8 ms·

Is Aging a Disease?

48 points by benryon 7y ago

Astropop 7y ago
A lot of people that discuss this issue decide that "they don't want people living forever". What about you stop living after a while, and let the rest of us live longer? Keep your decision for yourself; die if you want to!
- serf 7y ago
  > Keep your decision for yourself; die if you want to! at the risk of seeming like the devil's advocate, i'd like to point out that the freedom to kill yourself is fairly rare, and still being fought for. There might be an intersection in our future history where aging is no longer a problem, but the freedom to commit suicide is still being discussed. At that point those folks you mention may have had a point. It takes a few leaps, but I can imagine it.
  - Inception 7y ago
    > freedom to kill yourself is fairly rare, and still being fought for. > the freedom to commit suicide is still being discussed. I think you mean "assisted suicide" or "assisted dying". People are free to commit suicide whenever they want. I wish they weren't...I'd (selfishly) like to have a couple friends back.
    - darkerside 7y ago
      If somebody is discovered to have intent to commit suicide, you can bet the police will be knocking down their door to stop them. By your definition (possible to do, if not stopped by authorities), we are free to rob banks. I'm sorry about your friends.
    - Someone 7y ago
      (Attempting) suicide is a crime in parts of the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation), and used to be in the UK up to 1961 (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14374296 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14374296), in Canada until 1972 (https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/faqs/ https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/faqs/), and in some sense still is in India (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_309_of_the_Indian_Penal_Code https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_309_of_the_Indian_Pe...)
- mariodiana 7y ago
  I don't remember the exact figures, but I believe some actuaries crunched the numbers a while back and determined that if aging were halted and all diseases made curable, people would die on average around age 400 from accidental causes. Nobody lives forever.
  - gpm 7y ago
    I bet that if aging were halted, all diseases made curable, and famine was made obsolete, the accidental death rate would go way down. People take risks right now because "they have nothing to lose" - they're going to die anyways. Once that stops being the case the amount of risk taking would go down.
- ergothus 7y ago
  I used to feel as you do. Looking at history, though, it seems like most (all?) significant social progress comes about because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new. We live in a world that isnt controlled by feudal powers owning a good portion of the population not because of wars, but because younger and less invested people forced those conflicts. The results of those conflicts are accepted because the people for whom the old way was normal die off. The new generations are able to make their own mistakes, get invested in the nest normal, and be replaced in turn. Now I fear we will make anti-agathics before we develop a means to actually change without people dying. I still hope. Someday we might live with death as a choice AND without oppression. Pretty sure I wont be around for it.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new. This is just wrong. My 80-year-old mother is far more progressive politically than many 20-35 year old men in this country. Remember the heavily armed Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville protesting the removal of Civil War statues? Those weren't elderly people.
    - serverholic 7y ago
      Just because your mom is different doesn't mean anything. It's well known that as people get older they become more conservative and set in their ways.
      - gpm 7y ago
        > It's well known that as people get older they become more conservative and set in their ways. Is that a "symptom" of the "disease" of aging though?
    - close04 7y ago
      That's a nice anecdote but what happens when you try to dislodge a ruler with 300 years worth of experience, connections, and wealth? What happens when people have so much time to amass power that at some point you realize you, the younger generation, no longer stand any chance? Today's model of society isn't adapted for this. Postponing the effects of aging but maintaining the same lifespan within reason is one thing, greatly extending the lifespan* is quite another and we're definitely not ready for this one more than we're ready to become 4m tall from one generation to the next. *with the multitude of options - the young and old phases are proportional to today's but longer, the young phase is just as long as today and you get to "enjoy" a longer old phase, or the opposite.
- lm28469 7y ago
