Scientists Are Working To Eliminate Senescent Cells (theguardian.com) 151
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In a lab just south of San Francisco I am looking at two blown-up images of microscope slides on a computer screen, side by side. The slides are the same cross-sections of mouse knees from a six-month-old and an 18-month-old animal. The older mouse's image has a splattering of little yellow dots, the younger barely any. That staining indicates the presence of so-called senescent cells -- "zombie cells" that are damaged and that, as a defense against cancer, have ceased to divide but are also resistant to dying. They are known to accumulate with age, as the immune system can no longer clear them, and as a result of exposure to cell-damaging agents such as radiation and chemotherapy. And they have been identified as a cause of aging in mice, at least partially responsible for most age-related diseases. Seeing the slides, it makes me worried about my own knees. "Tell us about it," says Pedro Beltran who heads the biology department at Unity Biotechnology, a 90 person-strong company trying to halt, slow or reverse age-associated diseases in humans by killing senescent cells.
Developing therapies to kill senescent cells is a burgeoning part of the wider quest to defeat aging and keep people healthier longer. Unity, which was founded in 2011, has received more than $385m in funding to date including investment from big tech names such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. It went public this May and is valued at more than $700m. Its first drug entered early clinical trials in June, aimed at treating osteoarthritis. Other startups with zombie cells in their sights include Seattle-based Oisin Biotechnologies which was founded in 2016 and has raised around $4m; Senolytic Therapeutics whose scientific development is based in Spain and which was established last September (it won't disclose its financing other than to say it has a first round, which will allow it to reach clinical trials); and Cleara Biotech, formed this June backed by $3m in funding and based in the Netherlands. In addition, Scottish company CellAge, also founded in 2016, has raised about $100,000 to date, partly through a crowdfunding campaign. The report goes on to detail Unity's plan to kill senescent cells. Their method is to target the biological pathways senescent cells use to resist the normal death of aging cells. "The company's approach is to find small molecules (so called 'senolytics') that can do this," reports The Guardian. "But because small molecules, by their nature, can get everywhere in the body, the approach is prone to unwanted side-effects." As a result, the company has turned to localized treatment.
Meanwhile, Oisin is trying to kill all a person's zombie cells in one go. "The idea is to load the body with nanoparticles that insert a 'suicide gene' into every cell," reports The Guardian. "It only triggers if a cell has a lot of particular protein (p16) that acts as a marker of zombie cells, albeit imperfectly." It plans to test this method on late-stage cancer patients next year.
Developing therapies to kill senescent cells is a burgeoning part of the wider quest to defeat aging and keep people healthier longer. Unity, which was founded in 2011, has received more than $385m in funding to date including investment from big tech names such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. It went public this May and is valued at more than $700m. Its first drug entered early clinical trials in June, aimed at treating osteoarthritis. Other startups with zombie cells in their sights include Seattle-based Oisin Biotechnologies which was founded in 2016 and has raised around $4m; Senolytic Therapeutics whose scientific development is based in Spain and which was established last September (it won't disclose its financing other than to say it has a first round, which will allow it to reach clinical trials); and Cleara Biotech, formed this June backed by $3m in funding and based in the Netherlands. In addition, Scottish company CellAge, also founded in 2016, has raised about $100,000 to date, partly through a crowdfunding campaign. The report goes on to detail Unity's plan to kill senescent cells. Their method is to target the biological pathways senescent cells use to resist the normal death of aging cells. "The company's approach is to find small molecules (so called 'senolytics') that can do this," reports The Guardian. "But because small molecules, by their nature, can get everywhere in the body, the approach is prone to unwanted side-effects." As a result, the company has turned to localized treatment.
Meanwhile, Oisin is trying to kill all a person's zombie cells in one go. "The idea is to load the body with nanoparticles that insert a 'suicide gene' into every cell," reports The Guardian. "It only triggers if a cell has a lot of particular protein (p16) that acts as a marker of zombie cells, albeit imperfectly." It plans to test this method on late-stage cancer patients next year.
People need to die (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the only way for change to happen. Imagine in people from 200 years ago were still alive and voting. We'd never progress as a society.
