8 ms·

Ageing: The girls who never grow older

92 points by kercker 12y ago

sixQuarks 12y ago
Does anyone have pictures of these girls? I'm curious to see what they actually look like.
- chrisdone 12y ago
  I'm imagining Alia of the Knife.
ars 12y ago
Summary: There are no conclusions or new research in this article. Talks about some theories of the scientist interviewed about what aging is (Spoiler: He doesn't know and all current theories have flaws), wastes some time on human interest fluff, gives an interesting picture of girls with Syndrome X (that prevents them from developing, in a way that might be a lack of aging - if you've already heard about it there is nothing new here, if not this is a reasonable introduction), but has no conclusions or new information. They are doing genetic testing of the girls involved, results are not in yet, this article should have waited for the results.
- jostmey 12y ago
  I actually thought this article did a pretty good job explaining why we age. As pointed out, our bodies fall apart because they are the product of an evolutionary process. Our genetic code is like a computer program that runs into a bunch of fatal errors after it has been left running for too long. These fatal errors do not matter to our genes provided enough time has elapsed since our birth for our DNA to pass on several copies of itself. There is simply an absence of selective pressure for us to live past a certain reproductive age. (If I wrote in laymen's terms it is because I am a laymen on the issue, but a well informed one at that.)
  - ars 12y ago
    Yes, that is one explanation, but it's refuted by other evidence. (And the article covers this.) The main problem with the argument is that our body does a great job of fixing errors - so why does that process suddenly seem to stop? Why not just keep on fixing errors. If you can fix errors for 40 years why stop there? Why does the process suddenly stop at that age? It's not like there is a gradual accumulation of errors - it's no errors for 40 years, then suddenly error correction mode is switched off. Why? It also just raises the question of why there is a reproductive age in the first place? Why does that stop? (For women anyway - it doesn't seem to stop for men, so the evolutionary argument fails there too.) But the biggest argument against that theory is other animals. Why do they have different lifespans? The genetic machinery for all mammals is more or less the same.
    - jostmey 12y ago
      First of all, there are a number of things that go wrong in our bodies as we age. Certainly genetic errors build up over time and are left uncorrected. But this is just one of many things that go wrong. The reason our bodies are allowed to degrade in the first place is because we have usually already survived well into our reproductive age. The evolutionary theories of aging actually provide a pretty solid explanation as to why separate species have different lifespans. Some species take longer to reach reproductive maturity than others. Some species reproduce more slowly than others, which in turn effects how quickly the animal may age. Individuals in some species don't survive very long due to external pressures such as starvation and predation, which also shapes lifespan. The best introduction into the evolutionary theories of aging I have found is: http://www.genetics.org/content/156/3/927.full.pdf http://www.genetics.org/content/156/3/927.full.pdf . It is worth noting this theory explains human mortality curves once external causes of death have been removed.
      - crystaln 12y ago
        Would it not make more evolutionary sense to remain reproductively capable for hundreds or thousands of years? The motive for genes to reproduce does not end after a single set of offspring. In fact, I don't think the motivation is even reduced.
- jessriedel 12y ago
  This sort of comment is highly appreciated. Thanks.
- withdavidli 12y ago
  Wish I read this comment before reading that long article.
- ableal 12y ago
  > this article should have waited for the results. "Publish early, publish often" ? You know how the biz works ;-) Not that, as a reader, I disagree. Thanks for the outline.
gejjaxxita 12y ago
Amazingly this can't be accessed from the UK, a bizarre consequence of the license fee: We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com.
- bnchdrff 12y ago
  BBC re-posted the article from this source: http://mosaicscience.com/story/arrested-development http://mosaicscience.com/story/arrested-development
  - gone35 12y ago
    Nice; that's a much better version. It includes references, for one. For those interested, here is a non-paywalled version of the Walker 2009 paper that describes the case study [1]. [1] http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/cellbio/shay-wright/publications/MechAgeDevel-Publication-4-1-09.pdf http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/cellbio/shay-wright/publicati...
kstop 12y ago
What is with the terrible stock images?
kohanz 12y ago
The takeaway of this story for me, after reading this, is not the scientific implications, but I come away with tremendous sympathy and respect for the parents. Having just become a father a few weeks ago, I'm beyond grateful that our son so far appears to be a healthy boy and when I read about parents having to deal with adverse health events of their children, I can't think of anything tougher to go through than that. I don't know if I would have the strength or resilience to do what these parents did (raise these girls, who never develop beyond infancy), nor do I know whether it's the "right thing to do" (or if there even is such a distinction under the circumstances), but I respect the hell out of them.
joe_the_user 12y ago
This is a new article on a condition that's been written about already. These are children who fail to reach maturity normally. All of this was evidence of what Walker dubbed “developmental disorganisation”. Brooke’s body seemed to be developing not as a coordinated unit, he wrote, but rather as a collection of individual, out-of-sync parts. “She is not simply ‘frozen in time’,” Walker wrote. “Her development is continuing, albeit in a disorganised fashion.” The first this subject came up here, someone pointed out this has nothing really to do with the aging that anyone would want to stop. It might help understand the process of development and maturation but it clearly won't help us directly stop aging. And "never grow older" seems like a rather poor and even cruel way to describe a unfortunate syndrome.
- drcode 12y ago
  I really cringe at how this article takes some unfortunate people who are expected to die in early youth and sensationally spins it into "girls who have beaten aging".
balor123 12y ago
There's nothing charming about aging and the horrible conditions that come with it. Those people are delusional.
malkia 12y ago
I had a third cousin with such development. At 12 she still looked like a baby.
hazz 12y ago
Wayback Machine link for people in the UK: http://web.archive.org/web/20140521084936/http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140520-the-girls-who-never-age http://web.archive.org/web/20140521084936/http://www.bbc.com...
owlmonkey 12y ago
Another researcher was sequencing Brook before she died, and I believe using the PacBio sequencer to get the full sequence (instead of an incomplete "whole" sequence using Illumina sequencers.) Hopefully something useful will emerge. Here is a link to a video of Brook on Katie Couric's show: http://katiecouric.com/features/is-there-a-way-to-slow-your-aging-process-2/ http://katiecouric.com/features/is-there-a-way-to-slow-your-...

