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Ask Aubrey de Grey About Longevity Research
There may be such a thing as a conventional scientist -- but Aubrey de Grey is not one. Instead, biogerontologist de Grey has spent much of the last 20 years investigating the science of aging by considering the aging process as a multifaceted disease whose manifestations can be mitigated, rather than an inevitability to merely accept. That might not be unusual in itself, but de Grey believes that by addressing the causes and symptoms of aging, human life can be extended to at least 1000 years — a stance has earned him accolades and contempt in various degrees. (He might not especially mind being called names like "rogue" and "maverick," though.) De Grey is also chairman and chief science officer of The Methuselah Foundation, whose M-Prize for extending the lifespan of mice has been mentioned on Slashdot before. Ask de Grey about his research below; he'll answer the top-rated questions, and we'll publish them in this space. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply — so ask all the questions you'd like, but please confine yourself to one per post.
From the studies I've looked at, and the differing oppinions of the popular media, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions on the effects (or lack thereof) of telomerase on aging. Could you give a brief discussion of that (and possibly other factors/nonfactors and relative importance)?
So let's say that you or some other scientist in the field figures out a way to actually get humans to live to 1000 years. Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?
I don't respond to AC's.
Has any research been done on how extreme longevity affects a person psychologically?
You mad
Most people understand that parts of biological life break-down over time for various reasons, mostly environmental. What have we learned so far about humans, for example, and why cell death occurs?(Setting aside environmental causes like cancer, virii, toxins, etc.) If you had 60 secs to get a college student excited about wanting to study and research life extension, what would you say besides the obvious 'live-forever' meme?
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Do you think that there is something after death? If so, why extend life?
Do you or your organization research the societal implications of extreme long life? How will our cultures, society, and laws, and families/family structures have to change to accommodate long life? Are we ready for it?
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Given that the most promising research to-date on life-extension (resveratrol and caloric restriction) can produce about a 40% increase in maximum lifespan at best, how do you estimate that we can achieve a lifespan of 1,000 years (about a 10-fold increase in current maximum lifespans)?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I'd love to believe that we might "cure" aging within my lifetime, but several of the aging mechanisms discovered over the past 20 years (many of which you personally get credit for) appear more-or-less absolute limits to longevity. As just one example, telomerase - Inhibit it (as most human cells do), and cells can only divide a finite number of times; reenable it, and we live right up until we die of cancer.
Given such limitations, do you still consider near-immortality as a realistic possibility, or will we merely see a continuation of the current trend of higher functionality up the extreme natural limit to our lifespans (110 to 120 years), at which point people simply die of nothing?
If you increase the lifespan of the average human to 1000 years would they remain fertile in proportion? Would a women remain fertile until about age 350?
Also, would a child not encounter puberty until age 130?
Surely you've been asked the overpopulation question before, what is your response?
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Let's say we can live for 400, 600, 1000 years. How will we cope with all those centuries of memories? Even people nearing a century often (usually?) can't cope with that much info about themselves. Their personalities are often severly constrained, or at least exclude quite a bit of who they were 3/4 of a century ago. Is perhaps some of that limitation not merely "hardware", which your research targets, but also our "software", the way we integrate experiences into our personality and worldview?
Across 1000 years, a lot of those experiences are going to conflict, made as they are out of the human condition. How do we keep our minds together as well as your medicine proposes to maintain our bodies?
Myself, I drink to forget. Maintaining a window of clarity here towards the end, at the expense of a murky past I can't recall, is my own contribution to your grand project. Here's mud in yer eye!
--
make install -not war
This is rather personal, I know, but I feel it is relevant to your work.
What system of philosophy do you subscribe to that drives you to discover such things? Is it just the desire to see man taken to his highest potential, or is it something deeper?
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
If the average human lifespan were extended to 1000, would the average human age at a normal speed (i.e., like now), then hit a certain specific age and remain at that age until the end (everlasting youth), or would the aging be constant?
If I gave you a lab rat today, how long could you extend his life?
What about me - is there anything I can do (other than a healthy lifestyle), or could have done, today, to start extending my life?
How long before the answers to either of these questions change significantly? 5 years? 10? 20?
Considering your line of study, would you say the more difficult issues to deal with regarding life extension are technical ones (how do we do it?) or moral ones (why do we do it?)