  This is a pretty naive take on the subject, I think it's a much deeper problem on many level (moral, philosophical, economical, &c.), if we "cure" ageing tomorrow it'll concern everyone, even the people who don't want to be part of it. It's as if oil and fracking companies told you to shut up about pollution and just "keep your decisions for yourself". People would be much better off by focusing on their quality of life rather than their lifespan. One is a very actionable thing, the other one is a pure gamble (and ""curing"" it is 100% sci-fi for now). Or as Seneca would put it "But tell me, pray, do you consider it fairer that you should obey Nature, or that Nature should obey you? And what difference does it make how soon you depart from a place which you must depart from sooner or later? We should strive, not to live long, but to live rightly; for to achieve long life you have need of Fate only, but for right living you need the soul."
  - meowface 7y ago
    You should try to optimize for the best quality of life for the longest amount of time possible (you could consider the expected value quality * time). I'd rather live a mostly pretty good life for many years than a good life for half of those years. If the people working on aging treatments are right (and I imagine they probably are if you set a long time horizon), we'll eventually be able to live for hundreds of years without any of the effects of aging. Eliminating aging and most disease would improve the average quality of life far more than probably anything else we could possibly do within the same time span. Of course dramatically extending lifespans will have a huge impact on the world, but we'll almost certainly have other shock absorbers by then to minimize the externalities. (The same things we'd be doing to deal with overpopulation from birth rates, etc.) And once/if the technology is universally available, free, and safe, the majority of people will almost certainly opt in to it within a generation or sooner. You can be a conscientious objector if you like, but that doesn't mean you have a right to try to prevent a near-uncountable number of total hours of human flourishing. Comparing eliminating aging to retaining pollution is a much more naive take than what the parent posted, I think. I would consider it the opposite: hindering funding and progress towards treatment of aging is like blocking initiatives to fight climate change and fossil fuel proliferation, except possibly with even more dire consequences for humans in the long term than what climate change might pose.
bionhoward 7y ago
Aging is a disease because it is a “disorder [disruption] of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury.” 100% incidence doesn’t make problems disappear See also: https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
AllegedAlec 7y ago
> Is Aging a disease No, it is not.
- echelon 7y ago
  > No, it is not. What would you call Progeria? What about cancer? Transition of a cell into a particularly nasty disease state. (That term, by the way, is one the biologists throw around quite a bit to describe broken or damaged cells that no longer function as intended.) What if senescence can be slowed or stopped? What then? Diseases need not be communicable.
  - lm28469 7y ago
    > What would you call Progeria? > Progeria is an extremely rare autosomal dominant genetic disorder in which symptoms ___resembling___ aspects of aging are manifested at a very early age. > What about cancer? Cancer is cancer, aging is aging.
    - echelon 7y ago
      Aging is a slide into disease state. A non-healthy or misbehaving cell is in a disease state. Accumulation of intracellular and extracellular garbage, DNA point mutations, transpositions, malfunction of the cell cycle, abnormal signalling, and a myriad of other break downs are disease state. Cells are machines and they function in predictable biomechanical and biochemical manners. Aging related disease state encompasses some population of the space of deleterious state change. In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other. It is the layperson understanding of the word "disease" that does not fit.
      - speedplane 7y ago
        > In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other. The difference is that the word "disease" is something that at least theoretically can be cured. Aging does not have that implication. It follows then that if you say "Aging is a Disease", you're effectively saying that immortality is theoretically achievable. That's what makes the claim so uncomfortable.
quakegen 7y ago
The only cure for powerful and rich
- melling 7y ago
  Yeah this is a common response for some reason. If you thought about it for two seconds, you’d realize once the cats out of the bag, everyone will eventually have it.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    If you thought about it for 2 seconds more, you would realize that it will take up much longer to truly expand to even Solar system - I mean offloading billions, not some tiny colony. Meaning that almost immortal general population would be doom long term and thus has to be managed. Either by bans, which might be circumvented in more favorable jurisdictions (ie orbits or moon), or by setting the price too high. You would think management via price is impossible? Look how one of the first gene therapy single-pill 'cure' for spinal muscular atrophy Zolgensma is priced - 2 mil USD. Small cute kids are dying in pretty horrible ways because of this price all over the world. When saving babies lives is (also) about money, why aging wouldn't be?
