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!"
Slightly off topic (Score:2, Informative)
anyway, the online book is here [kuro5hin.org]
CMX-1152 / ependymin / ROHLEN (Score:3, Informative)
Blatent friend promotion.... (Score:2, Informative)
It's the cover story in the May/June issue.
http://www.thehumanist.org/
I don't know of a direct link to the full article... but it's worth picking up a copy in a bookstore.
Reference to a previous /. story (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a link... [slashdot.org]
And a link to the current site of bioethics.gov's views on aging retardation. [bioethics.gov]
Re:for one thing (Score:5, Informative)
Um, not quite (Score:3, Informative)
More than a few of those centennarians in Russia.. are not centennarians. Quite a few lied about their ages to avoid military conscription during Stalin's day.
As for the Chinese, well, there may be a similar argument there, not sure.
The Guinness Book is loathe to accept records for longevity for the larger reason. Lack of reliable evidence makes claims to longevity ripe for fraud. Think of how unreliable record-keeping must have been in various parts of the world over 100 years ago. Or how many records have been destroyed by disaster or conflict over the years..
Re:Obligatory Heinlein quote (Score:3, Informative)
"May you love as long as you live, and live as long as you wish." (Minerva, Time Enough for Love)
Should be: "May you love as long as you live, and live as long as you love."
Re:no (Score:5, Informative)
IANAG, but I am a MD.
Those things are called telomeres, they shorten in most cells with each copying of the DNA. Except that in germ (reproductive) cells there are telomerases, which re-lenghten the telomeres.
Problem solved right, just turn on your telomerases? wrong, cancer does that....
Read more at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re:no (Score:3, Informative)
I believe theyre called telomeres(sp?)
Re:CMX-1152 / ependymin / ROHLEN (Score:3, Informative)
As a starting point for something better tolerated, however, I agree it looks very promising.
Re:no (Score:5, Informative)
Longevity is closely tied to poor birth records (Score:3, Informative)
The likely cause? People inflate their ages to gain respect. He even uncovered proof of this in one of his examples.
The human body wears out at approximately ~80 years age. Based on Austeads studies of Opposums, he has developed a hypothesis that the period of female fertility is evolutionarily controlled by an organisms life expectancy in the face of predators and a hostile environment, which in turn drives the rate at which the organism "wears out"
Thus, our life expectancy is hard-wired into our genes, and is the product of the ~35 years of life that a prehistorical homo sapiens could expect to survive.
Yes, it is possible to manipulate gene expression, or even replace genes entirely with a retro-virus (despite what they said in the pseudo-scientific babble in Blade Runner). However, I expect that I will be long dead or rotted by the time the medical arts have gotten that good.
Eggs? (Score:3, Informative)
Which article? (Score:1, Informative)
The guy posted five links. To which article is he referring, the Fortune one that requires registration?
Re:Entropy will win (Score:3, Informative)
The spice extends life (Score:3, Informative)
As it stands now, your children don't end up like steadily more badly-mutated humans because there's a 'pre-culling' process that goes on. Sperm with bad mutations die or never make it very far. Eggs undergo a lesser culling process. Embryos that have problems are by and large let go naturally by the body - and mostly with good reason.
Those 'proving grounds' reset most genetic troubles from generation to generation, something that we cannot do quite as well for our own cells.
Michael West's The Immortal Cell [amazon.com] is a pretty interesting account of one researcher who has been chasing the dream for a number of years. It's pretty fascinating reading, and those who haven't been watching the field will be amazed at what we have not only figured out, but what we have actually accomplished.
One option that comes up for the shorter term is tissue cloning. There are actually a number of things we know already (some from Michael West's book):
(It seems we can also 'reset' cellular programs by de-alkylating histones - those big 4-piece wintergreen mints that DNA is wrapped around. Histone alkyl 'tails' seem to have a lot to do with telling a cell what it actually does. Some of West's research indicates that you can get this to happen as part of the tissue cloning process)
So, instead of using hard-to-procure human eggs, you can perhaps use rabbit eggs (I'm sure the Australians wouldn't mind) and have what amounts to basically switching Duracell batteries for Energizer batteries. You can then pick out the healthy clonal cells for division into tissues.
With genomics, proteomics and experimentation, we can find the hormones or hormone chains to specialize the cells into skin, retinas, livers or even bone marrow.
Bone marrow gets my vote as a worthy cause. Being able to produce blood from the DNA of known-good donors would provide a decent backup if the ideal solution - cloning blood from the patient's own DNA - can't be done in time.
Sure beats any other 'stem cell source' we can get our hands on.
The next steps would be to try repairing aging cells in situ. The two biggies to fix which researchers have identified are the shortening telomeres (chromosome caps) and mitochondria (they are more susceptible to mutation, being more bacteria-like and exposed to by-products of burning food for energy).
Some good news at least in that it seems that we might not induce cancer in an attempt to lengthen telomeres - although further testing will be required.
It's pretty amazing how far we've come, but the things that are going to make the difference are going into the pipeline now - expect pretty fantastic things in 20 years, perhaps even 15.
