Anti-Aging Scientists Extend Lifespan of Oldest Living Lab Rat (theguardian.com) 65
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists working on an experimental anti-ageing therapy claim to have broken a record by extending the lifespan of a lab rat called Sima. Named after the Hindi word for "limit" or "boundary", Sima is the last remaining survivor from a group of rodents that received infusions of blood plasma taken from young animals to see if the treatment prolonged their lives. Sima, who was born on February 28, 2019, has lived for 47 months, surpassing the 45.5 months believed to be the oldest age recorded in scientific literature for a female Sprague-Dawley rat, the researchers say. So far, Sima has outlived her closest rival in the study by nearly six months. "We have the oldest living female Sprague Dawley rat," said Dr Harold Katcher, a former biology professor at the University of Maryland, now chief scientific officer at Yuvan Research, a California-based startup.
Researchers have rushed to produce and trial therapies based on young blood plasma after numerous experiments found that infusions could reinvigorate aging organs and tissues. But while studies have found benefits for rodents, there is no evidence to date that the somewhat vampiric approach to youthfulness will help humans dodge the passage of time, despite the best wishes of Silicon Valley. The results from Katcher's latest study will be written up when Sima dies, but data gathered so far suggests that eight rats that received placebo infusions of saline lived for 34 to 38 months, while eight that received a purified and concentrated form of blood plasma, called E5, lived for 38 to 47 months. They also had improved grip strength. Rats normally live for two to three years, though a contender for the oldest ever is a brown rat that survived on a restricted calorie diet for 4.6 years.
A patent filing on the potential therapy describes how plasma from young mammals is purified and concentrated before use. Some components, such as platelets, are removed, as they can trigger immune reactions. The patent names pigs, cows, goats, sheep and humans as possible donors. The amount of plasma needed to produce a single concentrated dose is at least as much as the recipient has in their entire body, it states. If the therapy ever shows promise in humans -- large trials are needed in more animals first -- Katcher believes the plasma could be collected from pigs at abbatoirs.
Researchers have rushed to produce and trial therapies based on young blood plasma after numerous experiments found that infusions could reinvigorate aging organs and tissues. But while studies have found benefits for rodents, there is no evidence to date that the somewhat vampiric approach to youthfulness will help humans dodge the passage of time, despite the best wishes of Silicon Valley. The results from Katcher's latest study will be written up when Sima dies, but data gathered so far suggests that eight rats that received placebo infusions of saline lived for 34 to 38 months, while eight that received a purified and concentrated form of blood plasma, called E5, lived for 38 to 47 months. They also had improved grip strength. Rats normally live for two to three years, though a contender for the oldest ever is a brown rat that survived on a restricted calorie diet for 4.6 years.
A patent filing on the potential therapy describes how plasma from young mammals is purified and concentrated before use. Some components, such as platelets, are removed, as they can trigger immune reactions. The patent names pigs, cows, goats, sheep and humans as possible donors. The amount of plasma needed to produce a single concentrated dose is at least as much as the recipient has in their entire body, it states. If the therapy ever shows promise in humans -- large trials are needed in more animals first -- Katcher believes the plasma could be collected from pigs at abbatoirs.
Pinky (Score:4, Funny)
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Ok, but this time you play the part of Dorothy.
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Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
You dirty bastard!
Re:Pinky (Score:4, Funny)
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"I think so Brain, but doesn't Peter Thiel already have a husband?"
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Yes, Brain, but if we didn't have ears, we'd look like weasels.
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What is it (Score:2)
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I would hope that before they start performing this treatment en masse they figure out what is giving the benefit.
The treatment comes with a few catches: you have to eat rat food, and run on an exercise wheel several times per day.
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You'd be surprised how many people would probably be willing to do that if it meant they didn't have to die.
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You'd be surprised how many people would probably be willing to do that if it meant they didn't have to die.
Eat (unpalatable) rat food, run on exercise wheel? There may be some, but judging by the low popularity of very very similar route "eat (unpalatable) healthy food, do exercise, not necessarily in a wheel" which is very similar and with solid science backing it up... I doubt it'll be all that many.
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There's a tonne of research on the working week available. Have a search on the interwebs pipes. I think you might be surprised/shocked, especially by the bits about overwork reducing overall productivity, as well as the negative health effects.
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Other studies in this area that provided some clues that the junk-cleaning process is an important part of it. IIRC, in one study researchers found a similar effect by replacing a double-digit fraction of an elderly rat's plasma with albumin.