    - 1996 7y ago
      > Small cute kids are dying in pretty horrible ways because of this price all over the world. No, they are dying because other companies have not found ways yet to duplicate that. In the end, it's all just information - recipes if you will. Nothing magic. When most drugs just become gene therapy, I'd suspect it will be a matter of days until they are copied and released for all - like movies high quality rips. Only one thing is needed: a marketplace, so companies can compete on price for the customers who leave feedback to select the best providers. This won't happen here, because of the FDA, regulations etc. But I don't see why a country with more appetite for risk (and thus money) will not become a hub for medical tourism, 1 flight away, with drugs and treatments cheap thanks to competition, and readily available thanks to the lack of regulations.
  - 7y ago
xiphias2 7y ago
At this point it's classified as a disease modifier. Diabetes and age related diabetes are different diseases and need to be treated differently. On the long term as we get a better understanding of aging, it can be reclassified as a disease with a cure to be found, but right now it's a bit too early for that.
- bionhoward 7y ago
  Since when did the definition of a disease require the existence of a cure? This whole topic feels like semantic quibbling...we could spend more time designing anti-aging plasmids and less time debating which human sounds to use It doesn’t matter what we call it, we’re all too noob at programming biology to fix it (or know it’s not fixable e.g. halting problem), the healthcare industry is bottlenecked by expensive regulations, bureaucracy, and status documents, we’re too scared or dense to run the experiments, and even if we knew how to fix aging, we don’t have the infrastructure to deliver these fixes affordably at scale
carapace 7y ago
IMO If you're into space travel you should also be into longevity research, eh?
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Only if you think humans should be the ones traveling. I’m personally more in favor of better AI and robotics. Carting meat bags around the galaxy is a pretty poor proposition on way too many fronts.
  - melling 7y ago
    Yes, in the short term for the next 75-100 years. Let’s rapidly iterate and improve AI and robotics. After that for the following 500 years, humans should get out there.
    - carapace 7y ago
      Bingo!
tejohnso 7y ago
I was watching Aubrey De Grey on JRE last night and was surprised to hear that ADG no longer prefers the disease label for aging. It's too dissimilar from what we're familiar with regarding diseases: something that we get, treat, and is gone. Aging is an ongoing system maintenance issue. He indicated that he prefers to simply call it a "health problem". From the article: "Maybe the ancients weren’t wrong, and aging can be not only delayed but cured like a disease" It seems that's exactly the mindset ADG was distancing himself from.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  >It's too dissimilar from what we're familiar with regarding diseases: something that we get, treat, and is gone. That's absolutely not what a disease is. Off the top of my head, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, Guillain-Barré, are some diseases that one gets, which only progressively worsens over time. A significant portion of diseases are never "gone".
hirundo 7y ago
The lack of aging would be a sort of population wide disease, in that adaptation benefits from turnover, and a lack of adaptation would impair our odds of survival as a species ... unless anti-aging includes some form of neoteny that improves adaptation in the elderly.
- vslira 7y ago
  Aging is a multidimensional process and if "lack of adaption" is targeted the same way "control of bowels" will be/is, then it makes sense to include this concern in anti-aging research. Speaking this way, resistance to change should be a priority in anti-aging technology, no?
ausbah 7y ago
honestly, it the question shouldn't matter. no matter what aging really "is", it is still a universally horrible affliction that leads to nothing but increasing lower qualities of life those who are afflicted by it, and so should be dealt with as such
- xiphias2 7y ago
  Actually it matters a lot for research funding and accepting papers in journals. One of the biggest things the anti-aging community has achieved is to finally get to a stage where aging is categorized as a disease modifier. Please don't underestimate the effect of this achievement.
  - balfirevic 7y ago
    That's true, but it's important to acknowledge that "aging is a disease" and "aging is not a disease" are statements about the word "disease", not about aging.

