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Telomere-Lengthening Procedure Turns Clock Back Years In Human Cells

Posted by samzenpus on from the making-it-young dept.

Zothecula writes Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a new procedure to increase the length of human telomeres. This increases the number of times cells are able to divide, essentially making the cells many years younger. This not only has useful applications for laboratory work, but may point the way to treating various age-related disorders – or even muscular dystrophy.

112 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. entropy decreases? by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    oh yeah, closed system.

    1. Re:entropy decreases? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      Er no. Definitely not a closed system.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re:entropy decreases? by Threni · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sarcasm is just a lie with an attitude problem, isn't it!

    3. Re:entropy decreases? by Methadras · · Score: 2

      Sarcasm stems from the greek word Sarx which means 'to cut or rend flesh'. That's why people who use sarcasm appropriately are told that their sarcasm has bite to it. Sarcasm isn't a lie with an attitude problem, it's usually a truth with bite which is why sarcasm is the most violent uses of comedy... and sometimes tragedy.

  2. Start with Stem cells and.... by Gr8Apes · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seems like make stem cells young again will extend us past 120. The last 115 year old that died had 2 stem cells supplying more than 80% of her red blood cells. If you can rejuvenate them, they should be able to slow down aging everywhere else as well.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    1. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by aliquis · · Score: 2

      Guess cancer is still an issue but what I wonder is if one can combine this with more food and physical work and hence look good AND be fresh / not burn off quickly at the same time?

    2. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Oh you mean pollution the leading cause of cancer. Still a really major problems as many of the pollutants build up in your body guaranteeing death no matter how much money you have for medical services and a really nasty one at that. Rather amusing that the corporate executives will be killing themselves and their families because there is no escaping the kinds of pollution that build up within the human body, in the air, in the water, in the soil and in the food.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    3. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The last 115 year old that died had 2 stem cells supplying more than 80% of her red blood cells.

      Citation needed.

    4. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Then please explain how two thirty year olds can make a zero year old baby?

      Through a lot of steps that greatly reduce the chance that critically damaged DNA will be passed on. To start with, the two thirty year olds need to be healthy enough in a number of ways to actually produce a baby (maybe that's "to end with" rather than "to start with" since it's really the last step of the previous iteration. Anyway, both sexes have to produce gametes, and there are processes to weed out bad gametes at the time of production (before their own birth for females, or within a matter of days before release for males). Then, when ova actually emerge, there are more screening processes. Same for sperm. Then they both have to travel, and various defects will prevent them from reaching their destination. Ditto when they merge, and again when the fertilized egg begins to divide, and so on through the rest of ontogeny.

      It's sort of tautologically obvious, but only DNA that can produce a viable baby will produce a viable baby. Then, the baby has to become a viable adult and reproduce and we're back around to the first/last step. Mutations obviously get through but, just as obviously, mutations that prevent reproduction absolutely don't make it more than a generation.

    5. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by fractoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You jest, but this is why we have children instead of just living forever. Think of reproduction as, in a sense, compressing all the information required to make an animal down into a much smaller amount of storage medium than the entire animal takes up. That's a far smaller volume for 'bad data' (mutations, genetic abnormalities etc) to exist in. Then the process of 'unpacking' this data applies a bunch of checksum checks (changes are liable to render the embryo non-viable rather than continuing). In the end you have a genetic copy of the parent(s), but with all of the bad data and random junk squeezed out.

      It's not as simple as adding extra telomerase to the end of your DNA strands. The reason we have this genetic equivalent of a MAX_LOOPS constant is that once cells have subdivided that many times, they error rate gets too high. Extending cellular life in this manner without some form of added error correction will just result in cancer.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    6. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by mcvos · · Score: 1

      Mutation is a normal result of human reproduction and a vital driver of evolution. You just don't want it to get so far out of hand that new babies aren't viable. Of course somewhere in our reproductive process those telomeres also have to get longer again. No idea how that works. Might be important, I guess.

    7. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Meh, they need to invent a way to reverse ageing. I'm already post a prime, I don't want to be stuck like this for the rest of my much extended life!

      Seriously, how annoying will it be when they invest booster spice and all the people under 30 can live that way forever?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Nah. I was thinking errors occurring in the copying of genes or whatever. For whatever reason really.

      I don't know how the free radicals work and I don't really know to what extent the body make more sells / replace them quicker if you work out and eat more (but I know about the ideas that eating less will help the cells repair damage instead.)

      So that was what I was thinking of.

      Recently I saw some statement that 60-something percent of the cancer cases wasn't because of something you had done but that doesn't say much I guess because maybe things like pollution is included in that and the rest is rather things like alcohol and such.

    9. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by Wycliffe · · Score: 1

      Meh, they need to invent a way to reverse ageing. I'm already post a prime, I don't want to be stuck like this for the rest of my much extended life!

      Seriously, how annoying will it be when they invest booster spice and all the people under 30 can live that way forever?

      One step at a time. My guess is that any age halting method would probably have some improvement for those post prime but even
      if it all it does is halt your aging at your current age that buys you more time until they can actually figure out how to reverse the aging process.
      At this point in life with death starting to loom on the horizon, if I had to do it all over again, I would probably opt to go into the medical
      field and research aging. With a finite lifespan, a complete career change is no longer a good option for me but if someone did manage to
      halt aging then there is no reason I couldn't go back to school and start studying how to reverse aging.

    10. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by doug141 · · Score: 1

      You jest, but this is why we have children instead of just living forever.

      An organism that fails to reproduce fails to evolve as fast as competitors. Earth is dominated by fast-evolving, gene-shuffling, sex-having life-forms - not Methuselahs.

