Scientists Dodge FDA To Offer a $1 Million Anti-Aging Treatment in Colombia (medium.com) 145
Would you pay $1 million and fly to South America for a chance to live longer? From a report: Libella Gene Therapeutics, a Kansas-based company that says it is developing a gene therapy that can reverse aging by up to 20 years, is hoping your answer is yes. In an interview with OneZero, the company says it is ready to give an experimental anti-aging therapy to older people at a clinic north of Bogota, Colombia. But that's not all -- it's also charging people $1 million to participate. Scientists and ethicists say the company's experiment is not only dubious but it also raises concerns about how anti-aging treatments should be tested in people. The aim of Libella's therapy is to lengthen a person's telomeres, which sit at the tips of chromosomes like caps on the end of shoelaces. First discovered in the 1970s, telomeres have been linked to aging because they seem to shorten as a person gets older. By delivering a gene called TERT to cells, which in turn makes a telomere-rebuilding enzyme called telomerase, Libella thinks it can prevent, delay, or even reverse aging.
"I know what we're trying to do sounds like science fiction, but I believe it's a science reality," Jeff Mathis, CEO of Libella Gene Therapeutics, tells OneZero. Libella's therapy is based on studies published by American geneticist Ronald DePinho in 2010 and Spanish scientist Maria Blasco in 2012, which found that telomerase gene therapy could reverse signs of aging in mice. While intriguing, many have dismissed the idea of using gene therapy to reverse aging in humans because it would involve a permanent change to a person's DNA, a risk that's hard to justify in someone who's healthy. Behind Libella's technology is Bill Andrews, a molecular biologist who, 20 years ago, led a research group at the Bay Area biotech firm Geron to identify the human telomerase enzyme. He tells OneZero that he developed a telomerase gene therapy and licensed the technology to Libella. "I can't say it's the only cause of aging, but it plays a role in humans," he says about telomere shortening.
"I know what we're trying to do sounds like science fiction, but I believe it's a science reality," Jeff Mathis, CEO of Libella Gene Therapeutics, tells OneZero. Libella's therapy is based on studies published by American geneticist Ronald DePinho in 2010 and Spanish scientist Maria Blasco in 2012, which found that telomerase gene therapy could reverse signs of aging in mice. While intriguing, many have dismissed the idea of using gene therapy to reverse aging in humans because it would involve a permanent change to a person's DNA, a risk that's hard to justify in someone who's healthy. Behind Libella's technology is Bill Andrews, a molecular biologist who, 20 years ago, led a research group at the Bay Area biotech firm Geron to identify the human telomerase enzyme. He tells OneZero that he developed a telomerase gene therapy and licensed the technology to Libella. "I can't say it's the only cause of aging, but it plays a role in humans," he says about telomere shortening.
In Colombia? (Score:2)
They always had an anti-age drug, at least you feel that way.
But more seriously, if this works, the drug 'wars' are kid's play compared to what will happen then, soon 8 billion craving that drug.
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I hope by the time I really need it, it has been tested, and maybe more open to the general public for a bit more reasonable price.
I'll start saving NOW, however for this eventuality!!
I'd like to be over 100yrs for sure!!!
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A lot of ageing has to do with damage to your genes over time. A lot trickier to fix that. Think of each cell, containing bundles of genes which define your whole body, all sorts of damage can occur to that DNA which is replicated in the next cell produced, the damage, because it does not affect the actual function of that cell, which is carried over into the next cell produced. That damage accumulates over time, subtly effecting cell function, not so much the more defining DNA but the more background DNA,
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Neverthelss the telomeres restrict cells from doubling more than roughly 20 times, even those with no defects.
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Just require anyone who wants to be immortal to be sterilized. Problem solved.
Only if you're also going to hunt down offspring they've already had. If I have a few kids then get the treatment the sterilization won't matter.
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Not the Inmates who get the treatment as forcing sterilized can be seen as cruel and unusual punishment
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Problem solved.