My interested non-expert understanding is the best practical longevity advice we have for adults today is...
1. Have medical insurance and get regular care
2. Live in a longevity zip code
3. Have regular and ongoing social contact with other people
4. Have grab bars in you
The tech is perfect (Score:3)
Heirs tend towards nromality (Score:2)
We need billionaires and their heirs living generations feeding off others for eternity.
Heirs of rich people tend towards normality. Social science has the term "regress to the mean", which says that if you have an outlier on the bell curve, the next generation will be closer to the mean.
We see this all the time with rich people: one person in the family has a knack for selling/inventing/whatever, becomes an industry giant and starts a dynasty and has a family. But then the children are all above average, but not exceptionally so, and the grandchildren are roughly equivalent to normal people.
T
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At any one time, certain *people* are rich, but over long periods different *families* become rich.
Also, billionaires get that way by creating wealth, not by sucking it away from others. If you purchase a junk car, spend the summer rebuilding it, then sell it for more money you haven't sucked wealth from anyone else, you created wealth from your own work.
Marx got that part wrong, and his theories have been proven disastrous time and again.
Billionaires don't flip cars. You can't make a billion with your own work, their wealth is only built on other people's labor.
Which theories have been proven wrong exactly?
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Well, lots of Marx's doctrine has been proven wrong, but the most wrong was that taking control from one set of people and giving it to another would improve things. Monopolies (i.e. control of more than 50% of any definable market) should be anti-protected. Not necessarily broken up, because some markets are "natural monopolies", but taxed or regulated more heavily, to the extent that if control of 90% of the market is reached, they should be essentially run by the state. The main problem with this solu
Re:Heirs tend towards nromality (Score:5, Informative)
If you purchase a junk car, spend the summer rebuilding it, then sell it for more money you haven't sucked wealth from anyone else, you created wealth from your own work.
But not a billion dollars-worth.
To create a billion dollars you need to convince a lot of other people to do that work for you and give you 50% of the profits.
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If you purchase a junk car, spend the summer rebuilding it, then sell it for more money you haven't sucked wealth from anyone else, you created wealth from your own work.
What a tone-deaf comment. I understand that wasn't your comment, just pointing out that OP doesn't seem to understand: Assuming you made a modest profit of $2,000 you'd only have to spend your summer rebuilding 500,000 cars. Or find 200,000 people willing to get paid $1000/car to fix them for you for a couple of years. Seems reasonable, right? There is literally no way that a person can become a billionaire in their lifetime without exploiting a lot of people to get there.
but over long periods different *families* become rich
There are two things you need in
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There is a reason why its a meme... Someone with a background in advertising wants you to believe in it without having to prove it.
That is not only incorrect but also self defeating.
Imagine a system where what you said was true, intergenerational wealth should remain dead flat. Look at any sort of studies on it (in the united states) more people move between wealth quintiles than stay in the one they were born in. If it was true families should hold on to wealth for many generations. Studies on the extremel
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Let's start with this one
Imagine a system where what you said was true, intergenerational wealth should remain dead flat
Fist, those are your words, not mine. I absolutely have stood on the shoulders of my parents. Who stood on the shoulders of theirs. Each step of the way we have built more wealth. Saying I benefited because my parents made enough money by the time I moved out that they could send me on my way with a free hand-me-down beater car and the means to take out loans so I could go to college is absolutely true. I likely would not be where I am today had I not had those opportunities. That
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No worries on the grammar BS, your post was understandable and that is all that matters to anyone who matters.
Yes, those words are mine. You gave a situation that was unquantifiable, like someone who talks about fair without definition, so I had to quantify it to make it a discussion in reality and not hyperbola (yes I know this was in a chain talking about $1B but your meme went quite a bit farther than that). Yes, all actions are proceeded by all other actions and there were a million things that you star
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First, I appreciate your well thought out and well articulated comment. Rare thing on here, so thank you for that. And I've managed to get some food, caffeine, and a touch of alcohol in me, so I feel as though I have a bit of my wits back. (Travelling for work at the moment, and I've been up for about 18 hours now. Ugh.)
