Scientists Have Mathematical Proof That It's Impossible To Stop Aging (sciencealert.com) 177
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Alert: Mathematically speaking, multicellular organisms like us will always have to deal with a cellular competition where only one side will win. And ultimately, that means our vitality will always come out as the loser. We have a pair of researchers from the University of Arizona to blame for this depressing conclusion, who crunched the numbers on a hypothesis involving the weeding out of unfit cells and found it amounted to a catch-22 situation. Aging -- and all of the biological changes that come with it -- is more or less the result of cells slowing down and losing their functions. But what if there was a way to encourage the more active cells to stick around at the expense of their sluggish siblings? Surely if we knocked off those old cells we could keep making pigments and collagen a little longer. Researchers have pinned hopes on reversing the inevitable decay of biochemistry by repairing DNA or extending the shrinking bits of chromosome called telomeres, for example. While it's good in theory, there is a catch. Another feature of aging is a number of cells start to populate like there's no tomorrow, reproducing in uncontrolled ways that look too close to cancer for comfort. According to the researchers, this means we're damned either way.
The way we grow old poses something of a mystery. If replicating biology is good enough to continue for generations, why do our own cells wind down after just a few decades? A simple answer is evolution isn't strong enough to weed out genes that only cause us grief after we've popped out a few offspring. But this model of aging adds a new element to the existing hypothesis -- even if evolution did select for eternal youth, competition inside our own bodies would see us to an inevitable grave. In other words, since multicellular organisms are the cumulative effect of bunches of cooperating cells, we logically can't have it both ways -- if you clear the way for 'younger' cells to keep your skin baby-smooth, you're just asking for the big C. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The way we grow old poses something of a mystery. If replicating biology is good enough to continue for generations, why do our own cells wind down after just a few decades? A simple answer is evolution isn't strong enough to weed out genes that only cause us grief after we've popped out a few offspring. But this model of aging adds a new element to the existing hypothesis -- even if evolution did select for eternal youth, competition inside our own bodies would see us to an inevitable grave. In other words, since multicellular organisms are the cumulative effect of bunches of cooperating cells, we logically can't have it both ways -- if you clear the way for 'younger' cells to keep your skin baby-smooth, you're just asking for the big C. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Unbalanced Machine (Score:3)
This just kind of sounds to me like a PID controller tuned for the short term that goes out of control in the long term. Probably just falsely applying what I know to something completely unrelated...
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Sure, it sounds like it, because they oversimplified the problem. One issue with engineering education is that in order to make problems solvable, they teach you to make a lot of assumptions to simplify the problem. It's a useful tool for making control systems on a small scale, but for more complex systems like biology(even single celled organisms), politics, economics, weather, climate, psychology, it doesn't work. I think this disconnect leads to a lot of arrogance(I myself had to learn the hard way) abo
Re: Unbalanced Machine (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes correct. Moreover they have misunderstood their own math. It doesn't say that aging cannot be repaired. It said that evolution cannot do it. There is no organism that lays spare parts in cold storage and then swaps them out when parts wear out. We however could eventually make spare parts.
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There is no organism that lays spare parts in cold storage and then swaps them out when parts wear out.
Hermit crabs? Hell, some of them form a line when a new shell is found. They then all trade shells, hand-me-down fashion.
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Sure, but those don't count as parts for this analysis.
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Why not?
Many jellyfish will revert back to an earlier stage of development and regrow to adulthood, fresh and clean, and essentially don't die due to age.
Other fish and many plants also beat out aging in similar ways. And many more organisms such as fungi blur the lines by being part of a large distributed colony that's a single thing. It's like rebuilding a car. If you gradually replace every part, at what point is it a different car? Why doesn't sexual reproduction fit the spare parts description? Yo
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Live cells are still different than dead cells. This is about the aging of live cells.
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Live cells are still different than dead cells. This is about the aging of live cells.
No, this is about the AC statement:
There is no organism that lays spare parts in cold storage and then swaps them out when parts wear out. We however could eventually make spare parts.