Not for long. This is a gene therapy, and that technology is getting cheaper by the day. You can buy five year old equipment on eBay now for the price of a decent used car, that's going to be the price of bleeding-edge tech five years from now. The work is being automated as well, which is why the first gene analysis took thousands of scientists around the world a decade to do and now it takes a single tech putting your cheek swab into the analyzer and emailing you the results tomorrow.
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Even if it does work you may just look younger when you die of cancer or heart disease at a normal age.
Re:In Colombia? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, hell...even THAT is a big plus, is it not?
If the only effect is to keep me young looking, and potentially young feeling when I get to the normal current life ranges, then that would be a HUGE plus to this.
Ideally, I'd want to live longer too, but it just keeps me younger looking and feeling while I age normally, that would be a great thing too!!
Please, take my money!!
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Re:In Colombia? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it isn't all that bad after all.
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I don't think telomere lengthening automatically prevents age-related cognitive decline. So when a rich old coot gets a more youthful body, he will still be too scatterbrained to hold his own in a competitive labor market.
That is just the very first thing I thought of off the top of my head, and I don't even know if it is true. This *is* all experimental, after all. However, given how outrageously complex the human body is, I expect that reversing this one aspect of aging will not solve nearly enough age
Re:In Colombia? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think telomere lengthening automatically prevents age-related cognitive decline. So when a rich old coot gets a more youthful body, he will still be too scatterbrained to hold his own in a competitive labor market.
That is just the very first thing I thought of off the top of my head, and I don't even know if it is true. This *is* all experimental, after all. However, given how outrageously complex the human body is, I expect that reversing this one aspect of aging will not solve nearly enough age-related problems to be worth the million dollars. A "complete youth package" is needed, and we aren't anywhere near such a thing.
This treatment certainly won't reverse aging, but it could come with a nasty side dish of cancer. [utah.edu]
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So what? (Score:3)
This treatment certainly won't reverse aging, but it could come with a nasty side dish of cancer.
Which they'll probably have good cures for within the next decade or so.
If your body is wrecked and this treatment can give you a lot of quality of life back, it has a way better upside than any risk of cancer which hardly matters if you are very old anyway.
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You don't cure cancer though... Also, cancer is not a single disease that infects things. So you would have to cure each and every variant.
Don't get me wrong, it would be great if we could just inject a patient with something that would shrink tumors and target cancerous cells. It still won't be a cure and you won't likely be getting a vaccine.
We can't even stop the common cold, good luck with cancer.
P.S. If this life extension does work, it will only be the super rich that ever get it and no healthcare pla
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Jealousy is really ugly.
The treatment will also be available to any good chemist who can synthesize the relevant chemicals. It will be available to anyone with the intelligence and will to learn how to synthesize the chemicals. It will also be available to any group of people who hire a good chemist. The chemicals will become available on the black market. And so forth, and so on.
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There are no "chemicals" involved. ... perhaps you want to look up the difference and the difference in complexity.
It is a "gene therapy"
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it will be that much longer.
Doubtful. The gene scan that you get done at Ancestry or one of the other places that costs a couple hundred dollars (2/3 of which is marketing expense) would have taken years and cost hundreds of millions just two decades ago. Technology is improving at an exponential rate, and price is also dropping at an exponential rate.
Re: So what? (Score:2)
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Re: So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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What are the side effects, what else are you also doing?
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It is unlikely that is simply the machinery getting old and rusty after all our cells continuously regenerate themselves and even species that can regenerate most of their lost bodies (eg: starfish) still go thru the aging process.
If you think it's unlikely that we procreate and die, you've apparently missed every lesson on evolution.
As we age we incur disease, injury, and genetic mutations. None of those is beneficial to reproduction. Pretty much all species have a period in time when they're the most fertile, and then they drop off after that. Once you've procreated, there's minimal evolutionary benefit in you sticking around.
