4 ms·

I don’t think this should be allowed as a treatment, if it’s efficacy hasn’t been established. But I wish there were a trial. I want to be able to live healthil

I don’t think this should be allowed as a treatment, if it’s efficacy hasn’t been established. But I wish there were a trial. I want to be able to live healthily to 100.

rscho 8y ago
...by feeding upon material which is already limited in availability for providing treatment to people younger than you are.
nradov 8y ago
There is zero scientific basis to expect that this would allow people to live healthily to 100. We have limited resources for clinical trials and those resources should be focused on areas more likely to produce useful results.
- mips_avatar 8y ago
  I haven’t seen any evidence for it either. But I’d like to see the FDA support aging treatments more. The affect of an extra 10 years of healthy life would be huge.
- ibeckermayer 8y ago
  And what precisely gives you (or the bureaucrats running the FDA) the authority to decide for everybody in America what is the best use of our blood? I should be free to decide for myself what to do with my own body, and which authorities to trust on matters beyond my domain of expertise. If you have a good argument for why this is a waste of resources then make the argument, don’t legistlatively prohibit me from thinking for myself.
  - rscho 8y ago
    There are things that are a public necessity and indeed collectively-enforced rules simply because they won't work if too few people agree to it. Another example of this process is vaccines. If herd immunity is too low, then vaccination cannot work, although it is a perfectly good solution if everyone is on board. A second point is that you probably are no expert on the topic of human plasma. This could motivate the enforcement of rules under certain circumstances, given that you are unable to personally judge if the use of such precious material is a waste or not. I personally, think that your opinion is the epitome of selfishness.
    - krageon 8y ago
      It is true that not all vaccinations work 100% of the time and that herd immunity helps protect the people for who they have not worked. It is very, very wrong to say that this means that "If herd immunity is too low, then vaccination cannot work".
      - rscho 8y ago
        Oh yeah? Please expand on this, I'm curious. If that is your point of contention, you could replace "cannot work" by "may do more harm than good at a social level".
        krageon 8y ago
        I don't know what to expand on, as I don't understand how it wasn't clear from what I have already told you - can you indicate roughly where I stopped being clear?
        rscho 8y ago
        You mentioned I said something very very wrong, but it's not clear to me if this is a language or fundamental issue. For instance if I say, as I have tried to enunciate above, "if herd immunity is too low, vaccines may do more harm than good at a social/epidemiologic level", does that still seem very very wrong to you? To be clear, your above comment gave the impression that you thought that a low herd immunity could not increase deaths due to disease compared to no herd immunity at all, which is wrong and was probably the reason why you were downvoted.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Here's my response: People acting like absolute fucking idiots can and do frequently fuck things up for everyone else. Which means sometimes we need to put guardrails in place in order prevent them from doing things like say, selling organs to sketchy people or selling blood for quackery. There was another comment on a prior thread [1] that I'll link here but the gist of it is that if an adverse reaction happens because someone decided to sell their blood to some guy that decided being a vampire would add years to their life, it could seriously affect the amount of blood donors and the people that actually medically depend on said donations. I'm tired of seeing people on HN excuse snake oil salesman under the guise of 'well they should be allowed to sell or do whatever they want' because this kind of stuff can and does cause actual harm outside of your own limited scope. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203483
- abainbridge 8y ago
  > There is zero scientific basis to expect that this would allow people to live healthily to 100. Not quite zero. There is at least some evidence that it might treat Alzheimer's disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5950663/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5950663/
DKnoll 8y ago
I am a layman so I could be totally misinterpreting things, but based on existing research it seems like the most effective method would be to filter out or suppress the production of VCAM1 which is apparently a protein that is associated with aging effects. It will be interesting to see how the research develops over the next couple decades. https://www.leafscience.org/the-fountain-of-youth-could-be-closer-to-hand/ https://www.leafscience.org/the-fountain-of-youth-could-be-c...

I don’t think this should be allowed as a treatment, if it’s efficacy hasn’t been established. But I wish there were a trial. I want to be able to live healthily to 100.

rscho 8y ago

...by feeding upon material which is already limited in availability for providing treatment to people younger than you are.

nradov 8y ago

There is zero scientific basis to expect that this would allow people to live healthily to 100. We have limited resources for clinical trials and those resources should be focused on areas more likely to produce useful results.

mips_avatar 8y ago
I haven’t seen any evidence for it either. But I’d like to see the FDA support aging treatments more. The affect of an extra 10 years of healthy life would be huge.
ibeckermayer 8y ago
And what precisely gives you (or the bureaucrats running the FDA) the authority to decide for everybody in America what is the best use of our blood? I should be free to decide for myself what to do with my own body, and which authorities to trust on matters beyond my domain of expertise. If you have a good argument for why this is a waste of resources then make the argument, don’t legistlatively prohibit me from thinking for myself.
- rscho 8y ago
  There are things that are a public necessity and indeed collectively-enforced rules simply because they won't work if too few people agree to it. Another example of this process is vaccines. If herd immunity is too low, then vaccination cannot work, although it is a perfectly good solution if everyone is on board. A second point is that you probably are no expert on the topic of human plasma. This could motivate the enforcement of rules under certain circumstances, given that you are unable to personally judge if the use of such precious material is a waste or not. I personally, think that your opinion is the epitome of selfishness.
  - krageon 8y ago
    It is true that not all vaccinations work 100% of the time and that herd immunity helps protect the people for who they have not worked. It is very, very wrong to say that this means that "If herd immunity is too low, then vaccination cannot work".
    - rscho 8y ago
      Oh yeah? Please expand on this, I'm curious. If that is your point of contention, you could replace "cannot work" by "may do more harm than good at a social level".
      - krageon 8y ago
        I don't know what to expand on, as I don't understand how it wasn't clear from what I have already told you - can you indicate roughly where I stopped being clear?
        rscho 8y ago
        You mentioned I said something very very wrong, but it's not clear to me if this is a language or fundamental issue. For instance if I say, as I have tried to enunciate above, "if herd immunity is too low, vaccines may do more harm than good at a social/epidemiologic level", does that still seem very very wrong to you? To be clear, your above comment gave the impression that you thought that a low herd immunity could not increase deaths due to disease compared to no herd immunity at all, which is wrong and was probably the reason why you were downvoted.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Here's my response: People acting like absolute fucking idiots can and do frequently fuck things up for everyone else. Which means sometimes we need to put guardrails in place in order prevent them from doing things like say, selling organs to sketchy people or selling blood for quackery. There was another comment on a prior thread [1] that I'll link here but the gist of it is that if an adverse reaction happens because someone decided to sell their blood to some guy that decided being a vampire would add years to their life, it could seriously affect the amount of blood donors and the people that actually medically depend on said donations. I'm tired of seeing people on HN excuse snake oil salesman under the guise of 'well they should be allowed to sell or do whatever they want' because this kind of stuff can and does cause actual harm outside of your own limited scope. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203483
abainbridge 8y ago
> There is zero scientific basis to expect that this would allow people to live healthily to 100. Not quite zero. There is at least some evidence that it might treat Alzheimer's disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5950663/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5950663/

DKnoll 8y ago

I am a layman so I could be totally misinterpreting things, but based on existing research it seems like the most effective method would be to filter out or suppress the production of VCAM1 which is apparently a protein that is associated with aging effects. It will be interesting to see how the research develops over the next couple decades. https://www.leafscience.org/the-fountain-of-youth-could-be-closer-to-hand/ https://www.leafscience.org/the-fountain-of-youth-could-be-c...