But the earlier poster is right in that it's more complex than that, and the telomere mechanism is strongly connected with cancer and important regulatory functions. Doesn't mean it's impossible - just that there's a bunch more work to do.
Killing people is the lazy, despicable solution to any problem.
Are you so unwilling to engage in a dialog, to actually talk with people, find ways to live together. Are you unwilling to admit that people do change? Are you willing to slaughter millions based on these prejudices?
Selfish meglomania is to sit around and do nothing when you *could* help to prevent millions of deaths. Does it matter how they die? Do you think we shouldn't cure diseases? After all, they are natural. Should we live in caves, hunt/gather our food, and die after 30 years of hard, unpleasant life? After all, anything else would not be natural.
A cure for cancer is absolutely necessary - but great progress is being made, and a great deal of money is pouring into that research (because people decided it is important - big science proceeds by vox populi). The NCI predict a cure by 2015.
Similarly, we also need to cure Alzheimer's - but progress is also being made there.
However, curing cancer and Alzheimer's doesn't extend the maximum human life span of about 120 years, nor does it prevent increasing infirmity and decrepitude as our bodies wear out. It's just part of the overall solution.
Anthrax is also natural, so we shouldn't try to cure that, right?
The poor get everything last because new technology costs a lot of money - it takes time for the price to come down as techniques are perfected and businesses go after the lower income demographics. They got TVs last. They got cheaper heart surgery last. They got dialysis last. They'll get regenerative medicine last. But you know what? They will get it.
They only way the poor don't get something is if people prevent new technology from being developed by saying that it'll only be available to the rich at first.
Go read the SENS proposals - they'll tell you exactly how we currently believe we can fix the aging process. Knowing how to do it is half the battle. After that, it's just time, money, and sweat.
Aubrey's a great guy to hang out with, and a very engaging conversationalist. He's thought all of the science through logically and carefully, and has a talent for explaining things in ways that are surprisingly easy to understand - in short, he's a good teacher.
That's really the essence of the 4-hour pub conversation thing; being a good enough teacher to enable "students" to open up to new ideas in a complex subject and experience that "oh yes, I see now" moment.
Staying healthy and active *and* working on the medicine of the future is the way to go - as I point out at the Longevity Meme.
In the Fortune article, David Stipp points out that 30 years ago people would have called you mad to predict goats that made spider silk. All the signs are that science can make serious inroads into extending the healthy human life span within 30 years from now - regenerative medicine, cancer therapies, nanomedicine, manipulating mitchondria.
Read my last two newsletters for examples of recent scientific advances that clearly point to ways forward to achieve this goal. It isn't unrealistic. It isn't pie in the sky science. It's just hard work, funding, and time. The time could be short enough for us to choose to live a much longer, healthier life - but it's up to us to make that happen.
Hence the Methuselah Mouse prize and similar initiatives. If you value life and want more of it, you should certainly donate.
The Methuselah Mouse Prize (rewarding scientists who manage to extend healthy life span in mice) has some of the same names involved as advisors, and is in many ways an attempt to further evolve the fundraising methodology used so successfully in the X-Prize.
I think that progress to date since the launch last year is pretty impressive. $50,000 raised and $300,000 in pledges is far greater progress than the X Prize managed in the same period of time after launch - learning from the past and improving on it is a good thing. Check out The Three Hundred as well as a good example of how to get a certain set of people involved:
research prizes bring 16:1 investment return
on
NASA's Own X Prize?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Research prizes work so much better than many other methods of investment in progress that it's surprising you don't see more of them. On average, you'll see 16 dollars invested in progress for every 1 in the prize.
The present US administration has been attempting to bury stem cell research and therapeutic cloning - both fundamental technologies in regenerative medicine - since it came to power. Therapeutic cloning is essential to many stem cell therapies and much related research. Immense damage has been done. Christopher Reeve and many stem cell scientists (including the founders of the field) believe that the actions of this administration alone have set the field back by 5 years.
Some nasty math works out from here. There is currently an 80% effective stem cell therapy for heart disease that has been demonstrated in the US, Germany and Japan in human trials. It saves lives. 2000 people die EVERY DAY in the US from heart disease, yet the FDA is currently blocking any application of this working therapy. For more, see:
A stem cell/therapeutic cloning cure for Parkinson's has been demonstrated in mice, as have stem cell cures for nerve damage, diabetes, cancer (yes, a cure for cancer based on stem cells has been demonstrated in mice:
) and many other conditions. This isn't pie in the sky science! Real, working cures based on stem cell medicine are in the labs, only 5-10 years from being available for us. This is the science that the US administration is trying to drown. It's sickening that any group of human beings would try to enforce so much suffering...
