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Blood of World's Oldest Woman Hints At Limits of Life
porkchop_d_clown (39923) writes "When Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper died in 2005, she was the oldest woman in the world. [New Scientist reported Wednesday] that, at the end of her life, most of her white blood cells had been produced by just two stem cells — implying the rest of her blood stem cells had already died, and hinting at a possible limit to the human life span."
Isn't this old news?
Since the summary didn't mention it, and I'm sure others were wondering.
If you live long enough most of your cells end up dieing or critically damaged by the formation of inclusion bodies caused from misfolded proteins. As far as we can tell the cells are otherwise fine they are just slowly accumulating that damage over time. This is also what alzheimer's is. The problem is that misfolded proteins are kind of contagious to other proteins in the cell and that is what leads to the inclusion bodies.
We are making progress though on being able to clean out the inclusion bodies. Your cells do have the ability to take them apart but somehow they end up not doing it. Give us some time though and we will fix this problem also and clean out these inclusion bodies in all of your cells and then your cells will work much better.
The other issue we need to fix is activating telomerase to extend our telomeres. The basic issue is that natural selection does not really select for anything after reproductive age so humans are filled with a bunch of small defects and we are getting better at repairing the damage. I really look forward to what can be done with CRISPR-CAS9 to repair DNA damage and replaced damaged genes.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
I find the conclusion that there is an absolute limit to the human life span because at some point the stem cells producing white blood cell all die out quite strange.
A few centuries ago, we could have concluded that there is an absolute limit to human life span because at some point someone can't eat anymore while he lost all his teeth. Any similar logical train of though could lead to the same conclusion.
And now, what if you find out why the cells die and manage to prevent it? Then the next thing that kills us will limit our life span, until we find out how to fix that as well. Absolute limits are difficult to set.
If this is a critical factor for maintaining longevity ...
It is not clear that it is. So far there is ONE data point. Before we start extrapolating, we might want to look at some other old people.
Look, if you know what you're talking about, I'm not sure you fit in here....
Who dares to love forever,
When love must die.
---Queen
Momento Mori
But they smell funny..
Really? You're trying to solve this "problem"?
My thought upon reading this story was, "Oh, thank God!!"
I had been hoping there was a definite end that science could not trick. I was beginning to fear that the medical community was going to try to force any level of existence to continue without regard to quality. Death is a part of life. I'd rather live with that than trying to force a 100 year old body to keep it's heart beating just because some family member doesn't know how to cope any other way.
Try working in the healthcare field. You'll see that that is the norm. Older patients often would be fine with letting go. But the family falls apart emotionally and pushes for ANY MEANS POSSIBLE to save them. It's pathetic. And it costs our healthcare industry billions that could be spent much better.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Sadly it doesn't stop with death too. Many more billions are wasted in the funeral racket. In my family my grandmother is a very simple and humble woman, but her darn kids keep insisting on fancy expensive gravestones and caskets in her end of life planning. It's like, you realize we are just going to throw dirt on this right? And she won't be "comfortable" regardless of how many pillows are in there.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
> Further, I see a lot of pessimism on Slashdot regarding super-longevity. I don't get it.
You don't understand that super-longevity would be bad both due to over-population and entrenched interests that will not allow progress, or you don't understand how hard a problem life extension is?
>> Actually, because that million is earning interest while you are drawing down on it, even at 5%API, you should be able to draw around $80K/yr for 20 years
Most advisors recommend calculating return at 4% (not that you can get that today in CDs)...and trying to avoid completely eroding the principal in twenty years. By the time you get through that math, you end up with the popular "rule-of-twenty". E.g.,
http://www.getrichslowly.org/b...
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/2...
Death is a part of life. That doesn't mean it's good or shouldn't be fought against. Smallpox used to be a part of life too, and I doubt anyone's life is made worse by not having it around anymore.
The idea of longevity research, of course, is to make 100 year old body indistinguishable from a 20 year old body, not merely to "keep the heart beating".
