8 ms·

Anti-ageing 'supermodel granny' drug extends life in mice by 25%

39 points by isaacfrond 2y ago

DolphinAsa 2y ago
Ah yes, the never ending reign of the boomers would be great. just great. Though in seriousness, pretty amazing if this works in humans. Peptide therapy seems huge lately.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  An antibody is not a peptide [1]. This drug is an antibody that targets the protein interleukin-11. Peptides are very short amino acid sequences. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1360138524001444 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13601...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
grishka 2y ago
As an anti-aging intervention, this is useless because it still doesn't uncover the master organism development regulator, and it doesn't actually "fix" aging, it doesn't make the organism believe that it's younger. The aging process still happens and the organism still dies of the passage of time. It might be useful as a lead to that master regulator, though. Or it might be not.
- irdc 2y ago
  I’d still take it (or, something that does the same but is proven safe and effective in humans) while waiting for something that matches your desiderata. I’ve seen what ageing can do to people,…
  - wang_li 2y ago
    All you need is something that extends your healthspan at slightly greater than the rate that new discoveries to extend your healthspan are made.
    - grishka 2y ago
      Yes, this is called longevity escape velocity, except this is not quite how aging works. The organism wants to destroy itself. It's part of the developmental program that starts with conception but eventually turns self-destructive. Trying to use the modern medical approach, where the body is assisted with what it wants to do anyway, is going to be an uphill battle.
      - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
        What do you mean "wants to destroy itself"? Why does it "turn self-destructive"? The best interpretation I can make is an allusion to how we're designed to be fundamentally unmaintainable (think Twitch's codebase), so living is synonymous with eventual ruin. Fun biofatalistic fact: some evidence alleges that genes regulate our IQ to keep it within a narrow range, keeping from going too low or too high. :D So, maybe, by just disabling some regulator gene somewhere, we could all be von Neumanns! But the true fix for all this is to rewrite the genome in Rust.
        irdc 2y ago
        It would be fun to speculate what IQ escape velocity looks like. Just how much can we boost those neurons? How many Whetstones can your wetware do?
        shrimp_emoji 2y ago
        Yeah! That's how I'm forecasting the first "superhuman AGI". We don't need a dozen civilizations' training data, either; just enough cheeseburgers. And we have loads of those already. ;D
      - irdc 2y ago
- D-Coder 2y ago
  Fifteen to twenty extra years of lifespan is useless? With reduced odds of cancer? (20-25% longer life x 80 year current lifespan.)
- aiauthoritydev 2y ago
  Steps to biological immortality would look exactly like these.
TeaBrain 2y ago
The Nature article this is based upon was posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224
abeppu 2y ago
> However, he said there were still problems, including the lack of evidence in patients and the cost of making such drugs and "it is unthinkable to treat every 50-year-old for the rest of their life". On the "lack of evidence in patients" ... does "testing" this in humans mean decades long trials? Given that the effects in their animal model was 25%, it seems like measuring if there was such an increase in humans (and beginning taking it in late middle age) it would be a generation before you had results. On the "unthinkable to treat every 50-year-old" comment, I think we as a society would need to change as a function of our changed lifespans -- making all the middle-aged people live to 100+ would exacerbate issues around social benefits, housing stock, etc. But if we all had longer, more productive lives (i.e. worked longer, added our skills and expertise to the economy for longer), could that more than offset the costs? If a drug raised your life expectancy by 20 years, and most people worked another 15, that's still pretty good.
- throwaway837te 2y ago
  I think you are right. If you get 20 extra years with the quality of an average 50 year old, I think it's a good thing. Many countries are seeing the birth rate decline. If people could extend their life with 20 healthy and productive years it would change everything. Suddenly you could choose to change your career or make more long term financial choices.
- marcusverus 2y ago
  Assuming the drug adds another 20 years of quality life, the impact on social program financing would be very good. As is, the average person spends, roughly ~56% of human life being net-productive (20 learning, 45 working, 15 retired). Add 20 healthy years, and most folks will keep working, which would raise the share of productive years to ~65%. If the treatment is expensive, then only net-productive individuals would be able to afford it, meaning we would gain the benefit of contributors contributing for longer, without net-recipients receiving for longer. This would also allow folks another 20 years of planning/saving for retirement, which could greatly improve the quality of those years for the average retiree, but probably won't. The biggest social impact of this drug, I think, would be its affect of the wealth gap. Another 20 years of compounding market returns would buoy the net worth of the 30% who make up the "upper class". An ever-increasing number of people would be able to achieve financial "escape velocity" by building nest-eggs which can sustain them indefinitely via 3% withdrawals, allowing them to retire "early" (i.e. before the new "standard" retirement age of 80). Folks who speed-run their careers and retire in their 40s-50s could enjoy 50 or 60 years of retirement! Inheritances would rise dramatically, but come later in life. This would also result in a backlash, of course. Envy is the oldest and most powerful organizing "principle", and politicians will happily use this new prosperity to generate enmity for their own purposes, just as they always have. My main concern would be the dysgenic impact of such a thing. If it becomes generally available, it will no doubt encourage thinking folks delay having children even more, while also granting another decade of fertility to the "oops another baby" cohort. It seems clear that this would significantly accelerate our decline toward idiocracy.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224
black_13 2y ago
[dead]
zaphod420 2y ago
Was expecting AI generated images of 'supermodel granny'... Was glad to see pictures of mice.
resonator 2y ago
I'm very uneasy about us collectively seeking longer lifespans. Earth is already supporting more people than is sustainable. Living longer robs someone else of an opportunity to live, or a shorter life. Over many generations we may be able to lower our birthrate to compensate, but I worry about happens in the meantime.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  > Over many generations we may be able to lower our birthrate to compensate Already on it, boss!
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Over many generations we may be able to lower our birthrate to compensate We’ve gone—globally—from 5.3 births per woman in 1963 to 2.3 in 2022 [1]. 2.1 is replacement [2]. In the rich world, where longevity treatments will first become available, it’s 1.6 [3]. (3.3 in 1960.) There are arguments against longer lifespans. Population growth is not one of them. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15832599/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15832599/ [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINOED https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINOED
  - resonator 2y ago
    I don't argue for a second that our birthrate isn't dropping; it is. But we either haven't dropped it enough, or it's being offset by higher consumption. The overshoot day is now the 1st of August [1]. Until we push that back out to to a sustainable level, we haven't done enough. To achieve that, I can only see a few classes of solution. We could reduce our per-capita consumption, our lifespan, or our number. I'm assuming that the overshoot day is roughly correct. The details of exactly how much our birthrate has dropped or by how much our consumption has increased isn't important to know that there is a massive discrepancy between where we are and what is sustainable. Doing anything that increases that discrepancy is probably going to make it worse. [1] https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/ https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/