Re:Unbalanced Machine (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, it sounds like it, because they oversimplified the problem. One issue with engineering education is that in order to make problems solvable, they teach you to make a lot of assumptions to simplify the problem. It's a useful tool for making control systems on a small scale, but for more complex systems like biology(even single celled organisms), politics, economics, weather, climate, psychology, it doesn't work. I think this disconnect leads to a lot of arrogance(I myself had to learn the hard way) about what we have the ability to control or even predict. I think this arrogance, the over simplification of complexity, is largely why engineers tend to be the most likely candidates for terrorism. They have immense power to understand and control simply systems, so why not big complex systems too? https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Sort of. The article starts by talking about terrorists, but when they get into talking about engineers specifically they shift to talking about "leaders of extreme right-wing groups".
In other words, that article is political propaganda that we've become accustomed to seeing from the Washington post or in Slashdot terms: "nothing to see here,move along."
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Sort of. The article starts by talking about terrorists, but when they get into talking about engineers specifically they shift to talking about "leaders of extreme right-wing groups".
Um, that isn't necessarily a shift. More terrorist acts which occur on US soil are perpetrated by right-wing groups than by any other group.
Where have we heard this kind of thing before? (Score:2)
What was that guy's name?
Lord...
Lord Kelvin, or something like that?
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Seems reasonable. Evolution has made beings able to reproduce. There isn't any evolution pressure on adults living must past the time when their children can reproduce. Yes there are some benefits of longer lived species as the older ones provide wisdom and protection to the younger, but there is a falling off point.
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Ah good. Thanks for that AC. Now we can go home.
Are you an engineer, perchance?
Sigh, no they didn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sigh, no they didn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if aging cannot be stopped that does not mean it can never be dealt with. Some creatures have a solution that works for them. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Sigh, no they didn't (Score:5, Funny)
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That's pretty cool... and there are trees on this planet that are close to 5,000 years old. That's not immortal, but it's pretty clear they have aging controlled pretty well. Trees may be simple compared to many advanced animal life, but they're still pretty complex organisms.
I don't believe preventing aging is impossible; it's just very difficult. If we live long enough we'll find a solution to aging.
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https://www.treehugger.com/nat... [treehugger.com]
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Very few people consider a cloned plant to be the same individual. It has the same DNA, but it seems to be starting over and growing a new individual from a reproductive budding site; it uses its reproductive machinery to copy itself instead of for sexual reproduction.
I know it makes a better story that way, but still.
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Re:Sigh, no they didn't (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok. I'm a mathematician, so I think I have some degree of expertise relevant to comment when someone says that they have a mathematical proof of something. You cannot give a mathematical proof of something in the physical world.
You are of course correct. I think they are using the wrong words "mathematical proof" when the accurate term is "extensive modelling."
But that's the world we live in, where Mathematical proof sounds so smart and right, and extensive modelling probably sounds like women and men walking around on catwalks to show off clothing.
The abstract :http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/10/25/1618854114
The full text http://www.pnas.org/content/ea... [pnas.org]
A really quick perusal of the full paper doesn't show any particular issues, it is simply a model run to some conclusion. As always, some assumptions have to be made. As such, there is nothing outlandish or red flagging about it.
I think the tl;dr version of all this is don't put a lot of stock in articles that try to bridge popular culture and science - read the actual papers.
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I don't even need a mathematical proof to say that extending life is difficult as there's plenty of evidence with man-made objects which are 100% controllable machines and can be reb
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Hubble space expansion seems pretty perpetual. The fact that we havenâ(TM)t figured out any way to tap into it is irrelevant
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If by "extensive" you mean building the simplest possible model that some significant subset of the chattering class is willing to regard as credible for all of the five minutes it takes to seagull post and flit onto the next topic.
Excellent work. Now the reader is equipped with a yellow flag that activates (one hopes) on next encounter with a similarly thumping article (sub
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If by "extensive" you mean building the simplest possible model that some significant subset of the chattering class is willing to regard as credible for all of the five minutes it takes to seagull post and flit onto the next topic.
Excellent work. Now the reader is equipped with a yellow flag that activates (one hopes) on next encounter with a similarly thumping article (subtype: da da da DAH!) beating the vapid drum that "it's the telomere, stupid!"
Now well-equipped reader thinks, I once read a MOASH (mother of all stupid headlines) to the effect that merely fixing the telomeres lurks below the snake oil horizon.
This is what hapless mayfly dredges out of his or her damp, woven basket promulgated as "proof".
Appalling.
Even the huddled yeast on this proof basket fail to thrive.
Whoa dude, let's have a beer and relax.
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194 proof, to be exact.
