Aging Discovery Yields Nobel Prize

An anonymous reader writes This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded to three scientists who have solved a major problem in biology: how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes, called the telomeres, and in an enzyme that forms them."

Re:Sooo

[nomadic]

Can you imagine being immortal like Duncan, and being buried alive? Assuming the soil was to hard to be clawed through, it would be an awful way to spend an eternity.

Nothing is too hard to claw through given enough time.

I would settle for...

[Vanderhoth]

I would settle for being put to death at 85 to keep population under control, if it meant my bones, mussels and organs didn't age. One of the worst thing about watching someone get old is to see their self reliance taken away and needing someone to help them into and out of the bath, change their diaper, feed them and put them to bed. THE worst thing is realizing someday it could and probably will happen to you.

It's sad but you start off with needing someone to look after you and that's how it ends, if you live that long.

Re:Good find

[dword]

Some say it got small a long time ago, because it can support around 500.000 humans at the rate we're "eating" its resources.
Source [youtube.com].

Re:Sooo

[Vanderhoth]

That's the cycle. The baby boomers retire, the supporting population is to small to sustain them, the world gets flung into chaos for a few decades and/or we learn to deal, the boomers start dying off, there is another period of prosperity because the future generations have learned to be efficient, future generations slowly for get how to be efficient as it's no longer required to support a large aged population, future generations start having multitudes of children, cycle starts over.

Re:Sooo

[MyLongNickName]

Sorry for the reply to myself. If you have never read "I have no mouth, and I must scream", it is very applicable. It is a classic of the science fiction genre, and a well written dystopian story.

This is the only link I could find. I know I have seen it in others...
http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html [archive.org]

Re:Sooo

[dkleinsc]

For instance, being immortal but still aging [wikipedia.org].

Where are we with Viral Immortality?

[Adustust]

I was actually wondering how viral technology was evolving. I'm far from a biologist, so correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we able to reverse engineer and create our own viruses in laboratories now? Doesn't a virus take over your cell and reprogram it with the code wrapped up in the virus itself? It starts making the cell pump out tons of new viruses which ultimately bursts the cell and kills it. How much more difficult would it be to create a virus with your DNA from saved blood at age 20 (say your 60 now), program it to hijack the cell and reprogram it with the new DNA? There would have to be a few modifications made, for example, making it invisible to your immune system, coding the virus to die after reprogramming the cell, etc. Then just fill up an IV and let them flow into your body. I'm sure there's a huge difference from the kind we can engineer versus the type I'm suggesting, but is it possible? Or would the temporary pause of cell function during the reprogramming phase kill you?

Re:Speak for yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

All the people I've spoken to who are near retirement insist they are just tired. What happens when you reached a point you're just done working?

I'm a developer and I love my job, I get new challenges all the time, but I think about what I'm doing and wonder do I really want to be doing the same thing in 20 years? How easy could I be retrained to do something completely different?

I come from a place where coal mining and steel making were big industries for a while. A few years ago the the steel plants closed down due to "lack of demand" and the mines followed shortly after. Our provincial government tried to retrain the labor force to do other things, but so far as I've heard most of the workers who are third and forth generation minors and steel labors and range form thirties to sixties couldn't be retrained to deal with technical issues.

Of course this raises the issue, is it they couldn't be or didn't want to be retrained?

regardless, I'd like to know what really makes people think that after 30 years of doing something they would be able to pick up a new trade and be able to compete with a young work force specifically trained with the skills in new technologies? isn't this one of the issues we have today?

I know a lot of people I work with are good developers because they have experience and I respect, admirer and learn from them. However, some have issues with me and at every turn are trying to put me down because their jealous that while they worked hard with, little or no education in what they do, accumulating the knowledge they needed over a period of years, I'm able to do as much as them sometimes in better ways because I was trained for it. I once had commented to a college that I might like to go back to school and get some SAP training. One of our system administrators stood up and in a very offended voice said, "Going back to school isn't the answer to everything you know!" and promptly stormed out of the room. I later found out she is a single mother with two kids. She "fell" into her position because she's good at what she does, but has been denied promotions several times because she lacks the training our employer is looking for. We work for an employer who willingly pays for us to keep up on our training. Her issue is she couldn't afford the time because of her kids.

now if she could live indefinitely maybe it wouldn't be an issue because eventually her kids would grow up and she'd have the time, but would she want to at that point?