First the "easy" ones
So, I would quibble about your "really really really good luck" comment as it is often repeated but impossible to prove or disprove as "luck"
To be honest, I was thinking about "winning the lottery" relating to that comment. Not really worth discussing, honestly. Nobody, even born wealthy, can sustain billion
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I would like to thank you as well. It's not often to hear rational discussion. Sorry to hear your travel and lack of sleep, hopefully you are getting to a better place.
Ah, sorry on the luck bit as well. People call everything luck now so its hard to tell any more. Yes, lottery now that is luck.
I agree the toast bit is a proxy for quite a bit. I can surely understand how it can sound bad to someone who that is their one luxury or anyone who does it in a sustainable way for themselves. The problem is there ar
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There is literally no way that a person can become a billionaire in their lifetime without exploiting a lot of people to get there.
Can you please define your use of the term "exploit"?
Note: I'm not saying that billionaires *don't* exploit others as a rule, but I'd like to know what you mean by it.
For example, are you exploited if you agree to do some work for a wage with which you are content, regardless of how much your employer makes on the same work? Is exploitation based on how much you make vs your employer?
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When I say exploit, I think of a company like Apple driving their workers in China so hard they jump off a building because that's a better solution than going back to their family farm and standing ankle deep in shit all day. Or companies like Amazon that work their employees to the point that they have to piss in Gatorade bottles instead of risk losing their source of income and health insurance because they took a bathroom break. Or a company like Starbucks that would shut a store down rather than let a
Re:Heirs tend towards normality (Score:2)
& hard work? Yeah, there are loads of people who work very hard. Most of them aren't extraordinarily successful: That's statistically impossible & we also have a sy
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also the fact that a very large part of business success is just down to luck.
Being a colossal prick helps a lot too. I consider myself a pretty lucky person, and I make decent money, but I'm not willing to fuck someone else over just to get more.
I knew somebody who tried that (Score:2)
When you're buying a junk car for cheap there's a reason. Cars are complicated. An old car doesn't just have one thing wrong with it, it has a *lot* of things wrong with it.
So you fix the engine on and old Toyota and sell it. Your customer comes back in a week because the transmission is slipping. Now you fix that for free because if you don't word gets around quick that you sell junk
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You said they need the blood of young, unemployed virgins?
Phew, at least up to the 6-digits we should be safe by now.
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I'm fairly sure every heir that is at least as psychopathic as their billionaire ancestor will make sure that these infusions get replaced with saline.
Or, if more psychopathic, mercury.
Remember: Being a heir is only fun if the one you want to inherit from finally croaks, preferably while you're young enough to still enjoy inheriting the whole shit. Ask King Charles, he should be an expert in this.
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If they can, indeed, use pig blood on humans, you have a valid point. This has not yet been proven. If it does,would the recipient need to live on immune-suppressants?
Now with the pig-heart replacement, the patient died because the pigs heart carried a virus, and he had to be strongly immune suppressed so that he wouldn't reject it.
Perhaps cultured blood would be a better solution. But would that mean that the blood would need to be matched to the recipient? Would major blood type be good enough?
At best
Old News (Score:2)
Simpsons did it.
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Live longest with this one simple trick (Score:2)
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Fortunately for us, it really doesn't work that way. Calorie restriction is a little more complicated than "just fast now and then". Cheers!
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Comment removed (Score:3)
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Oranges without seeds, bereft of their ability to reproduce...
But tasty.
Simpsons predicted it (Score:2)
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Countess Bathory was first.
Sounds terrific! (Score:3)
This is straight out of a horror/dystopian story.
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How many souls will have to be harvested for one treatment? Just a passing thought.
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Yeah, it kind of reminds me of Serge Voronoff, the Edwardian quack who experimented with transplanting monkey testicles into humans to increase virility and reverse aging. By the 1920s Voronoff was doing a roaring trade performing his procedure on millionaires, and had become rich enough himself to purchase his very own Bond villain lair [goo.gl]. He died at age 85 in 1951 -- a ripe old age to be sure, but far short of the 140 years he promised his patients.
Voronoff's transplants would have been almost immediately k
Just like I always say (Score:2)
What about the drug for young blood? (Score:2)
Saw something about a discovery that old marrow might be the issue, and they realized a particular interleukin (il-2b?) was involved (increasing with age while stuff seems to go wrong). We already have drugs that block that for inflammation (arthritis, IBD, etc). And it seemed to work pretty well (I forget the measure given...70%?). Turning back a lot of the markers in the blood, and solving the accumulation of crud in the marrow.
(from Reddit a few days ago now)
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