Do You Want to Live Forever? 1334
Jamie McCarthy writes "In 1918, Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Daly inspired his weary men to attack by yelling, 'come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?' But how would the world change if we could? This month's Technology Review introduces us to the computer scientist, and self-taught biologist, Aubrey de Grey, who thinks immortality could be within our grasp by 2030. Thinking like an engineer, he's broken aging down into seven specific problems, like cell atrophy and mitochondrial mutation, which he believes can all, in principle, be solved. And he has good reason to think those seven are the only 'bugs' standing in the way of a thousand-year lifespan. De Grey is clearly both a genius and a little nuts, but I'm not sure in what proportion..."
Doom for Social Security (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Doom for Social Security (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who needs social security? (Score:3, Insightful)
> insterest. When you are ready to retire in 1000
> years you will be worth $100,000,000,000,000
>
> Sign me up!!!
Except that in a thousand years, that will buy you a Mars bar with enough change to use a payphone.
Re:Doom for Social Security (Score:2, Funny)
This is one reason that SS is fundamentally flawed.
Failing to take into account that people live forever and could collect SS in perpetuity is hardly "fundamentally flawed"
Re:Actually, it is. (Score:4, Informative)
Except for the obvious difference that the people who receive welfare have not paid a bloody dime into the system. It is those of us who pay income tax that provide the benefits to welfare recipients, on the basis that it is better for all of us to be forced to support them, than for us to see them starving beside the street.
On the other hand, Social Security is sold to the people as a system where they pay money in over their working career so that they can then have it back after they retire. (The fact that the system doesn't actually work that way seems to be irrelevant to the masses of SS devotees.) What SS should have been, assuming you agree that people are in general too stupid to save money on their own for retirement, is mandatory personal retirement savings accounts. Determine the average length of time people will live, subtract the average length of time they can usefully work, determine the average monthly income needed after retirement, figure out a reasonable rate of return on funds deposited, and do the math to determine how much they need to be forced to save to provide for themselves.
Social Security was never supposed to be, and should never be thought of as, a welfare program. If you agree that it is a necessary program at all, then it should just be a mandatory retirement account. Every penny of which you put in, is then yours to take back out when the time comes.
No different (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, Social Security is sold to the people as a system where they pay money in over their working career so that they can then have it back after they retire.
Which woul
And also exactly why it is failing (Score:3, Insightful)
Thus the projected problems starting in 2018 (the year the program has more money going out in payments than comes in from workers) instead of 2042.
Re:Actually, it is. (Score:3, Insightful)
Social Security was conceived as, and still is, a welfare program. It takes money from working people and gives it to retired people. The working people accept it because they too will get money when they retire. But they're not going to get the money they "saved." They're going to get the money from people who aren't yet working today.
I'm against Social Security and forcing people to save, but I think this no
Re:Actually, it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
Welfare is for lazy trailer trash who can't get off their fat ass to find a job.
Trailer trash such as my mother, who after the divorce was a single mother of five. Trailer trash that worked her ass off, lived in a "house" in the "city." Eventually she got off Welfare, but thank God it was there for us when we needed it. It was not for lack of work ethic that we were on it, it was poor planning on my mother's part.
Social Security is for old people who worked hard and want to retire.
Socialist Security is not for people who want to retire, the benefits are so tiny that all it does is supplement the typically small income our elderly are able to procure. Think about it -- who wants to hire a 70 year old to a six figure job when that person is bordering on senility and has very few productive years left? Age discrimination may be illegal, but it happens. I see a lot of old people working at Wal-Mart and McDonald's. Social Insecurity will barely pay their rent or house insurance, whichever is applicable.
Lots of people are in favor of cutting welfare benefits in the name of forcing these people to get a job and quit being leeches, while very few people want to be seen as "cutting" SS in the eyes of the older voters.
Not everyone on Welfare, Food Stamps, or whatever other public assistance programs are out there are leeches. Some are just in a shitty part of life and need a boost. I have no problem cutting Social Security as long as everyone gets their dues if they want. I plan on denying my Social Security benefits even after paying into the system all my life. Hopefully I won't need them, because I will plan better than my parents did. It may be a drop in the bucket, and more symbolic than anything, but that is doing my part to keep the system from fucking some poor Joe who gets the short end of the stick in 40-60 years.