"And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
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If it's an either-or, the ethical and more humane solution for society in that case would be to take away voting rights from 100+ year olds, not to shun the possibilities of them living longer
Not just voting rights. Right now, death helps redistribute wealth. It's not perfect but imagine if Rockafeller never died. Instead of a charitable foundation, we would have someone likely with an almost infinite amount of wealth by now.
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we would have someone likely with an almost infinite amount of wealth by now
that would be pretty cool, a small tax on that one person could make everyone on the planet rich as well as fund colonies off the planet.
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Except Rockefeller's foundation spent the money far more wisely than the government would have.
Same for Bill Gates. His foundation's spending on nutrition and anti-malaria programs have saved millions of lives for less than the government spends on one aircraft carrier.
Re:People need to die (Score:4, Informative)
His foundation pays for research that leads to patents on treatments that it then collects royalties on. That's the kind of 'help' his foundation does.
States eradicated smallpox a couple decades ago just fine.
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His foundation pays for research that leads to patents on treatments that it then collects royalties on.
Can you back this up with a citation or example?
States eradicated smallpox a couple decades ago just fine.
The WHO eliminated smallpox. The WHO is now trying to eliminate malaria ... by working closely with the Gates Foundation.
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"Eugenics
Beginning in 1930 the Rockefeller Foundation provided financial support to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics,[37] which later inspired and conducted eugenics experiments in the Third Reich."
Wow. Such wisdom.
But that's a low blow. The guy really did donate a lot of money that went on to do a lot of good stuff. And all it took was the blood, sweat, tears, anguish, suffering, death, and abuse of the entire working class. The way in which he got his billions w
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Except Rockefeller's foundation spent the money far more wisely than the government would have.
Same for Bill Gates. His foundation's spending on nutrition and anti-malaria programs have saved millions of lives for less than the government spends on one aircraft carrier.
My point is that the Rockefeller foundation and likely even the Bill Gates foundation wouldn't even exist if they didn't expect to die.
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OK, so in exchange for letting them live longer, you want to take away their:
voting rights
wealth/money
and probably:
jobs (they'll be clogging up the employment rolls, and imagine a 300 year old Scalia or RBG)
anything else?
I'm sure people would still choose living (if we're talking about life as a healthy 100+ year old)
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but imagine if Rockafeller never died.
I'm seeing a LOOOOT more peopel voting for an estate tax, a higher income tax, and a stronger desire for a moderate amount of inflation.
Remember, we live in a democracy. If everyone imagines a horror scenario of the old rich, we can vote on solutions. Case in point, the age of robber-baron industrialists was so bad for so many people we had a political uprising and unions formed.
Also, disenfranchisement based on age is some straight up "Logan's Run" level of WTF.
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but imagine if Rockafeller never died.
I'm seeing a LOOOOT more peopel voting for an estate tax, a higher income tax, and a stronger desire for a moderate amount of inflation.
An estate tax doesn't work if you never die and income taxes hurt working people more than the already rich. Inflation helps a little but what we would really need would be an asset tax instead of an income tax. It's really what we need now. The closest we have to an asset tax is property tax and capital gain tax but both of those are lower than an income tax. Basically, the current system is designed to allow the rich to keep their money once they get it and for it to be harder for others to become ric
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An estate tax doesn't affect the obscenely rich, and never has. Look at Trump, et al. There's many ways around estate taxes for those with significant wealth. In fact, estate taxes are such a non-issue that they probably should be converted into other sorts of taxes that would affect these alternate wealth transfer options.
As for the current system, it's been co-opted by the rich and corporations to offload their fair share as much as possible onto others. It was never about keeping the rich rich and the
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Yep. Fucked that one up. I meant asset tax. The cludge of property tax, auto tax, you-own-a-Rembrant-you-can-pay-a-taxes also do essentially the same thing. There's not like... a way to correlate them with income tax.
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Tell that to someone whose grandfather didn't bleed in the fight. You'll get better mileage out of that baseless propaganda. But go on, tell us, why is it a lie. Lay it out. I'm sure you have a rational thought buried somewhere.