The US house of representatives passed a therapeutic cloning ban last year, but the US senate has been sitting on it. More on that here:
The Bush administration basically went over their heads to try and get what they wanted now from the UN, and damn near succeeded. You can read more about that here:
This stopped being about human reproductive cloning a long time ago - there is a large, influential group of organizations, politicians and factions who stand opposed to any medical progress that will lead to longer, healthier lives. If cures for cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes and other things get thrown away as well...well, too bad. You can see these views in their raw, ugly forms in the pronouncements of Leon Kass and the President's Council on Bioethics:
In their view, living healthily for longer is bad. Working to cure suffering is bad. Medical progress is bad.
Time to kick these people out of power - if we don't stand up for our right to develop and use better medicine, we're all going to be paying for it in years to come. See more at:
<p>I can't help but feel that some important threshold in public awareness has been passed when a New York Times article on the science behind greatly extending healthy lifespan is a topic for discussion on Slashdot. The article quotes Aubrey de Grey of <a href=http://www.methuselahmouse.org>Methuselah Mouse Project</a> fame; he's been getting a fair few column inches of late, which is also a good thing. Slowly but surely, healthy life extension and aging research is moving closer to the spotlight.
<p>There's a bunch of resources, pointers and a gentle guide to the sensible way to extending your healthy life at the <a href=http://www.longevitymeme.org>Longevity Meme</a>, if you care to give it a look. Lots more interesting stuff for the/. crowd.
It's frustrating that/. posts this sort of thing, but never touches on serious stuff dealing with the Singularity. Bah to the moderators.
For example, the Singularity Institute has a vast array of comp-sci-related interesting stuff about General Artifical Intelligence and its role in the Singularity. The institute and volunteers are working on Flare, a programming language for GAI development.
Then we have the Foresight Institute who have a bunch of scholarly, serious things to say about nanotechnology and its implications.
Just for starters, of course. Then we have a million other resources out there, such as:
I used to work for a company that deals with real time equity market data web sites: all runs on a custom Forth back end and web application server. CNBC ran on Forth for a year. Fortune Investor, Citibank, American Expresss -- all ran on Forth.
www.wallstreetcity.com -- still running on Forth.
Reason
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.c fm?news_id=976
But the earlier poster is right in that it's more complex than that, and the telomere mechanism is strongly connected with cancer and important regulatory functions. Doesn't mean it's impossible - just that there's a bunch more work to do.
Are you so unwilling to engage in a dialog, to actually talk with people, find ways to live together. Are you unwilling to admit that people do change? Are you willing to slaughter millions based on these prejudices?
Selfish meglomania is to sit around and do nothing when you *could* help to prevent millions of deaths. Does it matter how they die? Do you think we shouldn't cure diseases? After all, they are natural. Should we live in caves, hunt/gather our food, and die after 30 years of hard, unpleasant life? After all, anything else would not be natural.
Here, you should read The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant by Nick Bostrom - it's a great story and a wonderful rebuttle to your point of view.
Similarly, we also need to cure Alzheimer's - but progress is also being made there.
However, curing cancer and Alzheimer's doesn't extend the maximum human life span of about 120 years, nor does it prevent increasing infirmity and decrepitude as our bodies wear out. It's just part of the overall solution.
So telomeres are involved, but they aren't the entire picture.
The poor get everything last because new technology costs a lot of money - it takes time for the price to come down as techniques are perfected and businesses go after the lower income demographics. They got TVs last. They got cheaper heart surgery last. They got dialysis last. They'll get regenerative medicine last. But you know what? They will get it. They only way the poor don't get something is if people prevent new technology from being developed by saying that it'll only be available to the rich at first.
Go read the SENS proposals - they'll tell you exactly how we currently believe we can fix the aging process. Knowing how to do it is half the battle. After that, it's just time, money, and sweat.
That's really the essence of the 4-hour pub conversation thing; being a good enough teacher to enable "students" to open up to new ideas in a complex subject and experience that "oh yes, I see now" moment.
In the Fortune article, David Stipp points out that 30 years ago people would have called you mad to predict goats that made spider silk. All the signs are that science can make serious inroads into extending the healthy human life span within 30 years from now - regenerative medicine, cancer therapies, nanomedicine, manipulating mitchondria.
Read my last two newsletters for examples of recent scientific advances that clearly point to ways forward to achieve this goal. It isn't unrealistic. It isn't pie in the sky science. It's just hard work, funding, and time. The time could be short enough for us to choose to live a much longer, healthier life - but it's up to us to make that happen. Hence the Methuselah Mouse prize and similar initiatives. If you value life and want more of it, you should certainly donate.
