How Long Do You Want to Live?

Re:How Long Do You Want to Live? by reasonattlm on Saturday August 25, 2012 @11:41PM (#4434239)

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-th...

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

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Long Do You Want to Live? by soup10 on Sunday August 26, 2012 @12:23AM (#4434324)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Long Do You Want to Live? by reasonattlm on Sunday August 26, 2012 @10:19AM (#4435128)

Most biologists do in fact take SENS seriously - you are very behind the times, and your characterization of the technologies involved is outright wrong.

See the SENS Foundation advisory board, for example, as a representative sample of influential figures in the life sciences:

http://sens.org/sens-research/advisory-board

Equally, see the proposed plan for moving thirteen mitochondrial genes into the cell nucleus: this has been achieved over the past five years for three of the thirteen, and last year someone came up with a generalizable method that should be applicable to all of them, rather than having to hack a separate methodology for each one.

http://sens.org/sens-research/research-themes/mitosens

Your comments show that you are unfamiliar with the research community and with the science in question.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Long Do You Want to Live? by thronemonkey on Sunday August 26, 2012 @01:54AM (#4434478)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]