48 points by benryon 7y ago

A lot of people that discuss this issue decide that "they don't want people living forever". What about you stop living after a while, and let the rest of us live longer? Keep your decision for yourself; die if you want to!

serf 7y ago
> Keep your decision for yourself; die if you want to! at the risk of seeming like the devil's advocate, i'd like to point out that the freedom to kill yourself is fairly rare, and still being fought for. There might be an intersection in our future history where aging is no longer a problem, but the freedom to commit suicide is still being discussed. At that point those folks you mention may have had a point. It takes a few leaps, but I can imagine it.
- Inception 7y ago
  > freedom to kill yourself is fairly rare, and still being fought for. > the freedom to commit suicide is still being discussed. I think you mean "assisted suicide" or "assisted dying". People are free to commit suicide whenever they want. I wish they weren't...I'd (selfishly) like to have a couple friends back.
  - darkerside 7y ago
    If somebody is discovered to have intent to commit suicide, you can bet the police will be knocking down their door to stop them. By your definition (possible to do, if not stopped by authorities), we are free to rob banks. I'm sorry about your friends.
  - Someone 7y ago
    (Attempting) suicide is a crime in parts of the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation), and used to be in the UK up to 1961 (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14374296 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14374296), in Canada until 1972 (https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/faqs/ https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/faqs/), and in some sense still is in India (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_309_of_the_Indian_Penal_Code https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_309_of_the_Indian_Pe...)
mariodiana 7y ago
I don't remember the exact figures, but I believe some actuaries crunched the numbers a while back and determined that if aging were halted and all diseases made curable, people would die on average around age 400 from accidental causes. Nobody lives forever.
- gpm 7y ago
  I bet that if aging were halted, all diseases made curable, and famine was made obsolete, the accidental death rate would go way down. People take risks right now because "they have nothing to lose" - they're going to die anyways. Once that stops being the case the amount of risk taking would go down.
ergothus 7y ago
I used to feel as you do. Looking at history, though, it seems like most (all?) significant social progress comes about because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new. We live in a world that isnt controlled by feudal powers owning a good portion of the population not because of wars, but because younger and less invested people forced those conflicts. The results of those conflicts are accepted because the people for whom the old way was normal die off. The new generations are able to make their own mistakes, get invested in the nest normal, and be replaced in turn. Now I fear we will make anti-agathics before we develop a means to actually change without people dying. I still hope. Someday we might live with death as a choice AND without oppression. Pretty sure I wont be around for it.
- magduf 7y ago
  >because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new. This is just wrong. My 80-year-old mother is far more progressive politically than many 20-35 year old men in this country. Remember the heavily armed Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville protesting the removal of Civil War statues? Those weren't elderly people.
  - serverholic 7y ago
    Just because your mom is different doesn't mean anything. It's well known that as people get older they become more conservative and set in their ways.
    - gpm 7y ago
      > It's well known that as people get older they become more conservative and set in their ways. Is that a "symptom" of the "disease" of aging though?
  - close04 7y ago
    That's a nice anecdote but what happens when you try to dislodge a ruler with 300 years worth of experience, connections, and wealth? What happens when people have so much time to amass power that at some point you realize you, the younger generation, no longer stand any chance? Today's model of society isn't adapted for this. Postponing the effects of aging but maintaining the same lifespan within reason is one thing, greatly extending the lifespan* is quite another and we're definitely not ready for this one more than we're ready to become 4m tall from one generation to the next. *with the multitude of options - the young and old phases are proportional to today's but longer, the young phase is just as long as today and you get to "enjoy" a longer old phase, or the opposite.
lm28469 7y ago
This is a pretty naive take on the subject, I think it's a much deeper problem on many level (moral, philosophical, economical, &c.), if we "cure" ageing tomorrow it'll concern everyone, even the people who don't want to be part of it. It's as if oil and fracking companies told you to shut up about pollution and just "keep your decisions for yourself". People would be much better off by focusing on their quality of life rather than their lifespan. One is a very actionable thing, the other one is a pure gamble (and ""curing"" it is 100% sci-fi for now). Or as Seneca would put it "But tell me, pray, do you consider it fairer that you should obey Nature, or that Nature should obey you? And what difference does it make how soon you depart from a place which you must depart from sooner or later? We should strive, not to live long, but to live rightly; for to achieve long life you have need of Fate only, but for right living you need the soul."
- meowface 7y ago
  You should try to optimize for the best quality of life for the longest amount of time possible (you could consider the expected value quality * time). I'd rather live a mostly pretty good life for many years than a good life for half of those years. If the people working on aging treatments are right (and I imagine they probably are if you set a long time horizon), we'll eventually be able to live for hundreds of years without any of the effects of aging. Eliminating aging and most disease would improve the average quality of life far more than probably anything else we could possibly do within the same time span. Of course dramatically extending lifespans will have a huge impact on the world, but we'll almost certainly have other shock absorbers by then to minimize the externalities. (The same things we'd be doing to deal with overpopulation from birth rates, etc.) And once/if the technology is universally available, free, and safe, the majority of people will almost certainly opt in to it within a generation or sooner. You can be a conscientious objector if you like, but that doesn't mean you have a right to try to prevent a near-uncountable number of total hours of human flourishing. Comparing eliminating aging to retaining pollution is a much more naive take than what the parent posted, I think. I would consider it the opposite: hindering funding and progress towards treatment of aging is like blocking initiatives to fight climate change and fossil fuel proliferation, except possibly with even more dire consequences for humans in the long term than what climate change might pose.

