Life Extension [pdf]

http://www.scienceagainstaging.org/Books/Booklet_25_ENG.pdf

by delinquentme • 15 years ago

32 24 15 years ago

Some context from earlier this year:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/02/25-scientific-ide...

"The Science for Life Extension Foundation is a Russian organization consisting of advocates and aging researchers. They are similar to the SENS Foundation in that they undertake a mix of fundraising, directing research, organizing events, advocacy for longevity science, and publishing on potential methodologies to extend the healthy human life span."

And another of the rather nice materials from the Science for Life Extension Foundation here:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2011/07/biomarkers-of-agi...

If you read Russian there's a whole livejournal full of these things from one of the people involved:

http://aging-genes.livejournal.com/

delinquentme4• 15 years ago

Since I'm not seeing too much commentary... I'll bite:

"TLDR" version on 'Idea 01': any cell can be regressed to a less developed version and can be used as a general purpose "stem cell"

"Did Read" version: One item on this list which looks particular promising is the idea of "induced pluripotent cells"

literally: gone are the days of embryonic stem cells, and the social injustice associated with them.

It is in my experience when talking with individuals on this topic in particular that they really have a hard time disconnecting "stem cells" from "killing babies"

We literally now have the technology to regress these endo exo and meso ( differentiated cells ) into their previous undifferentiated states.

This is HUGE! Previously once a cell had "differentiated" to one of the above mentioned states, It could only further develop along that differentiation. Thus it was excluded from migrating from a endo to exo ... or meso to endo etc.

zeteo2• 15 years ago

The issue was never killing babies. The embryos were going to be destroyed anyways, and parental consent was needed. It's like organ donation on a smaller scale.

The real issue is that a large section of the US population is committed to an ideological social conservatism. "Playing God", i.e. changing the fundamentals of social relations that were unchanged for millenia, is what really ticks them off. You see how even a relatively minor thing, like gay marriage, is heavily opposed; practical biological engineering will face ten times more vocal opposition, regardless of the way it may be achieved.

delinquentme4• 15 years ago

I disagree. I think as soon as you put this into the perspective of personal gain there is no cap on the change that can be made.

Just look at what the beauty industry sells now... creams that erase years... I can't begin to comment on the financial windfall of legitimately turning back the clock.

I don't think anyone legitimately WANTS to get old and accrue physical decay...

Vivtek• 15 years ago

The issue was never killing babies.

Precisely. Fertility labs kill lots and lots of fertilized embryos and conservatives never bat an eye.

TerraHertz• 15 years ago

This thread not getting much attention because most HN readers are young and therefore don't think about their own impending mortality.

mahmud• 15 years ago

Not everyone indifferent to immortality is "young". Some of us actually appreciate being a life form, expiration date and all. To live long/forever is to halt evolution. I'm more than happy to take my shot at life, live my 8 decades, then get out of life's way.

After a certain stage in life, we take more than we contribute in terms of scarce resource. When my time comes, I will be more than happy to get out of the way and let time march on.

synth• 15 years ago

>Some of us actually appreciate being a life form, expiration date and all.

Good for you. Some of us, however, think that people should be able to choose their own fates, time of death included. People are not defined by their expiration dates, but by their lives, accomplishments and so on. To accept death as "natural" makes as much sense as accepting polio as natural and just allowing the disease to ravage the body instead of applying medicine. Hey, it's "natural" after all, right? Can't be bad if it's from nature, right?

>To live long/forever is to halt evolution.

FYI evolution does not mean progress, just adaptation. What does it matter to halt or slow down this completely arbitrary mechanism at this point in our evolution? (Which many would argue happened a long time ago anyways.)

>I'm more than happy to take my shot at life, live my 8 decades, then get out of life's way. After a certain stage in life, we take more than we contribute in terms of scarce resource.

It's funny to think that the life expectancy has increased so much in the last few millennia. What would you have said if the average life span was around 25 like it was a few thousand years ago?

>When my time comes, I will be more than happy to get out of the way and let time march on.

Okay, go ahead and be apathetic about death if you want, but don't pretend you're some vanguard of the sanctity of life.

