A Stealthy Harvard Startup Wants To Reverse Aging in Dogs, and Humans Could Be Next (technologyreview.com) 170
The idea is simple, if you ask biologist George Church. He wants to live to 130 in the body of a 22-year-old. From a report: The world's most influential synthetic biologist is behind a new company that plans to rejuvenate dogs using gene therapy. If it works, he plans to try the same approach in people, and he might be one of the first volunteers. The stealth startup Rejuvenate Bio, cofounded by George Church of Harvard Medical School, thinks dogs aren't just man's best friend but also the best way to bring age-defeating treatments to market. The company, which has carried out preliminary tests on beagles, claims it will make animals "younger" by adding new DNA instructions to their bodies.
Its age-reversal plans build on tantalizing clues seen in simple organisms like worms and flies. Tweaking their genes can increase their life spans by double or better. Other research has shown that giving old mice blood transfusions from young ones can restore some biomarkers to youthful levels. "We have already done a bunch of trials in mice and we are doing some in dogs, and then we'll move on to humans," Church told the podcaster Rob Reid earlier this year. The company's efforts to keep its activities out of the press make it unclear how many dogs it has treated so far. In a document provided by a West Coast veterinarian, dated last June, Rejuvenate said its gene therapy had been tested on four beagles with Tufts Veterinary School in Boston. It is unclear whether wider tests are under way.
However, from public documents, a patent application filed by Harvard, interviews with investors and dog breeders, and public comments made by the founders, MIT Technology Review assembled a portrait of a life-extension startup pursuing a longevity long shot through the $72-billion-a-year US pet industry. "Dogs are a market in and of themselves," Church said during an event in Boston last week. "It's not just a big organism close to humans. It's something people will pay for, and the FDA process is much faster. We'll do dog trials, and that'll be a product, and that'll pay for scaling up in human trials."
Its age-reversal plans build on tantalizing clues seen in simple organisms like worms and flies. Tweaking their genes can increase their life spans by double or better. Other research has shown that giving old mice blood transfusions from young ones can restore some biomarkers to youthful levels. "We have already done a bunch of trials in mice and we are doing some in dogs, and then we'll move on to humans," Church told the podcaster Rob Reid earlier this year. The company's efforts to keep its activities out of the press make it unclear how many dogs it has treated so far. In a document provided by a West Coast veterinarian, dated last June, Rejuvenate said its gene therapy had been tested on four beagles with Tufts Veterinary School in Boston. It is unclear whether wider tests are under way.
However, from public documents, a patent application filed by Harvard, interviews with investors and dog breeders, and public comments made by the founders, MIT Technology Review assembled a portrait of a life-extension startup pursuing a longevity long shot through the $72-billion-a-year US pet industry. "Dogs are a market in and of themselves," Church said during an event in Boston last week. "It's not just a big organism close to humans. It's something people will pay for, and the FDA process is much faster. We'll do dog trials, and that'll be a product, and that'll pay for scaling up in human trials."
Don't do it (Score:1)
Doesn't this guy watch movies? We are gonna have a bunch of Cujo's running around.
Re:Don't do it (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey!
Re:Don't do it (Score:5, Funny)
Or vampires. This is exactly how vampires get started.
I don't mind being a vampire, as long as I'm a Count Dracula erudite and classy vampire rather than one of those sissy whiny emo twilight vampires.
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Plus it will ruin movies. Kids will watch "Old Yeller" and won't understand what "old" means.
A world full of stupid people.... (Score:5, Funny)
That live forever. Exactly what we need.
Re:A world full of stupid people.... (Score:5, Funny)
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This obsession can't be healthy [youtube.com]. Do you remember all the people always going on and on about Osama and Obummer and shit for 8 years? They're some of the dumbest people in this country. I'd like to ask you to think about what this means, but I'm not sure you'll figure it out. You look exactly the same to me. Get some mental help.
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Only if you don't realize that he lives on as worms.
Re:A world full of stupid people.... (Score:4, Interesting)
A world full of stupid people that live forever. Exactly what we need.
