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Harvard Prof. Says Cure For Aging Could Emerge Within 5 Years (washingtonpost.com)

Posted by timothy on from the ok-but-those-are-long-years dept.

trbdavies writes: Reporting from the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) gene-editing summit in D.C., the Washington Post quotes Harvard genetics professor George Church as expressing "confidence that in just five or six years he will be able to reverse the aging process in human beings." He says: "A scenario is, everyone takes gene therapy — not just curing rare diseases like cystic fibrosis, but diseases that everyone has, like aging," CRISPR is a powerful technology, but many at the summit have expressed caution about both the ethics and the feasibility of using it to cure disease. The story quotes Klaus Rajewsky, of the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine saying "We have become masters in the art of manipulating genes, but our understanding of their function and interaction is far more limited."

4 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds great - too great by jdavidb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That would certainly be wonderful, and I'm sure it's theoretically possible at one point, but I wonder if it's a bit overoptimistic. I mean a lot overoptimistic.

    If they are going to solve this problem in five years I don't need to worry at all about diet and exercise, right? What an excuse for not taking good care of myself....

    --
    Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
    1. Re:Sounds great - too great by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That would certainly be wonderful, and I'm sure it's theoretically possible at one point, but I wonder if it's a bit overoptimistic. I mean a lot overoptimistic.

      If they are going to solve this problem in five years I don't need to worry at all about diet and exercise, right? What an excuse for not taking good care of myself....

      Now that is a very interesting comment. I think it speaks to the odd puritanical streak in some folks, that somehow being healthy without sacrifice is bad. Certainly I'd like a way to not have to got to extremes for physical fitness. At my physical height, I bicycled 30 miles per day, ran 3 miles per day, and did weights every other day. Top it off with three Ice Hockey games a week.

      Now whether or not that would make me live longer - which I doubt - it did give me some wicked CV stamina. Ruined my legs though. But in the end, and in retrospect. It was just about all I did for many years outside of work. That Calvanistic streak coupled with the idea that all we have to do is "take care of ourselves" simply ain't all that.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    2. Re:Sounds great - too great by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      My brain has room for approximately 500 years of unedited memories; I don't know how it handles overload, but I suspect it will remove the least-used. The problem is memories aren't discrete: they're built out of piles of association, and removing one part of the memory removes a *lot* of memories.

      Geriatrics to make you about 30-40 years old until you're about 300 would be cool. 1000-year lives would probably suck.

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  2. Re: Fantastic! by zlives · · Score: 4, Interesting

    stepping on people to get ahead is not easy, otherwise everyone would be doing it