hey. The human brain is probably going to be one of the last things we figure out. We don't need to know how the brain works in order to cure aging. And am I correct in guessing that your already old or at least 40+?
evidently you didn't study enough.
Certain parts of the body is more succeptable to free radical damage then other parts. Female ovaries have some of the lowest mutation rates anywhere. Also your mixing up cancer with sensence, its senesence that causes mutated cells to stop dividing. Apoptosis is often triggered as another method of killing cells to prevent them from being mutated.
It would be quite feasable to keep stem cell lines of every person, careful monitoring of the cell lines should allow us to have absolute minimal amounts of mutations to occure in the stock lines.
I'm just glad I didn't go to purdue, obviously their all wack at that university.
The worst part of adapting to change is being able to adapt to change itself. The old people of today lived in a rather less exciting life, especially rural people. Even with the advent of world wars, television, plastics, life didn't change all that much 90 years ago. Things were good, but they weren't blinding speed change. If you grew up in a world constantly changing, being old and accepting change is going to be a HELL of alot easier. Besides old brains lack the same balance of neurochemicals as young people, much of that subborness comes from the aging disease itself.
Bah. 50 year ago we didn't even know how dna copied itself, now we actually understand how much of the molecular machinery of life works. Its alot easier to fix a car once you understand how a car works.
One of the largest biotech companies, genentech, has been working on the new field of using the immune system itself to combat cancer. All that research money IS starting to pay off, and we are getting closer and closer to completely understanding life. Its a completely new ball game now.
I got interested in genetics at 13 when I read the cartoon guide to genetics, I was about 16 when I started hearing about telomeres and p53. Now I'm 21, doing my own research(viva la grant money) relating mutation rate to growth hormone, and am thoroughly fascinated by biogerontology.
I've hung out at a special big wig aging research seminar last summer, it was really the best 5 days of my life. Molecular Biology is accelerating at such a rate, that a supposed "cure" for aging may very well be developed in the next 20 to 30 years. In fact I bet my life on it(literally). A non-biologist just doesn't get how fast our field is improving, the curing of aging is inevitable.
Aging itself is a very effective mechanism against aging, while you associate cancer with olld age old age itself helps prevent cancer. Mice that have overactive p53 will have dramatically reduced cancer, but they exhibit many aspects of aging at a very early age! Aging and cancer is like ying and yang, to cure aging we must also cure cancer. Right now it takes X number of genes to be mutated before your cell becomes tumorous, and then another X number of genes before it becomes cancerous. We must increase the number of redundant cancer genes so that cancer is EXTREMELY rare, the only reason we still have cancer is because of evolution. There simply isn't enough evolutionary pressure to decrease our cancer rates, however with genetics we can most definetly overcome this problem.
Yes this post is over-enthusiastic, and paints a picture far too positive for any respectible scientist. Damnit I got 60 years ahead of me, if you thing what we did in the last 50 you'd understand why theres no doubt in my mind we'll be curing aging in the next 20-30 years.
Since like all technology this will disseminate to the other countries in the globe, this also means a major change in air power. Manuverablility means practically nill at the speed of light. Large aircraft equiped with lasers would in addition to destroying missles would also be able to destroy all aircraft, even if the enemy aircraft are super manuverable, stealthy, super expensive F-22 jets. In fact the developement of powerful lasers will strongly reduce the importance aircraft, all you need to do is see the aircraft and you can kill it.
Being that by the end of the week I'll actually be working for a biotech software company, I sure hope that the scientific community doesn't force mandatory Open Source. Now while the agrument can be made that keeping the software restricted is hindering the biotechnology industry, compared to the evils of gene patenting, software has a very small role in the big picture.
Now even though I would love to find my own gene and would probably patent it and start a company like everyone else, I do believe that patents on genes that occur naturally is wrong. Its akin to patenting Heart Failure, and then forcing everyone to pay you dues whenever they try to see if someones heart is at risk to failing, or when they try to revive the heart. Now whats even worse is that the patents of genes are used to create a monopoly where only the patent holder and those who have enough cash are allowed to try to fix the gene. Its like the hypothetical heart failure patent holder suing Abicor for creating an artifical heart.
So to recap, forcing companies to make their software open source, not very important.
Preventing companies from patenting naturally occuring genes, much more important.
In thoery cloning would result in animals with slightly shorter chromosomes, and thus possibly age sooner. However now that we have been able to study the cloned animals there IS NO ACCELERATED AGING. It is believed that the cloned fetus produces telomerease in its cells and from what we can tell, turns back the clock on aging.
