7 ms·

Nobody is quick to accept aging or death. But it's understood that we are very far from medical technology that can tackle the problem. Aging is deeply ingrai

by soup10 14y ago

Nobody is quick to accept aging or death. But it's understood that we are very far from medical technology that can tackle the problem. Aging is deeply ingrained in our DNA. So far the world has spent countless billions trying to cure cancer and has largely failed. We can't even control the growth of a few measly cells with mutated DNA. Yet we are composed of trillions of cells, all 'programmed' to deteriorate over time. The idea that we can cure aging with some miracle cure is a pipe dream until we have a far better understanding and control of biological processes.

MikeCapone 14y ago
> Yet we are composed of trillions of cells, all 'programmed' to deteriorate over time. That is incorrect. The diseases of aging are the result of evolutionary neglect, they aren't 'programmed in' as if there was a timer running. They're a bug, not a feature. I suggest you have a look at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312367066 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312367066 http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbA1pFvfNp4&feature=gv&hl=en http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbA1pFvfNp4&feature=gv&#3... http://michaelgr.com/2011/10/24/aubrey-de-grey-on-the-diseases-of-aging-video/ http://michaelgr.com/2011/10/24/aubrey-de-grey-on-the-diseas... The lack of progress so far certainly doesn't mean that we can't make progress, especially if we take a different approach and we use tools that weren't available before (and never underestimate using a different angle/mindset -- as long as we consider aging itself 'normal' and just something to be slightly delayed, we certainly won't make progress). The SENS 'engineering' approach mean that we don't have to understand metabolism or fix everything that goes wrong, just to periodically do repairs on whatever long-lived molecules are accumulating over time to cause pathologies. That's a lot easier than the past gerontological approaches of trying to understand and cure everything.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  This is where I think we're headed. We're going to figure out exactly what all the moving bits do in our DNA and mitochondria and we'll be in a position to re-write it at will. When that happens, the question of what it means to be 'you' is going to get very pertinent, a safe example if it turns out your love of certain foods is a result of wiring in your brain due to your DNA makeup, do you change it? Do you add new foods? Do you delete old foods? What happens to social justice when one person can afford gene therapy to make their children 99% more capable than average and others can't? If you ever saw the movie Gattica (not a great movie but it tried) don't worry about people who are born 'perfect' or born the 'natural' way, think about people who re-write their own genetics to have the mutation that gives Sherpa in the Himalayas more, and more efficient red blood cells. Very scary tech talk at Google on this once where a researcher in gene therapy was getting approached by trainers already.
  - rosser 14y ago
    Pedantry: The title of the flick is GATTACA; it's a play on those being the four bases in DNA. Quite agree with the rest of your comment, though.
  - brador 14y ago
    Got a link to that tech talk?
    - ChuckMcM 14y ago
      I scanned through Youtube but it does not look like that one made it out of the Googleplex, sorry.
  - maxerickson 14y ago
    I don't think I care at all if genetic modifications ruin athletic exhibitions (or the list of great mountain climbers or ...). (I would say the potential for experimentation gone wrong is a much bigger concern;)
- lutusp 14y ago
  >> Yet we are composed of trillions of cells, all 'programmed' to deteriorate over time. > That is incorrect. The diseases of aging are the result of evolutionary neglect, they aren't 'programmed in' as if there was a timer running. No, the earlier poster is exactly right -- all living cells are programmed to deteriorate over time. There are no examples of immortal cells, with one exception -- cancer cells, like those that were harvested from Henrietta Lacks in 1951 and live on today in Petri dishes all over the world (so-called HeLa cells). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_cell_death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_cell_death A quote from the second article: "Programmed cell-death (or PCD) is death of a cell in any form, mediated by an intracellular program.[1][2] PCD is carried out in a regulated process, which usually confers advantage during an organism's life-cycle. PCD serves fundamental functions during both plant and metazoa (multicellular animals) tissue development." There is a reason we die -- it makes evolutionary sense. If there was an advantage to living longer, we would live longer. If there was an advantage to living a shorter time, we would live a shorter time. Our present lifetimes result from natural selection and evolution.
  - MikeCapone 14y ago