bionhoward 7y ago

Aging is a disease because it is a “disorder [disruption] of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury.” 100% incidence doesn’t make problems disappear See also: https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

AllegedAlec 7y ago

> Is Aging a disease No, it is not.

echelon 7y ago
> No, it is not. What would you call Progeria? What about cancer? Transition of a cell into a particularly nasty disease state. (That term, by the way, is one the biologists throw around quite a bit to describe broken or damaged cells that no longer function as intended.) What if senescence can be slowed or stopped? What then? Diseases need not be communicable.
- lm28469 7y ago
  > What would you call Progeria? > Progeria is an extremely rare autosomal dominant genetic disorder in which symptoms ___resembling___ aspects of aging are manifested at a very early age. > What about cancer? Cancer is cancer, aging is aging.
  - echelon 7y ago
    Aging is a slide into disease state. A non-healthy or misbehaving cell is in a disease state. Accumulation of intracellular and extracellular garbage, DNA point mutations, transpositions, malfunction of the cell cycle, abnormal signalling, and a myriad of other break downs are disease state. Cells are machines and they function in predictable biomechanical and biochemical manners. Aging related disease state encompasses some population of the space of deleterious state change. In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other. It is the layperson understanding of the word "disease" that does not fit.
    - speedplane 7y ago
      > In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other. The difference is that the word "disease" is something that at least theoretically can be cured. Aging does not have that implication. It follows then that if you say "Aging is a Disease", you're effectively saying that immortality is theoretically achievable. That's what makes the claim so uncomfortable.