Secondly the more recent cloning trials have led to a 80% success rate, which is far better then the dreadfully low rate with dolly and other earlier clones. While you may object still to even 80%, natural birth itself is full of failures. All cloning has to do before it is medically ethical for humans is to match the failure rate of normal reproduction.
To get a better understanding of why cloning and stem cells is important, you need to realize where these medical breakthroughs will lead us. Simply put, stem cells/theraputic cloning can slow down and even reverse aging. Now aging is not as inevitable as you might think, for the most part aging is caused by your chromosomes getting progessively smaller every time your cells divide. The older you are, the shorter your chromosomes are. When the telomeres(ends of the chromosomes) reach a certain point the cell engages into a dormant stage where it stops dividng and alters its behavior, causing you to get old. The reason the cells stop dividing is because if they don't the telomeres get too short and your chromosomes can unravel, become massively mutated, and then become horrible cancer. MOST of your cells stop at the right time and simply age naturally, the other cells become mutated and cancerous and you die. In addition to some of your cells becoming cancerous with old age, your immune system which plays a HUGE part in stopping cancer and tumours also wears out and begins to shut down. Aging would be slowed down by inserting into your body healthy stem cells which would move around your body and fix up anything that is beginning to wear out, this would include keeping the immune system in working order. Having a healthy immune system, living and eating healthy, and making use of the latest in cancer treatments means you have an excellent chance of preventing cancer from killing you. Now the big question is how do we get a supply of stem cells. Prefferably we would extract a small amount of marrow from your bones, and then remove the stem cells from the marrow. After genetically engineering them to increase their resistance to cancer, and decreasing the rate at which they age a culture of them would be kept, from which you would get periodic injections. However reversing the aging of the stem cells may not work very well, and they also may have mutated over time. If this proceedure for harvesting stem cells fails to work, inserting your DNA into a surrogate egg and then growing it in vitro to subsequently harvest would be a viable alternative.
Because stem cells are sooo powerful and have so much promise, we need to keep our options open as for how we can create stem cells. Just because aging has occured ever since animals have existed doesn't mean it has to be mandatory.
Slashdot Mirror
hey. The human brain is probably going to be one of the last things we figure out. We don't need to know how the brain works in order to cure aging. And am I correct in guessing that your already old or at least 40+?
evidently you didn't study enough. Certain parts of the body is more succeptable to free radical damage then other parts. Female ovaries have some of the lowest mutation rates anywhere. Also your mixing up cancer with sensence, its senesence that causes mutated cells to stop dividing. Apoptosis is often triggered as another method of killing cells to prevent them from being mutated. It would be quite feasable to keep stem cell lines of every person, careful monitoring of the cell lines should allow us to have absolute minimal amounts of mutations to occure in the stock lines. I'm just glad I didn't go to purdue, obviously their all wack at that university.
The worst part of adapting to change is being able to adapt to change itself. The old people of today lived in a rather less exciting life, especially rural people. Even with the advent of world wars, television, plastics, life didn't change all that much 90 years ago. Things were good, but they weren't blinding speed change. If you grew up in a world constantly changing, being old and accepting change is going to be a HELL of alot easier. Besides old brains lack the same balance of neurochemicals as young people, much of that subborness comes from the aging disease itself.
how bout this. I'll send you a gun. Weeding stupidity out of the gene pool is essential if we're going to evolve into an enlighened species!
Bah. 50 year ago we didn't even know how dna copied itself, now we actually understand how much of the molecular machinery of life works. Its alot easier to fix a car once you understand how a car works. One of the largest biotech companies, genentech, has been working on the new field of using the immune system itself to combat cancer. All that research money IS starting to pay off, and we are getting closer and closer to completely understanding life. Its a completely new ball game now.
