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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.
Look, if you know what you're talking about, I'm not sure you fit in here....
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.
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.
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.
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.