Paypal Co-Founder Backs Anti-Aging Research Prize 260
Baldrson writes, "Anti-aging researchers, via The Methuselah Mouse Prize or M-Prize, are receiving an additional $3 million incentive to stop and reverse aging. Researchers win M-Prize money in increments by breaking longevity records for mice or reversing their aging. The philanthropic donation comes from Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal. Mr. Thiel has pledged to match each dollar donated to the M-Prize with his own 50 cent contributions up to $3 million." The M-Prize was created by Aubrey de Grey, a controversial biomedical gerontologist in Cambridge, England.
Heinlein had a better idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Pay the money to people with a family history of long lifespans if they breed with other qualifiers. Even if this prize leads to mice with long lifespans it may not deliver usable insights into human ageing
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Re:Heinlein had a better idea (Score:4, Interesting)
There are natural limits. Living longer isn't at all the same thing as not aging. People who die at 120 do so having been really old people for 40 years.
Bear in mind that I have a track record here of being Mr. It Isn't Aging, You've Just Let Yourself Go; and in the 1990s my Uncle Eli grabbed the all time record for oldest licensed driver in American history (he sucessfully passed his test at 104), but after 80 years all bets are off. You degrade, not how you live or what you do.
Uncle Eli will not be applying to be tested again.
This prize is aimed at halting the degrading.
KFG
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It wouldn't be too difficult to come with with a
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All of mine.
Are all your grandparents still alive?
None of mine are, although this is largely a factor of having splipped over the median myself some time ago. My Grandparents were all functional into their 80s. My Mother is in her mid 70s and still mows her own lawn and carries her own backpack.
However, be it noted that my ancestors, although both long lived and productively long live
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God, how I should love to have your genes.
Please, for the sake of future generations, breed.
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If you had my genes you would likely be dead already. I am a mass of genetic dysfunction. Cystic Fibrosis, Celiac Disease, dyslexic, disgraphic and dyspraxic, with resultant atrophy of childhood skeletal and muscular development.
Life is hard and tenuous. Had I been born at the time of my grandparents I would have died at about two years of age. The lifespan of my ancestors does not take into account familial infant mortality.
Strangely enough I'm "strong and healthy"
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This is what I don't understand in our risk-averse society - yeah, sure you might die doing [insert dangerous activity here], but you're probably going to have a slow, horribly drawn out death anyway. I'd rather spend my life living rather than waiting to die as most risk-averse people seem to do.
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from
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/ record.asp?recordid=43573 [guinnessworldrecords.com]
Oldest Driver
There are two male drivers who were issued with new driving licenses at the age of 104: Fred Hale Sr (USA, b. December 1, 1890) was issued with a driving license in February 1995 at age 104, and drove until it expired on his 108th birthday in 1998. Fred currently holds the Guinness World Record as the oldest living man.
Re:Heinlein had a better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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By not paying people money to have kids, you'd tend to limit the number they have in industrial societies. Look at Europe, without lifting
Hmmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
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"How much did the guy inventing the serial to USB converter get for expanding a mouse's lifespan?"
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I can see it now. (Score:2, Funny)
Instant death.
Hate to see it happen (Score:5, Funny)
Oh dear. (Score:5, Funny)
Dawkins (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason being that parasitic genes in a host that usually end up killing or harming it will quickly be removed from the gene pool. So such genes are not evolutionarily successful.
On the other hand, if their effect was triggered only after a certain number of years (when an animal has already performed its main purpose of reproduction), there is no drive for it to be removed from the gene pool. An animal with the parasite would be as successful in spreading its genes as one without it. So over the years, the early-acting bad stuff has been wiped out bit by bit by natural selection, while the latent ones have been accumulating all along.
I'm sure someone with more knowledge in this will chip in.
Re:Dawkins (Score:4, Insightful)
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Exactly. People tend to think too much in terms of the "survival of the fittest" individuals, but evolution depends on successful mutations achieving sufficient penetrance in the population to eventually (or even quickly) become dominant. There are also important "meta-genetic" traits (like the rate of mutation)
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Your comment seems to be a striking example of an all too common fallacy, namely the fallacy that evolution somehow "cares" about the general well-being of the population. This idea has been eradicated long ago, and "group selection" only survives in very limited circumstances. The reason is quite simple: explana
Re:Dawkins (Score:5, Interesting)
If evolution had meant us to fly it would have given us wings. It didn't, yet we do fly.