    You are looking at it the wrong way. Yes, from the point of view of an individual cell, you are correct. But from the point of view of a whole human, that's not how it works. At 25 pretty much all your cells have died and been replaced many times, and if over evolutionary times we had lived to be 500 years on average, we'd have mechanisms to keep up healthy that long. But we haven't, and so we don't, which is why everything starts going wrong as soon as you get to evolution's blind spot, past the age at which most of us lived and reproduced. If damage didn't accumulate past thresholds that cause various pathologies, we'd basically stay young adults forever. If we can figure out how to fix that damage before it reaches those levels, that's what is going to happen. It's a lot easier to figure out how to fix those few kinds of damages than to change metabolism so that damage doesn't occur, or to cure diseases after they begin. > There is a reason we die -- it makes evolutionary sense. If there was an advantage to living longer, we would live longer. If there was an advantage to living a shorter time, we would live a shorter time. Our present lifetimes result from natural selection and evolution. What is "good enough" for our genes isn't always good for us as people. Most of what can be called "modern progress" is about protecting us from what would happen to us if nature was left to itself. Curing the diseases of aging is just the continuation of that (unless you don't wear glasses, don't live inside a building, don't wear shoes, don't get vaccinated, don't take antibiotics, don't wear any kind of protection, don't brush your teeth, would never have surgery, wouldn't get hearing aids, dentures, etc).
reasonattlm 14y ago
Please see the following links on the two broad and very different approaches to research into interventions in aging. Your comment is only reflective of one of them, the slow and very hard task of slowing aging by reprogramming metabolism and epigenetics, which is an immense and very poorly understood challenge at this time. The research community is struggling to fully figure out calorie restriction - a billion dollars on sirtuin biochemistry alone, and next to nothing to show for it - which itself is just a tiny slice of the realm of evolved alterations to aging: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/02/enthusiasm-for-the-slow-road.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/02/enthusiasm-for-th... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/09/the-scientific-debate-that-will-determine-how-long-we-all-live.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/09/the-scientific-de... The other path ahead is much more clear, however: it is based on identifying and reversing fundamental changes/damage/lesions at the level of cells and biomolecules, and sidesteps much of the complexity of metabolism by focusing only on reversing these changes, not on the vast networks of reaction in our biochemistry that spiral outward from these comparatively few changes. There is in fact a very detailed set of proposals out there on how to reverse aging and make its root causes go away, including everything from broad cost and time estimates through to exact descriptions of the biotechnologies needed, some of which are partially realized already. See this is a starting point for a layperson's overview, and then feel free to delve as deeply into the papers and ongoing research as you like: http://sens.org/sens-research/research-themes http://sens.org/sens-research/research-themes
- soup10 14y ago
  People who offer solutions and timetables are researchers trying to get funding(always overly optimistic). The fact is that we have a relatively tiny amount of understanding and control over organic matter. And far more basic research breakthroughs are required before aging can seriously be discussed. SENS and transhumanists are like a primitive civilizations enchanted by the prospect of landing a man on the moon before the horse and buggy was invented, which is why most biologists don't take them seriously.
  - thronemonkey 14y ago
    I agree with the gist of your comment (that we're VERY far away from anything like conquering mortality) but I am a biologist and I would describe myself as a transhumanist — not the Ray Kurzweil, this-is-happening-in-the-next-50-years sense, just in the sense that I think the transhumanist vision is something we should strive for (however far away it may be) and use an inspiration.
adrianN 14y ago
Well, the people were asked how long they wanted to live, not what they believe is medically achievable within their livetime. Only one percent wanted to live forever. That sounds like acceptance of death for me.
mistercow 14y ago
>But it's understood that we are very far from medical technology that can tackle the problem. That's not what the question in the survey was. The question was "how long do you WANT to live?", not "how long do you think you WILL live?". Saying you don't want something just because you can't have it is just sour grapes. >The idea that we can cure aging with some miracle cure is a pipe dream until we have a far better understanding and control of biological processes. I don't think any informed people believe that some "miracle cure" is going to come along and cure death and aging. Curing death and aging is going to be a slow, incremental process because aging is made up of many components (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types_of_aging_damage_proposed_by_de_Grey_.28The_Seven_Deadly_Things.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types_...)

