4 ms·
I wont rule out that posibility, but it is much more complex than that. There is a qualitative difference between causes of death before and after ~75 yo. Peop
by crpatino 10y ago
I wont rule out that posibility, but it is much more complex than that.
There is a qualitative difference between causes of death before and after ~75 yo. People in their 60s and 70s have a tendency to die from specific organ failure, - heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, etc, - modern medicine has gotten really good at dealing with this kind of health problems.
People 80+, on the other hand, have a tendency to die from ageing itself. The deterioration in their body is generalized and they find it harder to bounce back after common illnesses and mild accidents, with a non trivial risk of complications always present. And even if they kind of recover, this just adds to the teardown of general health and it will be a little bit harder to recover the next round.
IMHO, the increase we see in people who reach the 100+ mark has more to do with they being people that have won the "genetics lottery". Their families just seem to age more gracefully and/or slowly than average; we are seeing them appear in greater numbers now because they would have died of specific organic disease a generation ago.
However, I am afraid that in order to see the kind of dramatic increase in maximum life expectancy, we would need to develop a different kind of medicine, one that deals directly with the aging problem, not with specific diseases. I don't think we are that close to such breakthrough as to expect to personally benefit from it, so I will count my blessings if I make it to age 80 or so.
- melling 10y agoWe do have Blue Zones from which we can study the genetic aspect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone It's a very young science so it's hard to say what we'll be able to do with it. To date, not much research has been done on aging. We could learn a lot in 50 years. The world of 1967 was a lot different than today, for example. And I would think that the world will change more in the next 50 years than it has in the last 100.
- crpatino 10y agoMostly agreed, though I would hedge this to include the fact that it is a non trivial effort to move from basic science to applied science, and from there to professional best practices. Even if we crack the aging problem within 15-20 years, I do not think that the bulk of doctors that are going to learn the procedures that come out of it in Med school have been born yet. The doctors that would be in a position to invent such procedures might have been born already, but they will reach middle age themselves before they get a chance to develop their breakthroughs. That being the case, please forgive me if I do not hold my breath.
- sulam 10y agoHonestly it seems like doing procedures is less likely to extend your life, unless someone figured out head transplants. ;) Much more likely that gene therapy will drive therapeutic advances for the next 50 years.
- ap3 10y agoInteresting to note that we might be seeing more people make it to the 90-100 yr club but we don't see a jump into the 120 club
- HeavenBanned 10y agoSo with advanced gene therapy all we would have to do is find outliers in longevity, create a "vaccine" for everyone that copies the relevant genes onto the recipient that allow for longevity, and expand life into the hundreds. Every few years, create a better "vaccine" based off new outliers living than previous templated outliers. Rinse, repeat until we're thousands of years old. Is this the right logic?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- adventured 10y agoWe're going to solve the aging genetic lottery factor in the next 30 years with gene editing. We'll be doing it successfully at an experimental level within 10 to 15 years, and we'll be practicing it commercially in that 30 year time frame. The extreme speed at which CRISPR is moving forward makes this an unavoidable outcome, the genie is way out of the bottle. 30 years out we'll be able to buy people at least a decade of high quality life extension.