Its called engineering and its as much a result of our evolution as anything else. We already live 2 or 3 times longer than we did "in the wild" because of our engineered environment. I don't see why we couldn't go further.
Re:Dawkins (Score:4, Funny)
Who is the parasite, "me" or "my" mithochondria. It's not an easy question to answer.
The question of whether or not I am a parasite is easier to answer. Yes, yes I am. A girl has to make a living somehow.
KFG
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Sorry, couldn't resist.
Just be glad I didn't start off a rant about girls and parasites.
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It's just a figure of speach. My figure is male.
However, when I say I am a parasite I mean that in the classical sense. I am, essentially, a male geshia, although spelling it "raconteur" carries more social standing. People invite me to their social functions (and sometimes even pay me for it) simply to have me at their social functions; as an assurance of having a certain amount of society guarunteed.
I provide value by simply being around, so people are inclined to gather my food for m
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I would think it isn't so much that aging is inevitable, just that, as long as something can live long and healthily enough to breed, there's no advantage to it. The only disadvantage to living forever and continuing to breed that I can think of woul
far from inevitable (Score:2)
The real reason is likely that non-age related factors used to set an upper bound on lifespans: if almost everybody gets killed before age 40, there isn't much point for human bodies to evolve to last much longer than that. The fact that we live to age 80 or 90 is a testament to how well we have evolved to
Re:Dawkins (Score:4, Insightful)
"f there were some mutant strain of mouse that had a dispropotionately long lifespan compared to his peers, free from the negative consequenecs of age, would (s)he not reproduce far more offspring bearing his/her genes than the others, over time?"
Short answer: No.
Look to humans: it doesn't matter how long after menopause a woman lives, she's already had all the kids she's ever going to have. She could live to be 1,000, but unless she's fertile and breeding for a longer time, she's not going to be making that big a wave in the gene pool.
thanks for that (Score:2, Funny)
There, that's better.
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Bullshit.
Check ot bacteria. They don't care for their descendants, and they do quite well.
A crack whore popping out 10 kids is going to have more of an impact on the gene pool than a woman who has only one but devotes more care to raising her child.
The offspring don't have to live all that long - just long enough so they too reproduce, which is really easy. Or did you miss the lectures on "teen pregnancy?"
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Only if the crack whore doesn't leave her children on the streets so that they die of exposure. There is a big difference between bacteria and humans; a new bacterium has as much ability to survive as an adult one does (if such terms even apply to species that reproduce by mitosis). An infant human needs an absolute minimum of a year of care to
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"Now, a woman who lives to 1,000 may only have one child every 50 years, but that's still 20 children"
Nevr heard of menopause, have you?
This is a necessary biological adaptation, because a woman is born with all the eggs she'll ever have (abut 4000), and they degrade over her lifetime. That's why there are more defects in children of women over 40, for example.
Men, on the other hand, produce new genetic material continuously.
So the crack whore pumping out kids every year from the age of 15 to 30 st
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no, one of the kids will grow up and shoot the kid who's mom nurtured him while growing up. That's why I support chemical spaying of crack whores [google.com]
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The belief is that it's caused by your suggestion above. Other animals don't gain as much from protection of their aging parents
Study whales instead? (Score:2)
Perhaps if we looked at animals that are more human-like in terms of reproductive strategies, we'd see some better optimizations than even we have?
I'm thinking particularly about whales; many species have only one chance at reproducing per season, due to their migration patterns, and have 12-month or longer gestations. I'm not sure how long infant whales take be
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Have you ever watched a beautiful woman pass a group of smart guys on the street. I think there is still some instinct in us
Yes, I get your point. Yes, I agree. Yes, I am somewhat of a pedantic bastard.
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Being bound by our instincts and realizing that some of our evolutionary behaviour is fun are two entirely different things.
Culture of Death (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Culture of Death (Score:4, Interesting)
So the day it's possible to cryogenically freeze people, I'm in.
Imagine being frozen for 50 years, then brought back so you could see the world for 1 year, then frozen for another 50, and so on until your natural death. You could witness the world thousands of years from now.
THAT would be great.
Organ Doaner (Score:4, Interesting)
More than likely, it will be much like a couple of SF stories by different authors - the section of Larry Niven's "The Long A.R.M. of Gil Hamilton" wherein a law allowing corpsicles to be thawed and broken up for parts is being considered.
However, I like a short story I read many years ago - a man has himself frozen, and is awakened. He wakes to find another, older man next to his bed. They strike up a conversation about what has changed - the young man asks about the older man's earrings, which he is informed are antenna. He is then told he is being prepped for heart surgery. "But I don't have a bad heart" the young man says. "No, but I do" says the older man.
