10 ms·

Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’

103 points by apsec112 8y ago

sanxiyn 8y ago
This is a great news. Fighting aging is one of the most important challenge of our time. This is also encouraging: "Gazette: Are there regulatory hurdles? When we've spoken in the past, you've mentioned that the FDA considers aging a natural process and therefore won't approve drugs to treat it. Sinclair: I've been part of a group that talked with the FDA, and they are willing and also quite enthusiastic about considering a change that defines aging as a disease."
- netsharc 8y ago
  And not climate change? In my mind's model of the future we're going to die within 50 years, this research is useless when the infinitely aged doesn't have clean water to drink.
  - guzik 8y ago
    That's why he said "one of the most important challenge".
  - kristofferR 8y ago
    If "old people" weren't sure they would die within the next 30 years anyway, then perhaps they would actually start caring about the planet.
    - jhayward 8y ago
      As an "old person" this feels personal. What evidence do you have that supports such a claim for "old people"?
      - kristofferR 8y ago
        https://news.gallup.com/poll/234314/global-warming-age-gap-younger-americans-worried.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/234314/global-warming-age-gap-y... Only 29% of Americans over 55 think climate change will pose a serious threat in their lifetime :(
        jhayward 8y ago
        That's a cherry-picked stat if I ever saw one. In context of this thread you seem to be equating that with "think climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed", which is an entirely different question. Most of us don't want to see our kids lives ruined. In fact, the headline stat of that linked survey is "56% of Americans over 55 worry a great deal about global warming".
  - Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
    One of the main connections to longevity people usually miss in this whole "climate change" discussion is one of the main psychological reasons people don't take care of the environment in the first place: and it's arguably their lifespan. Everyone in the west knows that they will die at most ~100 years of age, and if you are basically not in some top percentile morality-wise (and also at that point in your life where all more important problems are resolved and you even have energy to care about the environment), you just don't care about it because you know you're going to die anyway. Of course many people think about their children and the other people etc, but many don't. If we manage to extend the expected (or even just possible) generic lifespan of normal people - that will be one of the best promoters of environment-thinking of normal population. Because suddenly the choices they make today become very real in terms of impact on the environment in the next 50-100-200 years, because there is a good change that this same person is going to be living at that time.
    - tomp 8y ago
      No the main psychological reason is that people are bad at rationally assessing risks. E.g. most fear flying more than driving. Then there's also other (more economical, but you could say that's caused by psychology as well) reasons, such as tragedy of the commons.
      - Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
        Perhaps a bit OT, but it is interesting that people keep bringing fear of flying as "irrational risk". People fearing flying more than driving are not afraid of the relative chances of dying (which are low either way). They are afraid of the feeling and experience of spending long time in a falling plane knowing that you are going to die, being stuck in one seat and not being able to do anything about it. This does not happen when you are driving, if there is an accident, you usually either die instantly or in some rare cases receive some injuries, but at least then you can lie at the site of the accident and hope that medics will come. It's not the same as being stuck in a box for 10s of minutes knowing you are most likely about to crash to a painful death. You have to spend time in that experience, to feel it, in a completely hopeless state. That's why people afraid of flying, not because of some statistics.
- guzik 8y ago
  Aging is a disease, there should be no doubt in that. What makes aging unique is that it affects 100% of the population.
  - lm28469 8y ago
    That's also the only thing that keeps our population in check. Let's see how we handle the incoming retirement issues, that'll give us a good indication (less workers, more retired people pretty much everywhere in the west, peaking in the next few decades). Living long won't help much if it just means more people consuming our limited natural resources and weighting on our social infrastructure. At any rate most country would shift their retirement age accordingly and life would be the same but longer, I fail to see the appeal of that (albeit it's the ultimate realization of our "us vs nature" western mentality) We should figure how to live well before we try to live longer, and we still have some things we're nowhere close to figure out (energy, pollution, retirement, increasing pop, &c.) But all of that only applies if everyone has access to this tech, which I doubt. Most likely it will be a "cure" for the rich. Seems to me that scientists are working toward goals that kind of look nice on paper (curing aging, genetic modifications, &c.) without stopping even one second and thinking about the moral/social/economical consequences down the line.
    - ionised 8y ago
      Don't worry, poor people will still age and die.
      - lm28469 8y ago
        We'll make a lesser version of it available to everyone who gets a mortgage > 50 years and a new electric car. It'll involve weekly injections though, that way as soon as you stop paying you go back to where you belong.
      - xiphias2 8y ago
