Aging Reversed In Mice 554
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the aging process after experimental treatment developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School turned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies. 'What we saw in these animals was not a slowing down or stabilization of the aging process. We saw a dramatic reversal – and that was unexpected,' says Ronald DePinho, who led the study. The Harvard group focused on a process called telomere shortening where each time a cell divides, the telomeres are snipped shorter, until eventually they stop working and the cell dies or goes into a suspended state called 'senescence.' Researchers bred genetically manipulated mice that lacked an enzyme called telomerase that stops telomeres getting shorter causing the mice to age prematurely and suffer ailments, including a poor sense of smell, smaller brain size, infertility and damaged intestines and spleens. When the mice were given injections to reactivate the enzyme, it repaired the damaged tissues and reversed the signs of aging raising hope among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat in humans – or at least to slow down the aging process."
Quality, not quantity (Score:2, Insightful)
For the most part, most of us live long enough. What is necessary is a substantial increase in the quality of our lives, not an increase in the length of it. If this treatment can return youthful vigor to our cells, that is something amazing. So far we've been relegated to using HGH or steroids or exercise and diet to control our aging process. However, the actual cellular aging progresses unhindered.
A treatment that does not require diet and exercise modifications is sorely needed.
Do not want (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Do not want (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:2, Insightful)
[quote]A treatment that does not require diet and exercise modifications is sorely needed.[/quote]
Absolutely. Because quality of life is measured by how much you can eat in front of your computer without gaining weight.
Just what we needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
You're an engineer, aren't you?
You go: Well, a lot of our problems come from lack of excercise and bad diet. So... we need to tweak our bodies to no longer be troubled by that.
Personally, I'd prefer to see a social and economic reevaluation, that just plain leaves you more time and resources to live a more healthy life in the first place.
Being able to take the time to do these things the usual way would mean a proportional decrease in stress on top of the healthier living.
So in short: Instead of fixing what is broken, make it so it doesn't break in the first place.
Re:Do not want (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't consider this to make people to last forever, but 'unnecessarily long'.
What do you consider a necessary duration? And necessary for what? There is no objective purpose to life - people have to ascribe their own subjective meaning - whatever you think is necessary during your own life is you own subjective value judgement and doesn't apply to anyone else.
we are 'out-breeding' our ability to be able produce enough food ... putting more people on this rock with drastically increased lifespans don't seem to be sch a bright idea to me.
This is a potential problem, but it presumes that technology won't be able to keep up with demand. There is mounting economic pressure (which makes all the difference) to create a renewable infrastructure now. It's only a matter of time. The more people there are, the greater the pressure. People would be able to work for longer, and would be under less pressure to have kids early. There is a large degree of self-correction to the situation, but it's one of those difficult to predict scenarios, becuase it's such a collosal global game-changing event.
Besides, think a bit what it would be like to live forever, it's a nightmare.
I honestly have never understood this attitude. People say it, but never give a reason. Why? You say you love life, so when would that change for you? At what point do you become effectively suicidal? Are you anticipating an afterlife?
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:4, Insightful)
Speak for yourself. I want to live forever.
You're a 20-something, aren't you? Come back and say that in another half a century. Life isn't all that "must-have" after a bunch of decades, even if you're in perfect health. The main problem is that after numerous years of life-experience, you start realizing what unbelievable sacks of shit most people truly are. If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too.
Re:Do not want (Score:5, Insightful)
"we are 'out-breeding' our ability to be able produce enough food"
Says you. I actually work in the field, and we have well more than enough technology, raw seed stock, and modified seed stock, to feed this planet fifty times over for the next twenty generations.
"our main energy source is finite (oil), and our climate seems to be going through changes (i don't care if they're man-made or not),"
These actually pose real problems that we must work upon.
"putting more people on this rock with drastically increased lifespans don't seem to be sch a bright idea to me."
Well, odds are this would only be available to those that could afford it, while the general masses die off. While this leaves a lower population to sustain the planetary population overall, there's also a lower planetary population to handle. Thinking of a worst-case scenario, this would be like giving those hard working and intelligent enough a pass at a super-long life, while eliminating the unwashed masses. That poses another problem, but everything is a problem, and in truth nothing is a total solution.