In fact, there's a decided negative: You continue to consume the resources that the young, fertile members
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(eg: salmon dying off en mass after spawning).
That is actually a myth.
Many die, because they damage their skin when digging holes into the ground for the eggs. They get infections more easy and are weak and get caught by animals ... but there is no real "mass dying" after spawning.
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True, and I think aging mitochondria may have more to do with the aging of multi-cellular entities that depend on the mitochondria for their energy. There are very good reasons most of the mitochondria genes have been moved to the cell nucleus.
There's also the question of senescent cells, and what they do the the inter-cellular fluid. Some tests have shown the eliminating senescent cells extends youth. But, of course, you would need to do that before you really needed to do it.
Re:In Colombia? (Score:4, Interesting)
> I expect that reversing this one aspect of aging will not solve nearly enough age-related problems to be worth the million dollars.
That depends entirely on who's buying it. For an American making the median wage of $31k, for whom it's 32 years income? Probably not.
For Bill Gates, who's worth $90 billion? If he can manage a 5% annual return on investment he can make that much in 12 hours. If there aren't any horrible side effects, why *wouldn't* he, or any other truly rich person, go for it? Even if it only reverses some of the symptoms of aging and doesn't actually extend lifespan, that's still a heck of a return for on a few days income. A million bucks isn't even enough to throw a decent party for that crowd, a touch of youth is a way better return on investment.
I can hear the eyes rolling... (Score:4, Informative)
...at the SENS Institute [sens.org] from here. They have been researching ways to reverse aging for decades. Keeping the telomeres from shortening helps only one of the seven known ways that mammals age.
In short, if you've got $1M burning a hole in your pocket, give it to the SENS Research Foundation. They are FAR more likely to solve this problem.
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Unless you have some degenerative brain disease, age related cognitive decline is NOT a given.
If you keep an active mind, and keep active physically, there's no reason for you to lose your mind and your sharpness as you age.
Eat right, keep physical activity and keep your mind active by
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I think you're wrong. But it's my guess that it has more to do with mitochondria becoming less efficient.
That said, if you want empirical evidence for the decline, go to an old folks home. Try to engage them in conversation about something that requires thought, but which they used to be good at. (I know I'm not as good a programmer as I used to be.) You'll find that even bridge is too thought intensive for most of them.
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That said, if you want empirical evidence for the decline, go to an old folks home. Try to engage them in conversation about something that requires thought, but which they used to be good at. (I know I'm not as good a programmer as I used to be.) You'll find that even bridge is too thought intensive for most of them.
... and she still beat everyone in Rommey.
That is a minority. A minority is definitely evidence that it is the other way around. In my family we had only one case of dementia
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Doing some sports actually keeps you young, even in the brain.
Some people just "give up" when they get old or something happens like the significant other dies, then they tumble quickly into dementia, albeit having no real reason for it.
We already have some idea (Score:2)
What would happen to society if we can meaningfully prolong life?
The average life expectancy for middle-class men in Victorian England was 45 years [www.bl.uk] less if you were a labourer. Today the life expectancy is almost double that.
We have adapted by people working for longer and by introducing retirement because we can now generally live long enough to acquire enough savings to support ourselves. I suspect this trend will continue - retirement ages will increase and people will work longer but also have more time after they retire.
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"They always had an anti-age drug, at least you feel that way."
They have trannies in Colombia too?
Well hot damn!
The cartel will move it when the pot cash goes awa (Score:2)
The cartel will move it when the pot cash goes away after the states make it legal
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Don't expect the black market to really go away. Government is being way to greedy on taxes and buyers don't give two shits about where its coming from. You look at it, smell it and all seems great. If you are buying from a grower or one of his people you are getting good stuff at a good price and it isn't hard to find those sellers, especially since anyone can legally grow now.
Maybe sheltered children of millennial's will think that you can only buy weed from a government sanctioned facility. It's dangerou
Re: In Colombia? (Score:2)
They always had an anti-age drug, at least you feel that way.