Re: People need to die (Score:1)
Strong argument: donât try saving anyone as we canât have old men and women voting ðY'
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Strong argument: donât try saving anyone as we canât have old men and women voting ðY'
No one said that.
Re:People need to die (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the only way for change to happen. Imagine in people from 200 years ago were still alive and voting. We'd never progress as a society.
"And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
If we could completely stop aging, the average life expectance would only jump to about 300. You can calculate this by extrapolating out the death rate of a 25 year old. People would eventually die from other things besides old age. This would likely be a net benefit to society. We would greatly reduce our heathcare costs and people wouldn't have to retire because they are no longer capable of working. It would likely have other effects too. People might decide to be more careful with their driving and eating habits if they knew that it was up to them how long they could live.
Re: People need to die (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: People need to die (Score:5, Funny)
They'll probably be maintaining COBOL and FORTRAN systems.
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Well, somebody has to. Don't tell me you're going to do it.
Hitler needs to die (Score:2)
And the first person to undergo this life extension will be...Hitler.
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Hitler didn't die of old age.
Dictators need to die (Score:3)
Technically correct while missing the greater point. It's not the "who" so much as the "what kind of person"? Life extend every dictator and see what happens.
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Your view of history is quite limited. Abolitionists existed in 1700, and women were not entirely without rights - even compared to today in Muslim countries.
Someone 300 years old could have a substantial knowledge of trends of history, and be able to cogently point out bad ideas that keep reappearing.
And, of course, you assume that people never learn.
Re: People need to die (Score:5, Insightful)
> Abolitionists existed in 1700, and women were not entirely without rights
Your date is a bit off. The first attempts to end slavery in the British-american colonies came from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and some of their contemporaries. So basically 1770s.
- Many U.S. States when they declared independence in 1776, also allowed women to vote, same as men did. Sadly that equal suffrage was later repealed in the 1810s and 1820s. Every time there's a revolution, there's also a backlash a few years later to "undo" what the revolutionaries accomplished :-(
- Blacks in the North continued to have the right to vote, and be treated as equals under the law.
Re: People need to die (Score:3)
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Do a web search. Quaker abolitionists were around before Jefferson was born.
And some of them [wikipedia.org]were even vegans.
(I'm not myself, but it is interesting to see what people think are "modern ideas"...)
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Yes, imagine a person who grew up in the early 1700's, with values of that era (slavery would be OK, no women's rights, etc.).
So quick to adapt to new technology as well.
Society can change faster than a generation. Look at gay marriage. Less than 10 years ago, California voted to not allow gay marriage and both Obama and Clinton are on record being against gay marriage. As far as adapting to new technology, some of that is likely because of the aging process too. Older people take longer to learn and just slow down both physically and mentally. Stopping aging would likely help this as well.
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Accidental death, suicide, and homicide kill 36,726 annually. In that age group, roughly 43M are alive. That 1:1171 or so chance of dying from those causes by my calculation.
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Accidental death, suicide, and homicide kill 36,726 annually. In that age group, roughly 43M are alive. That 1:1171 or so chance of dying from those causes by my calculation.
But that doesn't mean that you live to 1171, it means that on average everyone is dead by approximately age 1171. Based on those numbers, 50% should still be dead by about age 500 and chances are that the first life extensions will likely not be perfect and there will be other gotchas that would still get you long before that (like heart attacks)
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Accidental death, suicide, and homicide kill 36,726 annually. In that age group, roughly 43M are alive. That 1:1171 or so chance of dying from those causes by my calculation.
The important point isn't whether it's 300 or 1000 years, it's that it's vastly limited. Some will make it to 20,000 (roughly Gandalf's "300 lifetimes") by luck and timid living.
Unlike age 70, say, the average here doesn't fall off a rock. This is more like a half life average, so if it is 300 years, half will be dead, but 1/4 will still be alive in 600 years, and 1/8 in 900 years, and 1/16 in 1200 years.
Not likely anyone would live to 21,000 (1 in 2^^70) but if 1000 is half life, many thousands would.