        Do you realistically think that it will not be worth to scale the solution? Many medications stay expensive because not big enough number of people are affected. Also don't think U.S. only: how do you stop people from going to China to get the cheap (but well tested) copy of a medication?
Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
There is a very good recent more informal-type long-format discussion with this doctor (David Sinclair) discussing a lot of longevity topics on the Joe Rogan channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4
kristofferR 8y ago
This recent interview with Aubrey de Grey (main popularizer of anti-aging science) is really worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMFST20xHwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMFST20xHwk (1.5x speed is fine) He seems to think that anti-aging science has speeded up drastically recently, both in terms of the science itself, the funding and the popularity. I really love what the SENS Foundation is doing in terms of spinning research avenues into startups, since most investors are far more likely to fund high-risk investments than non-profit ones. He also mentions other positive developments in terms of legislation and advocacy.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  Wow I never thought I'd see someone suggesting listening to Aubrey at 1.5x speed. I have trouble following at normal x. The longevity field might be seeing an EV tipping point moment. Nobody cared until everyone spins.
- xiphias2 8y ago
  I'm still not sure if SENS should stay non-profit. It produced great results, it would get much more money if it would convert to a for profit company. At the same time it's important to keep the control near Aubrey de Grey, as he has a great track record of staying focused.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Non-profit doesn't mean they can't make money - just that they can't outfunnel it to shareholders/owners. Whether they would get more research funding from accepting investment instead of donations or if the mission would survive is a separate topic.
    - xiphias2 8y ago
      The main goal of going for a for profit company would be to increase funding. It's sad that Vitalik Buterin had to be the biggest donation giver when there are so many people much richer than him (and with shorter expected remaining lifespan).
raugustinus 8y ago
What makes people think we want to have them around any longer? To extend life is to decrease it's value. Simple economics tells us it's inflation. edit: I think Neil deGrasse Tyson says it a lot better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM
- jvln 8y ago
  There is a theory that some math problems are not solved because people who are solving them have to few time to think on them. Other theory states that 100 years war between France and England lasted so long because there were left 0 leaders older than 30+ years old and these guys were not good at negotiation.
- Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
  This makes no sense. Longer productive lifespan means that people can acquire more expert skills and become more proficient at what they do. Or for example switch professions if the economic climate has changed - which will be still much faster than teaching a completely new individual to learn that profession, if there is even a little overlap between them. I'm not saying that economics should even have any say in making people live longer (I don't think the purpose of life is to make the economy work well, it's the other way around), but even from the point of view of economics, we would want to make everyone live longer.
  - raugustinus 8y ago
    From the point of view of economics maybe. Switching professions can be done in a current lifespan and is not done very often. I don't see people changing just because their life is extended. I just don't understand people's fixation on having a longer life. Seems to me people just keep looking at the horizon to bring them what they want and they forget what's right in front of them.
    - frobozz 8y ago
      One reason not to switch professions is affordability. Few established mid-career professionals can afford to either take time out to train and qualify in another trade, or jump back down to the bottom rung and take a junior role in something else. If, at 60, you have paid off your mortgage, amassed some savings, and seen your adult children leave home, then you can consider it. However, by then, you only have 5-7 years left until your pension kicks in and 10 before cognitive decline starts to take hold (either may have already happened), so you will probably just plod on doing what you already know. You might not even have enough time to really get to the interesting part of being a whatever-your-new-career-is. If at 60, you are still in the prime of your life, with 60 more years on the clock, and 30 more years of full cognition and physical fitness available to you, then the idea of a career shift becomes more attractive. Even without the affordability question, there is likely to be a point in most people's careers where the pursuit of mastery stops and the doldrums set in. The longer the working life, the more likely you are to reach that tipping point at a point when you have time to do something about it.
dtujmer 8y ago
"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Well, maybe not the last one, but still an important one. Nick Bostrom has a great story describing the underlying philosophy in the fight against aging: https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html And here it is in video form as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY
- antt 8y ago
