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Scientists Identify a Potentially Universal Mechanism of Aging
cybergenesis2008 points us to a summary of research out of Harvard Medical School in which a set of genes known to affect aging in yeast was found to affect aging in mice as well. The genes, called sirtuins, perform two particular tasks; regulating which genes are "on" and "off," and also helping to repair damaged DNA. As an organism ages, the frequency of damage to DNA increases, leaving less time for the sirtuins' regulatory tasks. The increasingly unregulated genes then become a significant factor in aging. Realizing this, the researchers "administered extra copies of the sirtuin gene [to the mice], or fed them the sirtuin activator resveratrol, which in turn extended their mean lifespan by 24 to 46 percent." We discussed the plans for this research a few years ago.
But don't worry guys, they're going to come out with a new class of bailout drugs for you guys, like Paulsonex, and Philgramma, and Greenspanitol.
My pet snake thanks you.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm honestly scared of the day that they do figure out how to cure aging, because it will lead to an even greater stratification of social status and class. Most of the wealth in this country (and indeed most of the world) is concentrated with men who are over the age of 50-60 years. When they die, that wealth is then redistributed. Those people will be amongst the first to benefit from any such medical process; And if history has been any judge, that medical process will be expensive and there'll be little incentive to make it cheaper. The end result will be people who are born and work their entire lives, then die, never having had the opportunity to aquire wealth, because those who still have it aren't dying anymore.
This won't be something for humanity to celebrate. If and when the day comes, then we'll have to answer the question of what happens when numbers increase but resources decrease? And the answer will be in what kind of life is possible in that world. It won't be as good as the one you have now, I assure you.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
After reading over your 30-page argument and its wealth of calculations, charts, and academic sources cited across multiple peer-reviewed journals stating much the same, I have to say that I completely agree with you.
Seen a newspaper lately? 0% longer human life is an economic disaster.
Time is not a mechanism for aging. Our bodies do not undergo "time" and age as a result. Assuming these researchers are correct, our bodies undergo some process like the one discussed here, which causes our bodies to break down in one way or the other. Time does not do the breaking down. The breaking down happens in time.
Put another way, it's not the passage of time itself that causes us to age, it's something that occurs during that passage of time, such as the process we're talking about here.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
There are two problems I see with the usual theory that aging is related to "accumulation of damage", as the article seems to imply:
1) Humans live, barring accidents and disease, about 80-90 years, 120 at the outside. My dog lives 15-16 years, 22 on the outside. My dog gets all the normal signs of aging -- arthritis, gray hair, join and muscle pain, etc. But at an age that humans are not even entering their physical prime.
2) From a certain point of view, there is only one organism on earth, and it's billions of years old. Pieces of the organism fall off now and then, but it constantly renews itself. Slightly different each, but going through a consistent cycle of "physical prime". How can it renew itself when, presumably, all cells are "accumulating damage"?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
While your comment includes _some_ correct thoughts, what is correct is overwhelmed by your foolish notions. But you have been indoctrinated well. Your teachers should be pleased.
First, wealth isn't a finite resource. It is more like bytes and wood (we make more), than gold or oil (short of transmutation, finite).
We make wealth all the time. You add value to things by moving them from place to place, transforming them from one state to another (raw to finished, recycled, etc.), by performing services, inventing things, and so on.
It is nice (from a greedy point of view) when people die and their heirs get money the heirs didn't have to work for. But that isn't a redistribution of a finite resource. It is a "windfall profit". And as anyone with dying relatives will tell you, often dying relatives means a boatload of money out of _your_ pocket. Funerals, hospice care, etc. cost a God awful lot of money. That "wealth" is distributed from the immediate (living) family to the healthcare & death industries. Why do you think 50-60s hold the money but 60-70s don't. Because once you hit your 60s, your costs exceed your income. You spend your nest-egg you saved for 30 years.
The only real "resource" issues I see with immortality is land and leadership roles. But that is mitigated by the social aspects of immortality (see below) (e.g., 30 year mortgages turning into 60 year mortgages).
Second, why would their be "little incentive to make it cheaper"? Every medical advance has become cheaper over time. That is the whole point of generic drugs. Healthcare ain't cheap, but its like computers. A $1,000 PC in 2008 gets you a Hell of a lot better PC than $3,000 in 1998.
What kills healthcare is (a) lawsuits, a necessary evil, and (b) nationalized medicine (e.g., where Canada's Supreme Court has ruled that "a right to healthcare" means only a right to be on a waiting list. After all, this "right to healthcare" mantra is really a demand for immortality; "I should be immortal and my God, government, should give that to me").
What makes you think (to you your Marxist phraseology) the proletariat will not turnout with pitchforks & torches to see immortality pushed down the social ladder? Maybe in the EU (where an anti-democratic bureaucracy replaced an aristocracy), or China (mature fascist) would this even be conceivable (but not likely).
Third, you ignore the social effects of immortality.
A long lived population is likely to:
a) have less children or have them later (think and extreme version of Europe's demographics). It'll probably take longer to get a house, degree, etc. As life expectancy increased in the West so did our period of adolescence. You used to get married at 20, have kids, and be an adult. Now you can sit in college until your 30 (Ph.d), marry in your late-20s/30s, and never have kids. Adulthood has been pushed back substantially.
b) become very risk adverse. When you risk your life (or life savings) you aren't risking 30 years but 300 years.
c) you'll have to create a mechanism for moving people out of leadership roles or the Boss is likely to be The Boss for 100 years (like Motorola used to only promote based on seniority). This may be solved by increased career changing. Of course, with less children, there are less people trying to move up.
Scott Adam's (the Dilbert guy) take's it and did a write up on his blog a while back: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/who-will-kill-a.html entertaining if nothing else.
It's the awful truth isn't it? The Baby Boomers really aren't ever going to go away are they?
In times of trouble, the smell of frying onions usually gives confidence and comfort.
If they say raise retirement age from 60s to 80's and at 80 you feel like you are 60
Why has the retirement age not already risen with the vast improvements in healthcare and life expectancy?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'm not arguing that life is infinitely extendable, I'm just saying time is not a mechanism by which aging occurs. To say so misrepresents time: it is not a biological process. Whatever process occurs in time would be the mechanism by which aging occurs; in your terms, the way entropy manifests itself within our bodies.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
As an organism ages, the frequency of damage to DNA increases,
Don't you just love scientific religion? 'Tis a mathematical certainty! /bow
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr