Slashdot Mirror
Experimental Drug Targeting Alzheimer's Disease Shows Anti-Aging Effects (nextbigfuture.com)
schwit1 writes with news that researchers at the Salk Institute have found that an experimental drug candidate aimed at combating Alzheimer's disease has a host of unexpected anti-aging effects in animals. Says the article:
The Salk team expanded upon their previous development of a drug candidate, called J147, which takes a different tack by targeting Alzheimer's major risk factor–old age. In the new work, the team showed that the drug candidate worked well in a mouse model of aging not typically used in Alzheimer's research. When these mice were treated with J147, they had better memory and cognition, healthier blood vessels in the brain and other improved physiological features.
"Initially, the impetus was to test this drug in a novel animal model that was more similar to 99 percent of Alzheimer's cases," says Antonio Currais, the lead author and a member of Professor David Schubert's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at Salk. "We did not predict we'd see this sort of anti-aging effect, but J147 made old mice look like they were young, based upon a number of physiological parameters."
"Initially, the impetus was to test this drug in a novel animal model that was more similar to 99 percent of Alzheimer's cases," says Antonio Currais, the lead author and a member of Professor David Schubert's Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at Salk. "We did not predict we'd see this sort of anti-aging effect, but J147 made old mice look like they were young, based upon a number of physiological parameters."
If you can't afford it, just keep walking — you aren't any worse off than before.
Rich people begin to live (much) longer — CEOs, Senators, judges, and generals alike do not retire restricting career-growths of their underlings. Similar effects in families, with (grand)children never seeing the inheritance. Official retirement age raised (very) high.
A movement springs up denouncing the procedure as somehow unethical — while the Bible's long-living characters suddenly seem less implausible.
A separate movement springs up to demand "free" dosage for everyone — told, there is not enough for all, they demand none get it and proceed to destroy what little stock there is. Fortunately, a break-through — its development funded by the cash windfall from the millionaire "early adopters" — allows to produce enough of the stuff to add it to water supply (in developed countries).
Secret e-mails with government-officials discussing these very predictions and considerations are leaked and discussed by the media as awesome forethought by some and evil conspiracy by others.
Yet another movement begins to claim suffering from allergic and other mysterious-yet-painful reactions to the stuff and try to avoid it.
Something like that... Oh, and, of course, PROFIT!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.