  Imagine a world in which Stalin was still in power. That is what amortality looks like. I can't help but think that this would also completely retard scientific progress. Imagine tenure that lasts a milenium or more. We would still be discussing scholastism.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    1) No. Whatever people make, other people can destroy. You could get rid of Stalin any time you wanted, if even by running away or making him irrelevant. With various degrees of difficulty involved. And for every Stalin, you brought in a few Buddhas and Gandhis. 2) Again, that depends on how you approach innovation which has little to do with age. What would have to be instituted is probably rotation based on tenure, similar to presidency terms. If a professor is still deemed innovative, they can stay in charge. In fact, such a system would be vastly superior to the current one where once tenured, a professor is almost immovable for many years. It would also help with the publish or perish part if extended to lower levels - you'd get more chances. Most importantly, if the basic needs are met, you just gained access to a huge pool of genius engineers and scientists by sheer numbers. Imagine if, say, Feynman or Hawking or Knuth or even Leibnitz and Newton were still around, and cooperating... No matter the academic structures.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Imagine a world where Newton could still contribute, peak scientific output wouldn't be before the age of 35, and politicians would tackle long term problems because they will be affected by them too. That is also what amortality looks like.
jz_ 8y ago
If anyone is interested in tracking progress of clinical trials for age related diseases, there's this roadmap: https://www.lifespan.io/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/ https://www.lifespan.io/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/
killjoywashere 8y ago
Yawn ... This is the resveratrol guy again. Media hound.
Aaargh20318 8y ago
If we can cure aging, then overpopulation will become an even larger problem than it already is. I would propose to only make anti-aging treatments available to people who haven't procreated yet and on condition they get sterilised at the same time.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Overpopulation right now is not caused by people getting too old, it's caused by people having too many babies. It is also not a problem in countries where anti-aging treatments are likely to be available first and even less of a problem in the rich population that will be able to afford them at first. On the other hand, the promise of remaining able bodied until you die from an accident might reduce the number of children because you don't have to have children that take care of you when you're too old to take care of yourself.
  - c1sc0 8y ago
    Overpopulation is a direct result of medical progress, specifically penicillin and treatment for children's diseases.
    - adrianN 8y ago
      And yet the countries with the best medical treatments available have below replacement birth rates.
      - c1sc0 8y ago
        But it takes a generation or two for parents to adapt to the new reality of children actually surviving into adulthood & living prosperous lives.
        adrianN 8y ago
        It will likely also take a generation or two until our anti-aging technology actually works and is cheap enough to have a meaningful impact on the planetwide population.
grondilu 8y ago
"Prime time for an impact" is kind of an ironic title IMHO. People already live quite long, so it takes a long time for longevity to take any significant effect. If a 20yo man became immortal today, he will be 100 in 2099. Who knows what kind of world we'll be living in then? My point is : longevity is such a slow motion process that its impact on society is not as relevant as the pace of technology in other fields.
- braincrush7 8y ago
  Would anti aging cure mental deficiencies that occur with aging. We lose our ability to learn the more we age. I'd much rather be able to learn like an 18 year old for my while life and die at 70 then be a senile man and live till 100
  - xiphias2 8y ago
    Yes, actually companies trying to cure Alzheimer disease started as research in SENS.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Having a treatment that allows 20 year olds to live healthily to 120 likely helps the contemporary 85 year olds to live a few more years without being dependent on other people. Ageing populations are a huge problem in many first world countries.
  - xiphias2 8y ago
    Not really. What you're talking about works with solutions that are minimizing the damages building up in your body, but Audrey is specifically researching repairing the damages.
mms1973 8y ago
Anti-aging: the last nail in the coffin of Social Security
raubtier 8y ago
While waiting for new medications to prolong life, you can imitate a paleontological lifestyle as far as practically possible. Not just what and when to eat, but also what to expose your body to and how to shape your social life. In addition to a healthier and longer life, you will also be able to perform more and cope with more difficult challenges, which allows for a greatly increased quality of life.
PavlikPaja 8y ago
What you actually see if you study aging carefully is that it isn't anything like accumulation of damage the body cannot repair, it's the accumulation of damage the body can repair. In fact, among the most consistent things you can see is the accumulation of iron, and to a lesser extent other minerals, such as calcium. The body seems to have a really big trouble regulating those minerals, it doesn't even have its own way to get rid of excess iron, the only way you can get rid of it is blood loss. Now, what does it mean? One thing, the body doesn't really makes much distinctions when absorbing metals so that when there is excess iron, it cannot absorb other divalent metals without poisoning itself with iron. So it cannot absorb manganese without absorbing too much iron, and manganese is essential for preventing oxidative damage. A second thing is, the experiments on rats show that lanthanum (and possibly other rare earths) change the homeostasis in the brain so that the amount of iron decreases, while it normally accumulates with age. Multiple rare earths have been shown to bind preferably to proteins, usually over