Re:In response to the anticipated flood ... (Score:3, Informative)
If you saw the 60 minutes expose on this recently they were also a dumping ground for normal children whose parents didn't want them. They were officially branded as morons by the states, though they had average intelligence and were never able to escape the stigma. It effectively stole their entire lives from them. They were never educated and could never get a decent job. Some of them were so institutionalized that they return to the home in adulthood. The home 60 minutes covered also suffered rampant sexual abuse.
Its a pretty bad thing when governments start sorting people to decide who is and isn't up to society's standards. I'm pretty sure you were outraged when the Nazi's did it. Why do you look the other way when America was doing basically the same thing (just not outright killing people).
"Where did you get that fact from?"
Indiana passed the United States' first forced sterilization law.
These laws didn't apply to just the mentally ill.
The law encompassed the "feebleminded, insane, criminalistic, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf; deformed; and dependent"
Thirty states ultimately had forced sterilization laws. They were upheld by the Supreme Court in 1927.
I'll grant you its a little hard to qualify who is a "leader" in the grisly field of Eugenics but the U.S. had some of its great luminaries and pioneers in the early 20th century.
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/es
As an aside you should look at the history of Indiana in the early 20th century. It is an interesting study in how extreme parts of America were then. The U.S. was actually very heavily tied to the Nazi's economically and philosophically in the 20's and 30's though revisionist history tries to deny it. George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott, was the U.S. banker for Nazi Germany's richest industrialist, Fritz Thyssen who helped put Adolph Hitler in power.
Re:Eggs? (Score:4, Informative)
Very recently, this was shown to be false [newscientist.com], at least for mice. But everyone now confidently expects to find similar results in humans.
Re:no (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, "turning on the telomerases" is closer to a possible solution than you claim. I wish I could find the article again (if anyone else can, please post), but I can't, so here's the summary: A group of scientists took a worm and messed with its genes so that it constantly made telomerase. The worm was supposed to have a life span of 2 weeks (this was not a garden worm, but some kind of funny roundworm or something). After 1 year, it still appeared normal and healthy. It is quite possible that telomerase will do this sort of thing to other organisms too, but there are ethical questions that need to be resolved before we do testing on humans.
In response to your quip about cancer, yes, cancer cells constantly produce telomerase. This is why cancer can continue to grow and not die off (indeed, you can even get certain decades-old cancer strains in biological catalogues). However, this only keeps cancer cells from growing frail and losing important genes. The part that makes them grow and divide at a malicious rate is unrelated. This has to do with a protein called p53. p53 usually just sits around, but when a cell exhibits certain cancerous behaviors, p53 lyses (kills) it. In cancer cells, the gene that makes p53 no longer works (either it has been disabled, or it has a mutation in it that causes it to no longer make p53). This is why cancer cells are harmful - they do not stop replicating. This has almost nothing to do with telomerase. The telomerase just keeps the genes in the cancer cells (and in regular cells too) healthy. Indeed, all cells have a little telomerase in them, but not enough to completely repair the telomeres after the DNA has been copied.
His numbers are wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Then there's the matter of perspective. The plage of the 1300's killed as much as half of the population in the cities that did not institute quarantines, which flys in the face of his "age is the number one killer" premise.
Queen Mothers' advisers doing badly (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:3, Informative)
The buildup of ketones is very similar to what happens to diabetics who don't regulate themselves strictly enough. [ehendrick.org] It's one of the leading causes of many of the health problems diabetics suffer from.
The buildup of ketones leads to metabolic acidosis. Specifically, "This can occur when the body uses fats for energy instead of carbohydrates. Conditions where metabolic acidosis can occur include chronic alcoholism, malnutrition, and diabetic ketoacidosis. Consuming a diet low in carbohydrates and high in fats can also produce metabolic acidosis." [chclibrary.org]
You have it backwards (Score:2, Informative)
Most people in the world still depend on children to be their 'retirement fund.' If there is a high death rate (especially of children), then parents must assure their old age pension by producing more children. More children means that odds are better that there will be enough of them alive to support their parents.
China has a one child / couple rule and a cultural custom where only sons (and son's wife) supports the parents in their old age. Therefore, many couples choose to have a boy. It has now been 20+ years since this rule started to be enforced. Can you guess what their problem is now?
Re:(Shamelessly ripped off from The Onion) (Score:2, Informative)
And as another poster said, while evolution has been enormously important in bringing humans to this point, we are now foxing it in all kinds of ways (think genetic medicine) and do not rely on it for future progress.
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, so it's the fat metabolism that does it... (like I said, I'm not a nutritional scientist), but the point is, your body is thrown into a state of ketosis (http://atkins.com/helpatkins/newfaq/answers/Since StartingTheAtkinsProgramIHaveBadBreath.html) Ketosis is GREAT for weight-loss. You con your body into feeding off its own fat. But like I said, you don't want to be on this for the *long term*. A "low carb lifestyle" is NOT healthy.