Just don't look down at your mirror.
Well (Score:2)
Some people will have multiples of $1M more after this, so the treatment at least has some effects.
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each doctor will bill at $1000 /hr
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Indeed. The treatment will be pretty worthless for the ones treated, it is way too early for something like this actually working.
What about cancers? (Score:2)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
I am no DNA-talkin' guy, but it seems this might hide potential cancerous cells from the body, if the linked article is correct.
Re: What about cancers? (Score:2)
Sounds to me they want to develop cures which target telomerase activity, but I assume the anti-aging therapy doesn't cause continuous production. If you can turn it on/off then the anti-cancer therapies would work again when off.
I've been wondering (Score:2)
science fiction (Score:5, Interesting)
I know what we're trying to do sounds like science fiction
altered carbon. by richard morgan. greg bear's books. ken macleod's books. many others. they all make it clear that once anti-ageing treatments like this are available for vast sums of money, you end up with an "elite" class, far beyond the reach of law, who consider the rest of humanity to be nothing more than "cattle".
peter f hamilton's books also make it clear that there's a problem of having too *much* life-experience. once you are 1,500 years old, you have 20 *lifetimes* worth of knowledge in your head. very few people can cope with that: iain m banks "culture" series, which allows peoples' consciousness to be transferred to alternative bodies (even machines) and also stored, explores some possibilities: people going into "offline storage" for millenia, only to be woken if certain events (usually spectacular) occur.
anti-ageing sounds great in theory: in practice it can turn our entire planet into a dsytopian nightmare for everyone: both those who become pathologically and criminally "elite", and those left behind. the film Elysium explores and expresses this best.
Re:science fiction (Score:5, Insightful)
anti-ageing sounds great in theory: in practice...
You're saying "in practice", when no one has ever done this before, and we literally have nothing but theory and speculation. I'd be careful about reading too much "truth" into what science fiction writers speculate. They're first and foremost trying to spin a good yarn, and for that they require conflict, which makes dystopian futures more attractive than utopian ones.
Bad side effects. I can think of lots of scifi wit (Score:2)
Bad side effects. I can think of lots of scifi with that. Where some odd alternative medicine goes bad.
Also they can cover up deaths an old man died doing an alternative medicine just like steve jobs.
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Oh, please. 'Elysium' was nothing but a pile of absurdities upon more absurdities. It is merely one of a vast number of dystopian future stories that has nothing to say except the simplistic 'rich == evil' message. Science fiction of the type you are describing is nothing more than speculation about the future. It doesn't 'make clear' anything at all.
- Necron69
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That would be the definition of science fiction, would it not?
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rich == evil
More like unrestrained inequality == evil. When you look at times in history where the majority rose up and murdered the rich it was when inequality got too bad. That's why today the rich are careful to make the prospect of a revolution feel just slightly worse than continuing to serve them.
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When you look at times in history where the majority rose up and murdered the rich it was when inequality got too bad. ... in ancient rome the poor ones got free bread and free entry to circus and the bathes. In middle ages the poor ones were treated like cattle ... and in the industrialization age like work slaves, who got money, just enough to drink and stay poor.
And the poor ones starved
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Speculation = thought experiment = Gedankenexperiment.
It can make many things clear. And clear definitely is: if we had immortal Trumps, Gates, Ellisons, or for that matter Kims, Xi Jinping's, or any of the still existing dictators, it can't be so hard to grasp that that wold be a very bad idea.
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anti-ageing sounds great in theory: in practice it can turn our entire planet into a dsytopian nightmare for everyone: both those who become pathologically and criminally "elite", and those left behind. the film Elysium explores and expresses this best.
You're basing that statement of fact on nothing more than some storytellers speculating. Nice one.
We have those already. (Score:3)
[many authors wrote stories on the premise that] once anti-ageing treatments [] are available for vast sums of money, you end up with an "elite" class, far beyond the reach of law, who consider the rest of humanity to be nothing more than "cattle".