It doesn't have to be cheap enough that everyone can live forever. Perhaps it becomes a prime motivator to work once basic income rolls around.
Re:A world full of stupid people.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it becomes a prime motivator to work once basic income rolls around.
Quite the opposite. Citizens that voted themselves onto permanent welfare will also vote themselves this treatment for free. And free television, and a free couch.
Delusional thinking at it's finest.
No matter how much citizens vote, a Ferrari will never be free. And you can sure as fuck bet that immortality won't be either.
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Haven't been to a Bernie rally have you?
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I'm still hopeful that one day I'll be able to download a car and 3D print/replicate it.
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Delusional thinking at it's finest.
And yet you think free money for everyone for life is plausible? Now who's delusional?
Uh, when and where in my statement did I ever confirm that bullshit? No, I don't believe free money for life is plausible, but humans becoming unemployable is inevitable. And no matter how plausible UBI is or isn't, it won't stop a few hundred million idiots voting for their favorite liar promising to deliver it. The only delusion here is assuming that would never happen.
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The only delusion here is assuming that would never happen.
The delusion is thinking that it would stop at basic income.
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And yet you think free money for everyone for life is plausible? Now who's delusional?
Well, free money for everyone for life is certainly plausible. It would take less than $4 million dollars, or about 2-3 tomahawk missiles, each year to give every man, woman, and child one cent each year. Once you admit that is sustainable, it is merely a question of how much free money is sustainable. You may think that number is $100 per year, or $10,000 per year, but some amount is certainly sustainable.
What people who complain about UBI often ignore in their comments is that UBI is not fundamentally dif
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I have heard it said that the world makes progress simply because the people holding outdated ideas die off. If the rich and powerful but regressive old folks die off, perhaps all progress will stop.
It's not a question of intelligence, it's a question of holding to what the world was when you were growing up and your mind was formed.
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I don't see how this is any different from today...
Either way, you've got a world full of stupid people.
Re:A world full of stupid people.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of me would like something like this; I'm an athlete now, and I'm in my 50's, and would love it to go back to being in my 20's physically and make the best of my chosen sport. But another part of me wants this to fail, not be real at all, because it could actually be very destructive to our civilization and our species as a whole.
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I'd prefer a normal lifespan, but living all of it in a 20 year old's body.
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I'm sure that will work out exactly as well as keeping nuclear weapons secrets. Moreover, most of the research will have been published before it's a viable treatment anyone takes seriously, probably using procedures and theory that have been extensively documented (and made publicly available for years). If they suddenly STOP publishing about a specific avenue of research, and then surprise, immortality drug emerges, it'll be exactly as suspicious as when German and American scientists stopped publishing p
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Buy up the technology
Make everyone who understands it sign NDAs
Patent/copyright the technology
Refuse to license it to anyone for any price
Sue the living daylights out of anyone who independently discovers the process/formula/protocol/whatever you want to call it
Have less-than-credible-sounding people post on the Internet about it in such a way that you convince people it was never real, was always a hoax
Fund 'research' that shows that it's a hoax, was never possible, was about as legit as all the 'cold fusion' claims of the last decade or so
After a while nobody believes it was ever real, everyone stops talking about it
Secret is now safe, only The Rich have access to it
That's roughly how it would work, and don't think for a minute that similar things haven't been done before. Corporations do hostile take-overs and buy-outs all the time and then bury whatever it is.
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That's roughly how it would work, and don't think for a minute that similar things haven't been done before. Corporations do hostile take-overs and buy-outs all the time and then bury whatever it is.
All of that is true and possible, but I think people would notice Vladimir Putin running around shirtless for the next 100 years.
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That live forever. Exactly what we need.
Actually, even if aging and major diseases are wiped out most people wouldn't live to 2000 due to accidents and natural disasters. Stupid people presumably will live less than the average due to more accidents.
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That's assuming the rate of accidental death stays the same once disease has been eliminated. Once it's the #2 cause of death (suicide will be #1) then LOTS of effort will be put into reducing accidents. Assume we have self-driving cars by then that cause no accidents. According to a list I found online, drug overdoses, fires, and choking/asphyxiation would then be the major causes of accidental death. Most people die in fires due to smoke inhalation, so that can be rolled in with asphyxiation, which could
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That live forever. Exactly what we need.