Re:Sigh, no they didn't (Score:5, Insightful)
And from glancing at the article in question, it looks like the scientists actually didn't claim nearly as big a deal as the summary suggests.
Unfortunately, that is par for the course for the mainstream press, which lives on hyperbole, distortion and exaggeration. In fact, it is not too far-fetched to assert that the mainstream has been, for a long time now, moving from the news report business to the entertainment business.
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Unfortunately, that is par for the course for the mainstream press, which lives on hyperbole, distortion and exaggeration. In fact, it is not too far-fetched to assert that the mainstream has been, for a long time now, moving from the news report business to the entertainment business.
To be fair, as topics get more complicated, the issue of understanding becomes more a factor. Expecting reporters to be able to process, summarize, and relate a study/finding/report on banana blight or the consequences of a bad batch of sunscreen is reasonable. Expecting them to be able to make advanced biology, physics, math, economics or other hard sciences understandable in 5-minute stories... unreasonable.
Too many topics require so much background to dimly understand them that it's almost impractica
Nonsense article with a click-bait title (Score:2)
Thanks for saying that. This Slashdot story is about a nonsense article with a click-bait title.
Any theoretical model of biochemical aging must include all facts that have already been gathered, such as these:
Longest-living animal species [businessinsider.com]
400-year-old Greenland shark 'longest-living vertebrate' [bbc.com]
Longest-living mammal: B [wikipedia.org]
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Ok. I'm a mathematician, so I think I have some degree of expertise relevant to comment when someone says that they have a mathematical proof of something.
Well, then again, Kurt Gödel told us that there is stuff that is true, but cannot be proved to be true . . .
. . . so there!
Maybe.
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False Dichotomy (Score:5, Insightful)
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The way I see it, at most we just have to make sure cells still get killed off when other cells need to replace them. If w
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You were once the youngest organism on the planet. But at the same time you’re also as old as life itself, an unbroken line of cell divisions stretching back 3.5 billion years.
Yes, it's a false dichotomy. We're programmed to grow old and die. Mice and Humboldt Squid [wikipedia.org] live about the same amount of time, about two years. Humans, whales, and macaws live about the same amount of time, around a century. Your lifespan is neither determined by the size of your body or the speed at which you live. We all seem to age in the same ways - young and fresh, then adult, then old and frail.
Your cellular lineage is ancient, so it's not something intrinsic to the matter making up the cells. W
Math is sometime incorrect (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember for years the phrase was "mathematically a bumblebee can't fly". I hardly think we know all the nuances of cellular mechanics yet.
the myth that theoretically bumblebees can't fly (Score:4, Informative)
I remember for years the phrase was "mathematically a bumblebee can't fly".
Well, that myth that theoretically a bumble bee can't fly is mostly a myth, you know.
Here's a longer explanation of where the myth comes from: http://www.abc.net.au/science/... [abc.net.au]
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I remember for years the phrase was "mathematically a bumblebee can't fly".
That is a canard. At best, it was an utterance by an otherwise eminent scientist who happened to know very little about aerodynamics.
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Bumblebees have canards?
Re:Math is sometime incorrect (Score:4, Funny)
The Burt's Bees do.
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That's how they fly
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I remember for years the phrase was "mathematically a bumblebee can't fly". I hardly think we know all the nuances of cellular mechanics yet.
Bumblebees can't fly!
If you look close enough they're all riding mini quadrocopter's; that's why they make so much noise as they fly.
Bladerunner dialog (Score:2)
I always liked this bit of dialogue. It'd be more scientifically accurate if Batty had suggested telomerase and Tyrell had warned it would cause cancer. Or if Batty suggested stem cells and Tyrell mentioned teratomas. Still you can sort of live with that. What was interesting was that you get the impression that the four year lifespan isn't artificial crippling as is suggested earlier but it was the best Tyrell Corp could do. Or maybe Tyrell was bullshitting. Blade Runner being Blade Runner, either interpre
How To Look Stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Making an absolute claim like this is always a great way to make yourself look stupid. I remember at university chips were currently being fabricated using a 24micron process and a lecturer claimed it would be impossible to go below 8microns (I may be getting the numbers wrong here) because it was below the physical wavelength of light. Nearly two decades later, here we are at 10nm with further process shrinkages planned.