I got interested in genetics at 13 when I read the cartoon guide to genetics, I was about 16 when I started hearing about telomeres and p53. Now I'm 21, doing my own research(viva la grant money) relating mutation rate to growth hormone, and am thoroughly fascinated by biogerontology. I've hung out at a special big wig aging research seminar last summer, it was really the best 5 days of my life. Molecular Biology is accelerating at such a rate, that a supposed "cure" for aging may very well be developed in the next 20 to 30 years. In fact I bet my life on it(literally). A non-biologist just doesn't get how fast our field is improving, the curing of aging is inevitable. Aging itself is a very effective mechanism against aging, while you associate cancer with olld age old age itself helps prevent cancer. Mice that have overactive p53 will have dramatically reduced cancer, but they exhibit many aspects of aging at a very early age! Aging and cancer is like ying and yang, to cure aging we must also cure cancer. Right now it takes X number of genes to be mutated before your cell becomes tumorous, and then another X number of genes before it becomes cancerous. We must increase the number of redundant cancer genes so that cancer is EXTREMELY rare, the only reason we still have cancer is because of evolution. There simply isn't enough evolutionary pressure to decrease our cancer rates, however with genetics we can most definetly overcome this problem. Yes this post is over-enthusiastic, and paints a picture far too positive for any respectible scientist. Damnit I got 60 years ahead of me, if you thing what we did in the last 50 you'd understand why theres no doubt in my mind we'll be curing aging in the next 20-30 years.
Since like all technology this will disseminate to the other countries in the globe, this also means a major change in air power. Manuverablility means practically nill at the speed of light. Large aircraft equiped with lasers would in addition to destroying missles would also be able to destroy all aircraft, even if the enemy aircraft are super manuverable, stealthy, super expensive F-22 jets. In fact the developement of powerful lasers will strongly reduce the importance aircraft, all you need to do is see the aircraft and you can kill it.
Being that by the end of the week I'll actually be working for a biotech software company, I sure hope that the scientific community doesn't force mandatory Open Source. Now while the agrument can be made that keeping the software restricted is hindering the biotechnology industry, compared to the evils of gene patenting, software has a very small role in the big picture.
Now even though I would love to find my own gene and would probably patent it and start a company like everyone else, I do believe that patents on genes that occur naturally is wrong. Its akin to patenting Heart Failure, and then forcing everyone to pay you dues whenever they try to see if someones heart is at risk to failing, or when they try to revive the heart. Now whats even worse is that the patents of genes are used to create a monopoly where only the patent holder and those who have enough cash are allowed to try to fix the gene. Its like the hypothetical heart failure patent holder suing Abicor for creating an artifical heart.
So to recap, forcing companies to make their software open source, not very important. Preventing companies from patenting naturally occuring genes, much more important.
In thoery cloning would result in animals with slightly shorter chromosomes, and thus possibly age sooner. However now that we have been able to study the cloned animals there IS NO ACCELERATED AGING. It is believed that the cloned fetus produces telomerease in its cells and from what we can tell, turns back the clock on aging. Secondly the more recent cloning trials have led to a 80% success rate, which is far better then the dreadfully low rate with dolly and other earlier clones. While you may object still to even 80%, natural birth itself is full of failures. All cloning has to do before it is medically ethical for humans is to match the failure rate of normal reproduction. To get a better understanding of why cloning and stem cells is important, you need to realize where these medical breakthroughs will lead us. Simply put, stem cells/theraputic cloning can slow down and even reverse aging. Now aging is not as inevitable as you might think, for the most part aging is caused by your chromosomes getting progessively smaller every time your cells divide. The older you are, the shorter your chromosomes are. When the telomeres(ends of the chromosomes) reach a certain point the cell engages into a dormant stage where it stops dividng and alters its behavior, causing you to get old. The reason the cells stop dividing is because if they don't the telomeres get too short and your chromosomes can unravel, become massively mutated, and then become horrible cancer. MOST of your cells stop at the right time and simply age naturally, the other cells become mutated and cancerous and you die. In addition to some of your cells becoming cancerous with old age, your immune system which plays a HUGE part in stopping cancer and tumours also wears out and begins to shut down. Aging would be slowed down by inserting into your body healthy stem cells which would move around your body and fix up anything that is beginning to wear out, this would include keeping the immune system in working order. Having a healthy immune system, living and eating healthy, and making use of the latest in cancer treatments means you have an excellent chance of preventing cancer from killing you. Now the big question is how do we get a supply of stem cells. Prefferably we would extract a small amount of marrow from your bones, and then remove the stem cells from the marrow. After genetically engineering them to increase their resistance to cancer, and decreasing the rate at which they age a culture of them would be kept, from which you would get periodic injections. However reversing the aging of the stem cells may not work very well, and they also may have mutated over time. If this proceedure for harvesting stem cells fails to work, inserting your DNA into a surrogate egg and then growing it in vitro to subsequently harvest would be a viable alternative. Because stem cells are sooo powerful and have so much promise, we need to keep our options open as for how we can create stem cells. Just because aging has occured ever since animals have existed doesn't mean it has to be mandatory.