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A Stealthy Harvard Startup Wants To Reverse Aging in Dogs, and Humans Could Be Next (technologyreview.com)
The idea is simple, if you ask biologist George Church. He wants to live to 130 in the body of a 22-year-old. From a report: The world's most influential synthetic biologist is behind a new company that plans to rejuvenate dogs using gene therapy. If it works, he plans to try the same approach in people, and he might be one of the first volunteers. The stealth startup Rejuvenate Bio, cofounded by George Church of Harvard Medical School, thinks dogs aren't just man's best friend but also the best way to bring age-defeating treatments to market. The company, which has carried out preliminary tests on beagles, claims it will make animals "younger" by adding new DNA instructions to their bodies.
Its age-reversal plans build on tantalizing clues seen in simple organisms like worms and flies. Tweaking their genes can increase their life spans by double or better. Other research has shown that giving old mice blood transfusions from young ones can restore some biomarkers to youthful levels. "We have already done a bunch of trials in mice and we are doing some in dogs, and then we'll move on to humans," Church told the podcaster Rob Reid earlier this year. The company's efforts to keep its activities out of the press make it unclear how many dogs it has treated so far. In a document provided by a West Coast veterinarian, dated last June, Rejuvenate said its gene therapy had been tested on four beagles with Tufts Veterinary School in Boston. It is unclear whether wider tests are under way.
However, from public documents, a patent application filed by Harvard, interviews with investors and dog breeders, and public comments made by the founders, MIT Technology Review assembled a portrait of a life-extension startup pursuing a longevity long shot through the $72-billion-a-year US pet industry. "Dogs are a market in and of themselves," Church said during an event in Boston last week. "It's not just a big organism close to humans. It's something people will pay for, and the FDA process is much faster. We'll do dog trials, and that'll be a product, and that'll pay for scaling up in human trials."
Its age-reversal plans build on tantalizing clues seen in simple organisms like worms and flies. Tweaking their genes can increase their life spans by double or better. Other research has shown that giving old mice blood transfusions from young ones can restore some biomarkers to youthful levels. "We have already done a bunch of trials in mice and we are doing some in dogs, and then we'll move on to humans," Church told the podcaster Rob Reid earlier this year. The company's efforts to keep its activities out of the press make it unclear how many dogs it has treated so far. In a document provided by a West Coast veterinarian, dated last June, Rejuvenate said its gene therapy had been tested on four beagles with Tufts Veterinary School in Boston. It is unclear whether wider tests are under way.
However, from public documents, a patent application filed by Harvard, interviews with investors and dog breeders, and public comments made by the founders, MIT Technology Review assembled a portrait of a life-extension startup pursuing a longevity long shot through the $72-billion-a-year US pet industry. "Dogs are a market in and of themselves," Church said during an event in Boston last week. "It's not just a big organism close to humans. It's something people will pay for, and the FDA process is much faster. We'll do dog trials, and that'll be a product, and that'll pay for scaling up in human trials."
Doesn't this guy watch movies? We are gonna have a bunch of Cujo's running around.
Wasn't something like this the plot for that movie Planet of the Apes movie series?
That live forever. Exactly what we need.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
I would love to live an extended life or "forever". I just don't want everyone else to as well. The social and economic stresses it would put on the finite resources of this planet scare me. I think there's a reasonable chance that we'll see this in our lifetimes and it may be things like war that ends up killing people instead of "natural causes".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (Not a rickroll, I swear)
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Other research has shown that giving old mice blood transfusions from young ones can restore some biomarkers to youthful levels.
What could possibly go wrong?
The human treatment will cost hundreds of thousands...millions?
The billionaires will live to 130 with great health and the rest of us plebes? Sorry, insurance doesn't cover cosmetic treatments.
Everyday, instead of moving towards a Star Trek type of World, we seem to be moving towards a dystopia. Our grandkids are gonna live in a really shitty World. Global Warming, incessant wealth disparity, incessant wars, national debt ballooning - mostly to help those billionaires, religion becoming ever more powerful and oppressive (I'm looking at YOU Evangelicals!), ....
I"m two steps away from wearing a sandwich board and riding the NY Subway and tweeting and mumbling, "Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!..."
I don't want to live forever (and that's impossible anyways, entropy always wins)... but I wouldn't mind a solid chance of living until *I* decide I don't want to live any longer rather than being slowly crippled by age until my body gives up on me.
I'd love to live to 130 in the body of a 22 year old, but I think she'd be doing most of the work towards the end...
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Please tell me this is more than just lengthening telomeres, that's more of a symptom of aging than the cause of it. (Yeah, there's diseases related to it, again, symptoms of aging rather than the cause).
Will that work?
Not discussing whether it is even scientifically feasible, I abhor the idea that people will live "forever" in a youthful human body. Because the last thing that this world needs is the ability for the rich and powerful to live even longer, like some real life vampires that will literally prey on the rest of humanity. Before they solve aging, they better work on improving humanity itself, because biologically we are all selfish monkeys due to our genetics.
The beauty industry has almost abandoned torturing animals to be replaced by techies torturing them.
Elizabeth, is that you?
I have it written out on this napkin right here. See, we'll just use nanobots to repair all damage and do upgrades *forever*. And the code is 100% error free!!!! I marked the little checkbox that said so!!!
More seriously, folks, the consequences of aging tissues, even if the telomere cutoff is addressed, is cancer due to long-term chemical exposure and transcription errors. There *is no cure* for cancer in general, even though some have been successfully managed with expense and pain. It's a trade-off between healing from damage, correctly, and accumulating damage from the healing process itself, particularly transcription errors that will trigger cancer. There are also aging isues like growth of cartilage accumulating, arterial structures failing due to plaque buildup, bony structures due to accumulated microdamage, etc.
