Engineering An End to Aging 986
Reason writes "Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey has put forward a biological engineering plan to end human aging and co-founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize in recent years. Now he is finally getting some of the public recognition he deserves in an excellent David Stipp article at Fortune Magazine. If you ever wondered exactly how to go about engineering away the 50 million deaths due to aging that occur each and every year - and how to bring about a sea change in the scientific establishment - then this is the place to start. As an added bonus, I don't think you'll find a more succinct (and utterly British) answer to overpopulation objections to life extension than the one at the end of this article!"
some one has to say (do) it. (Score:5, Funny)
http://hhgproject.org/entries/wowbagger.html
I am just afraid... (Score:5, Funny)
My bet on who wins (Score:1, Funny)
Job applications of the future (Score:5, Funny)
Cheers,
Ian
murder rate will sky rocket (Score:5, Funny)
1) Wives will just get tired of thier husbands if they have to live together that long and vice versa.
2)If people won't just die on their own then someone will end up killing them. Right now, we at least have the feeling that some peopel will just die someday.
3)If you have my neighbors for that long of a time you might kill them too.
An End to Aging (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Don't (Score:4, Funny)
Simple solution: Annual Free Motorcycle day!
That'll take care of that overpopulation problem in a jiffy!
spam (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. You've got a point. Oh well, if aging turns out to be curable, maybe stupidity will too.
Heinlein... (Score:3, Funny)
Basically, you look for people who have all four original grandparents still living, and encourage them to breed with each other. Money was the incentive used.
But then, his concept required that you start the project in the 1800s. Today, I imagine you'd probably look for people with all eight great-grandparents surviving.
Re:I am just afraid... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:some one has to say (do) it. (Score:2, Funny)
but would you learn to spell?
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Off with their balls! (Score:5, Funny)
That's the roaches and rats, dude. Time to get a maid I thinks.
Eat your heart out... (Score:2, Funny)
which de Grey figures will limit life expectancy to about 5,000 years.
Eat your heart out, Leto II!
Is anyone else a little freaked out by the spider-goats?
(Shamelessly ripped off from The Onion) (Score:5, Funny)
World Death Rate Remains Steady at 100%
World Death Rate, Annual
------------------------
2004 (est) 100.00%
2003 100.00%
2002 100.00%
2001 100.00%
2000 100.00%
Source: USA Today
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:for one thing (Score:1, Funny)
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:5, Funny)
Cull the bottom 75% by physical beauty and then just rule over them.
Re:Job applications of the future (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so, what your saying is.... (Score:2, Funny)
(ducks and runs)
Re:Job applications of the future (Score:5, Funny)
1964 Slashdot: "If we're still using COBOL 40 years from now, then you can keep your age-extension drugs!"
Re:Heinlein... (Score:1, Funny)
Wow, what a great way to populate the world with people from the Ozarks.
Government Checks (Score:2, Funny)
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Job applications of the future (Score:2, Funny)
Most likly, they would spend ~50 years in a career, and then spend the next 1000+ living off Social Security.
Re:I am just afraid... (Score:4, Funny)
"Whatever, you do your thing, I'll do mine. Y'know. Whatever. You're the stupid one. Think you're gonna live forever? Nope. Someone'll kill ya. Someone'll kill ya with a knife. Sorry, that's just the way it is."
-Carl, ATHF
What do you mean? (Score:1, Funny)
Vila
Wow, that is hilarious! (Score:5, Funny)
HAHAHAHAHAHA! Those crazy Brits!
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:I am just afraid... (Score:5, Funny)
Roy: Death.
Tyrell: Death. Well, I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction, you--
Roy: I want more life, fucker.
Tyrell: The facts of life. To make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it's been established.
Roy: Why not?
Tyrell: Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have undergone reversion mutations give rise to revertant colonies like rats leaving a sinking ship. Then the ship sinks.
Roy: What about EMS recombination.
Tyrell: We've already tried it. Ethyl methane sulfonate as an alkylating agent and potent mutagen. It created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before he left the table.
Roy: Then a repressive protein that blocks the operating cells.
Tyrell: Wouldn't obstruct replication, but it does give rise to an error in replication so that the newly formed DNA strand carries the mutation and you've got a virus again. But, uh, this-- all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
Roy: But not to last.
Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very very brightly, Roy. Look at you. You're the prodigal son. You're quite a prize!
Re:I'm currently 58 years old and I'm not bored.. (Score:3, Funny)
a.) 58
and
b.) not bored
that begs the question.. what are you doing here?
Re:Longer Lives = A Better World (Score:2, Funny)
You just say that because you haven't tried it yet!
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:3, Funny)
Talk about a generation gap!
If I was telling my children "when I was your age, a hundred years ago ...", I'd expect them to end my aging process with a weapon.
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh well, if aging turns out to be curable, maybe stupidity will too. ;)
That one's easy - give them power tools.
Copyright law... (Score:2, Funny)
Well, at least no one could make another derivative work of Michael Crichton's [imdb.com] books.
Yeah, I know its not truly derivative, since he wrote the screenplay, but you get the point.
Don Henley's Already Pointed out the Problem (Score:2, Funny)
The Usual Moronic Primate Responses on Page 1 (Score:3, Funny)
Overpopulation? Not when we Transhumanists get through with you monkeys. Your population will be nicely culled, thank you - assuming you don't do it first with your brain-dead wars and inability to cooperate well enough to feed yourselves.
Cloning? Au contraire, mon frere - cloning produces an entirely independent entity - does nothing for immortalizing YOU - unless you brain transplant which raises issues about the clone's brain. And it still leaves you biological and just as subject to death as the next clone.
The only solution to immortality is direct replacement of human biology with nanotech - body, brain, the works - non-destructive, fault-tolerant, failure-tolerant, restartable and resurrectable procedures only.
This will be done.
And whatever you monkeys think about it is irrelevant.
You're going to die. I won't.
Have a nice day.
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:3, Funny)
Just because indefinite-lifespan opponents and their arguments can be predicted, doesn't mean that earth's capacity issues have been solved somehow by magic, or that by ignoring it in favor of praising this new, exciting science the problem just solves itself. It doesn't.
Luckily, we probably won't actually get indefinite lifespans. So you can play the part of the selfish bastard and have fun with it, knowing you'll never really have to pay the price for your stupidity.
Childish, selfish boobs, the lot of you.
Re:Once you can live forever... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow, that is hilarious! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe. Give me a thousand years or so to think it over. :-)
Re:some one has to say (do) it. (Score:4, Funny)
Woody Allen says... (Score:3, Funny)
"Some people want to achieve immortality
through their works or their descendants; I
want to achieve immortality through not dying."
-- Woody Allen
Re:I am just afraid... (Score:1, Funny)
Sounds like windows to me.
Re:some one has to say (do) it. (Score:5, Funny)
C'mon, if you gonna do it, do it right: but wood you learn to spell if you were board?
Re:some one has to say (do) it. (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, YOU are the Knothead!
Re:Don't (Score:1, Funny)
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:5, Funny)
you don't hear people going around debating the morality of having toilets.
Speke for ye selfe. I tosse me shite out the windoe as olde tymes. This I wolde beseche thee hertely, rid ye selves of the infernal toilets! To be carnally mynded is to be emnyte agaynst God! Look ye and fynde how bleste to lyve. [ebay.com]
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