You could have claimed it was mathematically impossible to reduce the fabrication process further due to the wavelength of light, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways around problems. To claim something is impossible simply because you don't know the solution is a great way to make yourself look stupid in the future.
Re:How To Look Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Making an absolute claim like this is always a great way to make yourself look stupid.
Which is why you only find this claim in the shit journalism that's trying to pander to a mainstream audience and not in the paper itself. I really wish I had millions of dollars, because I'd buy /., hire some competent people, and go right to the actual research rater than the sensational, misleading bullshit that is used to get ad-views.
Bye bye, Jellyfish (Score:5, Funny)
I guess immortal jellyfish will need to start dying off now, to satisfy this mathematician's proof.
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I guess immortal jellyfish will need to start dying off now, to satisfy this mathematician's proof.
The Hydra [wikipedia.org] as well. But to be fair, I believe they were referring specifically to human mortality.
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They do it by reverting to an embryonic state.
I guess if you don't mind being liquefied and having your cells induced to revert to stem cells and then growing a new clone human from there, you could consider yourself "immortal".
Proven wrong (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
TLDR:
Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish, is a species of small, biologically immortal jellyfish found in the Mediterranean Sea and in the waters of Japan...
It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation, which alters the differentiated state of the cells and transforms them into new types of cells.
Counterexample (Score:2)
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Entropy (Score:2)
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I doubt we'll see digital transfer of consciousness in my lifetime. Don't get me wrong, the idea appeals to me on a certain level, but even given the existence of such technology at some future date, how do you prove that consciousness was transferred rather than just some form of duplication?
Ideally via a Ship of Theseus [wikipedia.org] type method, slowly expanding a biological mind into the digital domain, running on both substrates for a while, and slowly shutting down the biological portion (as it naturally ages and dies, even?).
A faster yet still gradual route would be individually replacing neurons and killing them off once they're successfully emulated, as featured in multiple SF formats.
University of Arizona (Score:2)
This is a very limited result (Score:5, Informative)
They've shown mathematical proof that one particular concept for defeating the symptoms of aging won't work.
Obviously, no matter what you do eventually entropy wins... but there's no law of physics of which I'm aware that shows you can't re-engineer biology from scratch to make it much more entropy-resistant.
It's just really, really, really difficult. However, we already have examples of organisms that are highly cancer resistant, and others that live extremely long lives compared to ours, so we know even without a fundamental re-engineering there's a lot of room for improvement just copying what already exists in nature.
That's funny (Score:2)
No, that's not proof (Score:2)
That's a mathematical argument. Those always take the form of a proof; otherwise they're a priori bunk.
The next step is review, and seeing if papers that cite this one appear. If review finds the proof broken, or the proof is such that it leads nowhere (i.e. there's no citations), then we can say that the argument is bunk. Until then nothing has been "proven".
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Plus, the whole "mathematical proof" thing automatically means it doesn't apply to the real world.
All a mathematical proof does is prove that X is an inherent implication of the axioms (assumptions) used to define a conceptual space. In math that's fine as the base axioms are (mostly) *extremely* rudimentary assumptions outlining the foundation of counting, geometry, etc. Even in physics - we've got a pretty good (though known flawed) set of mathematically expressed axioms (aka Scientific Laws and Theories
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>proven inapplicable to reality,
Well, maybe not so much inapplicable to reality as divergent from it. Empirically anyway... bane of applied mathematicians everywhere.
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Yes, divergent is a better word. And when a (valid) proof diverges from reality, you know the divergence is inherent in at least one of your axioms.
A favorite quote:
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein
Who wants to live forever anyway? (Score:2)
On a lot of days, I am thankful that life doesn't last forever because it means that dealing with the collective madness of humanity is temporary. Who would want to live forever with that? I mean if you look at life objectively, what is the primary source of psychological suffering for you? I guarantee it's either your own actions or the actions of other human beings. Once you correct your actions, you're left with the others you can't control. We are greedy, manipulative and frequently sadistic becaus
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Primitive man would disagree. The elements and disease killed many more than other humans ever did.
Yes, I'm aware of ancient history and this is quite true. However, it is also true that we have found many tools available to make our lives better in this regard. Immunizations, Pasteurization, Refrigeration and all sorts of other things. That still means nature is much better than the self inflicted nonsense that humans inflict on themselves. I mean we have a crazy guy in North Korea that if he could, he would nuke the entire planet so he can "rule the world". That's far more perverse than anything e
Re:Who wants to live forever anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
I get what you are saying, but to think like that in absolute terms is to ignore the billions of positive selfless acts that also happen each day among humanity.