by soup10 14y ago

MikeCapone 14y ago

> Yet we are composed of trillions of cells, all 'programmed' to deteriorate over time. That is incorrect. The diseases of aging are the result of evolutionary neglect, they aren't 'programmed in' as if there was a timer running. They're a bug, not a feature. I suggest you have a look at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312367066 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312367066 http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbA1pFvfNp4&feature=gv&hl=en http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbA1pFvfNp4&feature=gv&#3... http://michaelgr.com/2011/10/24/aubrey-de-grey-on-the-diseases-of-aging-video/ http://michaelgr.com/2011/10/24/aubrey-de-grey-on-the-diseas... The lack of progress so far certainly doesn't mean that we can't make progress, especially if we take a different approach and we use tools that weren't available before (and never underestimate using a different angle/mindset -- as long as we consider aging itself 'normal' and just something to be slightly delayed, we certainly won't make progress). The SENS 'engineering' approach mean that we don't have to understand metabolism or fix everything that goes wrong, just to periodically do repairs on whatever long-lived molecules are accumulating over time to cause pathologies. That's a lot easier than the past gerontological approaches of trying to understand and cure everything.

ChuckMcM 14y ago
This is where I think we're headed. We're going to figure out exactly what all the moving bits do in our DNA and mitochondria and we'll be in a position to re-write it at will. When that happens, the question of what it means to be 'you' is going to get very pertinent, a safe example if it turns out your love of certain foods is a result of wiring in your brain due to your DNA makeup, do you change it? Do you add new foods? Do you delete old foods? What happens to social justice when one person can afford gene therapy to make their children 99% more capable than average and others can't? If you ever saw the movie Gattica (not a great movie but it tried) don't worry about people who are born 'perfect' or born the 'natural' way, think about people who re-write their own genetics to have the mutation that gives Sherpa in the Himalayas more, and more efficient red blood cells. Very scary tech talk at Google on this once where a researcher in gene therapy was getting approached by trainers already.
- rosser 14y ago
  Pedantry: The title of the flick is GATTACA; it's a play on those being the four bases in DNA. Quite agree with the rest of your comment, though.
- brador 14y ago
  Got a link to that tech talk?
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    I scanned through Youtube but it does not look like that one made it out of the Googleplex, sorry.
- maxerickson 14y ago
  I don't think I care at all if genetic modifications ruin athletic exhibitions (or the list of great mountain climbers or ...). (I would say the potential for experimentation gone wrong is a much bigger concern;)
lutusp 14y ago
>> Yet we are composed of trillions of cells, all 'programmed' to deteriorate over time. > That is incorrect. The diseases of aging are the result of evolutionary neglect, they aren't 'programmed in' as if there was a timer running. No, the earlier poster is exactly right -- all living cells are programmed to deteriorate over time. There are no examples of immortal cells, with one exception -- cancer cells, like those that were harvested from Henrietta Lacks in 1951 and live on today in Petri dishes all over the world (so-called HeLa cells). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_cell_death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_cell_death A quote from the second article: "Programmed cell-death (or PCD) is death of a cell in any form, mediated by an intracellular program.[1][2] PCD is carried out in a regulated process, which usually confers advantage during an organism's life-cycle. PCD serves fundamental functions during both plant and metazoa (multicellular animals) tissue development." There is a reason we die -- it makes evolutionary sense. If there was an advantage to living longer, we would live longer. If there was an advantage to living a shorter time, we would live a shorter time. Our present lifetimes result from natural selection and evolution.
- MikeCapone 14y ago
  You are looking at it the wrong way. Yes, from the point of view of an individual cell, you are correct. But from the point of view of a whole human, that's not how it works. At 25 pretty much all your cells have died and been replaced many times, and if over evolutionary times we had lived to be 500 years on average, we'd have mechanisms to keep up healthy that long. But we haven't, and so we don't, which is why everything starts going wrong as soon as you get to evolution's blind spot, past the age at which most of us lived and reproduced. If damage didn't accumulate past thresholds that cause various pathologies, we'd basically stay young adults forever. If we can figure out how to fix that damage before it reaches those levels, that's what is going to happen. It's a lot easier to figure out how to fix those few kinds of damages than to change metabolism so that damage doesn't occur, or to cure diseases after they begin. > There is a reason we die -- it makes evolutionary sense. If there was an advantage to living longer, we would live longer. If there was an advantage to living a shorter time, we would live a shorter time. Our present lifetimes result from natural selection and evolution. What is "good enough" for our genes isn't always good for us as people. Most of what can be called "modern progress" is about protecting us from what would happen to us if nature was left to itself. Curing the diseases of aging is just the continuation of that (unless you don't wear glasses, don't live inside a building, don't wear shoes, don't get vaccinated, don't take antibiotics, don't wear any kind of protection, don't brush your teeth, would never have surgery, wouldn't get hearing aids, dentures, etc).

