to save the day."
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
So in other words, I should invest my money in retirement homes?
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
Fearless imortal mice?!? Maybe my "wanna see my spaceship" pick up line will start working again!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
At the rate of mice-related stories we've been getting on Slashdot lately, I'm getting worried that the next one is going to be how scientists found a way to make mice smarter.
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?"
"Same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!"
>> Our tax rates will be 80% of our income.
So... stopping this aging gene also turns us into Swedes?
Longevity will provide the next inflection point of human capacity and progress. Imagine if the great people of science could continue to contribute and innovate for the equivalent of several lifetimes. Gauss was the last mathematician who was said to be able to be conversant with the entire spectrum of mathematics. Currently it takes a human a decade to two just to be abreast of a specific field of science to be able to make any significant contributions. The period of time available to advance our understanding is getting shorter and shorter due to increase in the body of knowledge and our limited life times.
I know there will be the crowd that says - but we were designed to die. That is bunk! Self aware intelligence is bound and destined to perpetuated and proliferate.
And soon our scientists will say stuffs like... Wernstrom: "Face it, Farnsworth, you're over the hill. It's time to leave science to the hundred-twenty-year-olds." Farnsworth: "You young turks think you know everything! I was inventing things when you were barely turning senile." Wernstrom: "Haha! Go home before you embarrass yourself, old man! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a nap before the ceremonies."
Here's a simple way to increase your lifespan. Eat less. In fact, halve the amount of food you eat.
There are papers that you can search for with sciencedirect.com or scholar.google.com that show rats that are given half the calories of the control group living almost 50% longer. It's just not exactly something that you can sell to people. You can live longer, if you live LESS. There's a reason animals that live very long lives have very slow metabolisms (such as Turtles) and animals that have very high metabolisms live less (such as humming birds and mice). To put it simply, you can 'burn the midnight oil' and live a short life, or eat less and do less and live longer.
Putting it more complicatedly, the reason you age is generally regarded to be because of damage your body and cells accumulate over a lifetime of living. The damage often comes from 'Oxidative stress'. This is just a very broad umbrella term for anything that causes the generation of 'Reactive oxygen species' that are highly reactive molecules that zip about your cell damaging proteins and DNA. ROS are made by things such as too much Vitamin K, smoking, UV light or certain other radiation bands, too much iron in the diet, and so on.
And the biggest contributor to ROS in your body over it's life? The Mitochondria. The 'power plant' of each cell. It makes ROS as a part of the process used to make ATP (the 'batteries' of your cells) and inevitably some escapes and causes damage. Over a life-time the damage builds up.
The biggest contributor to ageing is just plain old living (kind of obvious really), and the best way to therefore cut down on that damage is to eat less, slowing down the metabolism and decreasing the amount of ROS the mitochondria produces.
IMHO, not really worth it! you could get hit by a bus tomorrow! Dig into your fresh Chiabatta and Fetta cheese!
This is all a ploy by Disney to justify keeping Micky under copy-wraps for 600 years.
...or maybe not.
Is that why all those starving people in Africa all live to be 180 years old?
i know exactly when these amazing age-related breakthroughs will come to fruition for humanity
exactly at the age at which i am too old to partake of any of it
That's not really a joke.
People in government see anti-aging research and treatments in terms of the financial load on the retirement and medical infrastructure relative to the tax base of still-working young, and view improved treatments as extending the life of the infirm aged rather than extending productive, vigorous youth. As a result they tend to be opposed to such research, or in favor of rationing its fruits if it ever has any.
(I recall back in the early days of CNN, when the head of one of the government agencies was being live-interviewed on future solvency issues as the boomers retired, and he slipped and said "We have to get the death rate up to meet the birthrate." Guess what part got clipped from the replay a few hours later...)
Life-extension advocates, of course, point out that real breakthroughs will extend healthy, vigorous life rather than simply stretching senility - and might eventually eliminate the latter entirely. Thus an effective attack on aging would reduce, rather than increase, the load on the systems (once they were adjusted for the increased lifespan).
You'll notice that a significant fraction of The Fine Article is dedicated to heading off such short-sightedness on the part of the portion of the ruling class that will be dispensing grant money and regulating availability of any treatments.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I asked a friend of mine in the insurance industry once how long people would live if we eliminated all natural causes. He said given current accident rates, people would live on average about 800 years. I do wonder if a lifespan was 800 years on average, we might be more careful, but I doubt it. If you think about it, this number means that roughly 1 in 10 people die in accidents over the course of a lifetime. That sounds about right to me. As for people dying of diseases, I believe that most of the diseases associated with end of life are heavily related to aging itself, so many of the diseases you mention may be lessened or eliminated through extending lifespan.