5 ms·

Great interview. I thought his comments about the upper limits of human lifespan were especially interesting: > There currently is an upper limit, and the uppe

Great interview. I thought his comments about the upper limits of human lifespan were especially interesting: > There currently is an upper limit, and the upper limit is probably around 115, 120. You have a very large number—100 billion people to choose the number of people that have ever lived—and you have only one who has made it through to 122, Jeanne Calment. The second oldest was 119. It does seem there is an upper limit. Some people have shown that in the last hundred years, even though we have progressively increased the average lifespan, the number of people who live above 115 has not increased. I also couldn't help but think that his remarks about immortality being the naughty "I-word" is a roundabout way of addressing some of the excitement stirred by a certain slightly sensationalistic wizardly chap in the aging field.

neom 9y ago
While immorality might be a stretch, CRISPR is certainly going to change how we think about longevity in a sensationally magical way.
- RivieraKid 9y ago
  How? CRISPR is overhyped. We don't even understand aging sufficiently enough.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    We don't currently is not he same as we won't ever.
- dpatrick86 9y ago
  That would be great! The hundreds of off-target mutations thing is a little bit concerning, however.[1] I hope this doesn't turn out to stymie the potential for a delightfully scifi future. [1] https://sciencealert.com/turns-out-crispr-gene-editing-can-cause-hundreds-of-unexpected-mutations https://sciencealert.com/turns-out-crispr-gene-editing-can-c...
reasonattlm 9y ago
The interaction between medical technology and specific biological mechanisms determines limits to human life span. Given the sparse nature of demographic data for extreme old age, there is plenty of room to debate whether or not there exists one or more mechanisms of aging that have not been impacted in any meaningful way by improvements in medical technology over the past century, and which, on their own, can produce a very high rate of mortality in late life. That circumstance would look a lot like a limit to human life span, one that doesn't appear to be affected by medicine - but that is only because the right medicine hasn't been created yet. One mechanism that springs to mind here is the accumulation of transthyretin amyloid, found in one small study to be the majority cause of death in supercentenarians, but which appears to have only a smaller impact on mortality in younger old age - it is implicated in something like 10% of heart failure cases, for example. Can we argue that advances in medicine and public health over the past century have had little to no impact on the accumulation of misfolded transthyretin deposits in tissues, and thus this mechanism acts as a limit on life span? Or do some of these improvements in fact produce an small, incidental reduction in amyloid burden in later life? The evidence to support any of the possible positions on these questions is presently lacking. Whatever the state of effective limits on life span today, however, the limits on life span tomorrow are determined by progress towards rejuvenation therapies. There are treatments under development that can clear transthyretin amyloid from tissues, for example, such as the work of Pentraxin Therapeutics, or the catalytic antibody development funded by the SENS Research Foundation.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
Yeah, I wish there was more real talk about this too. I can certainly imagine that new technologies could turn a graph that's levelling off into a hockey stick. I think those are interesting theories. But there's no evidence that will happen. I can imagine being headed towards 150-year lifespans, there's just no evidence we're on that track right now.

neom 9y ago

While immorality might be a stretch, CRISPR is certainly going to change how we think about longevity in a sensationally magical way.

RivieraKid 9y ago
How? CRISPR is overhyped. We don't even understand aging sufficiently enough.
- kobeya 9y ago
  We don't currently is not he same as we won't ever.
dpatrick86 9y ago
That would be great! The hundreds of off-target mutations thing is a little bit concerning, however.[1] I hope this doesn't turn out to stymie the potential for a delightfully scifi future. [1] https://sciencealert.com/turns-out-crispr-gene-editing-can-cause-hundreds-of-unexpected-mutations https://sciencealert.com/turns-out-crispr-gene-editing-can-c...

reasonattlm 9y ago

The interaction between medical technology and specific biological mechanisms determines limits to human life span. Given the sparse nature of demographic data for extreme old age, there is plenty of room to debate whether or not there exists one or more mechanisms of aging that have not been impacted in any meaningful way by improvements in medical technology over the past century, and which, on their own, can produce a very high rate of mortality in late life. That circumstance would look a lot like a limit to human life span, one that doesn't appear to be affected by medicine - but that is only because the right medicine hasn't been created yet. One mechanism that springs to mind here is the accumulation of transthyretin amyloid, found in one small study to be the majority cause of death in supercentenarians, but which appears to have only a smaller impact on mortality in younger old age - it is implicated in something like 10% of heart failure cases, for example. Can we argue that advances in medicine and public health over the past century have had little to no impact on the accumulation of misfolded transthyretin deposits in tissues, and thus this mechanism acts as a limit on life span? Or do some of these improvements in fact produce an small, incidental reduction in amyloid burden in later life? The evidence to support any of the possible positions on these questions is presently lacking. Whatever the state of effective limits on life span today, however, the limits on life span tomorrow are determined by progress towards rejuvenation therapies. There are treatments under development that can clear transthyretin amyloid from tissues, for example, such as the work of Pentraxin Therapeutics, or the catalytic antibody development funded by the SENS Research Foundation.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

Yeah, I wish there was more real talk about this too. I can certainly imagine that new technologies could turn a graph that's levelling off into a hockey stick. I think those are interesting theories. But there's no evidence that will happen. I can imagine being headed towards 150-year lifespans, there's just no evidence we're on that track right now.