    11. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by Immerman · · Score: 2

      Well now, for the individual cancer would likely be preferable to death, would it not? Another reason for a genetic lifetime limit could be that, without it, you have the potential for individuals to live forever, hampering the evolution of the species by repeatedly reintroducing obsolete DNA into the gene pool. Over time those species with a built-in age limiter will experience more net genetic drift, allowing them to adapt more quickly to changing conditions.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    12. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by ultranova · · Score: 1

      Meh, they need to invent a way to reverse ageing.

      Isn't that what they've done? "This increases the number of times cells are able to divide, essentially making the cells many years younger." Sure, it might take a while for your body to heal the damage, and it might require further medical help in extreme cases, but the core cause has been fixed.

      Seriously, how annoying will it be when they invest booster spice and all the people under 30 can live that way forever?

      Or until an accident or illness kills you. Which will eventually happen, of course. But eliminating the physical effects of old age would surely make whatever time you do have more pleasant.

      Of course, overcoming death in our current state could lead to a Queen of Pain scenario.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    13. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 1

      Another reason for a genetic lifetime limit could be that, without it, you have the potential for individuals to live forever, hampering the evolution of the species by repeatedly reintroducing obsolete DNA into the gene pool. Over time those species with a built-in age limiter will experience more net genetic drift, allowing them to adapt more quickly to changing conditions.

      This assumes we do nothing to *artificially* modify our own DNA outside the normal evolutionary process. Should we engage in full-bore "designer baby" genetic engineering, the hit or miss process of evolution effectively becomes redundant. We can eliminate traits we find undesirable in vitro instead of waiting generations for nature to do it for us. Ditto on enhancing favorable traits. We have the technology in basic form already. If we chose to focus our efforts on it, we could make enormous strides in a very short period of time. The problems facing such a solution are moral, not technological.

      --
      In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    14. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Well, I was referring to the reason such a clock evolved at all. In general most biological features have (or once had) a valuable function to enhance gene-line survival.

      As for self-modification - frankly it worries me. We're notoriously bad about even figuring out what would actually make us happy in our own lives, often struggling ever harder in exactly the wrong direction. The thought of us taking conscious control over the direction our species evolves in seems like a recipe for disaster, especially since our decisions will almost certainly be hideously short-sighted. It's almost inevitable, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    15. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Well now, for the individual cancer would likely be preferable to death, would it not?

      The reason we have cancer is because our cellular machinery is sometimes defective, and without technology, we have no way to fix it.

      Now that we're developing technology to fix problems with ourselves at the cellular and even genetic levels, we should be able to solve cancer.

      Remember too, we were evolved to survive, as a species, in an environment without technology and hospitals and medicine, where we just lived in caves and huts and lived a primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. We have a lot of mechanisms in us which assume this environment: when we're cut, our blood clots and we form a scar (if the cut is bad enough). Our bodies don't understand the concept of bandages, so they take measures to protect us from infection in an environment where there is no such artificial protection.

      Now that we have artificial environments and modern medicine and technology, some of the ways our bodies work just isn't necessary any more, or could even be harmful.

      Another reason for a genetic lifetime limit could be that, without it, you have the potential for individuals to live forever, hampering the evolution of the species by repeatedly reintroducing obsolete DNA into the gene pool. Over time those species with a built-in age limiter will experience more net genetic drift, allowing them to adapt more quickly to changing conditions.

      The problem with this is that a species doesn't necessarily need to evolve; it only needs to if its environment changes substantially and it can't continue to survive as-is (or gets out-competed) by another species or by a mutated version of its own.

      The poster child for this is the shark. Sharks haven't changed in any significant way in many millions of years. Fossils of prehistoric sharks dating to the time of the dinosaurs are virtually identical to modern sharks. The other poster child is the horseshoe crab, which has also not been touched by evolution.

    16. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by Immerman · · Score: 2

      >The problem with this is that a species doesn't necessarily need to evolve; it only needs to if its environment changes substantially and it can't continue to survive as-is (or gets out-competed) by another species or by a mutated version of its own.

      Not much of a problem - care to offer even one environment that doesn't change continuously, as well as being full of other organisms competing for limited resources?

      As for sharks - their basic form hasn't changed substantially, but that doesn't mean they haven't been evolving. Improvements in heart and brain function, senses, and skin surface have almost certainly continued, not to mention the immune system, generally the most genetically volatile aspect of any species thanks to the fact that we're competing against beings that often get many thousands of generations of evolution for every one of ours, not to mention the ability to engage in apparently guided horizontal gene transfer both with members of their own species and others.

      Basically - so long as you have reproduction, mutation, and death, evolution is inevitable. Some locally optimal features may be conserved in some gene-lines even over geologic timescales, but the species is nonetheless in a state of constant flux. Or do you suppose hammerheads, whale sharks, etc, etc, etc existed from the beginning as well?

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    17. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      An organism that fails to reproduce fails to evolve as fast as competitors. Earth is dominated by fast-evolving, gene-shuffling, sex-having life-forms - not Methuselahs.

      That was true, until the last 40K years or so. There's some thought that evolution has actually stopped with humans.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    18. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      The last 115 year old that died had 2 stem cells supplying more than 80% of her red blood cells.

      Citation needed.

      Citations

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    19. Re:Start with Stem cells and.... by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Maybe in the last 50 years, with modern medicine, and with specific types of cancer, yes. But historically, cancer has been an almost universal death sentence. Also, there's no such thing as "obsolete DNA", only more or less effective DNA as demonstrated by the phenotypes it produces. If an organism is still around producing offspring generations later, then it's clearly very well adapted to its environment. If it's no longer well adapted, it will die out, solving the 'problem.'

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
  3. cancer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Won't allowing cells to divide like they are in a baby highly increase the risk of cancer?

    1. Re:cancer by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

      You might be thinking of something different, reverting the cells to stem cells. These are the telomeres, which are the tail end of the DNA strand that gets chopped a little every time the cell splits. After many splits, there's none left and the cell dies.