Don't worry. If they are that stupid, Darwin will have longer to collect them all...
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And those poor poor dogs are stuck with them.
That's got to be ruff.
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If they could keep your brain young and able to learn rapidly then they might not stay stupid for long.
What I wouldn't give to be able to pick up language like a four year old...
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Just me, if you don't mind (Score:4, Insightful)
I would love to live an extended life or "forever". I just don't want everyone else to as well. The social and economic stresses it would put on the finite resources of this planet scare me. I think there's a reasonable chance that we'll see this in our lifetimes and it may be things like war that ends up killing people instead of "natural causes".
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I would love to live an extended life or "forever". I just don't want everyone else to as well. The social and economic stresses it would put on the finite resources of this planet scare me. I think there's a reasonable chance that we'll see this in our lifetimes and it may be things like war that ends up killing people instead of "natural causes".
I agree overpopulation is a serious consequence of life extension.
But people dying preventable deaths is hardly the optimal solution. If it's a choice between people dying of old age and restrictions on reproduction I'd choose restrictions on reproduction. Sure it's a terrible violation of human rights, but so is dying.
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If it's a choice between people dying of old age and restrictions on reproduction I'd choose restrictions on reproduction.
I favor freedom of choice for each individual --- I suggest you be allowed to pick between.... [1] No concessions, But no access to this special treatment AND [2] Access to this special treatment, with an agreed upon restriction/caveat.... (1) As a condition to receiving a rejuvenate treatment like this --- If you are a child at the time, then nothing special is required, b
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AND [2] If some method is found to reverse the sterilization procedure, then you agree not to reverse it --- If you reverse it, or are found to have a child other than a child you adopted or had BEFORE the process, then you are banned from further rejuvenation treatments.
You can control overpopulation without making people choose between children and not dying of old age.
People will still be mortal, they'll still die for many other reasons. You can have lotteries or other mechanisms for distributing fertility rights.
Remember, a big consequence of this treatment will be a massive drop in fertility. Age is a big motivator in the decision to have children, but how many people will still want to have a kid in their twenties or thirties when they can wait till they're 80?
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Why would adopting additional children be considered bad?
It wouldn't be considered bad. And it's just an example of one kind of regulation that could be used to
help avoid the availability of rejuvenation causing population armageddon --- If that's an issue.
Other ideas would be to start teraforming and colonizing other planets, moons, and other bodies and space, then
move large percentages of the populations to the colonies and find LARGE stashes of additional resources,
which could eliminate the need f
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I think there's a reasonable chance that we'll see this in our lifetimes and it may be things like war that ends up killing people instead of "natural causes".
More likely it will be being middle class or lower which kills people, once it is priced at $50k per year per person (in 2018 dollars) to stop this from creating too much of a strain on resources.
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More likely it will be being middle class or lower which kills people
More likely: Disease. A population that has a longer turnover is less able to evolve and adapt --- humans as a species already have this problem to an extent; living 75 years or so more than most species.
once it is priced at $50k per year per person (in 2018 dollars) to stop this from creating too much of a strain on resources.
Such insane pricing would give rise to 'generic' unauthorized versions. You take a flight to some sh
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www.soyouwanttoliveforevereh.ca
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Such insane pricing would give rise to 'generic' unauthorized versions. You take a flight to some shady country, don't ask too many questions, and you get a pirated version of the $50k medication for $20.
If this was actually a problem, and resource scarcity hasn't been solved, then it would be quite easy for governments to track people who are 150 years old and shouldn't be. Or you show up at an emergency room with a 20 year old's body but an 80 year old birth certificate. A rogue nation without the necessary controls would be treated like a rogue nuclear nation today, with all the sanctions to go with it.