Any
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Easy: cure for aging = make them infertile too.
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The last study I saw on this made the assumptions that the life age of the body would be set between 23 and 28. Based on the activities people do at that life age, the average expected lifespan was 220 IIRC. That was based on people having the energy and lifestyles that would make them more active and more likely to engage in activities and stupidities that would end in disaster, just to keep the interest in living higher.
On the top side, something like 1% of the population would make it to 1000, so the ol
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I would say the death rate of a 40 year old would be a better number to use. You have mostly stopped doing stupid crap, you're mostly done with children, but you also are starting to see health related stuff like smoking, heart disease, diabetes, etc... Stopping aging likely wouldn't make all the wear/tear on the body stuff magically disappear. It would take additional breakthrus to be able to reverse all the wear/tear issues. Heart disease is already the number one killer and would likely remain so ev
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No one is talking about removing the ability to die.
We're talking about removing the ability for old age to kill us.
A bullet to the head, as well as thousands of other ways to be killed, not only remains but then becomes even more of a thing to avoid when it will cost you hundreds of years of your life ahead instead of just a small handful.
Then clearing out the old to make way for the new becomes a choice regarding how.
Either you move aside and live out the rest of your long and healthy life, or refuse and
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It's the only way for change to happen. Imagine in people from 200 years ago were still alive and voting. We'd never progress as a society.
"And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
This is cute non-sense that you feel is funny to engage in because you don't think extending life is actually a possibility that relates to your life. Once you have cancer or Alzheimers or even just your brain, muscles and bones atrophy with age, and there is a fix available, you will not reject it on the basis that your old-fashioned thinking should not be around any more. In no other context would you be anything but horrified at a suggestion to kill off large population groups because their thinking is n
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Your overly-trite response based on discussing the effects on an individual. The OP's discussing the effects on society as a whole.
People do change their minds and the longer-term perspective and accumulated competence of people living for, say, 200 years will do a lot of good
Well, I'm looking at the Boomer generation and what they are insisting society must do. Currently it features whining about very slight harm done to powerful rapists, obsession over who is sitting in the next stall in the bathroom, rich people must be given more money, housing supply must be massively limited to increase their own wealth, and insisting they should get to destr
Re: People need to die (Score:1)
You're missing the point. People progress because they adapt to a changing world. As you age you literally lose the mental plasticity required to asymilate new information and change your behavior. Slowing down or preventing these negative age-related changes wouldn't leave us with an intreched class of 'stubborn old people', quite the opposite.
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What a vile and disgusting statement, false in every regard. What makes you think that people don't get wiser as they get older? What makes you think change in society, which you call progress, will be an improvement? Judging from the proclamations of those young people making the most noise in politics today, progress is torturing all males to death
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What makes you think that people don't get wiser as they get older?
People.
Judging from the proclamations of those young people making the most noise in politics today, progress is torturing all males to death and giving 3-year-olds the vote.
Out of interest, are you old?
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What makes you think that people don't get wiser as they get older?
"Wiser" is too vague to be a useful metric. We should look at the way they tend to vote, since that was the issue cited as holding back progress.
While not all older people are conservative, there is a clear trend towards conservatism as people age. It's not clear to me that the trend is because they are "wiser". For example, at the time same-sex marriage become legal in many countries there was still a majority of over 65s opposed to it. If their numbers had swelled due to people living to 200 then it might
Re:People need to die (Score:4, Interesting)
What a vile and disgusting statement, false in every regard.
Well, that is one way to look at it.
What makes you think change in society, which you call progress, will be an improvement?
There is no way to tell ahead of time whether or not there will be an "improvement"; however, like Evolution itself, over enough time, things seem to "advance".
As a person who is subject to dying and not terribly far away from it, I support the idea of natural death. It causes change. There are some Golden Ages which ended because of death and that seems to be a shame; however, the majority of time, it has been self serving kings and emperors who have made everyone's lives miserable and it is good that things changed.
I think there is a quote by Max Planck (not going to verify because it really doesn't matter WHO said it) that goes something like this: The progress of Science advances one death at a time. Once a scientist has found a "truth", they tend to enforce that truth far beyond the applicability of that truth. Could you imagine still "believing" in the Niels Bohr model of the atom?
And yet another strangely prophetic captcha: stings
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I'm pretty sure Niels Bohr didn't believe in the Niels Bohr model of the atom late in his life.
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So if bots become sentient, should we terminate them after X years to avoid getting stuck in a rut?
Similarly, should we toss Linux after X years and start over with a new OS?
You might say, "but we can change and improve those things". If that's the case, then would you change your mind about human death if we could improve individual humans?
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We don't really know. Maybe somebody will find a relatively simple "magic formula" for a universal intelligence that mostly self-learns. I kind of doubt it, but we can only fuzzily guess at this stage.
When you are measuring beings by their utility, then they are essentially bei
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What a vile and disgusting statement, false in every regard. What makes you think that people don't get wiser as they get older?
The entirety of history.
What makes you think change in society, which you call progress, will be an improvement?
Almost the entirety of history. It's around 70/30.
Judging from the proclamations of those young people making the most noise in politics today, progress is torturing all males to death and giving 3-year-olds the vote.
Is this massive pile of stupid you are vomiting forth supposed to be "wisdom"?
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Change isn't always improvement. Look at the Russian and Chinese communist revolutions.
I agree that on balance the trend is improvement. It's just not always the case.
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But my real concern is that we don't really know what the side effects of this are. We keep trying to medicate all the 'negative' aspects of our lives, and it keeps biting us in the ass. We want everyone to be happy, and have a 'normal' psychological profile, and what we get it an opioid epidemic that is killing people. We are relative certain the appendix is vestigial, and removing it is of no great significance, but the preponderance of ca
Re: People need to die (Score:5, Insightful)
Who know what the side effects of eliminating these cells are going to be.
Long life.
They may not appear for generations. We thought that aggressive use of antibiotics and routine use of antibacterials would be a good idea
They are. We live longer, healthier lives than ever in human history. All thanks to those good ideas.
until we bred the superbugs that one day could eliminate us.
We didn't breed "superbugs". Life evolved, as it always does. The phrase "superbug" is fearmongering nonsense meant to attract attiontion. Every disease which we couldn't fight in the past was a "superbug". Measles. Polio. Smallpox. The plague. They killed and maimed incredible numbers of people and we had no defense against them. Today Ebola is one of the most potentially harmful diseases on the planet, and it has absolutely nothing to do with antibiotics or antibacterials.
I've never understood the mindset of the horribly confused people who seem to believe that we shouldn't bother fighting diseases or pests because new ones will evolve. That's like suggesting that we shouldn't eat today because we'll just be hungry again tomorrow.
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Who know what the side effects of eliminating these cells are going to be.
Well, just from the summary I'd say if you eat the wrong foods, all the rest of the cells in your body might self-destruct.
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We keep trying to medicate all the 'negative' aspects of our lives, and it keeps biting us in the ass
[Citation Required]. Specifically that the "biting us in the ass" part happens more often than positive results.
We want everyone to be happy, and have a 'normal' psychological profile, and what we get it an opioid epidemic that is killing people
[Citation Required]. Specifically, that the people dying of drug overdoses received psychological treatment or other evidence that they were not "normal".
What happens is we make people have incredibly shitty lives with no future so that a very small number of people get extremely rich. The "normal" response to that is despair and escapism, which frequently manifests itself as drug use.
We are relative certain the appendix is vestigial, and removing it is of no great significance, but the preponderance of caution that defines medicine says that maybe we should treat appendicitis as it could be a repository for important bacteria.
.....are
Re:People need to die (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the only way for change to happen. Imagine in people from 200 years ago were still alive and voting. We'd never progress as a society.
"And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
It also causes valuable lessons to be lost.The people who experienced Hiroshima and it's after-effects are better placed to fight against it happening again than people who just read about it as bored schoolchildren. It becomes easier to deny the holocaust when the survivors are dead of old age. And regulations put in place after the Great Depression were swept away by later generations who considered them obsolete relics, until the consequences became apparent in 2008.
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It is always safe to assume that socialists, communists, fascists and other types of collectivists hate individuals as they espouse their love to humanity as a whole.
AFAIC individuals matter while the collective does not. I am all for infinite life and completely against aging and dying from so called 'natural causes'. However anybody is and should be free to terminate their own existence if they so choose. It would be interesting to see how many collectivists would off themselves for the sake of their v
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Because nobody ever gained experience and wisdom as they age.
People deserve "Healthspan" (Score:2)
If you would do us the kindness to RTFA, you would realize that your lifespan will not be increased if you were suddenly able to eliminate all of your senescent cells. Life extension is not on the table with this approach, as it is with techniques that mimic caloric restriction.
However, should your senescent cells all undergo sudden removal, you would find yourself free from a number of age-related diseases. The article asserts that even a small number of senescent cells are able to act as powerful pathogen
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If you'd actually Read The Fucking Article you'd know that
Most of the benefit seen in mice seems to be in extending healthspan, the time free of frailty or disease, and as a result median lifespan (being sick, after all, is risky)
I guess you missed that part? Or were you confused by:
True longevity – the maximum time the animals remain alive for – remains relatively unchanged, though studies published in July and September 2018 show an extension of remaining lifespan in mice that were treated when they were very old.
So, the very longest-lived individuals might not benefit much from this, but many more of the population might be able to reach that age.
Lifespan of individuals increased, maximum longevity maybe not. Or they might just need more treatments. The future will tell us.
Re: People need to die (Score:2)
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I haven't died yet, and I don't intend to start. I wouldn't jump off a bridge just because lots of other people had done it.
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It's the only way for change to happen.
They have things called education and learning. And you don't have to go back 200 years. "Gay marriage" was socially unacceptable (by more than half the populous), only 10 year ago, in the USA [google.com]. And forget about it in the middle east.
If you think old people are inherently backwards and shouldn't vote, then you're RAGINGLY ageist.
Consider how many resources it takes to raise a surgeon from birth through all that schooling, to actually performing surgery by (on average) age 36.8. And then they retire by 65. H
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It's the only way for change to happen. Imagine in people from 200 years ago were still alive and voting. We'd never progress as a society.
"And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
First of all we'd be up to 50 billion by now.
Secondly, people voting is not a problem. That's amenable to persuasion (as long as you aren't a dick about it, which is, sadly, what most preaching to the choir politics is, e.g. the entire Kavanaugh thing most recently). People need to discover a better way on their own so they don't feel attacked and get defensive.
Anyway, the real problem is dictatorship. With the greatest psychopathic charismatics in history (the ability to lie convincingly is key) running
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If you want some solid evidence that you don't need to clear out the past generations to progress a cause, consider how fast recent social shifts have occurred. From 2004-2017, opposition to gay marriage in the US went from 60% to 32% (http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/). The US didn't lose 28% of its population in 13 years, it lost around 10.9% of its population in that time frame (calculated from this https://tradingeconomics.com/u... [tradingeconomics.com]). Even assuming that every old pers
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Don't worry .. (Score:5, Funny)
"zombie cells" ... have ceased to divide but are also resistant to dying.
Init will take care of them eventually.
Human "foresight" (Score:3)
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Nihilistic angst is paralyzing. The rest of us will live the best lives possible.
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No, I just went ahead and solved the issue with an approach that works.
Don't assume your context is everyone's. That's epistemologically invalid.
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What issue did you solve, exactly? As far as I can tell you just walked in, shit on the very suggestion of a solution, then declared yourself triumphant. Please explain to me how your approach "works" as anything other than a trolling tactic?
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Nothing, really? You've got nothing to respond with aside from the deafening silence? Sock puppet mod points do not an argument make. So far you've failed to convince me you have a coherent thought process.
Re:Human "foresight" (Score:5, Insightful)
Medicine is a history of doctors and scientists facing up to Death, raising their middle finger towards the reaper and declaring, "Not today!"
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Can I talk to them now?