      There are already ways to extend the telomeres, that is something telomerase accomplishes, but this is a new procedure.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:cancer by ITRambo · · Score: 1

      For an old premed course, cells that divide past (roughly) fifty times and don't then die become tumors.

    3. Re:cancer by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative
      No, cancer doesn't seem to be likely as a result of this. From the article:

      Although application of this RNA initially causes telomeres to lengthen, within 48 hours they once again begin to shorten as cells divide. This is a good thing, however, as cells that divide endlessly could pose a increased cancer risk if used in humans.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    4. Re:cancer by sg_oneill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah thats the Hayflick limit which is designed to stop that.

      Theres actually a damn good reason why cells are designed to stop reproducing after a certain limit. In fact one of cancers strategies is to artificially prevent telemere shortening to try and circumvent the hayflick limit.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    5. Re:cancer by gronofer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, the article mentions that, and says extending by only 1000 nucleotides is a good thing because "cells that divide endlessly could pose a increased cancer risk if used in humans.". Of course if you kept repeating the treatment, it would be the same as dividing endlessly anyway.

    6. Re:cancer by Doubting+Sapien · · Score: 2

      More likely the opposite. One of the hallmarks of cancer is genomic instability caused by abnormal chromosomes. Restorative extension of telomeres would in fact stabilize chromosomes and protect them from developing anomalies.

      --
      ========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
    7. Re:cancer by theshowmecanuck · · Score: 1

      You MIGHT die of cancer, but you WILL die of old age. My question is will it reverse aging? Can you rejuvenate?

      --
      -- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
    8. Re:cancer by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative

      My question is will it reverse aging? Can you rejuvenate?

      This is only one aspect of aging. Here is a list of several others. All of them probably need to be addressed to reverse aging (and probably other things we don't know about).

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    9. Re:cancer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Restorative extension of telomeres would in fact stabilize chromosomes and protect them from developing anomalies.

      Interesting if true, do you have a source for this info?

    10. Re:cancer by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      The cell dos not die, it just can not successful split anymore, so well, it dies at its final splitting.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    11. Re:cancer by Doubting+Sapien · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not offhand in any good laymen's literature I know of. But the process is described in a bunch of molecular biology textbooks I don't have access to at the moment. When chromosomes are not protected with telomere caps on the ends, the cellular machinery is likely to mistakenly treat them as DNA double strand breaks. What happens in such situations is that proteins involved in DNA repair will try to join the "naked" end to the nearest other piece of DNA, even if it belongs to another healthy chromosome. Fused chromosomes are always bad news for cellular health. The problem is amplified in what is called a breakage-fusion-bridge (b/f/b) cycle as cells try to continue dividing with abnormal chromosomes that now doesn't separate as they should.

      The presence of healthy telomeres suppresses this process. Even if your chromosomes get messed up through the infrequent snags that still happens occasionally, a damaged chromosome that is able to restore the presence of telomeres at the end by one means or another (there are several) will stop undergoing b/f/b cycles. Mind you, the chromosome is still damaged to some degree, but it doesn't get worse.

      --
      ========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
    12. Re:cancer by mysidia · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What we would ideally need to achieve elimination of cellular aging is the ability to sequence a person's entire DNA when they are young. And later digitally replicate an exact copy of the originals and print new undifferentiated cells to replace old ones, so the telomeres are longer, and also.... there are no mutations.

    13. Re:cancer by mysidia · · Score: 1

      And yet there are stem cells in the body that can naturally express telomerase, so overcome the limit.

      But it sure does seem to not be a defect or problem that there is a limit.

      Easy to see how messing with this in healthy people would be likely to cause more harm than good, especially if they can't be extremely selective about which cells they apply this to.

      Over time cell division inherently degrades the genetic material, because the error correction in the copying mechanism used in Mitosis is not good enough. Cancer, uncontrolled division, disease, new cells conveying inappropriate signals or not responding appropriately, or cells releasing harmfully warped versions of proteins, enzymes, catalysts, or other substrates or substances are just some of the bad things that can result.

    14. Re:cancer by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

      My question is will it reverse aging? Can you rejuvenate?

      This is only one aspect of aging. Here is a list of several others. All of them probably need to be addressed to reverse aging (and probably other things we don't know about).

      He lists seven, but there are actually eight aspects to aging - the last being not having a picture of yourself in the attic. Surely Dr. Grey should know this.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    15. Re:cancer by Mal-2 · · Score: 2

      The problem there would be that the epigenome, developed through one's life, would also get reverted. Your body might not recognize the reboot cells as its own.

      --
      How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
    16. Re:cancer by fractoid · · Score: 1

      Yep.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
    17. Re:cancer by Kjella · · Score: 1

      What we would ideally need to achieve elimination of cellular aging is the ability to sequence a person's entire DNA when they are young. And later digitally replicate an exact copy of the originals and print new undifferentiated cells to replace old ones, so the telomeres are longer, and also.... there are no mutations.

      I was under the impression you could get a whole genome sequencing for <$2000 these days, they're aiming to get it under $1000 but if they could do something useful with it throughout your whole life it's $25/year over an 80 year lifespan. And if you do this over a sample, aren't most the cells in my body likely to be damaged in different places, so a vote of simple majority would get it right?

      However, so far I've heard of very little genetic theraphy or other tangible ways to do something with this information. And you can't just pour new cells in my body, if you want to clean out the faulty cell you'd have to make garbagemen to find and eliminate damaged cells. Unless you could make new, "young" organs to transplant in but I'm thinking that's a lot more complicated than it sounds.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    18. Re:cancer by Wycliffe · · Score: 1

      You don't get it, is unlikely that the treatment by itself will cause uncontrolled division, but the fact remains that the cells are still "old" and have accumulated defects with every replication, so even more replications in the same cells equates with increased cancer risk. The telomeres are simply a countdown to self destruction as a countermeasure of said risk, but as long as the root cause is not tackled the best you can hope is a few more years of pain and suffering.