I think that our life spans are meant to be finite and I think if we embrace this understanding, we will lose our fear of death. IMHO, people concerned about living forever are not enjoying their lives presently. I would rather enjoy the life that I have then try to spend life looking for the fountain of youth. As someone who has seen people in various states of death and decline, I would sooner die than experience that pain and suffering. The world is also pretty inhospitable so I am not terribly attached to this life. The world is overpopulated now. Imagine if people started living vastly longer lives. The world's problems would only get worse.
Whoever it was has the reading comprehension of a load of bread. Since when is an explicit denial that "all loot boxes are gambling" somehow an admission?
I like most dogs more than I like most people.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Hurry up, dammit!
I'm old enough to remember when Star Trek and Brady Bunch were first shown...in reruns on my local channel in the 1970s.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
FTS:
"It's not just a big organism close to humans. It's something people will pay for, and the FDA process is much faster. We'll do dog trials, and that'll be a product, and that'll pay for scaling up in human trials."
I'm not going to claim that all regulation is bad, but there is a common theme out there that regulation is NEVER bad. This sentence can be read to say that they could alleviate pain and suffering faster, but the FDA is in the way.
From my own experience, I've seen the same thing with the FAA in my non-professional life. Just about anything that can be considered innovative in the GA aviation market occurs in Experimental Aviation. It is just too hard to get anything through the FAA blockade.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
But I'm an optimist and I'll choose to live.
The stealth startup
I assume "stealth startup" is code for "we haven't got any money to spend on advertising."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I am 55.... I don't want to be the last human to die.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
How soon will this be ready for the public in dog years? Or has that changed already?
...it's the man's fault.
"I Can't Look!" Gesture
Voice of God internal monologue
(Just for the record, Don LaFontaine always left me writhing in my seat.)
If I were into this kind of thing, I might upload a certain iconic scene from Clockwork Orange with Beethoven's symphony replaced by a gravely Don LaFontaine voice-over narration: in a world ruled by mediocrity, one man dares ...
No, wait, I'm conflating Amadeus with Dr Ludovico Faustus.
alt.fido.die.die.die
Thanks for ruining it for me, you big killjoy.
I bet you and all your facts and logic are a real thrill at parties.
I get it,
I really do.
The "human anti-aging" is just a smokescreen.
The Real Reason for this is all too apparent. SMBC explains it all.
Inequality just gets worse and worse doesn't it?
At least this would stop vampire billionaires from draining blood from young volunteers
Eventually, you breed out all those willing and/or able to control their reproduction. (See Niven & Pournelle's Moties, who can't restrict their reproduction by much; they die unpleasantly if they don't have a baby every so often.)
No thanks. I can't wait for my wife's yapping little bitch of a dog to finally kick the bucket.
Your fear need not limit other people's opportunity. Die if you want to but I for one have a lot of projects to do. Another thousand years might let me make a dent in my current list. Longer life means accumulating more wisdom and knowledge.
George Church is undermining scientific integrity by legitimizing questionable start-ups just so they can attract billion or two of investments with no intent to deliver.
... at the regular age. Hence he promises something he cannot deliver on but which is something the people who are extremely afraid of death (pathetic wimps, the lot of them) wand desperately enough to not look closely. That will probably make him rich but will not extend his life or improve the condition of his body.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And with excellent results !
It is really sad to see your parents slowly turn into vegetables -- and the doctors try to tell you there is nothing your can do, or they give expensive pills that are
barely better than placebo. BS !
Nootropics might be the new cool thing with programmers, but they are MUCH better at bringing declining minds back to normal than they are at turning average people into geniuses.
The problem is -- in the US -- doctors are NOT ALLOWED to talk about anything that isn't FDA approved (just ask your doctor).
I've been giving my 80 and 90 year old parents (and now in-laws) a stack of phenylpiracetam, Alpha-GPC, DHA fish oil, etc for over a year now.
The results are quite amazing to everyone who knows them.
Now, I have started to test age-reversal supplements.
I always guinea-pig myself first -- mostly to learn what to expect.
It is good that my genetics are close, because there are genetic factors.
It is also good that I know my parents -- they trust me and I know when to take their complaints seriously.
Everyone should know that the proper order of things is that cats come before dogs! I would accept an argument that they want to test the process out on dogs first since they're more expendable, but i will not abide them skipping over cats entirely!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I'm sure there are a great many works of fiction, mostly science fiction, that touch on this topic. However, one of my favorite and to me most plausible explorations is portrayed in a book titled Altered Carbon. Everyone has a cortical stack implanted at birth. Your consciousness can be spun up in a virtual environment or copied from body to body. Poor people typically live one lifetime, and if they're murdered and their stack is left in tact they will get a free replacement. The replacement is usually the body of someone who is spending a century or more in virtual storage serving a prison sentence.
Meanwhile, the wealthy live forever and have offsite daily backups of their consciousness and biological clones they can jump into. They're pejoratively referred to as Meths, as in Methuselah. As would be expected, rich people living forever and continuing to amass wealth and power makes for a less than perfect world.
Netflix made this into a TV show released in February. I'm sure plenty of people will shit on it for various reasons, but I found it to be very enjoyable and would highly recommend it.
Millennial science is not science. Are there any real scientists left? Calling all scientists! This is such a bullshit waste of time and money, and the research that millennials refuse to read because in their minds they created everything that exists in reality themselves, is widely available. Sigh, sigh, sigh.
Once society gets used to the idea that you don't *have* to die, it won't be long before society starts looking at you funny for actually wanting to. Then of course treating you like a criminal for trying to.
If you want to live forever, you have to go to church... Either "the church" or "George Church". How fucking ironic...
Abominations