calcium, but possibly also other metal ions, zinc seems to be a kind of universal element that can bind to almost any place that isn't taken. Neurons even seem to dramatically increase in capacity (with each neuron carrying its own signal, instead of many almost exactly the same thing over and over) as the concentration of lanthanum increases in vitro. (it's worth noting though, that lanthanum has been seen as an essential nutrient for decades in China, so if it cured aging, it would be known) I thing we need to consider the possibility that there is no such a thing as aging, but is the result of some sort of imbalance caused by early agriculture, metallurgy, or whatever human activity that changed the environment in a way that our bodies, and other mammal bodies have no way of dealing with. The rumors of longevity from history and various isolated places are seen as myths, but they may not all be.
- lawlessone 8y ago
  Gonnna need citations for all of that..
  - PavlikPaja 8y ago
    Iron is known to accumulate with age: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23237353 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23237353 It has even been proposed as the mechanism of caloric restriction: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2481398/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2481398/ Here is some literature review that I just found: https://res.mdpi.com/metals/metals-05-02070/article_deploy/metals-05-02070.pdf?filename=&attachment=1 https://res.mdpi.com/metals/metals-05-02070/article_deploy/m... The absence of iron excretion mechanism shouldn't be controversial, here is the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_iron_metabolism#Iron_recycling_and_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_iron_metabolism#Iron_rec... Both iron and manganese are transported by the same molecules and the nutrients inhibit each other, e.g.:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577 The need of Mn for MnSOD also shouldn't be controverisal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOD2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOD2 lanthanum changing the concentration of iron in the brain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378427406000580 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037842740... Review of lanthanide effects, cites the higher affinity of certain lanthanides to proteins: http://www.actabp.pl/pdf/4_2000/1107.pdf http://www.actabp.pl/pdf/4_2000/1107.pdf Lanthanum increaseing the capacity of neural transmission, (together with https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)31646-5 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)31646-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00198-7?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral#references https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00198-7?utm_sourc...: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Acute-functional-neurotoxicity-of-lanthanum(III)-in-Gramowski-J%C3%BCgelt/fb6f59438fb3b4d54cd55ef707c14fd4920f57a3/figure/0 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Acute-functional-neuro... The longevity myths are well known, there are local myths of 100+ year old mountain men, (caucasus + some other range in south asia) and the myths of ancient "golden age" when people didn't age are almost universal, and many of the earliest written sources insist on "implausible" ages of certain people. Surprisingly many religions (virtually all, in fact) agree that people started aging when they previously were not and longevity was the normal state until aging was inflicted on people, only the reasoning why it happened varies. - all the abrahamic religions, a very important part of hinduism mentioned in many texts, the greek religion, sumerian, etc.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Advances against aging are great, but they also call for advances in finances for the aged. With every advance in medicine, your chances of outliving your money go up as well. Better feed the pig!
- magduf 8y ago
  What are you talking about? If people live longer, healthier lives, then they can work a lot longer.
  - magduf 8y ago
    In case anyone is still reading this, I'd like to add to this. Think about humans in terms of corporate employees. A single human in today's society costs an absolute fortune to raise to adulthood in resources. It takes a lot of investment by society and the parents both to have the child, then to educate it. It takes many years of education to turn the child into a citizen. It takes more education (college) to turn the citizen into a highly productive one. Then, assuming all goes well, they go into the workforce and then there's a lot of ramp-up time, gaining expertise, etc. If they go the postdoc degree route, that's more time. Even worse, look at all the training/education needed for specialized doctors and surgeons. People aren't usually really productive until they're 25-30 years old. Then they only have so many decades until they're too feeble to really contribute a lot, and during that time they're expected to have kids of their own, which is basically a second job. (Even worse, women need to have those kids in their 20s-30s, which is exactly the wrong time career-wise.) In short, the actual overhead needed to produce useful citizens in today's complex society is enormous, relative to the total lifespan of that person. It wasn't a problem in the hunter-gatherer days because we didn't need much education to learn some simple non-written language, nor much training to go throw a spear and kill some animals and cook them. Things are very different now. Extending useful and healthy human lifespans would change that equation, and be a huge boon for modern society. Just look at how many women end up postponing having children, or giving up on it altogether, because it just doesn't fit in with a high-paying career. As a result, developed nations are seeing negative population growth, which isn't sustainable.

