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First Successful Gene Therapy Against Human Aging? (geekwire.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
For the first time data may show that a human being has been successfully rejuvenated by gene therapy, claims Bioviva USA. "In September 2015, then 44 year-old CEO of Bioviva USA Inc. Elizabeth Parrish received two of her own company's experimental gene therapies: one to protect against loss of muscle mass with age, another to battle stem cell depletion responsible for diverse age-related diseases and infirmities." Bypassing America's FDA, the controversial therapies were described by the MIT Technology Review as "do-it-yourself medicine," saying it "raises ethical questions about how quickly such treatments should be tested in people and whether they ought to be developed outside the scrutiny of regulators."
"The treatment was originally intended to demonstrate the safety of the latest generation of the therapies," reports Bioviva's web site. "But if early data is accurate, it is already the world's first successful example of telomere lengthening via gene therapy in a human individual."
She only took the treatment 7 months ago. How much could we really know about it's efficacy in such a short period? Unless she reverted to looking like a 20 year old person (she doesn't), then I have a hard time believing that it's really working. Also, we don't know how it will effect her long term.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Asimov did this in Foundation and Earth. In his version the Spacers lived a long time, but chose to live without human contact in order to avoid disease. They were served by robots. Probably very accurate description of what would happen if there were enough space on Earth and people lived a long time.
Elizabeth Moon wrote several novel series that indirectly touched upon this issue, where "rejuvenation" kept older people living longer in key positions of business and government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familias_Regnant_universe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatta's_War
I guess we're just going to have to take it at face value that the CEO of the company, the person who has the most to gain from an increase in stock price, is making totally truthful and unbiased claims about the efficacy of this treatment.
Some observations which may seem obvious but bear mentioning: (1) In today's out-of-control / Ponzi monetary system, this is almost enough to start a speculative bubble (2) At some point anti-aging breakthroughs at a fundamental level are inevitable (3) When real anti-aging therapies become available they are going to be priced out of this world...literally priced for billionaries. The LAST thing in the world your health-insurance is likely to underwrite is something which will extend your natural lifespan to something preternatural. Can you imagine ObamaCare doing that? Can you imagine the impact of such a move, were it to occur, on the broken pension/SS/medicare system and the negative interest rate economy in general? (4) We have a problem already with "elites" buying it all -- including complete control of the government. Can you imagine the situation when billionaires -- and only billionaires -- can afford to live forever? (5) That's right: totalitarianism by the 0.001% for the 0.001% ... forever.
I'd say if we are going to "fix" the government and monetary/tax system we might want to fix it sooner than later.
And pensions are for people who are in unions. You think companies just all of a sudden decided to give retiring workers money? Pensions were something that were fought for through labor organizing.
You can thank Ronald Reagan and trickle-down economics for pensions where people can live with dignity in old age to 401k plans (if they're lucky) that are nothing but piggy banks for Wall Street to play with.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Probably, but I doubt that that will be her problem. Teleomere shortening is one of the body's defenses against cancer...and she's apparently turned that off. There may also be a similar reason for stem cell depletion, though I've never heard of one for certain, only a couple of things that suggest that stem cells are more likely to turn cancerous than other cells. And the word is suggest, as there are other findings that suggest that senescent cells are the ones most likely to turn cancerous.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Teleomere shortening is one of the body's defenses against cancer...and she's apparently turned that off.
The articles are sadly lacking in detail as usual but my impression is that they have performed a one-off lengthening, not turned off shortening. Also, it seems it was only done to her leukocytes not every cell.
there are other findings that suggest that senescent cells are the ones most likely to turn cancerous.
There was a recent result in mice where they managed to eliminate all senescent cells. So do that first, then lengthen the telomeres periodically and who knows how long you might last.