      The cell is going to die (and you with it). I will take an increased chance of cancer over the 100% risk of dying once you are out of telomeres.
      I might wait and opt to not get my telemeres increased until I'm 80 or so if the risk of cancer was high but if I'm 99 then I have alot to gain
      and not much to lose in getting a life extending treatment.

    19. Re:cancer by Wycliffe · · Score: 2

      What we would ideally need to achieve elimination of cellular aging is the ability to sequence a person's entire DNA when they are young. And later digitally replicate an exact copy of the originals and print
      new undifferentiated cells to replace old ones, so the telomeres are longer, and also.... there are no mutations.

      Decent strategy but a DNA map of you in your youth shouldn't be necessary. The mutations only really cause problems at the cell level.
      If you take a few thousand/million samples from different parts of the body then you should be able to look at the averages and determine
      what the starting cell DNA was as different cells shouldn't have the same mutations so you should be able to average out any mutations.
      Once you have the good dna and can replicate it then doing as small as a 1% cell replacement per month should be more than enough to
      halt and/or reverse the aging process getting you back to your youth in about 8 or so years.

    20. Re:cancer by strikethree · · Score: 1

      If people could live forever, nothing would ever change. We would be stuck with the likes of Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin throughout all of eternity. The world would become a living hell until the human race was itself completely wiped off the face of the planet.

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
    21. Re:cancer by mysidia · · Score: 1

      If people could live forever, nothing would ever change. We would be stuck with the likes of Pol Pot, Hitler, and Stalin throughout all of eternity.

      That's not true.... Hitler/Stalin did not die of old age; if people really did live forever, then Hitler/Stalin would not have been able to kill anyone, by the way.

      Everyone dies eventually. Even if we can eliminate aging and death by old age. There are plenty of other ways to die. Statistically speaking, one of those other ways is going to happen eventually, even if you become eternally young..

      It's not going to turn earth into a living hell.

      It would eliminate many problems. Imagine how much more productive the economy would become, if retirement was no longer a thing?

      We could get rid of the Social Security tax, for starters.

  4. Interesting approach by Chikungunya · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Making the treatment directly with mRNA sidestep a lot of dangers of promoting cell replication, the immune system would not have any foreign proteins to recognize and so multiple doses are feasible, the RNA is degraded over time so the replication goes back to normal instead of keeping forever in an artificial state and it was demonstrated that the cells grow "old" again after the treatment.

    Still, it feels like its going to be much more a lab tool than a anti-aging treatment for a few more decades, RNA treatment is very tricky to do in vivo and even the most promising candidates for treatment (vaccines and so on) only produce very limited success, unless some revolutionary vector is invented in the near future it will pass a lot of years before this can be safe and efficient enough to be commercialized.

    1. Re:Interesting approach by PsychoSlashDot · · Score: 1

      Still, it feels like its going to be much more a lab tool than a anti-aging treatment for a few more decades, RNA treatment is very tricky to do in vivo and even the most promising candidates for treatment (vaccines and so on) only produce very limited success, unless some revolutionary vector is invented in the near future it will pass a lot of years before this can be safe and efficient enough to be commercialized.

      I'll give you two decades. Three, tops. Get going, I literally don't have forever to wait for this.

      --
      "Oh no... he found the .sig setting."
    2. Re:Interesting approach by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

      The timing of these techs is really going to put me as the ~2050 headline "ArsonSmith 85ish, Last man to have to die of natural causes" Who am I kidding, If I make it to 2040 It'll be from some marvelous breakthrough.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  5. I have a bad feeling about this... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

    Anyone else get the sickening sense that 'lengthen your telomeres!!' pitches would be a nearly perfect successor to the historical deluge of penis-pill spam?

    1. Re:I have a bad feeling about this... by Xrikcus · · Score: 2

      It already is to some degree

    2. Re:I have a bad feeling about this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Who said it" isn't a very good heuristic under all circumstances. In the world of biology, "does it make sense if you think about it" is probably worse.

      -Anonymous Coward

  6. some first hand insights by Doubting+Sapien · · Score: 4, Informative

    The first author of the paper did an impromptu AMA over at reddit. http://www.reddit.com/r/scienc...

    --
    ========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
    1. Re:some first hand insights by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Interesting, thank you.

      He sounds a bit, well, enthusiastic about all of this. He is really looking at this from the rejuvenation end rather than straight molecular biology which pricks up my suspicion meter. Nonetheless, he does make it clear that this procedure (if it really works, if it can be used in a therapeutic sense) is only going to be one small part of a rejuvenation 'package' and there is a long ways to go before this is advertised on late night TV.

      Good read.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:some first hand insights by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      He also seems to think we're going to live forever in a computer cloud (hello Pauley's ROM construct). I think he might have ingested too much acrylamide as a grad student.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  7. Expensive by ITRambo · · Score: 1

    I suspect that this will be one of the most expensive treatments ever. If so, only the very, very, wealthy will live well past 120 years and still be vigorous.

    1. Re:Expensive by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I suspect that this will be one of the most expensive treatments ever.

      There is no particular reason to believe this will be expensive. It is just some RNA, which can be inexpensively replicated. Even if it is patented, it is likely that someone else can some up with a similar technique, making it a competitive market, and driving down prices.

      If you really want to be a pessimist, you should instead focus on how this is going to bankrupt Social Security. People are going to retire at 65, and then collect benefits for the next 55 years.

    2. Re:Expensive by newcastlejon · · Score: 2

      If it really works people won't give a damn about patents.

      --
      If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
    3. Re:Expensive by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Getting RNA into people in any sort of controlled method hasn't yet happened. And it won't be easy.

      Of course it's going to be expensive. Do you think they want everyone to live forever?

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    4. Re:Expensive by sinij · · Score: 1

      If this works really well, then war and/or genocide will be the only way to keep population down. The alternative to death from the old age is much more uglier.