So?
We ALREADY have small elite classes, far beyond the reach of law, who consider the rest of humanity to be nothing more than "cattle".
This just means that they can spend abunch of their money being first adopters of an experimental anti-aging treatment to try to
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they got el chapo. Made a lot of selling "cattle" drugs
Re:science fiction (Score:5, Insightful)
If we were dogs we would think a dog's lifespan is a lifetime. If I take a step back I feel like life is incredibly short, especially considering how aging drives you through many phases in life. For many it's like you spend ~20 years to become an adult, then ~10 to party, ~20 to raise kids, ~15 to reach retirement, ~15 sunset years then ~15 in a nursing home if you live that long. If you could add like a hundred "free" years as an healthy adult to that, hell yeah I'd take it. I appreciate all the help the health care system has given my parents as illness caught up with them but to be honest, when they were 70 and healthy it was definitively with an unspoken "for their age" and not like they were 20 anymore.
Most of those who lose the will to live lose it because their body is failing them. Fading vision, fading hearing, fading taste buds, losing teeth, using a stroller and full of aches and pains, they're weary and tired and it's only going downhill, you fix one problem and they get two new ones. To act like there's nothing wrong with people that are "only" aging is an insult to all elderly because the truth is clear as day, nobody would choose to age if they could help it. Which is not to say we should give up on making the 80yo become 90yo or the 90yo to become 100yo but we should seriously start experimenting on how to not let the body deteriorate like that in the first place.
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Most people actually chose to age.
For many people bone and joint problems , especially tooth problems, are completely avoidable. But they don't care. They don't _behave_ healthy. How many people do you see bowing down to pick up a heavy bag instead of simply bending the knees? How many do you see carrying a heavy bag and still taking two stairs on a stair case?
People are so lazy with her body they don't even shift into an easy gear on bicycle but stay in the heavy/high gear as to impress someone who is not
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Please sign me up for the "elite" group then.
I"m good with all that you described if I could live that long.
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I'm re-reading KSR's Mars trilogy right now, and it makes another interesting point. What happens to your brain when you keep stuffing things into it? What if the longevity treatments aren't enough? They wind up with a brain plasticity treatment as well, and people who don't get it fail. But people who do get it change. Fingers crossed, I guess, not that I'm likely to be around to find out and thus have to care.
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Don't take science fiction too seriously.
OTOH, it's worth noting that most people become less ethical as the age. Not more competent beyond a certain point. The catch-phrase from the 1960's of "never trust anyone over 30" did have a certain amount of validity, and still does, though there's really not the sharp cut-off that that implies, and it's truth is statistical in nature.
That said, those who seek power tend to be untrustworthy at any age. But again this truth is statistical in nature. Still, it's
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After a while you realize that power and wealth is not as desirable as they once were. If you're looking at forever there is NO chance that you couldn't make it to the top, so the thrill is gone. You're already "comfortable". Hell, you don't even have to worry about dying. Sci-fi authors imagine that it all gets cyberpunk and shit but the reality is you just stop caring about pretty much anything. That's the real difficulty. Consuming resources but not producing anything of value in return.
I get it.
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there's a problem of having too *much* life-experience. once you are 1,500 years old, you have 20 *lifetimes* worth of knowledge in your head. very few people can cope with that
It's not the knowledge. Knowledge merely accumulates and that's fine.
It's the shit that happens in life. That also accumulates. The human mind didn't evolve to cope with unlimited amount of pain and loss. It's tough to let go, and few of us ever manage to let go completely. Something stays with you. How many loved ones can you lose before it just drives you mad? How many injustices can you witness or experience? How much personal suffering can you stand? Even if you're good at coping, if only a small fracti
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It's tough to let go, and few of us ever manage to let go completely.
Because people are brought up in the *wrong* religious context.