"Besides, think a bit what it would be like to live forever, it's a nightmare."
I've been dead twice. I think I prefer life, TYVM.
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:2, Insightful)
Takes one to know one?
If you look for certain characteristics in people, you will see them disproportionally to other qualities.
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
Speak for yourself. I want to live forever.
You're a 20-something, aren't you? Come back and say that in another half a century. Life isn't all that "must-have" after a bunch of decades, even if you're in perfect health. The main problem is that after numerous years of life-experience, you start realizing what unbelievable sacks of shit most people truly are. If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too.
You die when you stop enjoying life.
The more I love life, the more beautiful people I meet.
I'm sorry that you lost the love for living.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Old news (Score:3, Insightful)
in reality it would be closer to have your body begin to whither at 40 and die at 70, or have a decent body until your 70 and you can drop dead of cancer at any time after 40.
Re:Do not want (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing a point by the way, an important point.
People, who are short-lived, do not care about the long term consequences. It's like politicians, who are elected only for a few years and all they try to do is to get reelected, they don't care about actually working that much. Same with non-owners of corporations, who are nevertheless on top of them, like seagull CEOs for example, they come in, make a lot of noise, crap all over the place, collect the severance and leave.
People who live longer than our very limited life-spans, and people who have more active life-styles by being healthier, would probably end up thinking a bit more long-term, which may end up being good for the population in the long run.
I do not buy the argument that the natural order of things is GOOD. I think the natural order is actually pretty bad, considering that evolution basically cares about procreation first of all, doesn't care about your quality of life past certain age-point, so it elects the traits in populations that are better suited for the young people, not for those who are maybe 20 years older than 'the young'. But in today's society being 20 years older than 'the young' also has a positive effect (well, with some). They are experienced, they are very knowledgeable and specialized, they are trained, a lot of resources went to their training, they are still useful, but their health is deteriorating and they do become an increasing burden.
If this particular treatment prolongs the life of people by say 40 years, yet makes them younger in the process, it would end up as a net positive for society, because those resources would be available longer and without the downside of being sicker.
Basically sign me up (I am almost sure I will never see this treatment, but I would like to.)
Senescence != immortality (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want to age. I don't care if my life ends at 80 or 90 or 150, I want those years, every last one of them, to be spent without sitting in a hospice as a drooling vegetable. I'd rather get tired of living than spend most of my life on the sliding slope away from the heights of my youth.
When they come to take me away when I'm 150, I'll say good bye to the cruel world, the cruel bedsheets and even the cruel curtains with some sort of tassels.
And as for the population problem, if I was sure I'd live till eternity, I might not even care too much about the propagation of the species (see, I don't really see why Wowbagger had to date Trillian).
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus imagine what would happen to the population if people started living forever. Living forever means being able to fuck forever. Of course mandatory sterilization would be impossible to implement, and of course the babies would want to live forever too, so we would truly see a population explosion like never before.
Assuming you know you are to live forever, what's the rush in breading children? At least until the Earth runs out of latex, you can keep fucking.
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're that disgusted with life after thirty-, forty-, fifty, sixty-something years it has nothing to do with your age. Many people live that long and longer and find something to love.
Maybe you need a hobby.
Re:Do not want (Score:3, Insightful)
Although, if people can live forever, I'm changing my opinion on term limits to "pro" I shudder to imagine what it would be like to have Ted Kennedy as eternal senator.
When it's possible, it's going to happen. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Then the immortals ascended to the heavans (Score:3, Insightful)
I think 100+ years spent in a tin can with other people is something that has such an incredibly high chance of causing extreme psychological issues that I would not agree to send them, volunteers or not. And it raises a whole host of ethical issues as well, such as whether the travelers would have some right to kill one another if they perceived a threat or what to do with some immortal space traveling hero should he try to return to society and be utterly unable to reintegrate, similar to how a lot of ex-felons are when they are released.
Unless we're talking Starship Enterprise-style accommodations here, I would do everything in my power to stop trips like that from ever happening.
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:3, Insightful)
If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too.
