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Key Step In Programmed Cell Death Discovered
Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered a dance of proteins that protects certain cells from undergoing apoptosis, also known as programmed cell death. Understanding the fine points of apoptosis is important to researchers seeking ways to control this process. In a series of experiments, St. Jude researchers found that if any one of three molecules is missing, certain cells lose the ability to protect themselves from apoptosis. A report on this work appears in the advance online publication of Nature.
I wonder if they could trigger apoptosis in cancer cells? That would be very cool
Solution is simple: free immortality, all you have to do is agree that you die if you ever have babies without permission. Not right away, but you start aging and eventually die as the treatment is reversed. Have a baby without permission, and grow old then die (your baby gets immortality treatment). That way when someone dies someone else gets an *authorized* baby, and the population remains stable. Maybe have a reversible sterilization (like a vasectomy) to prevent... accidents, while keeping baby-making ability in case of emergencies.
Now, obviously that stinks of china's "one baby" policy... but if people aren't willing to stop having babies on their own, either someone else has to stop having babies for them, or more people have to die. There is just not enough room for all the babies people want to have, sometimes. And if people aren't dying of old age... well then they can't keep making babies.
On a completely retarded sci-fi note... if we assume that we continue the trend of the west evolving into tall blond beautiful people, we stop aging about 20 and get quasi-immortality, and we advance science to the point where it looks like magic to most people and then integrate it into our biology and then our genetics... and then undergo an apocalypse so we forgot all this ever happened... Well then "we" get to be elves while people who didn't get (technology-so-advanced-it's-indistinguishable-from) magic, quasi-immortality, and a distinct look get to be regular humans. It could happen!