Really? On what, for example?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Nah, science has just identified the thing that needs to be tricked. We just need fresh stem cells. I, for one, am going to assure that I get a steady supply of stem cells by eating a baby for breakfast each morning.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
I'd rather live with that than trying to force a 100 year old body to keep it's heart beating just because some family member doesn't know how to cope any other way.
False dichotomy. If we manage one day to make 100 year old bodies to be more like today's 60 year old bodies, you'll have a different option.
Ezekiel 23:20
Genesis 6:3 says in the New Living Translation:
Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years."
Funny how reactionaries always seem to think of life extension as living a long time as an old person rather than living a long time as a young person.
Such is life in idiocratic paradise.
I had been hoping there was a definite end that science could not trick.
There isn't. Our bodies are machines, no more no less, and ultimately science will solve every riddle they pose. Soon, fifty or a hundred years from now, the first immortals will be born. Who knows, perhaps they already have been.
The comfort is actually for those who see her into the ground. They're not comfortable if the dead person doesn't look like a fucking piece of art. They call this "respect". They do it out of "respect" for the dead person. And so that the living left behind don't poke their eyes out for the rest of their lives that "this guy had no respect for this mother; he bought the cheapest plywood casket with a pillow made of hay". And if you don't want to move to a different state/country, you comply.
There will be no point to having a "youthful" old age if we will still become more conservative as we grow old, and in our misguided attempts to stay relevant, end up preventing the world from changing, just to keep things familiar.
Make your living wills now.
Get the funeral (or lack of one) that you want.
Death is a part of life.
...for 93% of us.
With 7 billion people on the planet, and only 100 billion of us having ever lived, only 93% of us have died.
As part of the 7%, I'm keeping my hopes high.
There's a cremation service in the US that you can sign up for that will be ... aggressive ... in seeing your body cremated according to your wishes, (relatively) cheaply and quickly. Their market is precisely people who want to trump their family on this issue. But I'm blocking on the company name - anyone?
Soylent.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
My grandfather just celebrated his 95th birthday, and my co-worker said, "I hope I get to be that age some day!" I replied that I surely did **NOT** want to ever arrive at that age, and he looked at me befuddled.
I asked, "Do you know any 95 year-olds?" No, he didn't. "Think about his life. All his friends are dead. All his brothers and sisters are dead. His kids are in their 70s and due to die soon. He can't drive. He can't walk without a walker. His breakfast is made up of more pills by volume than toast. He can't see well, and his hearing is worse even when he wears his hearing aids. He hasn't been laid in 30 years and never will be again. Pain is a constant and has been for years. He hasn't had a drink of wine in over a decade. He hasn't been able to travel since 1997. What kind of life is that?"
Mohamed was rather quiet for quite some time after that.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Real respect is dragging grandpa's corpse to several pubs for a last night of drinking with family and friends.
I know you're joking, but there's nothing I would want more.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
You are nothing more than a couple dollars worth of parts and some electrical/chemical interactions.
The fact that you believe otherwise is cute in the same way that a child believes the tooth fairy is real.
, fifty or a hundred years from now, the first immortals will be born.
That would, IMHO, be an utter disaster for mankind. Human beings are really good at learning what their world is like when they are children, because they are more or less starting from scratch. What they absolutely suck at is adapting to change after they've figured all that out. We form our opinions and view of the world when we are growing up. We can see then with (relatively) unclouded eyes the way things are, and even reason out the way we think things ought to be. But that becomes relatively set. This is why Max Plank remarked:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
It isn't just science either, it's pretty much every realm of human thought. I was born into a society (1967) where it was accepted that black people should be kept away from white people, women were inferior to men in every way and belonged in the home, and "gay" was not a state of being, but a repulsive activity that needed to be suppressed at all costs. Its true that lot of people's minds changed since then, but by and large what happened is that the old folks who felt strongest about society staying that way died . Social conservatism is far more prominent with older people at pretty much every level you check.
While I'd like to think that all that was wrong with the 70's is gone from me, the fact is its all still lurking down in my head, because that's the world I was born into. The best I can hope for to personally advance society is to raise my own kids without my prejudices, and then when its just me left that remembers the early 70's I can die and all that horrible shit will die with me.
Anyone trying to "fix" this is an active threat to humanity.