    5. Re:Expensive by rock_climbing_guy · · Score: 3, Informative

      I hate to go all Negative-Nellie on you here, but let me give you a counter-example. There is a drug marketed under the name "Xyrem" that is used to treat very difficult cases of narcolepsy, which is no laughing matter if you know someone with the disease (which I do) or have it yourself (which I don't). This drug used to be cheaply available over the counter, but in more recent times, it has fallen under patent protection and costs up to $12,000 per month, with the price regularly increasing. You read that right: an over the counter drug became an obscenely expensive patent medicine. When I learned this story, I learned the lesson that money buys public policy in the USA.

      You can tell yourself that the fedgov and megacorps can't keep something from us, but in practice, they can make it very difficult and dangerous to obtain outside of the authorized channels when there is enough money involved. Enforcement of laws against marijuana, cocaine, ecstacy, and even meth are nothing compared to this obscenity.

      In short, I do believe that the establishment has the power to keep this from us no matter how bad we want it.

      --
      Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
    6. Re:Expensive by Idou · · Score: 3, Interesting

      People are going to retire at 65, and then collect benefits for the next 55 years.

      If aging can be postponed, then so can retirement. Also, perhaps work will become more pleasant without the pressure of having to rush and save up for retirement.

      --
      Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
    7. Re:Expensive by CAIMLAS · · Score: 1

      I don't know, it seems to me it may be less determinate - people of all ages die, not just the old.

      I'm sure that, over several dozen generations, warfare would be somewhat more refined to be less catastrophically destructive. It will be fought other ways. Today, half the world's at war, and it doesn't result in most of the remainder even being aware of it.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    8. Re:Expensive by rock_climbing_guy · · Score: 1

      Some people swear by it. Some people say it helps some, but isn't worth the hassle and cost. Some people have dangerous reactions to it.

      --
      Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
    9. Re:Expensive by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      "Xylem" sounds like a trade name. Was it called something else before it was patent-captured, or was it actually always patented, but the price went up after it was introduced?

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    10. Re:Expensive by arobatino · · Score: 1

      I suspect that this will be one of the most expensive treatments ever.

      Treating aging directly should be cheaper in the long run than treating all age-related diseases separately, which is what we're doing now.

    11. Re:Expensive by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      If aging can be postponed, then so can retirement.

      When the number of voters 65+ exceeds the number of voters 18-64, how are you going to raise the retirement age? We already have people living to much older than SS was designed for, and we have not had the political will to fix it.

    12. Re:Expensive by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Yeah, right!

      Do you remember the saying that with computers "we could perform the same amount of work in less time, thus live a more leisurely life"? In reality, we perform more work in the same amount of time.

      At the end of the day, everyone is competing against everyone else. That's capitalism. The only difference is that we'll work the same as we always did, but with more years attached to our life. You will be rushing to save up for retirement no matter what; be it till 90 or 190 years of age.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    13. Re:Expensive by Idou · · Score: 1

      The longer people live, the higher probability they will be directly impacted by short sighted decisions, like not increasing the retirement age. Longer life will result in more long term thinking.

      --
      Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
    14. Re:Expensive by Idou · · Score: 1

      Computational technological advances have greatly increased our ability to generate wealth. Your point seems to be about wealth distribution. However, it is far easier for a society to redistribute wealth than it is to generate wealth (this is easiest to see in developing nations). The harder problem is already being addressed by technology. Technology's propensity to decentralize concentrations of power will eventually solve the easier problem.

      Overall, it is hard for me to accept your point that longer, healthier lives will not make people more wealthy. Most mortgages are ~30years. If you double the time period people can work without having to worry about a mortgage, you definitely have improved their financial situation (assuming some level of rational financial decisions).

      --
      Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
    15. Re:Expensive by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      You're missing the point. By working more, individual lives become more "rich". Meaning the standards of living rise for everyone. But in terms of financial wealth, power is in the disparity of what you have over those who do not. So basing wealth on the idea of increasing denomination via savings is a moot point, because everyone else will be doing the exact same thing; supply and demand carry over.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    16. Re:Expensive by rock_climbing_guy · · Score: 1
      Wikipedia has some good information about the drug. It was originally known as GHB, and Xyrem is a trade name. The short story about the "patent capture" is that it was criminalized on Schedule I in the 1990s after a Dateline special reported that it was being used as a date-rape drug. The FDA would several years later award a patent for the medicinal use of the drug, so that's how it became "patent captured". Several years later, the company, realizing that it was a crime to obtain the drug anywhere else and that there is no other drug like it, decided that they would raise the price to what it is today. Most recently, I read that over one billion dollars was paid for this drug last year.

      Having seen how people are affected by what they do, that people who need the drug can't get it because of the cost, I wanted to spread this knowledge far and wide so that people can know what the government is doing to sick people in their own name.

      --
      Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
    17. Re:Expensive by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 1

      Your claims of "up to $12,000 per month" appear to take the absolute worst case scenario. Wikipedia notes roughly 90% of Xyrem consumers get this via insurance, with co-pays under $50 and a significant number get it for under $25. Admittedly, insurance companies are getting stiffed, but one suspects they're negotiating lower than worst-case pricing with the supplier in the first place.

      Being an Orphan drug, development costs are amortized over a very few patients, making costs high. It's like saying a B-2 bomber costs billions of dollars to build when, in fact, a huge cost of "building" the plane is the amortized R&D costs. The actual labor and materials is much less. That's why the fewer planes are built, the more expensive each one becomes.

      There is no good solution to this problem. If you fix prices such that R&D costs can't be recouped, you remove incentive for pharma to R&D the drug in the first place. If you allow them to recoup the costs, the end user must pay them. There is no other way. Pharma R&D dollars don't just fall from the sky.