92 points by kercker 12y ago

sixQuarks 12y ago

Does anyone have pictures of these girls? I'm curious to see what they actually look like.

chrisdone 12y ago
I'm imagining Alia of the Knife.

ars 12y ago

Summary: There are no conclusions or new research in this article. Talks about some theories of the scientist interviewed about what aging is (Spoiler: He doesn't know and all current theories have flaws), wastes some time on human interest fluff, gives an interesting picture of girls with Syndrome X (that prevents them from developing, in a way that might be a lack of aging - if you've already heard about it there is nothing new here, if not this is a reasonable introduction), but has no conclusions or new information. They are doing genetic testing of the girls involved, results are not in yet, this article should have waited for the results.

jostmey 12y ago
I actually thought this article did a pretty good job explaining why we age. As pointed out, our bodies fall apart because they are the product of an evolutionary process. Our genetic code is like a computer program that runs into a bunch of fatal errors after it has been left running for too long. These fatal errors do not matter to our genes provided enough time has elapsed since our birth for our DNA to pass on several copies of itself. There is simply an absence of selective pressure for us to live past a certain reproductive age. (If I wrote in laymen's terms it is because I am a laymen on the issue, but a well informed one at that.)
- ars 12y ago
  Yes, that is one explanation, but it's refuted by other evidence. (And the article covers this.) The main problem with the argument is that our body does a great job of fixing errors - so why does that process suddenly seem to stop? Why not just keep on fixing errors. If you can fix errors for 40 years why stop there? Why does the process suddenly stop at that age? It's not like there is a gradual accumulation of errors - it's no errors for 40 years, then suddenly error correction mode is switched off. Why? It also just raises the question of why there is a reproductive age in the first place? Why does that stop? (For women anyway - it doesn't seem to stop for men, so the evolutionary argument fails there too.) But the biggest argument against that theory is other animals. Why do they have different lifespans? The genetic machinery for all mammals is more or less the same.
  - jostmey 12y ago
    First of all, there are a number of things that go wrong in our bodies as we age. Certainly genetic errors build up over time and are left uncorrected. But this is just one of many things that go wrong. The reason our bodies are allowed to degrade in the first place is because we have usually already survived well into our reproductive age. The evolutionary theories of aging actually provide a pretty solid explanation as to why separate species have different lifespans. Some species take longer to reach reproductive maturity than others. Some species reproduce more slowly than others, which in turn effects how quickly the animal may age. Individuals in some species don't survive very long due to external pressures such as starvation and predation, which also shapes lifespan. The best introduction into the evolutionary theories of aging I have found is: http://www.genetics.org/content/156/3/927.full.pdf http://www.genetics.org/content/156/3/927.full.pdf . It is worth noting this theory explains human mortality curves once external causes of death have been removed.
    - crystaln 12y ago
      Would it not make more evolutionary sense to remain reproductively capable for hundreds or thousands of years? The motive for genes to reproduce does not end after a single set of offspring. In fact, I don't think the motivation is even reduced.
jessriedel 12y ago
This sort of comment is highly appreciated. Thanks.
withdavidli 12y ago
Wish I read this comment before reading that long article.
ableal 12y ago
> this article should have waited for the results. "Publish early, publish often" ? You know how the biz works ;-) Not that, as a reader, I disagree. Thanks for the outline.