But in general I agree. I think that is one of the main reasons for dementia. People getting caught in their thought - Karussell, and not being able to get out again.
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I've seen an estimate - can't cite it, unfortunately, that if all medical causes of death were eliminated, the human lifespan would average roughly 650 years. I imagine that people over 200 or so would be so careful about hiding themselves that you would never be aware of their existence.
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One number (Applehu Akbar): 650 years: Memory of estimate if medical issues were no longer cause of death.
Another number (fafalone): 8,938 years: Based on eliminating all "Natural causes" deaths and dying from misadventure apparently at recent actuarial rates for the current age distribution. (With caveat that many misadventure death rates are likely to drop drastically.)
I recall a third: 850 years if I recall correctly (maybe it was the 650 one alluded to above): Memory of an estimate (by a Cryonics
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The difference in estimates depends a lot more on assumed causes of non-medical death. In the long estimate above, car crashes are by far the largest factor. By the time you actually live into your 500s, other unguessable causes of death will undoubtedly predominate. Will you fall off a derelict wind turbine while recovering neodymium from it? Murdered by a rogue AI? Caught in a war between the colonists of Enceladus and Mimas?
If the linked chart had been drawn up in 1850 your most likely causes of ccidenta
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The most interesting part is how long we'd live even if the world doesn't change, 650 is way too low. Here in Norway the average deaths per year age 18-27 is 38/100000 or in other words 99.962% live. 0.99962^1800 = 0.504 meaning we'd live to be 1800 just by being as healthy as people 18-27. If we choose not to do drugs or kill ourselves and got rid of disease leaving only accidents then it'd be thousands of years longer. While old age gets help it's going to kill 96-97% of us.
Libella Gene Therapeutics (Score:2)
They're big fans of PT Barnum's dictum "there's a sucker born every minute". The trick is to find suckers who still have money, but I'm thinking they've hit on an effective solution to that.
Having Read "Lifespan" (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt that this treatment will accomplish anything. Scientists have cloned several different species from an aged animal's DNA, and the result, nowadays, is a healthy clone without the diseases and ravages of old age of the original specimen. So aging clearly isn't a result of the digital information being distorted or lost. Telomerase is also a natural enzyme that the cell already regulates.
David Sinclair's theory is that aging is a result not of corruption of the digital information, but of accumulation of noise in the analogue information in the epigenome (the chemistry environment interacting with the genes). Cells continuously split, digitally replicating the genes, but the chemical soup within the cell is also passed along, yet seldom gets renewed from source. This means that while a cell might be young, its epigenome can be very old and "noisy". So, $1m or not, they're likely barking up the wrong tree.
(I have no association to Dr Sinclair)
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Sorry, but your "proof" doesn't work, because during the cloning process they eliminate those cell lines that aren't successful enough. This is analogous to the germ-line cells that are not only limited in their number of divisions, but also have an extremely high mortality in early embryogenesis. The somatic cells have reproduced more often, but there are more of them in the culture to select from.
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Last I looked, and it's been a while, clones themselves were initially healthy but often suffered early onset of age-related problems, but the offspring of those clones were perfectly normal. As such, the benefits of cloning have been in cases like replicating a prize bull or stud horse in order to keep seeding high-value offspring.
Has there been some change on that front?
Massive (Score:3)
When the alternative is death, how do you define risk?
Snake Oil is a problem, but delaying possible incalculable benefit could be mass murderous.
A few dozens or hundreds may get no benefit, or be worse off. But if it works, the same screaming of the joys of the FDA will switch to screaming how unfair it is to be so expensive that only the rich can afford it.
I make no claim as to its validity; indeed it sounds too good to be true. Just that the risk vs. reward is way out of whack by people acting on "our behalf."
A million? A chance? (Score:4)
If their treatment actually works, eventually someone will figure out how to do it at scale and someone else will figure out how to make a knock-off version. At that point, prices will become far more reasonable. Also, they'll probably have worked out (or at least established) any problems it might cause by then.