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THAT would be great.
It would be great if that company you hired to store you and revive you each time lasted for thousands of years.
How many companies in history have survived for thousands of years?
Do you really think that anyone will want to revive you when the guy you originally hired is dead, hi
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just my 2c
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Why do people assume the future will always be a wonderful place? This world needs more pessamists.
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All the old sci-fi saws of "They'd use you for spare parts!" or "They'd turn you into slave labor!" are pretty dumb - I mean, if they can repair a brain damaged by freezing, I'd imagine they'd have to be able to do something trivial like repair an ailing heart. If they can RAISE THE DEAD, I'd have to think they'd have enough technology to do other labor-type tasks without needing to get
Books Already Written (Vinge, Across Realtime) (Score:2)
The Peace War
Marooned In Realtime
Also available in single book entitled:
Across Realtime
Instead of cryogenics, stasis fields called 'bobbles' allow 'flickering' into the future. Vinge develops this idea to the extreme and the whole story spans 50 million years. Cryogenics could serve as equivalent, with the drawbacks of maintenance of the frozen body for long periods of time.
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What about a revolution in 5 years where the country's currency is worth absolutely nothing, but you've paid for 50 years sleep time. You wake up 45 years after the major change with no money, no assets, and no idea what's going on. You'r
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A one-eyed babe will try to "chip" you, and you end up being a space delivery boy with lots of adventures.
Uneducated slob.
Not an unmanageable risk. (Score:2)
Over arbitrarily long periods, periods where an investment would have been un-profitable are exceptions rather than the rule. A well-diversified portfolio would not be at great risk of bankruptcy, barring some sort of catastrophic civilizational collapse (the sort of thing that would probably entail physical disruption of the sleeping folks anyway).
Even if you woke up in the next century's equivalent of the Great Depression, properly invested assets
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I have to disagree with this. Remember, 45 years have gone by in my scenario. If the majority of the people are still dirt poor after 45 years, government has completely collapsed and there's no way someone could keep the cryo tanks running. And after only 5 years, things haven't changed so much that you can't use your business savvy to save yourself.
No, I'm talking about when we perfect alchemy and can transmute from any atom to any other at
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Sorry but no dice buddy, if a simpleton can think of it, then anyone can and will.
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note: assuming sun does not blow up within the next 4 billion years.
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It could be a choice. (Score:2)
I could imagine some point at which our understanding of neuroscience and neurology improves to the point where a living human brain could be transplanted from one body to another, or its contents uploaded to a new wetware container. Thus, you could have yourself repeatedly cloned and preserve your consiousness across the ages, barr
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Apart from that, do you think God would approve?
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Well, at least according to the Bible, no. The Bible describes quickly decaying lifespans from the first generation to each subsequent generative iteration. At the end of this decay, it is legislated divinely than no human would live past twelve decades.
I'm an atheist, and don't put much stock in such things. Still, you gotta wonder why, biologically and medically, we've done a fantastic job of getting people to live to a hundred, and have been very frustrated not much past that. And interestingly, no
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What beats me is that the effect is present for males as well as females. You'd think that living permanently would be a good idea for males (who stay reproductive, and have little strain from reproduction).
Eivind.
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Have you heard about the coming problems with SS? To many people living too long, not enough kids(upcoming workers) consuming too much SS, driving it bankrupt. SS is a pyramid scheme that worked when there were 20 workers per retiree. It's approaching a 1-1. It's unsustainable.
Think about this: It pretty much takes 18-26 years to tr
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That is the point of this type of research.
You won't be 200 with the body of a 200 year old, but rather 200 with the body of a 21 year old. Hence the reason you had retirement in the first place goes out the window. If I could be 21 for the rest of my life, I wouldn't mind keeping a day job (Heck if you lived that long you could just put a sum of money in a bank and collect on interest in a hundred years.)
Personally, I would like to avoid what happened to my gran
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I've always taken immortality for granted (Score:2)
Any gardener can reverse aging (Score:2)
Selfish megalomania != philanthropy (Score:2, Interesting)
The paypal guy has just looked in the mirror, realised he's getting older, and wants to live longer. He's worked out that if a few days' coding, some neat financial agreements and a bit of luck can make hundreds of millions of dollars; perhaps a few million dollars and some injecting of mice can lead to him living forever. The guy is more Frankenstien than phi
Enlightened self interest (Score:2)
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Besides, it's not like BG cares about getting more money... he's got more than he knows what to do with.