Our civilization could not exist in the complex way it does without MOST members of the race USUALLY behaving in ways that involve friendship, love, kindness, and selflessness.
We all have a selfish animal side existing inside of us. But we also have the thinking side that has allowed humanity as a whole to continue on despite the animal side.
I believe the next 100 years will be absolute critical on if our path as a race leads us as a race toward extinction or some kind of 'beyond physical body' immortality.
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I get what you are saying, but to think like that in absolute terms is to ignore the billions of positive selfless acts that also happen each day among humanity.
It doesn't matter how many selfless acts go on. It matters how people measure their overall quality of life. How do you measure it? Do you measure it like the OECD [oecdbetterlifeindex.org] or some other means? We have Gallup polls and the OECD the demonstrate quite frankly that we need improvement in a variety of areas, not little improvement, BIG improvement. When you see record numbers of people on anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication, you can conclude we don't live in anything remotely close to a utopia.
Let me put th
Comment removed (Score:3)
Please someone keep the link at hand (Score:2)
Not even close to accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why we don't invite mathematicians to parties.
These guys have absolutely no clue what the hell they're on about. They start out grossly misunderstanding how aging works and what its role in biology is, then go on to grossly misunderstand how cancer is generated. Then they grossly misunderstand how replication works, followed by grossly misunderstanding evolution (strong enough? Who at a university+ level would say something like that?).
Any freshman biologist can answer all these questions easily.
Aging is the result of a) your body adapting to its current needs (growing, reproduction etc) and b) your genetic material accumulating errors from the replication used to build new cells. This is not a theory, this is not "controversial", this has been the settled conclusion for a long time. If the mathematicians at Arizona can't pick up a textbook...
The carcinogenesis process is also well understood (though there are many details, such as the newfound roles of both micro- and lnc- RNA, that are still a mystery).
There are X number of established ways, all involving knocking out tumor-preventing pathways or hyper-activating growth pathways. It is not a result of aging, but of the previously mentioned genetic errors that come with replication + plus external factors that may play some role (infection with HR-HPV is considered a requirement for cervical cancer, and plays a major role in some other cancers including penile, vulvar, anal, head, and neck). If it were a result of aging, or if cells got "hyper-competitive" later down the road, we wouldn't see kids with leukemia, nor teenagers with melanoma (from tanning all day long, something that causes massive buildup of genetic errors in the skin cells).
Our cells never actually wind down. They do the best they can with the resources they are given. As our machinery accrues more and more faults over the years, the functionality deteriorates. Just like an 8 year old computer will have some problems and some 'ticks', so too will cells based on old DNA. But there is no in-built wind-down parameter, there is no "give-up and die" gene.
At most we have something called telomeres attached to our chromosomes that tells us how many times the chromosome has been replicated, giving an indicator of how "reliable" the chromosome DNA is. Extending the telomeres leads them to be used for longer. This allows more errors to accrue in the chromosome, which increases the risk of a cancer blocking pathway on the chromosome to be knocked out. Hence, if you want to live forever, you have to both extend the telomere as well as prevent replication errors.
And to answer the final (ridiculous) assertion -
But this model of aging adds a new element to the existing hypothesis -- even if evolution did select for eternal youth, competition inside our own bodies would see us to an inevitable grave. /quote
There is only "competition" inside the body when something has already gone horribly wrong. There are more than 10 "anti-compete clause" pathways active in each cell. If a cell "competes", it will receive an apoptosis signal to commit suicide, and it will be destroyed by the body's own immune system. It is only when these anti-compete pathways have been destroyed already that any classic evolution-based competition can occur.
In short, these guys really should have asked a biologist before spouting nonsense.
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Hey, don't blame the mathematicians - they mostly understand the limitations of their art. From the article:
"Ageing is mathematically inevitable – like, seriously inevitable," says evolutionary biologist Joanna Masel.
This is a biologist making the claim. And biologists are notoriously bad at understanding the actual implications of math, almost as bad as doctors.
You cant stop or reverse time (Score:2)
Mathematical proof you can't stop aging. Can I post it in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences?