103 points by apsec112 8y ago

This is a great news. Fighting aging is one of the most important challenge of our time. This is also encouraging: "Gazette: Are there regulatory hurdles? When we've spoken in the past, you've mentioned that the FDA considers aging a natural process and therefore won't approve drugs to treat it. Sinclair: I've been part of a group that talked with the FDA, and they are willing and also quite enthusiastic about considering a change that defines aging as a disease."

netsharc 8y ago
And not climate change? In my mind's model of the future we're going to die within 50 years, this research is useless when the infinitely aged doesn't have clean water to drink.
- guzik 8y ago
  That's why he said "one of the most important challenge".
- kristofferR 8y ago
  If "old people" weren't sure they would die within the next 30 years anyway, then perhaps they would actually start caring about the planet.
  - jhayward 8y ago
    As an "old person" this feels personal. What evidence do you have that supports such a claim for "old people"?
    - kristofferR 8y ago
      https://news.gallup.com/poll/234314/global-warming-age-gap-younger-americans-worried.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/234314/global-warming-age-gap-y... Only 29% of Americans over 55 think climate change will pose a serious threat in their lifetime :(
      - jhayward 8y ago
        That's a cherry-picked stat if I ever saw one. In context of this thread you seem to be equating that with "think climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed", which is an entirely different question. Most of us don't want to see our kids lives ruined. In fact, the headline stat of that linked survey is "56% of Americans over 55 worry a great deal about global warming".
- Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
  One of the main connections to longevity people usually miss in this whole "climate change" discussion is one of the main psychological reasons people don't take care of the environment in the first place: and it's arguably their lifespan. Everyone in the west knows that they will die at most ~100 years of age, and if you are basically not in some top percentile morality-wise (and also at that point in your life where all more important problems are resolved and you even have energy to care about the environment), you just don't care about it because you know you're going to die anyway. Of course many people think about their children and the other people etc, but many don't. If we manage to extend the expected (or even just possible) generic lifespan of normal people - that will be one of the best promoters of environment-thinking of normal population. Because suddenly the choices they make today become very real in terms of impact on the environment in the next 50-100-200 years, because there is a good change that this same person is going to be living at that time.
  - tomp 8y ago
    No the main psychological reason is that people are bad at rationally assessing risks. E.g. most fear flying more than driving. Then there's also other (more economical, but you could say that's caused by psychology as well) reasons, such as tragedy of the commons.
    - Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
      Perhaps a bit OT, but it is interesting that people keep bringing fear of flying as "irrational risk". People fearing flying more than driving are not afraid of the relative chances of dying (which are low either way). They are afraid of the feeling and experience of spending long time in a falling plane knowing that you are going to die, being stuck in one seat and not being able to do anything about it. This does not happen when you are driving, if there is an accident, you usually either die instantly or in some rare cases receive some injuries, but at least then you can lie at the site of the accident and hope that medics will come. It's not the same as being stuck in a box for 10s of minutes knowing you are most likely about to crash to a painful death. You have to spend time in that experience, to feel it, in a completely hopeless state. That's why people afraid of flying, not because of some statistics.
guzik 8y ago
Aging is a disease, there should be no doubt in that. What makes aging unique is that it affects 100% of the population.
- lm28469 8y ago
  That's also the only thing that keeps our population in check. Let's see how we handle the incoming retirement issues, that'll give us a good indication (less workers, more retired people pretty much everywhere in the west, peaking in the next few decades). Living long won't help much if it just means more people consuming our limited natural resources and weighting on our social infrastructure. At any rate most country would shift their retirement age accordingly and life would be the same but longer, I fail to see the appeal of that (albeit it's the ultimate realization of our "us vs nature" western mentality) We should figure how to live well before we try to live longer, and we still have some things we're nowhere close to figure out (energy, pollution, retirement, increasing pop, &c.) But all of that only applies if everyone has access to this tech, which I doubt. Most likely it will be a "cure" for the rich. Seems to me that scientists are working toward goals that kind of look nice on paper (curing aging, genetic modifications, &c.) without stopping even one second and thinking about the moral/social/economical consequences down the line.
  - ionised 8y ago
    Don't worry, poor people will still age and die.
    - lm28469 8y ago
      We'll make a lesser version of it available to everyone who gets a mortgage > 50 years and a new electric car. It'll involve weekly injections though, that way as soon as you stop paying you go back to where you belong.
    - xiphias2 8y ago
      Do you realistically think that it will not be worth to scale the solution? Many medications stay expensive because not big enough number of people are affected. Also don't think U.S. only: how do you stop people from going to China to get the cheap (but well tested) copy of a medication?