This shit's like Kickstarter. Only idiots and the rich pay absurd amounts of money to have a chance at alpha testing a product. If it's any good, it'll take off on its own and you can buy in after things have settled down.
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Since everybody knows the $10 solution has to be too good to be true it stands to reason the $1M solution can't miss.
I guess. The fact that there's an idiot born every second means they've managed to cover a lot of the problem space so most anything makes sense now.
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You don't have to be absurdly rich to eat less. You need to be absurdly rich to have access to practical in-place gene manipulation that literally reverses aging by lengthening telomeres.
That is, of course, assuming that the therapy being discussed here even actually works.
If it doesn't, it's just another snake oil, and I honestly won't be surprised.
Pay to test with an quack doctor?? in an clinic? (Score:2)
Pay to test with an quack doctor?? in an clinic?
Also for 1M they can do better then an clinic over seas.
Worse Case they take your 1M and leave you sick in some unknown clinic
oh great (Score:2)
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I'm a Colombian Prince (Score:2)
My ancestors have always had a wonder drug that keeps you forever young....blablabla, send me money.
"...like caps on the end of shoelaces" (Score:2)
You mean an aglet [youtube.com]?
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I was hoping that would be written.
Of course they forgot about it at the end of the episode.
It's a ploy! (Score:2)
It is yet another ploy by the intellectual property cartel to keep extending the duration of copyright.
They realize that now that they got it to life + 70, there may be a significant pushback if they keep trying to increase the "70" part of the equation, so they are working on increasing the "life" part, deviously employing the commutative property of addition to achieve their nefarious goals.
Sneaky bastards!
if it worked... (Score:2)
Sure, once it is proven to work, I'll figure out how to get that kind of money and I'd happily spend it on 20 more years. That's about the time it takes to accumulate that money, and treatments tend to become cheaper with time, so by the 2nd time I'll be in the plus.
Problem: It's not been proven to work, yet. A million for a chance? Without an indication of the odds?
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Haha, no (Score:2)
Only way to really do reverse aging (Score:2)
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So, you're saying you'd rather die somewhat wealthy, than to live as a poor person?
I think I'd choose to live as long as possible, with extra life you have more time to earn and figure how to make money for those extra years.
I can't think of anything that is worth more than
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Depends how poor we are talking. If you mean to poor to go on vacation but my house is paid off and I really only need to make utilities and property taxes along with food. Sure that's pretty nice. If on the other hand poor means potentially becoming homeless while being a senior citizen.
Sorry, no thanks. The senior citizen homeless problem is extremely sad and has to be really hard on them. No thank you. I'll just stick to the plan I got going and die when I die. My family all seems pretty long lived with
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Sure it's hideously expensive right now, but the same is true of everything. Cars were at one point luxury items as was indoor plumbing. Same thing with any kind of medical treatment where th
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If you're blowing your retirement on it, it may well not be a good investment unless you fear death more than poverty. But in that case, you're probably not the target market.
The target market is the people who can spend $1M on an impulse buy, and routinely spend far more than that on cars, houses, yachts, etc. For them, reversing even some of the symptoms of aging for only a million bucks is a steal.
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Save twice as much ?
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We need more aging infirm boomers like a fish needs a bicycle.
Not saying anything about the one in TFA, but many proposed life extension therapies would supposedly not just extend life, but also reduce medical problems and cognitive degradation. Society could indeed benefit from some people staying active and productive longer. Others, not so much, I might agree, but even the extremely misanthropic should think of this not as making nursing home stays longer, but as providing more opportunity to die in an accident while living an active life.
(Also many of these ther
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They're going to kill only people so desperate that they'll fly to Columbia to have magic genetics done and maybe be a little younger live a little longer.
These won't be people with long healthy lives ahead of them unless it actually is shown to work. People that aren't already in a bad place won't be undergoing this.
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