Fair trade off, as far as I'm concerned. After all, we're all "THEM" from somebody else's point of view, right?
Besides, "they" aren't individual people, "they" are other people. Douchebags come in all ages, all groups and all eras. If you and your least favourite person both lived without ageing, would your life be improved by their death? No. You'd find someone else to take their place.
Learning to live with other human beings you dislike is a skill. I've met people who never learned it in the first place. I certainly didn't have it a 15. I was much better at it by 25. Perhaps I'll be able to tolerate anyone at 250. Assuming the human lifespan gets that long before I die of old age (unlikely, but there's always hope).
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
Since most people nowadays spend their days that way out of necessity... yes. Quality of life is increased by having your body tolerate its normal usage. It lowers your quality of life that you have to spend several hours a week running in circles and lifting weights just to keep your muscle mass from disappearing and being replaced by useless fat tissue.
I suppose that this might violate some people's ideal of having to earn everything with sweat and blood, but hey: they're free to go jog in a snowstorm while I sit in front of my computer and eat potato chips.
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about time. Time is the most valuable currency we have. We have a finite amount of it. It helps define us and give each moment meaning.
Hypothetical immortality (think Tolkien's elves) would remove all value in time.
Can you imagine a world where people no longer cared about time any longer? They no longer cared about change? I don't think we've met a true conservative until we've met someone who is a thousand years old.
Those who say that life is beautiful and people are wonderful--well yes, the glass is half full. This is so because it's also half empty. If you take away our problems (a key one being mortality), then what is left is not a wonderful, indefinite life. It's simply existing. Forever. Not good. Not bad. Just existing. When you've done everything there is to do, and time has no meaning, you just are.
Sounds like hell, to me.
There must be change, and there must be uncertainty.
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe. I'm only 32, but I would definitely take the live-forever serum if it was offered to me at this point. I'm already having to snip lower-priority things off my life goals list just due to lack of time. Maybe after I'm fluent in all spoken and written languages, fully understand current mathematics and number theory, fully grok current physics, have an encyclopedic knowledge of world history, have mastered cooking, dancing, martial arts, race driving, race flying, have built a computer by hand and written a POSIX-compatible operating system in its native assembly language, have built a car by hand and raced it, have visited every culture in the world and learned their customs well enough to interact freely with them... by the time I've done all those things I have a feeling I'll have thought of a list twice as long of things yet to do, but that sounds like at least three or four hundred years I'll need before I even get through the obvious stuff, and that's if I don't spend a large amount of time just relaxing with my family (which I will).
You seriously couldn't think of any fulfilling ways to spend a couple thousand years?
Re:See that all the time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:2, Insightful)
That seems like a failure of imagination on your part. I'm about the same age, and see only limitless possibilities if I could "reboot" now. Imagine going for a shot, and waking up to celebrate your biological 20th birthday tomorrow instead of 40th. It'd be amazing! I could choose to start something new, and see my "whole life" stretching ahead of me again. Tired of what I'm doing now? Okay, time to try law school, or medicine. Hell, if I was physically reset, maybe I'd give being a cop or a fire-fighter a try (can't usually start those jobs after 35 or so). Knowing all the things I know at my age now, coupled with physical youth? Maybe acting, or music or....well, anything.
Yeah, gimme that treatment, I'd be ready to live my life "yet again" in a heartbeat.
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I'd prefer to see a social and economic reevaluation, [one] that just plain leaves you more time and resources to live a more healthy life in the first place.
A "social and economic reevaluation"? That's a revolution. Usually it involves a lot of warfare and death. But feel free to reevaluate your own life, nobody is stopping you there.
And as far as revolutions go, getting everyone more time or more resources is feasible, but getting everyone BOTH is kind of an impossibility. Who pays for it? I mean, you're essentially arguing that the socio-economic system we currently have should change so that you have to work less and get paid more. That's just a daydream.
Maybe if you made some suggestions about what exactly would change.
Re:Quality, not quantity (Score:4, Insightful)
By the time you get done with half that list, you'll have forgotten everything from the start of the list.
Then I'd better take a detour through neurophysiology research. =)
So much to do, so much to do.