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago

There is a very good recent more informal-type long-format discussion with this doctor (David Sinclair) discussing a lot of longevity topics on the Joe Rogan channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4

kristofferR 8y ago

This recent interview with Aubrey de Grey (main popularizer of anti-aging science) is really worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMFST20xHwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMFST20xHwk (1.5x speed is fine) He seems to think that anti-aging science has speeded up drastically recently, both in terms of the science itself, the funding and the popularity. I really love what the SENS Foundation is doing in terms of spinning research avenues into startups, since most investors are far more likely to fund high-risk investments than non-profit ones. He also mentions other positive developments in terms of legislation and advocacy.

agumonkey 8y ago
Wow I never thought I'd see someone suggesting listening to Aubrey at 1.5x speed. I have trouble following at normal x. The longevity field might be seeing an EV tipping point moment. Nobody cared until everyone spins.
xiphias2 8y ago
I'm still not sure if SENS should stay non-profit. It produced great results, it would get much more money if it would convert to a for profit company. At the same time it's important to keep the control near Aubrey de Grey, as he has a great track record of staying focused.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Non-profit doesn't mean they can't make money - just that they can't outfunnel it to shareholders/owners. Whether they would get more research funding from accepting investment instead of donations or if the mission would survive is a separate topic.
  - xiphias2 8y ago
    The main goal of going for a for profit company would be to increase funding. It's sad that Vitalik Buterin had to be the biggest donation giver when there are so many people much richer than him (and with shorter expected remaining lifespan).

raugustinus 8y ago

What makes people think we want to have them around any longer? To extend life is to decrease it's value. Simple economics tells us it's inflation. edit: I think Neil deGrasse Tyson says it a lot better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3G9LOJZTmM

jvln 8y ago
There is a theory that some math problems are not solved because people who are solving them have to few time to think on them. Other theory states that 100 years war between France and England lasted so long because there were left 0 leaders older than 30+ years old and these guys were not good at negotiation.
Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
This makes no sense. Longer productive lifespan means that people can acquire more expert skills and become more proficient at what they do. Or for example switch professions if the economic climate has changed - which will be still much faster than teaching a completely new individual to learn that profession, if there is even a little overlap between them. I'm not saying that economics should even have any say in making people live longer (I don't think the purpose of life is to make the economy work well, it's the other way around), but even from the point of view of economics, we would want to make everyone live longer.
- raugustinus 8y ago
  From the point of view of economics maybe. Switching professions can be done in a current lifespan and is not done very often. I don't see people changing just because their life is extended. I just don't understand people's fixation on having a longer life. Seems to me people just keep looking at the horizon to bring them what they want and they forget what's right in front of them.
  - frobozz 8y ago
    One reason not to switch professions is affordability. Few established mid-career professionals can afford to either take time out to train and qualify in another trade, or jump back down to the bottom rung and take a junior role in something else. If, at 60, you have paid off your mortgage, amassed some savings, and seen your adult children leave home, then you can consider it. However, by then, you only have 5-7 years left until your pension kicks in and 10 before cognitive decline starts to take hold (either may have already happened), so you will probably just plod on doing what you already know. You might not even have enough time to really get to the interesting part of being a whatever-your-new-career-is. If at 60, you are still in the prime of your life, with 60 more years on the clock, and 30 more years of full cognition and physical fitness available to you, then the idea of a career shift becomes more attractive. Even without the affordability question, there is likely to be a point in most people's careers where the pursuit of mastery stops and the doldrums set in. The longer the working life, the more likely you are to reach that tipping point at a point when you have time to do something about it.