When something as dangerous as medication which could get populations to 20 billion in no time, necessa
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In Red Mars, they solved the resource problem of immortality by instituting a one child per couple family. If you do the math, each generation being 50% the size of the previous one with no deaths results in a doubling of the population. They proposed creating a market for the half child allowance each person receives, so those that didn't want children could sell to someone who did.
Of course, that requires a very strong government, which has its own problems, but at least there are solutions.
On the pract
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In Red Mars, you could grow plants in near vacuum by chanting over them and resource expropriation somehow leads to unlimited additional resources being provided.
You already touched on Red Mar's idiocy regarding government structure.
It's a silly thing to cite.
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Who cares if the books had other silliness?
This one point stands just fine on its own. Mathematically, if each generation is 50% of the size of the previous generation, then you double the starting population and hit a stable limit. This isn't an argument that depends on the authoritative statement of the author, it's a simple mathematical fact. Why bother attacking -- or even considering -- the source when the source is so clearly irrelevant to the validity of the idea?
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You need to read it again...the world class expert 'learned' how to grow plants in the thin atmosphere by chanting over them (the chanting over them was just the hippy version of 'reverse the polarity of the tachyon beams' style bullshit).
Also the entire colony, including the 'world class expert in closed biosystems' was recruited from the parking lot of a dead show, 5 hours after the show ended...because reason. IIRC part of reason was: 'Deadheads are actually the smartest people, all the smartest peopl
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The Motie Problem (Score:2)
Eventually, you breed out all those willing and/or able to control their reproduction. (See Niven & Pournelle's Moties, who can't restrict their reproduction by much; they die unpleasantly if they don't have a baby every so often.)
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Why a billion? Why not a million? Why stop there, why not a thousand? Actually, a thousand is more than I care for, I can really only have about 200 relationships at one time. We really ought to just be a tribe of 200 humans, any more is pointless.
Also, you're assuming you get to be one of those surviving humans rather than one of the billions lying in a mass grave from the purge. Mass forced-sterilizations will be violently opposed; far more likely is people have to decide whether to have children OR to li
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I would love to live an extended life or "forever".
"Extended" would be cool but forever would not. The Black Hole era will probably be boring and the Dark Era will be downright tedious.
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This technology has a lot of the solutions to its own problems embedded in it.
A youthful populace means higher productivity, both between not taking care of elders and not taking care of as many children. If the working age today is 18-67, that's 49 years (45 for the college educated and even less for those with even more education) out of 78, which means 29 dependent years (33 for college educated workers). Only 62.8% of the current lifespan is productive (57.7% for the college educated). By simply getting
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Let's allow these guys to handle the real ones for now.
Here's the ad (Score:2)
I vant your blood (Score:2)
Other research has shown that giving old mice blood transfusions from young ones can restore some biomarkers to youthful levels.
What could possibly go wrong?
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There are several similar studies. IIRC, the one about young-blood mice decided that the blood of the older mice contained something "poisonous", that could probably be filtered out if they could figure out what it was. I've run across other studies that blamed aging on the increasing proportion of senescent cells. (This isn't actually a contradiction, as possibly the senescent cells generate the chemical, whatever it is.)
Another study that I ran across blamed the problem on the increasing number of cell
The Dream of Immortality (Score:3)
I don't want to live forever (and that's impossible anyways, entropy always wins)... but I wouldn't mind a solid chance of living until *I* decide I don't want to live any longer rather than being slowly crippled by age until my body gives up on me.
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Read carefully. The guy is saying he'd live to 130, but his body would be like a 22yr old. I've listened to other scientist who are working on aging, and as I understood it, the emphasis has moved from quantity to quality.
To over simplify, there are some inescapable realities in biology that means the fuel tank will eventually run dry. 120 was quoted as the limit, but it was a vague limit. 130 is within reason. But, what they were discovering is that there are things could be done to make the years afte
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Buckminster Fuller published notes about theoretical possibilities of living eternally, even if entropy is irreversible. He suggested a form of suspended existence where where increasingly short moments of conscious existence would occur interspersed among increasingly long periods of zero entropy generating suspension. The notes were _fascinating_, I'll post them or a link to them if I can find them.
