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A comment on Root molecular cause of declining health in the old found by scientists. Parent comment

Re:Root molecular cause of declining health in the old found... by TheEzEzz on Thursday February 10, 2011 @10:29PM (#2205040)
That is an interesting trade off.

Still good new though, in my opinion. Cancer seems much more tractable than aging. If we can reduce the problem of aging to something that only requires us to additionally solve cancer, I would be ecstatic.

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Re:Root molecular cause of declining health in the old found... by siganakis on Friday February 11, 2011 @02:31AM (#2205502)
One of the things that cancer is good at is switching "on" telomerase (enabling the cancer to spread), so naturally working out how to switch "off" telomerase in cancer tumors has actually been one of the key vectors in cancer research.
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Re:Root molecular cause of declining health in the old found... by stcredzero on Friday February 11, 2011 @10:09AM (#2206526)
Cancer and aging are really the same problem. If we solve the other 6 forms of molecular damage and dysfunction, but don't solve the problem of cancer, then we all just get to be healthy for about a century, as if we're in our prime, but then die horribly of cancer.
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