Ask around (Score:3, Interesting)
Worse than that (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet in the recent Social Security article, many Slashdot readers would seemingly choose to ignore advances like those outlined in the article, quite odd for a supposedly technological nerd oriented forum. I guess we can expect them all to post and tell us why this article is complete bunk and we'll be dying in 100 years at about the same age as now.
I think I shall label them with the new term "politically-motivated luddite".
Re:Worse than that (Score:5, Insightful)
The level of "fix" needed to make social security solvent past 2031 is tiny. Besides, the reason we had (past tense, unfortunately) a social security "surplus" was due to the fact that lifespans *weren't* increasing as expected (among other things). Should they start to change, social security will clearly change to adapt - most likely with a later retirement age. A mere 2 year age boost in the retirement age made most of the difference in the 1980s - if you're living 50, or even 500 years longer, a longer work period should be a given.
Much of the SS calculations, by the way, is rather pessimistic. They assume pretty poor economic growth and population figures.
Re:Worse than that (Score:3, Informative)
That surplus is te
Destroying the village in order to save it (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Worse than that (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Doom for Social Security (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/trsummary.html
"This is one reason that SS is fundamentally flawed."
Your take, not fact.
Btw I'd like to point out that the reason most people need social security is because the most productive years of their lives are behind them and they need it because they have no more earning power. If you were "immortal" you could just keep working and wouldn't need SS.
Re:Doom for Social Security (Score:3, Funny)
Not necessarily. You could still end up decrepit and arthritis-ridden, barely able to care for yourself, and just live that way for the next several hundred years.
Re:Doom for Social Security (Score:5, Funny)
Oh.
Yay.
Re:Doom for Social Security (Score:4, Informative)
No. An utter lie.
The New York Times [nytimes.com]:
A Question of Numbers
By ROGER LOWENSTEIN
Published: January 16, 2005
THE CONSERVATIVE NEW DEAL
In 1938, the Social Security Act was only three years old, but its future was already very much in doubt. Conservatives claimed it would bankrupt the nation, and independent critics argued that the way it was financed amounted to ''financial hocus-pocus,'' as one editorial in The New York Times put it. President Franklin D. Roosevelt defended the program, said by a cabinet member to be his favorite, with some of his trademark oratory. ''Because it has become increasingly difficult for individuals to build their own security,'' the president told a national radio audience, ''government must now step in and help them lay the foundation stones.''
Social Security did become the cornerstone -- not only the biggest government entitlement plan but also the most universal, the most popular and the most enduring. But the debate over Social Security never ended. Barry Goldwater wanted to repeal it; Milton Friedman wrote in 1962 that it was an unjustifiable incursion on personal liberty; and David Stockman, the budget director who personified Ronald Reagan's efforts to shrink the federal government, tried to take a hatchet to Social Security, which he called a ''monster.''
But in this 70-year struggle, no other conservative has ever come as close to transforming the program as George W. Bush. He is making Social Security reform, including a partial privatization, a centerpiece of his second term. If the most ardent ideologues have their way, such a reform would be a first step toward a wholly new approach to retirement security -- one that would set aside the notion of collective insurance and guaranteed minimums for that of personal investing and responsibility.
This could do more to reverse the New Deal, and even the Great Society, than Goldwater, Stockman and Reagan ever dreamed of. ''We call it a conservative New Deal,'' says Stephen Moore, author of ''Bullish on Bush: How George W. Bush's Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger.'' In Moore's words, it will be a fundamental shift ''from an entitlement society to an ownership society.'' The key to this transformation, according to a generation of conservative thinkers and crusaders, is reducing the size and changing the nature of Social Security, which now pays benefits of half a trillion a year, and which will only grow bigger as America grows older.
The campaign to privatize has not only been about ideology; it has also focused on Social Security's supposed insolvency. Moore's book calls Social Security a ''Titanic . . . headed toward the iceberg'' and a program ''on the verge of collapse.'' A stream of other conservatives have bombarded the public, over years and decades, with prophecies of trillion-dollar liabilities and with metaphors intended to frighten -- ''train wreck,'' ''bankruptcy,'' ''cancer'' and so forth. Recently, a White House political deputy wrote a strategy note in which he said that Social Security is ''on an unsustainable course. That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness.''