39 points by isaacfrond 2y ago

Ah yes, the never ending reign of the boomers would be great. just great. Though in seriousness, pretty amazing if this works in humans. Peptide therapy seems huge lately.

kylebenzle 2y ago
An antibody is not a peptide [1]. This drug is an antibody that targets the protein interleukin-11. Peptides are very short amino acid sequences. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1360138524001444 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13601...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

grishka 2y ago

As an anti-aging intervention, this is useless because it still doesn't uncover the master organism development regulator, and it doesn't actually "fix" aging, it doesn't make the organism believe that it's younger. The aging process still happens and the organism still dies of the passage of time. It might be useful as a lead to that master regulator, though. Or it might be not.

irdc 2y ago
I’d still take it (or, something that does the same but is proven safe and effective in humans) while waiting for something that matches your desiderata. I’ve seen what ageing can do to people,…
- wang_li 2y ago
  All you need is something that extends your healthspan at slightly greater than the rate that new discoveries to extend your healthspan are made.
  - grishka 2y ago
    Yes, this is called longevity escape velocity, except this is not quite how aging works. The organism wants to destroy itself. It's part of the developmental program that starts with conception but eventually turns self-destructive. Trying to use the modern medical approach, where the body is assisted with what it wants to do anyway, is going to be an uphill battle.
    - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
      What do you mean "wants to destroy itself"? Why does it "turn self-destructive"? The best interpretation I can make is an allusion to how we're designed to be fundamentally unmaintainable (think Twitch's codebase), so living is synonymous with eventual ruin. Fun biofatalistic fact: some evidence alleges that genes regulate our IQ to keep it within a narrow range, keeping from going too low or too high. :D So, maybe, by just disabling some regulator gene somewhere, we could all be von Neumanns! But the true fix for all this is to rewrite the genome in Rust.
      - irdc 2y ago
        It would be fun to speculate what IQ escape velocity looks like. Just how much can we boost those neurons? How many Whetstones can your wetware do?
        shrimp_emoji 2y ago
        Yeah! That's how I'm forecasting the first "superhuman AGI". We don't need a dozen civilizations' training data, either; just enough cheeseburgers. And we have loads of those already. ;D
    - irdc 2y ago
D-Coder 2y ago
Fifteen to twenty extra years of lifespan is useless? With reduced odds of cancer? (20-25% longer life x 80 year current lifespan.)
aiauthoritydev 2y ago
Steps to biological immortality would look exactly like these.

