3 ms·
> Sorry, have we solved aging? My question seems well phrased: Why don't we? Examples of absolutes in your question: "everyone" "impossible" "nobody seems to c
by ben_w 3mo ago
> Sorry, have we solved aging? My question seems well phrased: Why don't we?
Examples of absolutes in your question: "everyone" "impossible" "nobody seems to care" "Nobody wants to talk" "wonder why nobody else cares?" "why nobody cares"
> why we haven't.
We don't really know what we're doing. We still don't today, but when I graduated, talking about life extension directly rather than specific old-age diseases like dementia and cancer was basically a sign someone didn't understand how hard the problem was.
In my lifetime I've seen: the invention of mammalian cloning; full genome sequencing (not just human genome, the first non-virus full chromosome was a yeast chromosome in 1992, the first full organism was a bacteria in 1995, the first animal was the nematode worm in 1998); CRISPR for (still basic but better than retroviral) gene editing; the Nobel prize for (if not the original discovery of) telomerase and its role in lengthening the telomeres that seem to force the Hayflick limit; what feels like an endless sequence of headlines about how lab rats have various multiples of life extension from calorie restriction, genetic engineering, and senolytic drugs (those which kill senescent cells); headlines about metformin and rapamycin potentially having anti-aging effects; and of course a few versions of AlphaFold which took us from "you can get a PhD by figuring out how just one protein folds" to "here's the folding of nearly every one of the 214 million proteins known to mankind plus a bunch of complexes between multiple proteins, RNA, DNA, ligands, ions, etc.".
We have a lot more work to do to get this ready for humans. Even with optimistic assistance from AI, I don't expect to see anything* on the consumer market until the mid 2030s, though it's possible to rush a lot of this stuff with a "move fast and break things" culture. (Between Kennedy in the USA and China's lax attitude to human rights, such a culture may in fact happen).
* except metformin and rapamycin and things like them, because those are already available for other conditions, so may end up as per GLP-1 drugs for obesity
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]