The campaign is potentially self-fulfilling: persuade enough people that Social Security is going bankrupt, and it will lose public support. Then Congress will be forced to act. And thanks to such unceasing alarums, many, and perhaps most, people today think the program is in serious financial trouble.
But is it? After Bush's re-election, I carefully read the 225-page annual report of the Social Security trustees. I also talked to actuaries and economists, inside and outside the agency, who are expert in the peculiar science of long-term Social Security forecasting. The actuarial view is that the system is probably i
Re:Doom for Social Security (Score:5, Interesting)
We don't *need* to work as much as we do; even hunter-gatherers generally only "work" what would be less than half time by a modern standpoint. But we do it anyways.
Why? Because want "stuff". We want to give our friends and family "stuff". We want to go "places" and go to see "things". To fill our wants, we work.
What if everyone was content to live in a little hut with almost no posessions, and focus our technological efforts purely on what was needed to keep agricultural production and basic medicine going and the tech base needed to support it? Our work hours would be tiny on average. But we don't want that life. We want the "you work, and you get stuff" life. And so it would be if we were immortal.
Sure, people would take a lot more long leaves. And a lot more career changes. But 20 years? They'd miss all the neat "stuff" they could have gotten.
Re:Doom for Social Security (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't seem to be given much choice in the matter. I would gladly work at a part-time job if I was given the choice: I would much prefer to make enough to pay for rent, bills, and groceries. Unfortunately, because of the model that society has adopted, I'm forced into a work-world where eight hours a day is the standard, and I'm paid to a level where I have quite a bit of disposable income. Given how unhappy I am spending a huge chunk of my week either thinking about work, preparing for work, or working, I have little time to myself and feel that I should compensate myself; additionally, it seems silly to just save the money I've earned, since I wouldn't know what to do with it all. Hence, I buy stupid things that I don't really need and that bring me a small but very transient amount of happiness.
I notice this pattern in pretty much everyone around me who isn't up to their ears in debt. They accumulate random garbage that they don't really need or particularly want much.
This model really sucks, because I think it leaves many of us largely dissatisfied. I don't know what would make you happier, but personally, I can say without hesitation that I'd prefer more free time to spend with my family and pursue my hobbies rather than more possessions. As well, it's environmentally destructive: we gather and gather useless crap, wasting our natural resources which could be put to much better use.
Re:Doom for Social Security (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We are tricked into working so much (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More Homeland Security (Score:3, Interesting)
No (Score:2)
Re:No (Score:2)
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuts, but also well suited for the task (Score:5, Insightful)
The world needs more thinkers like him, even if he's a little nuts. Anyone willing to start his own international symposium after teaching himself micro biology is. Too many professional scholars are pinned into doing research that has immediate market viability and too many researchers are more interested in their own career advancement than the science they're supposed to be advancing. So they play it safe.
Daly dreams of being on the cover of Time magazine I'm sure, ego is almost certainly a factor for him as well, and no doubt a huge payday would follow and major advancement on any of his 7 problems. But it's the all-or-nothing mentality, the fact that he's willing to go for it even if it never pans out, that separates him.
Re:Nuts, but also well suited for the task (Score:5, Informative)
No,
Daniel Daly is dead and buried in Cypress Hills Cemetary. Daly was arguably the greatest marine of all time and the man behind the famous quote. Aubrey de Grey is the self taught micro-biologist who may or may not "dream of being on the cover of Time magazine".
Re:Nuts, but also well suited for the task (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no argument with that, provided you mean the greatest US marine. The greatest marine of all time was the guy who licked the Carthaginians at Ecnomus.
The quote is famous but not original. I don't know when this exhortation was first made; no doubt the Romans were saying this in their day and for all I know the ancient Sumerians were too.
However, I do know how Frederick Hohenzollern ("The Great") addressed his men after the breakdown of his attack at Kolin: "You rogues! Would you live forever?" According to tradition, the reply called out from the ranks was "we thought for thirteen pennies a day we had done enough."
Re:Nuts, but also well suited for the task (Score:5, Insightful)
Research is expensive and sadly this is what the funding bodies want nowadays. If you are not interested in your own career advancement, then you will not remain in a job long.