1. elastin.. It's not alive, it doesnt regenerate. and even if replaced in a full sized organism, it would already be "loose" because it tightens as we grow, and eventually breaks down.. How do you replace this substance throughout the body? (I'm hoping this covers a bunch of the other materials of the same type)
2. degradation of cell function.. as mutations occur in cells, the functional protiens become non-functional.. while these arent cancerous, they are problematic as they're just hobos in the body. to stop this would require freakloads of genetic therapy, rather than the smaller amount needed to repair cancer.
3. Overcoming telomerase,, so does it get nuked by your gene therapy, or are the stem cells engineered to full length only..
4. How do you keep the protein digesting enzymes needed for removing garbage from inside cells from eating barr bodies and other useful proteins that would normally inhabit and possibly pollute a cell.
5. How do you prevent damage to someone who has 2 copies of a gene that are both useful (the two having a broader functional range than any known single gene) from getting your genericized version at both? wiping out the advantage.
6. How do you keep the memories from fading to nothing?
Thanks,
Storm
Are you a proponent of assisted suicide?
Should humans someday find that living to 1,000 as "normal" (through genetic advances, let's say), there will certainly be some that would prefer to live to 750, 500 or 100. Do you find it ethical to provide them an "early ticket"?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Per his Wikipedia entry he was in fact awarded a PhD from Cambridge. He did apparently get it without studying biology at Cambridge, which is pretty weird. Of course, that's also Wikipedia, so take it with an appropriately sized grain of salt.
It does look as if his biology credentials are weak (if one can even glean that from a Wikipedia entry), but it also looks as if he sincerely believes in the work.
On the other hand, I think someone taking a public stand and saying "treat this is a solvable problem" is doing a great service. It's sheer idiocy and superstition that we treat aging as if it's untreatable.
Others have listed potential problems, I'm interested in the follow-up question to those: what do you look for to say "this won't work"?
Simply stating "I believe it can" is the realm of religion. What evidence would it take to convince you that it isn't possible after all?
I'm not much over 40, and I can already tell my memory isn't as good as I was younger. My father, another 30 years older than me, has significant problems with short term memory, despite otherwise decent health. Do you agree that focusing primarily on minimizing the debilitating effects of aging is the best approach, rather than focusing simply on extending life itself regardless of the quality of life it would give?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I would rather die of cancer at 200 than of anything else at 70.
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Have you considered that aging, as a mechanism of limiting average life span, may not be a "disorder" but rather a biological adaptation, important for evolution? At the level of populations, where a lot of evolution occurs, it may be advantageous to limit the number of previous generations with which new ones have to compete. Useful new mutations will also be more likely to gain penetrance, I would think. And beyond that, life span is one of those system parameters - like mutation rate, recombination frequency, generation length, etc. - that determine the performance of evolutionary systems themselves as optimizers.
Which is not to say we are bound to accept it, of course. Many species live longer than humans, and many more not nearly as long. There is certainly more to it than the analogy of machinery "wearing out". Were mankind able to unravel this process and stop or reverse it, that would be quite an adaptation in itself, wouldn't it?
There are several promising animal models (caloric restriction, resveritol) for increasing longevity by 20-40%. Given that human beings already seem to live unusually long for mammals of our size, it is possible evolution (driven social/cultural advantages granted by long-lived friends and relatives) has already acted to take advantage of the biochemical processes involved.
What research has been done on human biochemistry to assess if that might be the case?
To get to what Ray Kurzweil calls the "First Bridge" -- to live long enough to take advantage of the first generation of longevity-enhancing therapies, in 15 to 20 years from now -- many people must change their lifestyles to stay as healthy as possible, so they're in good shape when the time comes.
The role of physical fitness seems to be given mere lip service in the popular longevity literature. By "physical fitness", I don't mean just the lack of obesity, but rather the ability to run at least a marathon, for example. Evolution has selected bodies for us that are capable of very demanding physical tasks, yet most people sit around with resting heart rates at least double what they could be if they were fit.
Do you know of any serious research efforts into the effects of peak physical fitness on optimal health and longevity?
I'm curious if you try to leave old-age diseases and disorders for traditional medical research and take on the problems leftover? What areas of aging has traditional medical research been ignoring?
I stole this Sig
Because the Republicans will never allow it.
They know that even _Alberta_ would send 2 democrats to the senate.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".