Better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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Time to report to carosel [wikipedia.org].
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Maybe nature intends for people to die of heart disease. And who is this "nature" anyway? God? There's a thorny question. I say any research into the understanding of the human body is good research, even if it doesn't seem to directly relate to something others deem more important. The miracle drug for my autoimmune disorder was discovered by accident while researching arthritis. Maybe their research will cure those children who age at a
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Re:Better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
How about not criticizing people for failing to offer their charity in a way not approved by Your Holiness? I for one, would like the option of living for as long as I please to, thank you very much. Are the needs of the elderly less worthy than the needs of the young?
And while we're at it, how about not suggesting that nature "intends" anything. That's just weird and lame.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
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Do you have a link to a reputable (i.e. peer-reviewed) paper to back up that wild assertion?
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And, as far as I know 'chemicals' aren't heritable. The genetics behind them, you could make an arguemnt for.
Waste of money (Score:2)
Those people are lobbying for wasting our money on the research that will make 70 years old people live longer (Alzheimer desease being the most ourtragious example) instead of spending it for the cause of deseases that devaste less fortunate of us. The rich want to live longer too.
It is important to have respect to older people and provide them good care by their kids, but have a sense of balance, people!
This is not philant
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Alzheimer is not a primary cause of sufferring in the majority of the world. Certainly it would afffect Africans more when the they will live in average longer than 40 years (Zambia, Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Swaziland) etc, etc.... [os-connect.com]. But this is not happening in the nearest feature or is it?
Let's assume we are eventually successful... (Score:2)
There are myriad social an economic issues that fall from this (like having to get government authorization to reproduce in order to control population for example) but let's leave those alone for now.
What about body part wearing out? Broken bones, worn out teeth, other injuries that, given hundreds of years, are bound to happen?
It seems to me that success in this field will necessarily create a need for engineering effective replacement body parts. Sounds like an interesting premise for a Sci-Fi
I don't see this as something positive... (Score:2)
I don't like the idea of dictators living for 200 years...
If we really wish to grow that old... (Score:2, Insightful)
Please, Please, NO! (Score:2)
I'll work till I'm 67, retire in poverty, and (based on my family's male longevity) die 4 years later.
The last thing I need is some breakthrough that will keep me hanging around after that.
Should we really try to be immortal? (Score:2)
The mortality rate would drop drastically, but the infant rate would keep its steady rate of increase, and then we have a massive overpopulation crisis. We would reach a point where we wouldn't be able to produce enough food to support everyone, and then more people just start dying of starvation. (What a fun way
Don't bring this to Britain (Score:2)
This island's already cramped, we don't need people living another 20 years.
Painting in the attic... (Score:4, Funny)
There's a painting of his cousin, Dorian Gray [wikipedia.org] in his attic.
Re:A prize seems redundant.... (Score:4, Insightful)
For good or ill stupid little trophies presented at awards ceremonies is a motivator for most people. The prize looks like a lot of money, but really, compared to what you'll likely have to spend to collect it it's just a stupid little trophy.
KFG
Prizes aren't about money (Score:2)
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"I'd prefer to donate to cybernetics systems, replacing your old parts with electronic parts are a lot more "natural" form of human evolution."
I don't think so ...
Isn't it better to not need a replacement in the first place (or is prevention now not seen as better than a cure).
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It costs money and a high-tech, energy-intensive infrastructure for what you propose. Prevention is cheaper. Partial cyborgs don't drastically reduce demands on food stocks, etc, either - there's still the biological component which has to be supported.
Its not like you're going to replace the brain any time soon ... and even if you could duplicate it computationally, it would just be a dupe - it wouldn't be the original. YOU would still cease to exist. Just a copy of you would be running somewhere as a s
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With prevention, there are no extra costs for keeping older people alive. No blockd arteries, reduced mobility, etc. so people can continue to be productive.
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The point about space colonization might be more valid, but the pure facts of exponential popul
"70" could be the new "40." (Score:2)
I can. Right now, when you think of "living...as a 70-year-old," you think of someone who may not be totally independent, or whose mental and physical faculties are dimished. In short, someone who is probably a burden to society, taking the social equivalent of a 'desk by the window' while they live out their time.
Except that even now, that's not true (heck, I know people who are still razor sharp and running marathons at 70), and future a
Oh the horror (Score:2)
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Oooh. (Score:2)