Wait, schedule's a bit busy. Line one up for me to talk to 120 years from now. Of the ones that are left as of right now, I mean.
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Well not entirely, about 200 years ago many doctors would prescribe tincture of mercury for very many ailments, and so medicine also has a history of giving bad advice leading to shortened lifespans.
Re:Human "foresight" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a trap! (Score:2)
How do we know senescent cells don't play some other important role?
So many times we think something is 'bad', when it's actually quite helpful (and a reason it evolved to that point). Let's sterilize everything - oh wait, now our immune function is compromised and pathogens get stronger. Lactic acid is why muscles hurt and stop - oh wait, it's actually fuel for muscles and transports out the actual 'bad stuff'.
Maybe they're genuinely bad, useless cells...but it seems more often than not this is the wrong w
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There's some speculation that the process of intermittent fasting -- from half a day to 8 days or more, simulating conditions that occurred in nature -- allows the body to clear out some senescent cells through autophagy. If true it would show that there is value in removing them, though non-drug induced process would probably be preferable for an average person.
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More often than not? Want to back that up? A few examples that stand out are not enough for you to think this.
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I could return to you with the same question: where's the evidence that there will be zero negative side effects from the removal of senescent cells?
Or: how many examples would satisfy you?
Geez bub, this is a discussion site, what's the harm in a little speculative discussion?
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It could be that the body simply leaves them around in times of plenty, just waiting for the inevitable winter time when we would run out of food, and then break down the senescent cells to scavenge them for proteins. Our body doesn't have a dedicated protein store, like it does for fat and carbs. There is a lot of protein stored in the muscle, but breaking down muscle in times of hardship will be detrimental to your abilities to find the scarce food. Having some extra junker cells around could be an evolv
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Interesting idea.. On this thread though, are enough of these cells in a typical person to really make a difference on protein requirements? I'd imagine muscle tissue would be a considerably larger source. I doubt we have muscle-sized amount of senescent cells, eh?
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It's not just whole cells that can be scavenged, but also old organelles within each cell. You only need around 50 grams of protein on a normal day. During times of famine, construction of new cells is slowed down to minimal maintenance, so protein requirements are lower. There's about 10 kg of total protein in a human body, so even if just 1% (wild ass guess) of that is kept in the form of senescent cells and organelles, it should provide enough material to last a couple of extra days without impacting phy
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Oh, for sure, we're fine for a long time without consuming protein...but it wouldn't be a straight conversion of 50g of senescent cells to 50g of usable protein. I don't know the breakdown, but I'd imagine that most of the cell isn't protein...and the other side of the question is how many g of senescent cells are in the average person?
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How do we know senescent cells don't play some other important role?
Clinical trials.
You know, like how all medicine gets made these days.
Duh.
Science vs Existential Threat (Score:1)
It's interesting that the comments have skewed toward a fear, an existential fear, of this research. MIT Tech Review (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612124/clearing-out-old-cells-might-help-the-brain/) on 9/19/2018 first caught my eye. The goal seems less about extending one's lifespan as retaining 'vigor' as we age. The diseases, age-related impairments, that are within the scope of this research are considerable. I haven't seen any documentation about the possible benefit of longer life. Doesn't sound
Fasting... (Score:1)
The cure for Baldness only 5 years away (Score:1)
I think the only thing that isn't dying is this story; I've read an article talking about how Death itself will be cured "any day now" for the past 20 years, and we are still nowhere near closer to a cure than when Indiana Jones set out looking for the Holy Grail.
We can't even cure Male Pattern Baldness, where the cure has been 5 years away for 50 years.
One other thing, if a cure does come out I'll be glad to take it; if only to find out what discoveries they make out in the Universe. It is strange to see t
Climate change (Score:2)
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How ironic if we were to eliminate ageing just as the planet decides to rid itself of us irritating little ticks.
People who can actually live long enough to experience a real change of climate might be more inclined to pay attention to the possibility of a poor change.
Re: Finally! (Score:1)
It may be dangerous, but I don't much like the alternative.
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Birth rate is already at or below replacement rate in the developed world where this treatment would be available.