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Well, yes. But that is not going to be possible for a long, long time, if ever. Anti-aging scams are as old as the human race, this is just one more of those.
Sounds good to me (Score:4, Funny)
I'd love to live to 130 in the body of a 22 year old, but I think she'd be doing most of the work towards the end...
More than telomeres? (Score:2)
Please tell me this is more than just lengthening telomeres, that's more of a symptom of aging than the cause of it. (Yeah, there's diseases related to it, again, symptoms of aging rather than the cause).
Re:More than telomeres? (Score:5, Informative)
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Sorry .. just no (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, but if you were going to have to eat the rich, wouldn't you prefer that they be tender and succulent instead of tough and stringy?
Die if you want to. (Score:2)
Your fear need not limit other people's opportunity. Die if you want to but I for one have a lot of projects to do. Another thousand years might let me make a dent in my current list. Longer life means accumulating more wisdom and knowledge.
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As there is basically zero chance of this working, you should probably not be too concerned about it.
Holmes is back? (Score:2)
Life is meant to be finite (Score:5, Insightful)
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Good thing this company isn't talking about immortality. They are talking about pushing life to the limits that our bodies will support, without having individual parts breaking down and making the latter half of what we have so miserable.
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How can this possibly be true if humans only occupy 3% of the farmable land and less than 1% of the US population is farmers?
"I think that our life spans are meant to be finite"
Do you start cheering at funerals? Not my style.
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I think that our life spans are meant to be finite and I think if we embrace this understanding, we will lose our fear of death. IMHO, people concerned about living forever are not enjoying their lives presently. I would rather enjoy the life that I have then try to spend life looking for the fountain of youth. As someone who has seen people in various states of death and decline, I would sooner die than experience that pain and suffering. The world is also pretty inhospitable so I am not terribly attached to this life.
Well, I'm the perfect example of that assessment.
I Atheist so I believe in total oblivion after death. Some other think of this as peaceful (returning from where we came from) but, in my case, it scare me. And one of those reason for that difference is that I enjoy life.
People seem to focus on the negative side of humanity (like you apparently) but I find that the vast majority of people in the world have good heart. We just like to focus on the few very bad one. And if you don't like people around you, wel
I'm glad they're starting with dogs (Score:2)
Time (Score:2)
Hurry up, dammit!
I'm old enough to remember when Star Trek and Brady Bunch were first shown...in reruns on my local channel in the 1970s.
Regulatory friction (Score:3)
FTS:
"It's not just a big organism close to humans. It's something people will pay for, and the FDA process is much faster. We'll do dog trials, and that'll be a product, and that'll pay for scaling up in human trials."
I'm not going to claim that all regulation is bad, but there is a common theme out there that regulation is NEVER bad. This sentence can be read to say that they could alleviate pain and suffering faster, but the FDA is in the way.
From my own experience, I've seen the same thing with the FAA in my non-professional life. Just about anything that can be considered innovative in the GA aviation market occurs in Experimental Aviation. It is just too hard to get anything through the FAA blockade.
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FTS: "It's not just a big organism close to humans. It's something people will pay for, and the FDA process is much faster. We'll do dog trials, and that'll be a product, and that'll pay for scaling up in human trials."
I'm not going to claim that all regulation is bad, but there is a common theme out there that regulation is NEVER bad. This sentence can be read to say that they could alleviate pain and suffering faster, but the FDA is in the way.
So you want them to start selling life-extending treatments without conducting trials on the safety and efficacy of the treatments.
Do you want a zombie apocalypse? Because that's how you get a zombie apocalypse.
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Have you ever seen what goes into a "trial"? Have you noticed that there are medicines that have been used in other countries to effectively treat diseases for thousands of years, but this countries FAA won't accept that data to demonstrate that it is safe?
Testing a substance for safety and efficacy is one thing. Making it so difficult and expensive that nothing but Big-Pharma can even attempt to try is another.
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Bwahahaha!!! Jeesh, you're funny!