Would you mind providing a reference for the "Ketoines cause organ damage"-claim, or would that spoil the fun?
http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fSectionId= 342&fArticleId=255925
"Ketosis happens when the body needs glucose to fuel its processes, and can't get it from its usual source - carbohydrates. The body has a back-up mechanism that turns to stored fat or protein to produce the glucose, by going into a state called ketosis.
The problem with ketosis is that its by-products are toxic to the body in excess.
Ketogenic diets have been implicated in causing not only halitosis (bad breath), but also cancer, heart disease, kidney ailments and brittle bones.
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:2, Informative)
The current record holder for the reversal prize is Tom Kirkwood whose mouse lived a long time because of "good husbandry" to the ripe old age of approx 1500 days.. while Andrej Bartke won the postponenement prize by genetically altering the insulin receptor of a mice allowing it to live to 1820 days..
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:1, Informative)
In DKA, the body has an insulin deficiency: not just a low level, but an insufficient level. In DKA, there's plenty of blood sugar (in fact, probably too much), and the cells desperately need it, but it can't get in. The body tries to compensate by cranking out all sorts of other hormones, but it's hopeless without insulin, and the metabolism becomes wildly deranged.
In ketosis, the body has a low insulin level, because there isn't much glucose that needs to be packed away for storage. There isn't much glucose because you're not eating much carbohydrates.
*Actually, there's a condition called insulin resistance where it is partially ignored. This condition is usually caused by obesity, when fat cells get sick and tired of storing calories when called on by insulin. The body responds a little like in DKA, but the hormone levels don't go completely out of whack. This chronic low-level derangement of metabolism is a principal reason overweightness is unhealthy.
Moderation is the key. Refined sugar and starch are fine in small amounts. It's getting 1/3rd of your calories from them day in, day out that kills. Yes! The Nurse's Health Study has found that trans fatty acids (hydrogenated oils) are obscenely unhealthy, significantly worse than pure lard. At the others have said, moderation is the key. If there's no such thing as one peanut for you, then you should probably avoid snacks. OTOH, quite a few people overeat less if they can have snacks to keep them from getting ravenously hungry in the first place. And there's the rub. Until we get a magic Healthy Weight Pill, fundamental lifestyle changes are the only solution. That requires a different strategy than going on a "vacation from bad food".Aubrey de Grey to speak in Toronto on Aug. 7 (Score:2, Informative)
15 years? More like 800 years. (Score:4, Informative)
I don't believe that "15 year" answer, so I looked at a mortality table and did the math myself. I came up with an estimate of 800 years.
The acturial tables that you want are called mortality tables. Here is a collection of them from the American National Center for Health Statistics.
NCHS Data Warehouse [cdc.gov]
Going to the first table, death rates by age, the death rate for 15-24 year olds is 80.7 per 100,000 (all states, 2001).
This means that in the year 2001, in this population group, for each 100,000 people, 99,919.3 of people of these ages lived, and 80.7 of them died.
Or, to scale it down: start with 1000 people. In a year, 1 person dies, and 999 live. What's the average life span of that population? It's a hell of a lot longer than "15 more than normal 60 or so"!
A quick calculation, log(0.5)/log(0.999193)), shows that the median life expectancy of a "perpetual 20 year old", would be 858 more years. That is, if you had 100,000 of these perpetual 20 year olds, after 858 years, 50,000 of them would still be alive.
Calculating average is a bit trickier and I'll leave it alone.
The primary observation was that, while older people are on the average more susceptible to such things than younger people, the difference isn't all that great.
Oh yes it is.
ALL AGES: 848.5
0-1 year: 683.4
1-4 years: 33.3
5-14 years: 17.3
15-24 years: 80.7
25-34 years: 105.2
35-44 years: 203.6
45-54 years: 428.9
55-64 years: 964.6
65-74 years: 2,353.3
75-84 years: 5,582.4
85+ years: 15,112.8
A 50 year old has 5 times the chance of dying as a 20 year old. A 60 year old has 12 times the chance of dying as a 20 year old.
NCHS has lots of interesting tables like these; or you can google for "mortality table" and get tables from other sources, too.
Re:This is cute, but... (Score:3, Informative)
No, it is not, despite the close spelling. In one case, you have breakdown of body's ability to process carbohydrates by a process called insulin resistance. Kidneys need to produce more and more insulin for the cells to process the carbs into fat. Eventually you get into a point where the kidneys cannot supply enough insulin and the blood sugar shoots thru the roof.. And you have got type II diabetes.
And the acidosis is what happens when you intake too many carbs (!) when you have diabetes. In other case, you're consuming very small quantities of carbs by choice, so your body switches over to processing fat instead of carbs for energy. The ketones replace glucose. So in fact the two conditions are caused by exact opposite behavior.
I'm not going to root thru pubmed looking for terribly many references, but here's one [nih.gov]
They recommend low carb diet as a safe and efficient way of controlling seizures in children with parkinson's.
By implication, it would hardly be a recommended treatment if ketosis was in some way a harmful or dangerous state for the body to be in.