10 ms·

While the article title is sensational, it’s encouraging to see SENS getting wider traction in the public imagination. A lot of the other proposed therapies see

While the article title is sensational, it’s encouraging to see SENS getting wider traction in the public imagination. A lot of the other proposed therapies seem to involve genetic engineering, and this one seems more somatic, more at the scale of designing a drug to work at the scale of cells, vs the scale of DNA. It seems, to my interested layperson’s mind, that a rough and ready treatment is more likely at this scale, albeit one less likely to result in 4-digit lifespans, measured in years. This does make one of my fears more imminent, which is what to do with things like teeth, the vitreous humor, extant arthritic damage, and other systems and organs, the effects of aging for which the body has more or less lost or never had cells in place that can be recruited for repair. Time will tell. With any luck, we’ll have loads of it!

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> what to do with things like teeth, the vitreous humor, extant arthritic damage, and other systems and organs, the effects of aging for which the body has more or less lost or never had cells in place that can be recruited for repair Sounds like we’ll have a healthy industry in healthcare and research for lifetimes to come.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  > what to do with things like teeth, False teeth have been available for quite a while now, not to mention implants. > the vitreous humor, Replace the eye with a camera? There are already people with experimental implants. > extant arthritic damage, Exo-skeleton? There are Japanese developments for construction workers that could probably be repurposed to help people be mobile. > and other systems and organs, Artificial hearts exist, dialysis works. So yes, the health industry will be the biggest industry in the future.
scandox 8y ago
I’m amazed that anyone thinks above normal individual longevity is a good idea. In my view it will be the end of human progress morally and scientifically rather than the beginning.
- scottLobster 8y ago
  I'm amazed you can make such a sweeping statement with any confidence. What in your mind is "normal" human logevity? Because if by normal you mean "pre-industrial", then even discounting child mortality you're advocating for commplace plagues, famines and bad water affecting the number. We've been changing our environment, our bodies, and surpassing natural barriers since before we were sentient. Why should we stop now that we're just starting to get good at it?
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Normal or natural human longevity is ~30-35 years. You can determine that because it is essentially a function of (average) body weight. The bigger your (species) is, the longer you live. Really interesting book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Origins-Death-William-Clark/dp/0195121198 https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Origins-Death-William-Clark/dp/01... TLDR: 2 unchangeable sexes + death (both of those) has proven to be the most effective reproductive strategy, beating out every competitor by a huge margin. This means there is a very good reason for death to exist and death is a "new" thing. There was a very long time when animals (well ... technically multicellular bacteria colonies) just didn't ever die. Some of those are alive right now and are hundreds of thousands of years old, at least. We know about the effectiveness because there are species (none are animals) that are still alive that predate evolution's "invention" of death, that have competed to conquer the earth, and they failed dismally. And we know about the 2 unchangeable sexes because there's a lot of variation in sexes, none very successful (there even are asexual animals, and animals that can change their sex, and animals with different sex arrangements. Some have small differences (like males giving birth), and some are hugely different, like true asexual animals)
    - kwhitefoot 8y ago
shrimp_emoji 8y ago
>the effects of aging for which the body has more or less lost or never had cells in place that can be recruited for repair. So give it cells to be recruiter for repair! Stem cells seem promising for these things. It is a huge bummer to use a platform fundamentally designed to fail though. All of this has to be a stopgap until we have digital consciousnesses, I hope.
- candiodari 8y ago
  Yeah we just need to learn to program large scale DNA to be compatible with our own DNA code ... which we can't even read in a meaningful way ... I mean we can get the binary code, but we don't understand even a basic "if" instruction. Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's not going to happen tomorrow. This'll take 100+ years even at our accelerating pace of development. (teeth being an exception though)

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> what to do with things like teeth, the vitreous humor, extant arthritic damage, and other systems and organs, the effects of aging for which the body has more or less lost or never had cells in place that can be recruited for repair Sounds like we’ll have a healthy industry in healthcare and research for lifetimes to come.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kwhitefoot 8y ago
> what to do with things like teeth, False teeth have been available for quite a while now, not to mention implants. > the vitreous humor, Replace the eye with a camera? There are already people with experimental implants. > extant arthritic damage, Exo-skeleton? There are Japanese developments for construction workers that could probably be repurposed to help people be mobile. > and other systems and organs, Artificial hearts exist, dialysis works. So yes, the health industry will be the biggest industry in the future.

scandox 8y ago

I’m amazed that anyone thinks above normal individual longevity is a good idea. In my view it will be the end of human progress morally and scientifically rather than the beginning.

scottLobster 8y ago
I'm amazed you can make such a sweeping statement with any confidence. What in your mind is "normal" human logevity? Because if by normal you mean "pre-industrial", then even discounting child mortality you're advocating for commplace plagues, famines and bad water affecting the number. We've been changing our environment, our bodies, and surpassing natural barriers since before we were sentient. Why should we stop now that we're just starting to get good at it?
- candiodari 8y ago
  Normal or natural human longevity is ~30-35 years. You can determine that because it is essentially a function of (average) body weight. The bigger your (species) is, the longer you live. Really interesting book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Origins-Death-William-Clark/dp/0195121198 https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Origins-Death-William-Clark/dp/01... TLDR: 2 unchangeable sexes + death (both of those) has proven to be the most effective reproductive strategy, beating out every competitor by a huge margin. This means there is a very good reason for death to exist and death is a "new" thing. There was a very long time when animals (well ... technically multicellular bacteria colonies) just didn't ever die. Some of those are alive right now and are hundreds of thousands of years old, at least. We know about the effectiveness because there are species (none are animals) that are still alive that predate evolution's "invention" of death, that have competed to conquer the earth, and they failed dismally. And we know about the 2 unchangeable sexes because there's a lot of variation in sexes, none very successful (there even are asexual animals, and animals that can change their sex, and animals with different sex arrangements. Some have small differences (like males giving birth), and some are hugely different, like true asexual animals)
  - kwhitefoot 8y ago

shrimp_emoji 8y ago

>the effects of aging for which the body has more or less lost or never had cells in place that can be recruited for repair. So give it cells to be recruiter for repair! Stem cells seem promising for these things. It is a huge bummer to use a platform fundamentally designed to fail though. All of this has to be a stopgap until we have digital consciousnesses, I hope.

candiodari 8y ago
Yeah we just need to learn to program large scale DNA to be compatible with our own DNA code ... which we can't even read in a meaningful way ... I mean we can get the binary code, but we don't understand even a basic "if" instruction. Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's not going to happen tomorrow. This'll take 100+ years even at our accelerating pace of development. (teeth being an exception though)