Check out any rest/retirement home anywhere near you. There is a significant percentage of people there whose bodies are so wrecked with age related diseases that they are basically invalids that have been warehoused to die. The "issues" are currently so negative that they have been removed from the world. They have NO expectation of anything "long-term", positive or negative.
Most of them would line up to trade their next few years for a few days of youthfulness. And,
Stealth startup (Score:2)
The stealth startup
I assume "stealth startup" is code for "we haven't got any money to spend on advertising."
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Probably add to that "We do not really have a product either"...
Please Hurry... (Score:1)
I am 55.... I don't want to be the last human to die.
puppy melt (Score:2)
"I Can't Look!" Gesture [tvtropes.org]
Voice of God internal monologue [youtu.be]
(Just for the record, Don LaFontaine [wikipedia.org] a
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YouTube links break, without leaving behind even a title archive (bastards), so "just for the record":
Happiness is a warm puppy -m puppy -m puppy (Score:2)
I really do.
The "human anti-aging" is just a smokescreen.
The Real Reason for this is all too apparent. SMBC [smbc-comics.com] explains it all.
What is with Joule Unlimited, Dr. Church? (Score:1)
George Church is undermining scientific integrity by legitimizing questionable start-ups just so they can attract billion or two of investments with no intent to deliver.
He just wants to die rich... (Score:2)
... at the regular age. Hence he promises something he cannot deliver on but which is something the people who are extremely afraid of death (pathetic wimps, the lot of them) wand desperately enough to not look closely. That will probably make him rich but will not extend his life or improve the condition of his body.
Dogs? I'm already testing on my elderly parents (Score:2)
And with excellent results !
It is really sad to see your parents slowly turn into vegetables -- and the doctors try to tell you there is nothing your can do, or they give expensive pills that are
barely better than placebo. BS !
Nootropics might be the new cool thing with programmers, but they are MUCH better at bringing declining minds back to normal than they are at turning average people into geniuses.
The problem is -- in the US -- doctors are NOT ALLOWED to talk about anything that isn't FDA approved (ju
I am offended by this unnatural experiment! (Score:2)
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Dogs are more heavily inbred (the purebreds at least) and thus have more genetic disorders. Some of the breeds are quite expensive, as well. A cat is usually just a Tabby cat, there are few breeds people go out of their way to get, and few owners bother.
So no matter what (Score:2)
If you want to live forever, you have to go to church... Either "the church" or "George Church". How fucking ironic...
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You bring up a good point; this is called 'immanentizing the eschaton' in religious circles, and it could lead to interesting changes in religions. If the end-goal of following a religion is eternal life in a great place (heaven), what's the benefit if you know you can live forever on a great Earth?
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The human treatment will cost hundreds of thousands...millions?
The billionaires will live to 130 with great health and the rest of us plebes? Sorry, insurance doesn't cover cosmetic treatments.
In the developing world sure, but within a few years of it being established everyone will get some form of the treatment in the west.
The rich control a lot for certain, but the GOP showdown was a battle between Trump and Cruz, the two people most hated by the elites in the GOP. And Trump actually became President.
You think you Trump ran an effective populist campaign? Just wait for "Vote for me or you will literally die (of old age)".
I don't think that would be a particularly close election.
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Yes, the elites seem to be hating Trump with a passion. Yes indeed. All the way to the bank.
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The US health care system seems to be doing a pretty good job of preventing that so far, as congress hasn't done much to make life-saving treatments cheaper.
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The US health care system seems to be doing a pretty good job of preventing that so far, as congress hasn't done much to make life-saving treatments cheaper.
Politically, there's a big difference between: "Poor people sometimes die of preventable causes" and "Everyone but the rich dies of this preventable cause".
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You forgot the irony tag.
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You're making assumptions about which approaches will work. OTOH, you're right in that life will eventually lead to cancer unless something else kills it first.
I'll grant that the summary sounded like he might be lengthening the teleomeres, but that wasn't really clear. IIRC, it's also been shown that as a simple approach it won't work. The teleomeres are just one marker, and some cell lines don't use them anyway. (E.g., I believe that epidermal cell lines don't use shortened teleomeres to decide not to