      --
      In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    18. Re:Expensive by Idou · · Score: 1

      I agree that I am not understanding your point. However, I can't help but think that our disagreement stems from your seeing this as a zero sum game. Robert Wright has very compelling arguments that human civilization is moving towards nonzero sum games, and this is improving the lives of everyone. I recommend you test your views against the arguments he makes to support this claim.

      --
      Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
    19. Re:Expensive by rock_climbing_guy · · Score: 1
      The point is, the drug was FREELY AVAILABLE over the counter. I'm told it cost less than $100 for a typical months supply, and people were using it as a general purpose sleep aid, not just as a last-resort treatment for hard cases of narcolepsy. If you had a time machine and little bit of money, you could easily walk into a drug store in the early 90s and buy as much as you want.

      Before the fedgov got involved, it was freely available. The companies that have owned the patent have done NOTHING ZERO ZIP NADA except act as monopoly suppliers of the drug. A pharmacist who shares my point of view says that it costs pennies per dose to manufacture. But through careful manipulation of the legal and insurance systems, they are able to collect over ONE BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR for this drug.

      You are absolutely correct to point out that most patients pay only a very small co-payment. Jazz Pharmaceuticals, the company that currently owns the patent, knows this. They know that they can't charge $12,000 per month if a patient with a 10% copay is on the hook for $1,200 per month. They will simply collect $10,800 per month from insurance and write off the remaining $1,200 (because they are so nice, ya know).

      Seriously, these people are evil geniuses. They are gaming the system, preventing sick people from receiving medication that they did absolutely nothing to develop.

      Oh, and they are notorious for parking their money overseas to avoid paying taxes, just like Apple has been criticized for. At least Apple researches and develops useful products that people want to buy.

      Come to think of it, Jazz is sort of like SCO could be if they had one their LINUX lawsuit and been able to demand $699 license fees from LINUX users for a product they did not create.

      Oh, and to make matters worse, the fedgov refused to approve the drug for more uses, not because they thought it wasn't effective. No, they want to keep it from being used for more common illnesses because it is a drug of abuse, you see. They have to protect us from ourselves. I'm sure you understand this, given your .sig

      --
      Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
    20. Re:Expensive by burbilog · · Score: 1
      Most mortgages are ~30years. If you double the time period people can work without having to worry about a mortgage, you definitely have improved their financial situation (assuming some level of rational financial decisions).

      Longer mortgage is not going to change the situation, at least not much. Let's say I can pay $2k/month, then I can take 30 years mortgage with 3% interest rate to buy $500k house. Then I'll have to pay $260k of interest to the bank during these 30 years.

      Now suddenly I can live much longer -- I can take 60 years mortgage! Wow! Let's recalculate... the same house, 60 years, 3%... Huh? Monthly payment is now $1.5k, that's only 1/4 less than 30yrs mortgage, but now I have to pay $600k of interest for the same $500k house during these 60 years!

    21. Re:Expensive by Idou · · Score: 1
      Please note my:

      assuming some level of rational financial decisions

      Assuming income is the same in both situations, if I am not earning higher than 3% on my investments, then why am I not paying off my mortgage with my surplus monthly net cashflow (which is higher in the second scenario)? If I am earning higher than 3% on my investments then I am earning a spread and making easy money, like a bank (I am earning a higher interest rate than I am being charged).

      Twice the mortgage period length gives me twice as long an opportunity to take advantage of advantageous investments when they are above 3% (earn a spread), so, all else equal, I am better off financially.

      --
      Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
    22. Re:Expensive by burbilog · · Score: 1
      Assuming income is the same in both situations, if I am not earning higher than 3% on my investments, then why am I not paying off my mortgage with my surplus monthly net cashflow (which is higher in the second scenario)?

      Ok, let's do the math again: $500k house, 3%, 60 years, $1.5k monthly payment. Thus I have suprlus $500 per month to pay off the debt. Well, now I have to pay $390k of interest during 52 years. STILL much worse than paying $260 of interest during 30 years, while paying the SAME $2k per months.

      See? It makes little sense to extend mortgage more than 30 years in general. Of couse, it depends on %%: with 0.5% interest it makes more sense to take 60 years mortgage: $800 monthly payment (60 years) vs $1500 monthly payment (30 years), that's much better. Now if you pay off $700 every month, your mortgage will end after 38 years and you will pay $44k of interest (compared with $38k of 30 years mortgage), but this difference is negligible.

      On other hand... who's going to hand out mortgage at 0.5% for 60 years? Much below inflation?

    23. Re:Expensive by Idou · · Score: 1

      Here is a more simple explanation. You have two choices:
      A. You are forced to pay monthly principle payments of $1000
      B. You are forced to pay monthly principle payments of $500 but can also prepay another $500, if you want (depending on alternative investment opportunities).

      Option B. allows me to choose between both options, every month. If I choose option A, I am stuck with option A every month. Consequently, a rational person would choose the longest mortgage period possible because they could artificially create ANY shorter mortgage period option through prepayments.

      --
      Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
    24. Re:Expensive by burbilog · · Score: 1
      Consequently, a rational person would choose the longest mortgage period possible because they could artificially create ANY shorter mortgage period option through prepayments.

      Not always. You have to consider not only monthly payment alone, but interest rate, property price and length of mortgage as well. Extending mortgage length beyond certain limit makes no sense, because it won't reduce monthly payment any more. In previous messages I gave you an example where extra 30 years brought only 1/4 reduction of monthly payment. Worse, total money paid are almost doubled because of extra interest EVEN if you spend that 1/4 reduction to pay off early. Just take any decent mortgage calculator or do some math in spreadsheet and you'll see, monthly payment vs mortgage length is not linear!

      It happens because longer monthly payment is going to contain more interest during early years (look at annuity formula). Mortgage is useful within certain limits only, too short and too long make no sense at all.