The only other alternatives to this is to either have lots of your own cash to live off. This is, by and large, the way that most early scientists worked. Or you can become a rampant self-publicist . Having a strange physical appearance is a classic sign of this, usually in the facial hair department.
It's a pity. It would be nice if science were the fearless exploration of the unknown, rather than the fearful exporation of the nearly known. But to criticise us for playing safe is not fair. We have families to support. We have to keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs, just the same as everyone else.
Phil
Sure I would. (Score:3)
Re:Sure I would. (Score:2)
Things To Look Forward (Score:5, Funny)
3D High Def THX Surround Sound home entertainment (some brain surgery required)
The 100th season of the Simpsons
200 more years of Dick Clark in Times Square
Windows Cthulhu (C'mon, you know it was coming some day...)
Baseball players finally agree to seriously address the steroid issue after a homerun ball is driven through the skull of a guy two miles away from the stadium.
No matter how well you cared for your teeth, you'll eventually lose them.
Watching every public retirement system go into the stock market and then watch it really tank! (Alpo! Yum!)
Liver Spot removal pill spam
Survivor Krakatoa
Final Fantasy LXXVI: The ploy that isn't beaten to death, yet.
After about 20 presidents claiming to reduce spending you realize they're full of shit as the world runs out of money to finance the US debt. And those guys who said, "The debt doesn't matter", they died, so it didn't matter to them.
Re:Things To Look Forward (Score:3, Funny)
Duke Nukem Forever. Coming this millenium.
We think.
Re:Things To Look Forward (Score:5, Funny)
we can all live long enough so that a 6-digit /. id's will become "rare and wise" when there are 10 million /. members. :)
Re:Things To Look Forward (Score:2)
"Vote Cheney/Nyarlathotep 2016"
NBC maxing out at 76 different "Law and Order" series in prime time each week. Yes, I, for one want to see "Law and Order: "CHJ" (court-house janitor).
We will see if Kurt Vonnegut was really right in that "wear sunscreen" thing.
The year of "Linux on the Desktop".
A new season of NHL Hockey.
Re:Things To Look Forward (Score:3, Funny)
Hurd, still not ready.
*BSD, still dying.
Re:Things To Look Forward (Score:3, Funny)
More Spam (Score:5, Funny)
AND...we'll be getting them much longer. Jeez!
Not the right question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not the right question (Score:5, Insightful)
The same overtone of moral disapproval you express has greeted every major medical advance. And it may take a while for people to hash out, but the overwhelming response in the end is always, "Hell yes, we should!"
Re:Not the right question (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm thinking more about population growth rate, living space and use of resources. Not to mention the disparity between rich and poor. If you think that's bad now, think about if being rich automatically means you get several generations to amass a fortune
Re:Not the right question (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, the advances will not be just for the rich.
It'll be fine (Score:3, Interesting)
Woman, after they reach menopause won't be able to have any more children, so people probably won't have much longer child-bearing ages then they do now. (although culture might adapt to have children raised by their 'young' and healthy grandparents or something, rather then young and inexperianced 30somethings).
But as stu
Re:Not the right question (Score:5, Insightful)
And, especially when it comes to immortality, cause and effect dovetail nicely. The same people who can't see the possibilities in immortality are the same people who wouldn't be able to handle it well themselves.
For instance, one common objection I hear to a 1000+ year lifespan is, "I'd get really bored. What would you do with all that time?" My response is always, "What would you NOT do?" More time opens up more possibilities. So, the people who can't (or won't) see the experiential possibilities a longer lifespan creates also can't (or won't) see the ways out of the social problems it creates.
XMAS will be a bitch with 40000 relatives (Score:3, Funny)
Out of the love of our children. (Score:4, Insightful)
I love my (step) children, and the last thing my generation will do for them is to die and get out of the way so they can fill our shoes.
If my generation stays as productive adults forever (or close to it) they my kids must remain teen-agers for ever. The greats of any given generation only become great when those before them have exited the stage.
Elizabeth Moon touches on this in some of her books.
Re:Out of the love of our children. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's simply not true. Look at the lives of the greats in the sciences, the arts, politics, etc. and you'll see that at the point when their greatness was recognized, their mentors of the previous generation were usually alive and kicking.
