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Aging Discovery Yields Nobel Prize
An anonymous reader writes This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have solved a major problem in biology: how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes, called the telomeres, and in an enzyme that forms them."
Can you imagine being immortal like Duncan, and being buried alive? Assuming the soil was to hard to be clawed through, it would be an awful way to spend an eternity.
Nothing is too hard to claw through given enough time.
I would settle for being put to death at 85 to keep population under control, if it meant my bones, mussels and organs didn't age. One of the worst thing about watching someone get old is to see their self reliance taken away and needing someone to help them into and out of the bath, change their diaper, feed them and put them to bed. THE worst thing is realizing someday it could and probably will happen to you.
It's sad but you start off with needing someone to look after you and that's how it ends, if you live that long.
Some say it got small a long time ago, because it can support around 500.000 humans at the rate we're "eating" its resources.
Source.
That's the cycle. The baby boomers retire, the supporting population is to small to sustain them, the world gets flung into chaos for a few decades and/or we learn to deal, the boomers start dying off, there is another period of prosperity because the future generations have learned to be efficient, future generations slowly for get how to be efficient as it's no longer required to support a large aged population, future generations start having multitudes of children, cycle starts over.
Sorry for the reply to myself. If you have never read "I have no mouth, and I must scream", it is very applicable. It is a classic of the science fiction genre, and a well written dystopian story.
This is the only link I could find. I know I have seen it in others...
http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
For instance, being immortal but still aging.
I am officially gone from
I was actually wondering how viral technology was evolving. I'm far from a biologist, so correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we able to reverse engineer and create our own viruses in laboratories now? Doesn't a virus take over your cell and reprogram it with the code wrapped up in the virus itself? It starts making the cell pump out tons of new viruses which ultimately bursts the cell and kills it. How much more difficult would it be to create a virus with your DNA from saved blood at age 20 (say your 60 now), program it to hijack the cell and reprogram it with the new DNA? There would have to be a few modifications made, for example, making it invisible to your immune system, coding the virus to die after reprogramming the cell, etc. Then just fill up an IV and let them flow into your body. I'm sure there's a huge difference from the kind we can engineer versus the type I'm suggesting, but is it possible? Or would the temporary pause of cell function during the reprogramming phase kill you?