    25. Re:Expensive by Idou · · Score: 1

      OK, now I think you are just being stubborn. . . You are doing yourself a disservice. Think about this for a while:

      1) We were keeping all other factors constant and only changing mortgage period.
      2) In this scenario, mortgage period only impacts monthly payments of principle.
      3) Prepayments are payments of principle above and beyond what is determined by the mortgage period.
      4) Accordingly, you want your required principle payments as low as possible because you can also prepay to turn your mortgage period into any mortgage period shorter than your originally contracted period. For instance, I could get a 60 year mortgage and pay it off in 30 years by prepaying every month (it would look identical to a 30 year mortgage)

      I hope human life is extended just so that you live long enough to understand this concept.

      --
      Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
  8. Re:I am at Super Bowl 49 right now! by reboot246 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good for you. At least you're not having to watch all those damned social engineering commercials.

    The ads this year suck big time. Half the time I can't tell what they're trying to sell, if anything.

  9. sorry. butterfingers resulted in a premature post by Doubting+Sapien · · Score: 1

    Mind you, the chromosome is still damaged to some degree, but it doesn't get worse.

    Cancer cells are observed to maintain viability this way - even though they are diseased and abnormal cells, they maintain just enough chromosomal health by activating the necessary telomere maintenance process to continue dividing without incurring even greater genomic damage.

    --
    ========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
  10. Maxwell's LIttle Angel by fyngyrz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Even as a sardine is just a bird with an altitude problem.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:Maxwell's LIttle Angel by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      Is that why sardines on a plane taste like chicken?

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  11. Aging? by Sperbels · · Score: 2

    Or you could, you know, treat the number one killer of humans: aging.

    1. Re:Aging? by RivenAleem · · Score: 1

      Have you got a citation for "number one killer of humans"?

      How many people as a % actual die due to old age and not cardiac diseases, cancer and car crashes?

      While I do think it would be great to have actual anti ageing, is it actually a major cause of death?

    2. Re:Aging? by Player+03 · · Score: 1

      "Old age" is not a real cause of death, kind of like "natural causes." Those are just terms we use when it's too much work to determine what actually killed someone. As we get better at diagnosing people, we'll use those terms less and less.

      That said, the older you get, the more likely your body is to fail...

    3. Re:Aging? by RivenAleem · · Score: 1

      True.

      The same is said of AIDS. People don't die of AIDS, they die because their immune system is so compromised that the flu kills them or something else.

      I agree that there are things that kill you easier when you are older than when younger, but there are a lot of things totally unrelated to age that are already killing us, things like an unhealthy lifestyle leading to obesity and diabetes. You'll probably agree that there are very few fat old people (like _really_ old).

      While there's a lower risk of heart disease in younger people, this might likely be because they just haven't had enough time to do the full amount of damage required to finally cause it to fail.

      So we should see (purely for the sake of argument) what causes of death are due to an otherwise healthy body being old, and what causes of death are due to an accumulation of time doing something that may kill you.

  12. For the TL;DR folks by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

    From the Reddit AMA by JohnRamus (the lead author):

    Asked to describe a bit of background and where he thinks this research fits in with the rest of the field:

    People have been extending telomeres in human cells since at least 1998, and there are many methods of extending telomeres, including delivery of TERT DNA, delivery of small molecule activators of TERT, and other methods. However, before our method, there was no method to extend telomeres that meets all of several criteria that we think are probably of value in a potential therapy: a method that extends telomeres rapidly, but by only a finite amount after which the normal protective anti-cancer telomere shortening mechanism remains intact, without causing an immune response, and without risk of insertional mutagenesis.

    The innovations brought by our study:

    Our method meets the above criteria for a potentially useful therapy. Specifically, we found that by delivering mRNA modified to reduce its immunogenicity and encoding TERT to human fibroblasts, telomerase activity was transiently (24-48h) increased, telomeres were lengthened (~0.9kb over a few days), proliferative capacity of the cells increased in a dose-dependent manner, telomeres resumed shortening, and the cells eventually stopped dividing and expressed markers of senescence to the same degree as untreated cells.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  13. How two thirty year olds make a zero year old... by Press2ToContinue · · Score: 2

    Step One: 30 yo man buys 30 yo woman dinner.
    Step Two: ?
    Step Three: Baby

    --
    Sent from my ENIAC
  14. Much like AIDS ... by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

    People die of cancer. stroke, heart attack, emphysema. and countless other disease, but aging isn't one of them.

    With AIDS the HIV virus gradually destroys the immune system. Then some infection isn't successfully fought off. The immediate "cause of death" is the infection. But the underlying cause of death is the destruction of the immune system by HIV.

    Similarly, with aging, a host of systems gradually fail, through a number of mechanisms, of which telomere-shortening is the underlying cause of most. Eventually one of these systems failures results a disease process (or failure to reverse a disease process), and that disease process causes death. The recorded "cause of death" is the particular disease process. But the underlying cause is the system failure from aging.

    Take cancer: Accumulated errors in DNA replication, perhaps combined with a couple pre-errored codes inherited from the parents, result in a clone of cells that don't stop replicating when they should, and are able to evade the self-destruct mechanisms (including the hayflic. The accumulation of errors is one aspect of aging. The failure of the immune system to recognize, destroy, and clean out the clone of misprogrammed cells, more common in older people, is another.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  15. Re:I am at Super Bowl 49 right now! by sysrammer · · Score: 1

    The ads this year suck big time. Half the time I can't tell what they're trying to sell, if anything.

    We had a drinking game. Whoever figured out the commercial first won. Everyone else had to take a drink. Great fun was had by all.

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  16. Re:player.ooyala.com = Slashdot MALWARE by Luckyo · · Score: 1

    Running ghostery in tandem with adblock using easylist (+ any local lists of your preferred language/region) will typically block any and all pests of this kind.

  17. Forever young by Skvate · · Score: 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Do you really want to live forever?