Ray has donated quite generously in support of the Methuselah Mouse prize, as you can see on the donors list. Good for him.
http://www.methuselahmouse.org
I think that progress to date since the launch last year is pretty impressive. $50,000 raised and $300,000 in pledges is far greater progress than the X Prize managed in the same period of time after launch - learning from the past and improving on it is a good thing. Check out The Three Hundred as well as a good example of how to get a certain set of people involved:
http://www.methuselahfoundation.org/threehundred.a sp
Why are prizes for research so good? Take a look at this piece on how they work and why they work so well:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/research_prize s.cfm
Research prizes work so much better than many other methods of investment in progress that it's surprising you don't see more of them. On average, you'll see 16 dollars invested in progress for every 1 in the prize.
Here's a good article (plus links to other articles) on why research prizes are a great thing: http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/research_prize s.cfm
Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme
The present US administration has been attempting to bury stem cell research and therapeutic cloning - both fundamental technologies in regenerative medicine - since it came to power. Therapeutic cloning is essential to many stem cell therapies and much related research. Immense damage has been done. Christopher Reeve and many stem cell scientists (including the founders of the field) believe that the actions of this administration alone have set the field back by 5 years.
Some nasty math works out from here. There is currently an 80% effective stem cell therapy for heart disease that has been demonstrated in the US, Germany and Japan in human trials. It saves lives. 2000 people die EVERY DAY in the US from heart disease, yet the FDA is currently blocking any application of this working therapy. For more, see:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/protest_fda_ interference.cfm
A stem cell/therapeutic cloning cure for Parkinson's has been demonstrated in mice, as have stem cell cures for nerve damage, diabetes, cancer (yes, a cure for cancer based on stem cells has been demonstrated in mice:
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?article ID=2003-12-10-3
) and many other conditions. This isn't pie in the sky science! Real, working cures based on stem cell medicine are in the labs, only 5-10 years from being available for us. This is the science that the US administration is trying to drown. It's sickening that any group of human beings would try to enforce so much suffering...
The US house of representatives passed a therapeutic cloning ban last year, but the US senate has been sitting on it. More on that here:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_the_t herapeutic_cloning_ban.cfm
The Bush administration basically went over their heads to try and get what they wanted now from the UN, and damn near succeeded. You can read more about that here:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_globa l_therapeutic_cloning_ban.cfm
This stopped being about human reproductive cloning a long time ago - there is a large, influential group of organizations, politicians and factions who stand opposed to any medical progress that will lead to longer, healthier lives. If cures for cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes and other things get thrown away as well...well, too bad. You can see these views in their raw, ugly forms in the pronouncements of Leon Kass and the President's Council on Bioethics:
http://www.bioethics.gov
In their view, living healthily for longer is bad. Working to cure suffering is bad. Medical progress is bad.
Time to kick these people out of power - if we don't stand up for our right to develop and use better medicine, we're all going to be paying for it in years to come. See more at:
http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/
Speak out!
Reason
As I mention on the Longevity Meme:
/. crowd.
<p>I can't help but feel that some important threshold in public awareness has been passed when a New York Times article on the science behind greatly extending healthy lifespan is a topic for discussion on Slashdot. The article quotes Aubrey de Grey of <a href=http://www.methuselahmouse.org>Methuselah Mouse Project</a> fame; he's been getting a fair few column inches of late, which is also a good thing. Slowly but surely, healthy life extension and aging research is moving closer to the spotlight.
<p>There's a bunch of resources, pointers and a gentle guide to the sensible way to extending your healthy life at the <a href=http://www.longevitymeme.org>Longevity Meme</a>, if you care to give it a look. Lots more interesting stuff for the
<p>Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme
http://www.extropy.org/exi-lists/ Bunch of very smart people who have talked about this sort of stuff day in day out for years. Reason
It's frustrating that /. posts this sort of thing, but never touches on serious stuff dealing with the Singularity. Bah to the moderators.
For example, the Singularity Institute has a vast array of comp-sci-related interesting stuff about General Artifical Intelligence and its role in the Singularity. The institute and volunteers are working on Flare, a programming language for GAI development.
Then we have the Foresight Institute who have a bunch of scholarly, serious things to say about nanotechnology and its implications.
Just for starters, of course. Then we have a million other resources out there, such as:
KurzweilAI.net
Extropy Institute
at which one can learn about the Singularity and associated topics in context.
But no, we get trash like the spaceship guy. Bah, bah, bah. Reason
I used to work for a company that deals with real time equity market data web sites: all runs on a custom Forth back end and web application server. CNBC ran on Forth for a year. Fortune Investor, Citibank, American Expresss -- all ran on Forth. www.wallstreetcity.com -- still running on Forth. Reason