reasonattlm 14y ago

Please see the following links on the two broad and very different approaches to research into interventions in aging. Your comment is only reflective of one of them, the slow and very hard task of slowing aging by reprogramming metabolism and epigenetics, which is an immense and very poorly understood challenge at this time. The research community is struggling to fully figure out calorie restriction - a billion dollars on sirtuin biochemistry alone, and next to nothing to show for it - which itself is just a tiny slice of the realm of evolved alterations to aging: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/02/enthusiasm-for-the-slow-road.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/02/enthusiasm-for-th... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/09/the-scientific-debate-that-will-determine-how-long-we-all-live.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/09/the-scientific-de... The other path ahead is much more clear, however: it is based on identifying and reversing fundamental changes/damage/lesions at the level of cells and biomolecules, and sidesteps much of the complexity of metabolism by focusing only on reversing these changes, not on the vast networks of reaction in our biochemistry that spiral outward from these comparatively few changes. There is in fact a very detailed set of proposals out there on how to reverse aging and make its root causes go away, including everything from broad cost and time estimates through to exact descriptions of the biotechnologies needed, some of which are partially realized already. See this is a starting point for a layperson's overview, and then feel free to delve as deeply into the papers and ongoing research as you like: http://sens.org/sens-research/research-themes http://sens.org/sens-research/research-themes

soup10 14y ago
People who offer solutions and timetables are researchers trying to get funding(always overly optimistic). The fact is that we have a relatively tiny amount of understanding and control over organic matter. And far more basic research breakthroughs are required before aging can seriously be discussed. SENS and transhumanists are like a primitive civilizations enchanted by the prospect of landing a man on the moon before the horse and buggy was invented, which is why most biologists don't take them seriously.
- thronemonkey 14y ago
  I agree with the gist of your comment (that we're VERY far away from anything like conquering mortality) but I am a biologist and I would describe myself as a transhumanist — not the Ray Kurzweil, this-is-happening-in-the-next-50-years sense, just in the sense that I think the transhumanist vision is something we should strive for (however far away it may be) and use an inspiration.

adrianN 14y ago

Well, the people were asked how long they wanted to live, not what they believe is medically achievable within their livetime. Only one percent wanted to live forever. That sounds like acceptance of death for me.

mistercow 14y ago

>But it's understood that we are very far from medical technology that can tackle the problem. That's not what the question in the survey was. The question was "how long do you WANT to live?", not "how long do you think you WILL live?". Saying you don't want something just because you can't have it is just sour grapes. >The idea that we can cure aging with some miracle cure is a pipe dream until we have a far better understanding and control of biological processes. I don't think any informed people believe that some "miracle cure" is going to come along and cure death and aging. Curing death and aging is going to be a slow, incremental process because aging is made up of many components (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types_of_aging_damage_proposed_by_de_Grey_.28The_Seven_Deadly_Things.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types_...)