TeaBrain 2y ago

The Nature article this is based upon was posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224

abeppu 2y ago

> However, he said there were still problems, including the lack of evidence in patients and the cost of making such drugs and "it is unthinkable to treat every 50-year-old for the rest of their life". On the "lack of evidence in patients" ... does "testing" this in humans mean decades long trials? Given that the effects in their animal model was 25%, it seems like measuring if there was such an increase in humans (and beginning taking it in late middle age) it would be a generation before you had results. On the "unthinkable to treat every 50-year-old" comment, I think we as a society would need to change as a function of our changed lifespans -- making all the middle-aged people live to 100+ would exacerbate issues around social benefits, housing stock, etc. But if we all had longer, more productive lives (i.e. worked longer, added our skills and expertise to the economy for longer), could that more than offset the costs? If a drug raised your life expectancy by 20 years, and most people worked another 15, that's still pretty good.

throwaway837te 2y ago
I think you are right. If you get 20 extra years with the quality of an average 50 year old, I think it's a good thing. Many countries are seeing the birth rate decline. If people could extend their life with 20 healthy and productive years it would change everything. Suddenly you could choose to change your career or make more long term financial choices.
marcusverus 2y ago
Assuming the drug adds another 20 years of quality life, the impact on social program financing would be very good. As is, the average person spends, roughly ~56% of human life being net-productive (20 learning, 45 working, 15 retired). Add 20 healthy years, and most folks will keep working, which would raise the share of productive years to ~65%. If the treatment is expensive, then only net-productive individuals would be able to afford it, meaning we would gain the benefit of contributors contributing for longer, without net-recipients receiving for longer. This would also allow folks another 20 years of planning/saving for retirement, which could greatly improve the quality of those years for the average retiree, but probably won't. The biggest social impact of this drug, I think, would be its affect of the wealth gap. Another 20 years of compounding market returns would buoy the net worth of the 30% who make up the "upper class". An ever-increasing number of people would be able to achieve financial "escape velocity" by building nest-eggs which can sustain them indefinitely via 3% withdrawals, allowing them to retire "early" (i.e. before the new "standard" retirement age of 80). Folks who speed-run their careers and retire in their 40s-50s could enjoy 50 or 60 years of retirement! Inheritances would rise dramatically, but come later in life. This would also result in a backlash, of course. Envy is the oldest and most powerful organizing "principle", and politicians will happily use this new prosperity to generate enmity for their own purposes, just as they always have. My main concern would be the dysgenic impact of such a thing. If it becomes generally available, it will no doubt encourage thinking folks delay having children even more, while also granting another decade of fertility to the "oops another baby" cohort. It seems clear that this would significantly accelerate our decline toward idiocracy.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224

black_13 2y ago

[dead]

zaphod420 2y ago

Was expecting AI generated images of 'supermodel granny'... Was glad to see pictures of mice.

resonator 2y ago

I'm very uneasy about us collectively seeking longer lifespans. Earth is already supporting more people than is sustainable. Living longer robs someone else of an opportunity to live, or a shorter life. Over many generations we may be able to lower our birthrate to compensate, but I worry about happens in the meantime.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
> Over many generations we may be able to lower our birthrate to compensate Already on it, boss!
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Over many generations we may be able to lower our birthrate to compensate We’ve gone—globally—from 5.3 births per woman in 1963 to 2.3 in 2022 [1]. 2.1 is replacement [2]. In the rich world, where longevity treatments will first become available, it’s 1.6 [3]. (3.3 in 1960.) There are arguments against longer lifespans. Population growth is not one of them. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15832599/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15832599/ [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINOED https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINOED
- resonator 2y ago
  I don't argue for a second that our birthrate isn't dropping; it is. But we either haven't dropped it enough, or it's being offset by higher consumption. The overshoot day is now the 1st of August [1]. Until we push that back out to to a sustainable level, we haven't done enough. To achieve that, I can only see a few classes of solution. We could reduce our per-capita consumption, our lifespan, or our number. I'm assuming that the overshoot day is roughly correct. The details of exactly how much our birthrate has dropped or by how much our consumption has increased isn't important to know that there is a massive discrepancy between where we are and what is sustainable. Doing anything that increases that discrepancy is probably going to make it worse. [1] https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/ https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/