Re:Out of the love of our children. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'
Re:Out of the love of our children. (Score:3, Insightful)
The world is changing so rapidly that there is plenty of advantage that the younger generations have in way of not having to unlearn a bunch of obsolete assumptions and concerns. The older generations wi
Re:Not the right question (Score:3, Insightful)
As it should: there have been very few medical advances that have actually increased human lifespan or health. Many medical advances feed on fear of the inevitable, have increased suffering needlessly, and are a bottomless financial pit.
And, in case you were wondering why we live longer on average, it's not due to medicine, it's almost entirely due to public health measures, a reliable food supply, and prevention.
Re:Not the right question (Score:3, Insightful)
not precisly (Score:3, Informative)
If you take pre five year old in the mixe, then you are including infant maortality, which was a staggering number until about 75 years ago.
So, were not actually liveng that much longer, but more of us are given the chance to live beyond 5.
So the original poster is right about not increase the lifespan, but very very wrong about it not improving health.
Re:for the sake of evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as society exists, you can rule out any kind of human evolution. The only solution for all this is improved medicine.
Re:Not the right question (Score:5, Insightful)
When you ask that question, to make it honest, you should ask "Should YOU live forever?" After all, people who are against such things aren't against it for themselves, they're against it for OTHER PEOPLE.
After all, a person can choose not to get the treatment to live indefinitely, or even commit suicide if they've had enough. They don't need restrictions to keep themselves from the long lifespans. They want them to keep other people from getting them.
Re:Not the right question (Score:5, Insightful)
What's with this "we" shit? Speak for yourself.
Social Security (Score:2)
Re:Social Security (Score:2, Informative)
Not really... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not really... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even leaving that aside, though, people are changing too. In my opinion, people growing up in first-world countries today (in the last 20 years, really) will be less susceptible to that particular symptom of aging than their ancestors because they're used to things changing all the time. The rate of change will continue to increase if you believe Vernor Vinge [caltech.edu], but "things are changing faster than they did when I was young" is a different kettle of fish than "things were about the same when I was 15 and when I was 5, so why can't they stay that way forever?"
You can choose to greet change by cowering in fear and retreating into a hole or meeting it head-on and treating it as an opportunity. I believe today's kids are more likely to do the latter than previous generations were.
And even leaving that aside, you can bet that the perspective of a 70-year-old who hasn't even reached the average age of the population yet will be a bit different than one who's reaching the tail end of the actuarial tables.
Re:Not really... (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, the mother of one of my friends is extremely uptight. Most people I know who've been in contact with her were either swiftly banned
Other problems... (Score:2)
Plus, where will we fit everyone?
Maybe (Score:2)
Man that's a long time to be a virgin (Score:5, Funny)
no thanks (Score:2)
also, in practical terms, i'd rather not know that my death will most likely be by a sudden accident and that i can't ever "retire" because i won't know how long i'll live (hence how much i need.)
Who wants to live forever, when love must die? (Score:5, Insightful)
Arch Obler addressed some of the realities of such a life span in one of the episodes of the old radio show "Lights Out".
There was a revolution. The younger generation was tired of being held down by the generation that was in power when immortality became possible. Bereft of political power for hundreds of years, there was a violent and bloody revolt, resulting in the massacre of the older generation.
Can you imagine the state of civil rights if the people running the country in the 1950s were still alive and well?
To an extent, society just doesn't change unless the older generation dies off.
Re:Who wants to live forever, when love must die? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who wants to live forever, when love must die? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad SOMEONE picked up on this. Notice in my original post, I said:
To an extent, society just doesn't change unless the older generation dies off.
Notice that I dind't say "Advance" or "evolve".
That change isn't necessarily good. You're right about the civil rights example. The changes we're seeing now in America are bad, destructive and counter to the ideals upon which the nation was founded. If the current crop of leaders were granted immortality and ended up trading off on who was president for centuries, things would only get worse.
The point I was getting at, is not so much that one generation is better than the last, but that the BAD generations wouldn't ever die off. The newer generation isn't necessarily any better than those before it, but even with the worst leaders possible, the most destructive, oppressive regimes around, we have the consolation of knowing that sooner or later they'll die. What comes after them won't necessarily be better or worse, but at least there's the opportunity for the worst of us to die off. Of course this means the best of us die off as well, but at least the next generation has the opportunity to learn form the mistakes of the past, without necessarily having the ego of having committed them personally blinding them to the lessons.