gejjaxxita 12y ago

Amazingly this can't be accessed from the UK, a bizarre consequence of the license fee: We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com.

bnchdrff 12y ago
BBC re-posted the article from this source: http://mosaicscience.com/story/arrested-development http://mosaicscience.com/story/arrested-development
- gone35 12y ago
  Nice; that's a much better version. It includes references, for one. For those interested, here is a non-paywalled version of the Walker 2009 paper that describes the case study [1]. [1] http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/cellbio/shay-wright/publications/MechAgeDevel-Publication-4-1-09.pdf http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/cellbio/shay-wright/publicati...

kstop 12y ago

What is with the terrible stock images?

kohanz 12y ago

The takeaway of this story for me, after reading this, is not the scientific implications, but I come away with tremendous sympathy and respect for the parents. Having just become a father a few weeks ago, I'm beyond grateful that our son so far appears to be a healthy boy and when I read about parents having to deal with adverse health events of their children, I can't think of anything tougher to go through than that. I don't know if I would have the strength or resilience to do what these parents did (raise these girls, who never develop beyond infancy), nor do I know whether it's the "right thing to do" (or if there even is such a distinction under the circumstances), but I respect the hell out of them.

joe_the_user 12y ago

This is a new article on a condition that's been written about already. These are children who fail to reach maturity normally. All of this was evidence of what Walker dubbed “developmental disorganisation”. Brooke’s body seemed to be developing not as a coordinated unit, he wrote, but rather as a collection of individual, out-of-sync parts. “She is not simply ‘frozen in time’,” Walker wrote. “Her development is continuing, albeit in a disorganised fashion.” The first this subject came up here, someone pointed out this has nothing really to do with the aging that anyone would want to stop. It might help understand the process of development and maturation but it clearly won't help us directly stop aging. And "never grow older" seems like a rather poor and even cruel way to describe a unfortunate syndrome.

drcode 12y ago
I really cringe at how this article takes some unfortunate people who are expected to die in early youth and sensationally spins it into "girls who have beaten aging".

balor123 12y ago

There's nothing charming about aging and the horrible conditions that come with it. Those people are delusional.

malkia 12y ago

I had a third cousin with such development. At 12 she still looked like a baby.

hazz 12y ago

Wayback Machine link for people in the UK: http://web.archive.org/web/20140521084936/http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140520-the-girls-who-never-age http://web.archive.org/web/20140521084936/http://www.bbc.com...

owlmonkey 12y ago

Another researcher was sequencing Brook before she died, and I believe using the PacBio sequencer to get the full sequence (instead of an incomplete "whole" sequence using Illumina sequencers.) Hopefully something useful will emerge. Here is a link to a video of Brook on Katie Couric's show: http://katiecouric.com/features/is-there-a-way-to-slow-your-aging-process-2/ http://katiecouric.com/features/is-there-a-way-to-slow-your-...