dtujmer 8y ago

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Well, maybe not the last one, but still an important one. Nick Bostrom has a great story describing the underlying philosophy in the fight against aging: https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html And here it is in video form as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY

antt 8y ago
Imagine a world in which Stalin was still in power. That is what amortality looks like. I can't help but think that this would also completely retard scientific progress. Imagine tenure that lasts a milenium or more. We would still be discussing scholastism.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  1) No. Whatever people make, other people can destroy. You could get rid of Stalin any time you wanted, if even by running away or making him irrelevant. With various degrees of difficulty involved. And for every Stalin, you brought in a few Buddhas and Gandhis. 2) Again, that depends on how you approach innovation which has little to do with age. What would have to be instituted is probably rotation based on tenure, similar to presidency terms. If a professor is still deemed innovative, they can stay in charge. In fact, such a system would be vastly superior to the current one where once tenured, a professor is almost immovable for many years. It would also help with the publish or perish part if extended to lower levels - you'd get more chances. Most importantly, if the basic needs are met, you just gained access to a huge pool of genius engineers and scientists by sheer numbers. Imagine if, say, Feynman or Hawking or Knuth or even Leibnitz and Newton were still around, and cooperating... No matter the academic structures.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Imagine a world where Newton could still contribute, peak scientific output wouldn't be before the age of 35, and politicians would tackle long term problems because they will be affected by them too. That is also what amortality looks like.

jz_ 8y ago

If anyone is interested in tracking progress of clinical trials for age related diseases, there's this roadmap: https://www.lifespan.io/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/ https://www.lifespan.io/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/

killjoywashere 8y ago

Yawn ... This is the resveratrol guy again. Media hound.

Aaargh20318 8y ago

If we can cure aging, then overpopulation will become an even larger problem than it already is. I would propose to only make anti-aging treatments available to people who haven't procreated yet and on condition they get sterilised at the same time.

adrianN 8y ago
Overpopulation right now is not caused by people getting too old, it's caused by people having too many babies. It is also not a problem in countries where anti-aging treatments are likely to be available first and even less of a problem in the rich population that will be able to afford them at first. On the other hand, the promise of remaining able bodied until you die from an accident might reduce the number of children because you don't have to have children that take care of you when you're too old to take care of yourself.
- c1sc0 8y ago
  Overpopulation is a direct result of medical progress, specifically penicillin and treatment for children's diseases.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    And yet the countries with the best medical treatments available have below replacement birth rates.
    - c1sc0 8y ago
      But it takes a generation or two for parents to adapt to the new reality of children actually surviving into adulthood & living prosperous lives.
      - adrianN 8y ago
        It will likely also take a generation or two until our anti-aging technology actually works and is cheap enough to have a meaningful impact on the planetwide population.

grondilu 8y ago

"Prime time for an impact" is kind of an ironic title IMHO. People already live quite long, so it takes a long time for longevity to take any significant effect. If a 20yo man became immortal today, he will be 100 in 2099. Who knows what kind of world we'll be living in then? My point is : longevity is such a slow motion process that its impact on society is not as relevant as the pace of technology in other fields.

braincrush7 8y ago
Would anti aging cure mental deficiencies that occur with aging. We lose our ability to learn the more we age. I'd much rather be able to learn like an 18 year old for my while life and die at 70 then be a senile man and live till 100
- xiphias2 8y ago
  Yes, actually companies trying to cure Alzheimer disease started as research in SENS.
adrianN 8y ago
Having a treatment that allows 20 year olds to live healthily to 120 likely helps the contemporary 85 year olds to live a few more years without being dependent on other people. Ageing populations are a huge problem in many first world countries.
- xiphias2 8y ago
  Not really. What you're talking about works with solutions that are minimizing the damages building up in your body, but Audrey is specifically researching repairing the damages.

mms1973 8y ago

Anti-aging: the last nail in the coffin of Social Security

raubtier 8y ago

While waiting for new medications to prolong life, you can imitate a paleontological lifestyle as far as practically possible. Not just what and when to eat, but also what to expose your body to and how to shape your social life. In addition to a healthier and longer life, you will also be able to perform more and cope with more difficult challenges, which allows for a greatly increased quality of life.

PavlikPaja 8y ago

What you actually see if you study aging carefully is that it isn't anything like accumulation of damage the body cannot repair, it's the accumulation of damage the body can repair. In fact, among the most consistent things you can see is the accumulation of iron, and to a lesser extent other minerals, such as calcium. The body seems to have a really big trouble regulating those minerals, it doesn't even have its own way to get rid of excess iron, the only way you can get rid of it is blood loss. Now, what does it mean? One thing, the body doesn't really makes much distinctions when absorbing metals so that when there is excess iron, it cannot absorb other divalent metals without poisoning itself with iron. So it cannot absorb manganese without absorbing too much iron, and manganese is essential for preventing oxidative damage. A second thing is, the experiments on rats show that lanthanum (and possibly other rare earths) change the homeostasis in the brain so that the amount of iron decreases, while it normally accumulates with age. Multiple rare earths have been shown to bind preferably to proteins, usually over calcium, but possibly also other metal ions, zinc seems to be a kind of universal element that can bind to almost any place that isn't taken. Neurons even seem to dramatically increase in capacity (with each neuron carrying its own signal, instead of many almost exactly the same thing over and over) as the concentration of lanthanum increases in vitro. (it's worth noting though, that lanthanum has been seen as an essential nutrient for decades in China, so if it cured aging, it would be known) I thing we need to consider the possibility that there is no such a thing as aging, but is the result of some sort of imbalance caused by early agriculture, metallurgy, or whatever human activity that changed the environment in a way that our bodies, and other mammal bodies have no way of dealing with. The rumors of longevity from history and various isolated places are seen as myths, but they may not all be.