Probably not (Score:2)
If we achieved immortality (Score:2)
All kidding aside, it would remove the current obstacle of slow-speed space exploration.
A 60-year mission to Pluto? No problemo.
Let me guess ... (Score:5, Funny)
not that novel (Score:2)
Cate Archer (Score:2)
sure, why not (Score:2)
there's no fundamental reason (that we know of) that a sentient biological entity shouldn't be able to sustain itself indefinitely. the only reason we're not effectively immortal is that we're not designed to be. there's no evolutionary advantage to being so.
Fixing aging (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the Catholics are gonna like this very much.
Re:Fixing aging (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you imagine the consequences? (Score:2)
Of course, we could always legalize murder to balance it out a little, but I think having everyone not live 1,000 years is a better idea.
Imortality-must restrict reproduction (Score:2)
So any cure for aging would need to also include a limit on reproduction. Perhaps the treatment would, by law, include sterilization. And perhaps the treatment would be denied to anyone with more than a certain number of children.
Life in prison would be expensive (Score:2)
And who would we, as a tax-paying society, be obliged save from an early death via old age? Prisoners? Poor? Past Presidents?
medical knowledge too unstable for conclusions (Score:2, Interesting)
I am optimistic that someday medicine will have a better understanding, but not today.
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think how well my meager investments will be doing after they've had the chance to grow for 100 years! I'll be loaded!
Seriously, I think the money and class issues are the interesting side of this. If it happened there would be a clear class division between those that could afford it and those that couldn't. And for those that could, their wealth could grow without bounds. Our (in the US and most other western countries) society depends on inheritance and the associated taxes, dividing of estates, etc, to redistribute wealth, and this would immediately negate that effect. Anyone with an estate worth much could afford the technology to extend their life, and therefore not pass on the estate.
While it raises all kinds of social issues, on a personal level it means each of us has to try to accumulate enough wealth to get into the category of people that can afford it before the end of our natural lifespan. It's a race against time.
Did anyone notice... (Score:2)
At least live long enough to... (Score:4, Interesting)
But we WANT to be out of it... (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome our new Go'uld overlords (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that it would only be available to relatively few people. People who could afford multimillion dollar fees (which might exist solely to keep out the riffraff) or people with key political connections.
Working slaves can forget about it. Banks can always repossess a multimillion dollar house, but what do you do here when somebody declares bankruptcy after treatment?
The bottom line is that assets and power will quickly become (even more) concentrated in the top 1% or so of the population. Imagine what the average working person could do with a second lifetime where they own their own home from the beginning -- but they would start with much more real world experience and street smarts. Now imagine the same thing with people will millions of dollars in assets and dozens of lifetimes of experience.
The result would not be unlike the Go'uld in Stargate. The "immortals" might even put on the cloak of divinity. A few hundred years ago monarchs claimed they ruled by divine right, but they died just like us. How hard would it be for people with a centuries-long lifetime to manipulate society so the emphemerals believe that the immortals are graced by god. How long would it take for the emphemerals to forget that these medical treatments even forget or that everyone naturally dies within a century or so.
Death Becomes Her (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think this is possible... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you replace every damaged cell, there are still supercellular structures (tissues, organs) that have to be maintained. You are probably going to need a lot of wholesale organ replacement. Living things have elvolved to grow their organs from small or large by multiplying cells in a certain pattern. I'm not sure that cell replacement can adequately maintain that pattern. If you have an old house and you replace each piece of wood as it rots out, small inacuracies will build up over time, and the whole structure will become misshapen, and you will have to replace the whole wall.
I guess the point is that living things were designed to grow, and by that I mean go from small to large, into adult form, and then die. Can maintenance really work? If you look at, say, the spiral pattern on a flower, I think it's fairly easy to get one cell to multiply into that pattern, but then to replace a single petal? A lot of our organs have that branching tree structure. I think it's easier to grow that than to maintain. I don't know if our DNA has a program to replace a section of artery, but it certainly has a program to grow it.
I remember from a radio interview a museum curator said "It's easier to destroy than to create, and it's easier to create than to maintain". I think it will be cheaper to make new people and let the old ones die than it will be to maintain everyone.