  18. Re:ABP for the LOSE... apk by omnichad · · Score: 1

    HOSTS does not protect against DNS amplification attacks. It doesn't really matter what the victim is using for name resolution - they will still be the victim of the DDoS attack. That is, unless you're somehow downloading the entire Internet's DNS records and turning off DNS entirely. Which doesn't really factor into the bandwidth savings you mentioned.

  19. Re:player.ooyala.com = Slashdot MALWARE by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    Video? What video?

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  20. Re:player.ooyala.com = Slashdot MALWARE by temcat · · Score: 1

    fist beta

    Wow, and they are also into fisting now. I hope it won't be mandatory.

  21. Re:Adding more to do less = stupid, Luckyo by temcat · · Score: 1

    He has a problem with delivering his messageâ"if that's his actual goal, which I'm not sure about. The form in which he tries to do it puts off from reading whatever he has to say, even though he may be perfectly right (I don't really care about his favorite topic).

  22. Re:Adding more to do less = stupid, Luckyo by temcat · · Score: 1

    Communication skills are hardly offtopic when you want to convince somebody of something. Or at least to get them to read your message.

  23. doesn't do a thing for DNA mutations by swschrad · · Score: 1

    so the slowly-sickening cells live longer. a new boon to geriatric medicine, a new torpedo in the side of Medicare and Social Security.

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
    1. Re:doesn't do a thing for DNA mutations by Amigo+Van+Helical · · Score: 1

      Telomere extension is, by itself, not a panacea, and I doubt that anyone is claiming such. Even so, it does advance one front... or, if you will, begins to form one piece of the puzzle.

      And imagine if we do reach the end-game of healthy longevity. It seems to me that vigorous, alert, long-lived people could still work and contribute to society's wealth.

    2. Re:doesn't do a thing for DNA mutations by nobodyknowsimageek · · Score: 1

      so the slowly-sickening cells live longer. a new boon to geriatric medicine, a new torpedo in the side of Medicare and Social Security.

      No. This could allow cells copy themselves without replication errors for more generations. This is not "preserving" cells that are growing sicker; the existing cell is copying itself, and having a longer telomere means the succeeding generations are protected longer from errors. From one of the first links I googled (http://www.tasciences.com/what-is-a-telomere/):

      "Many scientific studies have shown a strong connection between short telomeres and cellular aging."

    3. Re:doesn't do a thing for DNA mutations by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

      Medicare and social security are supposed to HELP the elderly, but you are using these programs as a justification to KILL them!

    4. Re:doesn't do a thing for DNA mutations by fxsoap · · Score: 1

      I'm just excited to keep extending my Telomere's and be younger whenever I'm feeling run down!

    5. Re:doesn't do a thing for DNA mutations by eric_harris_76 · · Score: 1

      "Boomsday" by Christopher Buckley, who also wrote "Thank You For Smoking".

      --
      There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
  24. Cloning? by jerel · · Score: 1

    IANAS but wasn't this one of the big drawbacks to cloning an adult organism? You start with DNA that has already been shortened by this reduction of the telomeres and create a brand new organism but with part of the clock already run out. Didn't Dolly have this problem?

    --
    Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
  25. Re:I post on hosts where they apply... apk by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    If you post on hosts where they apply, why are you posting about hosts on a telomere article? Who is offtopic?

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  26. Re:Yes they do (by avoiding DNS) by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    As omnichad indicated, hosts files will not help you prevent DNS amplification attacks as the requests are not coming from your network.

    https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/a...

    You should probably remove that from your list of things hosts files do, a host file cannot block traffic originating on the internet, only your own name resolution traffic. If you would like to test it out, I am sure the Lizard Squad would be more than willing to test it for you.

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  27. Re:Hosts avoid DNS totally by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    You said

    7.) Protect vs. DNS amplification attacks

    No, hosts files to not prevent DNS amplification attacks. These attacks do not depend whatsoever on the configuration of your computer. These attacks are performed from outside your network. Here's how it works:

    1. I send a packet to a DNS server on the internet, lets say 8.8.8.8, this packet requests a large amount of data, like a request for the whole DNS database. This packet also has spoofed your address as the requesting address.
    2. You receive large amount of data.
    3. You have just been taken off the Internet due to repeated use of this attack. Congratulations, your hosts file is now useless as you have been DDOSed, and if you are lucky, your Internet router hasn't fried from the overload.

    This is not a benefit of hosts files. Take it off your list. DNS amplification attacks are not attacks against a DNS server, they are DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service in case you didn't know) against an internet connection. Your hosts file will be utterly useless when your ISP is receiving 7 Gbit of traffic destined for you, not many people have that kind of connection.

    More information:
    http://www.watchguard.com/info...

    If you aren't a security professional, don't act like you know what you are talking about, as it makes you look very foolish. If you are a security professional, read up on this stuff, as it could save your career.

    DNS amplification attacks were recently replaced by NTP amplification attacks. These attacks can take down even large ISPs. Your hosts file won't help you there either. Recent NTP amplification attacks can and have pushed more than 100Gbit of traffic using just a few NTP servers.

    http://www.darkreading.com/att...?

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  28. Re:Learn to read... apk by OverlyGenericUsernam · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't really matter if your Host Engine was magical and did my taxes for me, in addition to all the security claims. The problem is that you, the author of it, come off as crazy. You spam your message across all of slashdot looking for the slightest mentioning of hosts/adblock, you hound anyone that speaks ill of you or the program and post messages in reply trying to pretend to be other people that support your 'message'. And lastly, anyone that you are hounding that starts to ignore you instead of respond you take as if they had finally admitted you were right. All in all, not a good sign.

  29. Re:Get on topic, cut the ad hominem attacks by OverlyGenericUsernam · · Score: 1

    I didn't prove you wrong, as I didn't make any comments on hosts, the program directly, or advocate alternatives. Didn't do any down modding, have that turned off for myself as it tends to be more opinionated.
    No, my comment was completely about your character, and as your post shows, It is spot on.