lawlessone 8y ago
Gonnna need citations for all of that..
- PavlikPaja 8y ago
  Iron is known to accumulate with age: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23237353 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23237353 It has even been proposed as the mechanism of caloric restriction: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2481398/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2481398/ Here is some literature review that I just found: https://res.mdpi.com/metals/metals-05-02070/article_deploy/metals-05-02070.pdf?filename=&attachment=1 https://res.mdpi.com/metals/metals-05-02070/article_deploy/m... The absence of iron excretion mechanism shouldn't be controversial, here is the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_iron_metabolism#Iron_recycling_and_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_iron_metabolism#Iron_rec... Both iron and manganese are transported by the same molecules and the nutrients inhibit each other, e.g.:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2058577 The need of Mn for MnSOD also shouldn't be controverisal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOD2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOD2 lanthanum changing the concentration of iron in the brain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378427406000580 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037842740... Review of lanthanide effects, cites the higher affinity of certain lanthanides to proteins: http://www.actabp.pl/pdf/4_2000/1107.pdf http://www.actabp.pl/pdf/4_2000/1107.pdf Lanthanum increaseing the capacity of neural transmission, (together with https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)31646-5 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(18)31646-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00198-7?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral#references https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00198-7?utm_sourc...: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Acute-functional-neurotoxicity-of-lanthanum(III)-in-Gramowski-J%C3%BCgelt/fb6f59438fb3b4d54cd55ef707c14fd4920f57a3/figure/0 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Acute-functional-neuro... The longevity myths are well known, there are local myths of 100+ year old mountain men, (caucasus + some other range in south asia) and the myths of ancient "golden age" when people didn't age are almost universal, and many of the earliest written sources insist on "implausible" ages of certain people. Surprisingly many religions (virtually all, in fact) agree that people started aging when they previously were not and longevity was the normal state until aging was inflicted on people, only the reasoning why it happened varies. - all the abrahamic religions, a very important part of hinduism mentioned in many texts, the greek religion, sumerian, etc.

RickJWagner 8y ago

Advances against aging are great, but they also call for advances in finances for the aged. With every advance in medicine, your chances of outliving your money go up as well. Better feed the pig!

magduf 8y ago
What are you talking about? If people live longer, healthier lives, then they can work a lot longer.
- magduf 8y ago
  In case anyone is still reading this, I'd like to add to this. Think about humans in terms of corporate employees. A single human in today's society costs an absolute fortune to raise to adulthood in resources. It takes a lot of investment by society and the parents both to have the child, then to educate it. It takes many years of education to turn the child into a citizen. It takes more education (college) to turn the citizen into a highly productive one. Then, assuming all goes well, they go into the workforce and then there's a lot of ramp-up time, gaining expertise, etc. If they go the postdoc degree route, that's more time. Even worse, look at all the training/education needed for specialized doctors and surgeons. People aren't usually really productive until they're 25-30 years old. Then they only have so many decades until they're too feeble to really contribute a lot, and during that time they're expected to have kids of their own, which is basically a second job. (Even worse, women need to have those kids in their 20s-30s, which is exactly the wrong time career-wise.) In short, the actual overhead needed to produce useful citizens in today's complex society is enormous, relative to the total lifespan of that person. It wasn't a problem in the hunter-gatherer days because we didn't need much education to learn some simple non-written language, nor much training to go throw a spear and kill some animals and cook them. Things are very different now. Extending useful and healthy human lifespans would change that equation, and be a huge boon for modern society. Just look at how many women end up postponing having children, or giving up on it altogether, because it just doesn't fit in with a high-paying career. As a result, developed nations are seeing negative population growth, which isn't sustainable.