Inkjet printers for cells (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting counterpoint:
From Eurekalert [eurekalert.org]: University of Manchester makes made-to-measure skin and bones a reality using inkjet printers [eurekalert.org]
Re:Inkjet printers for cells (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't think this is possible... (Score:4, Informative)
Macrocellular problems are mainly in the "cell loss/atrophy" and "extracellular junk" plus "crosslinking". Extracellular junk is stuff like plaques (Alzheimer's) and probably arthritis as well - it's what degrades people's life experience probably most significantly.
The really interesting one is the "perfect cure for cancer", WILT - whole-body interdiction of lengthening of telomeres. Basically, the idea is that you can say "I don't care about nuclear mutations. The body already has developed a perfect way of handling those problems - kill off the screwed up cell, and replace it." The main flaw in that is cancer, and so all you really need is a "perfect cure for cancer".
The perfect cure for cancer is to prevent cells from ever being able to replicate infinitely, by preventing them from lengthening their telomeres (telomeres shorten a little after each cell division, and when they run out, the cell dies) - then, a cancer cell can divide, but eventually, the whole thing up and breaks down. The problem with this, of course, is that your body needs to replicate indefinitely - so his suggestion is that we lengthen telomeres ex vivo - that is, outside the human body. So you go in, say, once every few years, for a treatment, and then you'll never get cancer. If you miss the treatment, though, you'll die, so it's a bit of a tradeoff.
Interestingly, that sounds like a bizarre idea, but it has benefits, because it also would be a cure for a rare disease - dyskeratosis congenita, who are naturally missing the ability to lengthen telomeres. (This of course means these people are cancer-immune: they only live ten years, which is the downside)
and I think cells are only capable of growing into that patten, not necessarily replacing bad sections.
If you have an entire bad section, it's not from aging - it's from injury, and that's not what he's talking about. It's just senescence - that is, the falling apart of the body as it gets older.
It's important to remember most major systems in your body replace themselves completely, on average every 7 years. Some much faster, like the lining of your stomach. So your body is quite capable of replacing cells one at a time, except for senescence.
One of the best things about this kind of research is that all of the problems he's suggesting we work on have real consequences now. So there's benefit to working on them individually, but we also should be thinking a bit more globally in treatment regarding it. If you can come up with something that gets rid of almost all extracellular junk, for instance, it'll take care of Alzheimer's, heart disease, and several other problems as well.
But Immortals Also Die! (Score:3, Interesting)
Immortals also die.
Just because your body will never naturally die doesn't mean you'll live forever. There are diseases that act in means outside what we're discussing. There's suicide. There's murder. And (I don't remember where I read it; if someone has a cite, I'd be grateful) actuarial science shows that the rate at which people die in accidents is sufficiently high that even if we never got sick or old we'd still manage to off ourselves by doing something stupid sometime before our 500th birthdays. On average.
People would still die. As individuals, we're just too stupid to live forever, no matter how sturdy our bodies are.
No No No (Score:3, Insightful)
De Grey has broken the golden, unwritten rule of life sciences:
Have Humility in the Face of Nature
Fax Yourself a New Body (Score:3, Interesting)
An unintended consequence is that people who've stepped into a fax plate exist only as data, and data can be manipulated. Software can (and does, in his fiction), fix damage, remove disease, and undoes genetically programmed death. The upshot of all this is that everyone has the perfectly toned bodies of 20 year old athletes, and the worst that happens in death is that you lose a few hours of memories for ever. As long as a fax gate is nearby (and they're as common as telephones in McCarthy's future), the damage would have to be pretty extensive to cause actual death, otherwise your body can simpley be tossed into the nearest fax, and a repaired you will be spit out almost immediately. You're immorbid, incapable of natural death, and with backups made everytime you step through a gate, you're theoretically immortal.
Of course, with the notion to tamper comes the required self improvement. Soldiers would elect to have carbon nanofibres woven into their skeleton, and protective diamond plates inserted around major organs. Slashdot weenies, tired of receiving wedgies, could order up a buff exterior and pump up their enemies. Women could go blonde for a day, or enlarge their boobs for that special date, then shrink them down when they become a nuisance. You can even, with enough mass in the buffers, make copies of yourself.