Yeah, but... (Score:2)
https://www.facebook.com/help/... [facebook.com]
Which Paul Nelson? (Score:2)
Can anyone confirm or deny if this "Paul Nelson" is the same "young earth creationist" described in the above wiki entry or is he an actual scientist with a very unfortunate name?
Mathematical proof? (Score:2)
All I see from this research is a reasonable hypothesis that there is another important variable to consider. I couldn't see anything that looked like mathematical proof of anything.
Mathematical proof requires
a) There is proven math
b) It is used to prove a hypothesis
Then there's the issue that we barely have a clue what's happening within a cell. So far as I know there are statistics we use to justify our beliefs of how cellular fun
Complete Bullshit (Score:2)
You cannot "mathematically" prove anything about physical reality. It is just not possible. There are always 2 translation steps and these always introduce errors. Hence to claim that this was "mathematically prove" is just a lie, intended to make it sound absolute. It is not.
Living forever is not mathematically possible (Score:2)
However, the model in this article does not put limitations on longevity. It simply outlines one mechanism of eventual demise, without even putting a number of that eventual.
So if my choices to live about 100 years naturally, or 1000 years and eventually die from cancer...
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Old news (Score:2)
What about controlling cancer and/or nanotech? (Score:2)
I think this study may have been too bounded by what we currently know and see as limits.
Perhaps once we better understand cancer, it will be the key to making this all work; a "mild" and controlled cancer might solve the cell regeneration issue, especially if coaxed by nano-scale machines, which present another possibility: replacing and/or supplementing the failing parts of our bodies. Theoretically, a very careful balance of repaired telomeres, nanotech-supplemented systems, and controlled cancers cou
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I too remain convinced that nanotech provides the only possibility we have of stopping aging.
There's no other way to physically repair the DNA.
LK
Well... (Score:2)
Yeah, if you're just killing cells (Score:2)
This does not speak to reintroducing engineered, properly functioning cells.
trivialities (Score:2)
When you simplify a cell to something that has a positive and negative output to the overall organism, and add in an effect that increases the amount of negative output over time, you're going to find (surprise, surprise!) that aging "is a fundamental feature of multicellular life." That's not a conclusion, that's an assumption you've made at the start of your study!
To be fair, the authors of the study do cite two 50 to 60 year old papers discussing the (pre-modern-genetics) theory of aging that they are o
Well, they have a mathematical proof... (Score:2)
Well, they have a mathematical proof, and you know what Feynman says about scientists who rely solely on mathematical proofs: prove it! Real world, now.
Let's hope they don't tell the lobsters (Score:2)
Because they for sure don't know that.
Replacement (Score:2)
is a number of cells start to populate like there's no tomorrow, reproducing in uncontrolled ways that look too close to cancer for comfort. According to the researchers, this means we're damned either way.
So destroy those cells and bulk-replace them with younger cells that were pre-created in a different vat where they didn't have to compete.
The subject is completely irrelevant anyway (Score:2)
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Setting aside the example of Tithonus in greek mythology, it boils down to a matter of choice.
The choice to live, or to die, on any particular day as opposed to being at the mercy of nature. Maybe I'd get bored after only a few millennia, but that's a risk I'd like to take.
ignorant of biology - immortal organisms (Score:2)
there are plenty of multicellular organisms that are essentially immortal (no set lifespan) except for accident, predation or disease
Mathematical proof. *Sigh* (Score:2)
No. It merely means that using natural methods, and the science we have RIGHT NOW, there's no way to control the aging process without paving the way to cancer. Mostly because there's no currently feasible way to control trillions of differentiated cells in an ongoing, medically safe basis.
That doesn't mean that, 100+ years down the road that SOMEONE won't perfect a way to do so.
Not very Jelly (Score:2)
Kind if a Dr Who redo...is that what you're saying?
fucking yellow science journalists (Score:2)
Can somebody shoot the journalists and then read the PNAS article and report on what it really says?
You can't prove anything in biology (Score:2)
This has been hyped and distorted to a ridiculous degree
by pop science journos.
Proofs only work for pure math.
These researchers simply proved a theorem in their model which IMHO does not look very biological to begin with.
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It would be a lot more useful if you could keep your brain.
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That depends - are you capable of having more offspring? Are you capable of helping your grandchildren prosper?
A more accurate statement would be "Evolution only cares about how many descendants you have."
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This is why we have term limits.
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Tell that to Congress.