quakegen 7y ago

The only cure for powerful and rich

melling 7y ago
Yeah this is a common response for some reason. If you thought about it for two seconds, you’d realize once the cats out of the bag, everyone will eventually have it.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  If you thought about it for 2 seconds more, you would realize that it will take up much longer to truly expand to even Solar system - I mean offloading billions, not some tiny colony. Meaning that almost immortal general population would be doom long term and thus has to be managed. Either by bans, which might be circumvented in more favorable jurisdictions (ie orbits or moon), or by setting the price too high. You would think management via price is impossible? Look how one of the first gene therapy single-pill 'cure' for spinal muscular atrophy Zolgensma is priced - 2 mil USD. Small cute kids are dying in pretty horrible ways because of this price all over the world. When saving babies lives is (also) about money, why aging wouldn't be?
  - 1996 7y ago
    > Small cute kids are dying in pretty horrible ways because of this price all over the world. No, they are dying because other companies have not found ways yet to duplicate that. In the end, it's all just information - recipes if you will. Nothing magic. When most drugs just become gene therapy, I'd suspect it will be a matter of days until they are copied and released for all - like movies high quality rips. Only one thing is needed: a marketplace, so companies can compete on price for the customers who leave feedback to select the best providers. This won't happen here, because of the FDA, regulations etc. But I don't see why a country with more appetite for risk (and thus money) will not become a hub for medical tourism, 1 flight away, with drugs and treatments cheap thanks to competition, and readily available thanks to the lack of regulations.
- 7y ago

xiphias2 7y ago

At this point it's classified as a disease modifier. Diabetes and age related diabetes are different diseases and need to be treated differently. On the long term as we get a better understanding of aging, it can be reclassified as a disease with a cure to be found, but right now it's a bit too early for that.

bionhoward 7y ago
Since when did the definition of a disease require the existence of a cure? This whole topic feels like semantic quibbling...we could spend more time designing anti-aging plasmids and less time debating which human sounds to use It doesn’t matter what we call it, we’re all too noob at programming biology to fix it (or know it’s not fixable e.g. halting problem), the healthcare industry is bottlenecked by expensive regulations, bureaucracy, and status documents, we’re too scared or dense to run the experiments, and even if we knew how to fix aging, we don’t have the infrastructure to deliver these fixes affordably at scale

carapace 7y ago

IMO If you're into space travel you should also be into longevity research, eh?

mdorazio 7y ago
Only if you think humans should be the ones traveling. I’m personally more in favor of better AI and robotics. Carting meat bags around the galaxy is a pretty poor proposition on way too many fronts.
- melling 7y ago
  Yes, in the short term for the next 75-100 years. Let’s rapidly iterate and improve AI and robotics. After that for the following 500 years, humans should get out there.
  - carapace 7y ago
    Bingo!

tejohnso 7y ago

I was watching Aubrey De Grey on JRE last night and was surprised to hear that ADG no longer prefers the disease label for aging. It's too dissimilar from what we're familiar with regarding diseases: something that we get, treat, and is gone. Aging is an ongoing system maintenance issue. He indicated that he prefers to simply call it a "health problem". From the article: "Maybe the ancients weren’t wrong, and aging can be not only delayed but cured like a disease" It seems that's exactly the mindset ADG was distancing himself from.

oarabbus_ 7y ago
>It's too dissimilar from what we're familiar with regarding diseases: something that we get, treat, and is gone. That's absolutely not what a disease is. Off the top of my head, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, Guillain-Barré, are some diseases that one gets, which only progressively worsens over time. A significant portion of diseases are never "gone".

hirundo 7y ago

The lack of aging would be a sort of population wide disease, in that adaptation benefits from turnover, and a lack of adaptation would impair our odds of survival as a species ... unless anti-aging includes some form of neoteny that improves adaptation in the elderly.

vslira 7y ago
Aging is a multidimensional process and if "lack of adaption" is targeted the same way "control of bowels" will be/is, then it makes sense to include this concern in anti-aging research. Speaking this way, resistance to change should be a priority in anti-aging technology, no?

ausbah 7y ago

honestly, it the question shouldn't matter. no matter what aging really "is", it is still a universally horrible affliction that leads to nothing but increasing lower qualities of life those who are afflicted by it, and so should be dealt with as such

xiphias2 7y ago
Actually it matters a lot for research funding and accepting papers in journals. One of the biggest things the anti-aging community has achieved is to finally get to a stage where aging is categorized as a disease modifier. Please don't underestimate the effect of this achievement.
- balfirevic 7y ago
  That's true, but it's important to acknowledge that "aging is a disease" and "aging is not a disease" are statements about the word "disease", not about aging.