Is this possible? Depends on who you ask. Some nanologists poo poo the notion of nanoassemblers citing electronic forces on the atomic level as inhibiting the movement of little claws. Others poo poo the poo pooers by pointing out that individual atoms have already been manipulated in the lab.
The overall issue of immorbidity raises new questions. If we are incapable of death ourselves, do we lose our concept of it, and therefore our fear of it? Or how about, what if someone chooses to die. Their immorbid and highly improved bodies won't allow it. And what happens when you reach the physiologicallimit of your own memory capacity? Do you download it into a flash disk, or just dump them forever. And with people living for centuries, what do you do with all the bored, unemployable, and resource draining people who will overpopulate the planet in a society where production of basic goods is so efficient that there are absolutely no environmental pressures or population controls? Well...besides colonize space (which didn't work so well in McCarthy's books).
This guy seems like an idiot (Score:4, Informative)
I have a degree in Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology. I used to work in a Genetics research lab as well. Now, I'm no Cambridge Scholar, but I'm not stupid. But unless I'm missing something, this guy has basic points wrong in most of his 7 points.
Eliminating telomerase is not bad, and a way to reduce/eliminate cancer. Telomoerase is essential for Germ Cells, i.e. sperm and egg cells. It seems unlikely to be able to eliminate it in all cells but these.
Cancer cells don't need telomerase. There are countless avenues to cancerous cell growth.
Stimulation cell growth is good and necessary. Cell growth in the brain could be extremely problematic. The brain is a living, connected system. The connections are what make the brain what it is. Unlike computeres with fixed hardware and variable software, the brain is variable in both. The electrical patterns can change as well as the paths the patterns take. Essentially, they are insepearable. The addition of new cells, with no way to control their connectedness would not aleveate the problems of cellular degredation and loss.
Extrecellular protein linkages are unique. Biology is extremely effecient at its use of chemical compounds, structurally. Our knowledge of protein strcuture is limited, due to the limitiations we have of computational modeling due to limited computational abilities. That he should think that extracellular proteins show unique linkages seems hubristic. It is possible we don't understand all protein interactions yet.
Cell growth can be stimulated naturally. Here, even a passing comment has errors. Muscle cells are stimulated to divide by excercise. No! Excercise increases the size of muscles by stimulating an increase in production of muscle fiber proteins. More proteins cause a cell to be larger, and thus the overall muscle to be bigger. Thus excercise increases the size of muscles, not the number of cells. This is basic biology.
Mitochondrial proteins will work in the nucleus.While most cells in the world use a universal genetic code, some vary specific cells do not fully share the code's universality. Some non-eukaryotic cells and mitochondria. (It is interesting to note that mitochondria are thought to be descendended from symbiotic [wikipedia.org] non-eukaryotics cells themselves.) I don't know off the top of my head if these proteins will work with both codes, but it seems likely that even if the nucleus can produce the raw protein, the proper folding, transport, and ultimate use of the proteins might not occurt since they are not where they need to be, namely inside the mitochondria. Only native proteins might be functional.
Again, I might have too simple an outlook or be completely incorrect, but it seems that there are basic concepts of biology that conflict with de Grey's ideas.
Re:Overpopulation (Score:2)
Re:God didn't give us long lifespans for a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
And as much as I am seriously a religious person I don't let it stand in the way of the rights of others to choose. Man will play out his destiny and if God has a problem with it I'm sure he can take care of it on his own. I doubt that a group of scientists can stand in the way of God's plan.
Who knows... We of faith may be dead wrong too and that in itself should be reason enough for us to let others "do unto themselves". Instead of bashing people with Bibles (or Korans or Gitas or Necronomicons) we should be tolerant and guide those who desire our guidance.
Re:Your Forgetting (Score:3, Insightful)
Marriage would probably become contractual arrangements to stay together for, say, 20 years, with options after that for a specified amount of time (5, 10, or 20 years). Romantics would probably still try for "til death do you part" but I suspect a major change would come around in how it's viewed by society.
Reproduction would almost certainly be done by permit only if one subjected oneself to these kind of treatments. If one did not, and the normal lifespan
Re:The Selfish Gene (Score:3, Interesting)
In most places in America, even have sex at all with people younger than 16 can land you in jail very quickly. I'm not familiar with laws outside the USA, but there are some similar laws in Europe as well.
If