I'm not saying life extension will be without problems, of course. All I'm saying is that accepting death as inevitable when we are ever closer to conquering it, is not noble, it's defeatist. It's clinging to tradition. I say research away and may our children live to at least 200.

danssig2• 15 years ago

>To live long/forever is to halt evolution.

We already did that by civilizing. We checked out of "survival of the fittest" a very long time ago. Making people die if they don't have to due to some moral misgivings about "cheating evolution" is no better than any religious argument.

puredemo2• 15 years ago

>To live long/forever is to halt evolution.

Just the opposite. Imagine what having kids at 150 years old would do for natural selection.

delinquentme4• 15 years ago

> To live long/forever is to halt evolution.

evolution takes on MANY forms, to say that the life/death cycle is the ONLY form of evolution, is a gross simplification of the process.

chrisjsmith5• 15 years ago

I'm against life extension. I think science has the wrong end of the stick.

Whilst death looks like a scary thing and the primary motivation is to avoid the scary bit, people need to keep dying or the population increase caused by them not dying is going to make the standard of living for everyone very low. It's pretty selfish really.

It's better to had a prosperous and happy existence than live 5x as long and suffer through it.

pyrhho• 15 years ago

> people need to keep dying or the population increase caused by them not dying is going to make the standard of living for everyone very low

It's very kind of you to offer to make more space for the rest of us. You're welcome to refuse/object-to life extension on moral grounds. Somehow, though, when push comes to shove, I don't think you would.

chrisjsmith5• 15 years ago

You are welcome :-)

astrofinch• 15 years ago

What if the problem is not too many people but too few?

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/11/fertility-the-big-prob...

chrisjsmith5• 15 years ago

My hypothesis is that population is self-regulating in some way, be that socially or evolutional.

Personally, I really do think the fact that people put their careers before reproducing, therefore leading to problems later on is why there are fertility problems amongst developed nations. A huge number of people here in the UK don't have children until very late on and then have to rely on IVF which is not a flawless process.

The less "developed" (which is ironic) nations have less of a fertility crisis [1].

At the risk of sounding like some crazy hippy, this is all down to the short-sightedness of capitalism and globalisation self-destructing under its own rules. I think the article you linked neatly describes the arrogance that people should be able to control fertility rates.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...

* edit - cite your sources!

prodigal_erik• 15 years ago

Ending that with the "labor shortage" bit really undermined the rest. I read that in much of India it's a faux pas to buy a washing machine rather than hire the little old lady down the block. Labor shortages drive technological innovation, while labor surpluses lead to desperate workers taking menial jobs which are beneath their potential as human beings, as well as Luddism.

loup-vaillant• 15 years ago

Let's compare the two: without anti-ageing tech, we all die young¹, period. With it, we have a choice: die young (but healthier), or have much fewer children, if at all (also, mind the transition period).

Sure, if we choose to live longer, our standard of living may decrease. But I'm not sure. Our current world has many problem which if solved, may allow us to dramatically increase our standard of living even if we live longer.

Plus, anti-ageing tech give us the choice. Even if we go for the Logan's Run route, we'll be better off than right now, where we die young and senile and not at the same age (yet another inequality factor).

The only "justification" for the current situation is Mother Nature. But Mother Nature isn't All Mighty God. We don't have to listen to her.

1: lets consider for the sake of the argument that 80 years is "young", whether you are senile or not.

chrisjsmith5• 15 years ago

A lot of assumptions there.

Most of us die old bar any Darwin award entries. We're just redefining the term/symbol "old" when looking at anti-ageing.

Circumventing "mother nature" will just get us fucked another way. I reckon the first will be due to the social divide and emotional problems caused by those who can afford to live substantially longer.

danssig2• 15 years ago

So you're against us still having people like Einstein around? I think it's been demonstrated pretty clearly that breeding habits follow the environment. If we were all suddenly thrust into a world where we all live to be a thousand years old you think people would still be having kids at the same pace?

I think a lot of people wouldn't have kids at all. After all, having kids is our only means of achieving "immortality" at the moment. That's no longer needed if we can just live forever ourselves.

chrisjsmith5• 15 years ago

And you believe the mind and its internal processes are capable of surviving that long even with no ageing?

As with all chaotic processes, I reckon it will decay faster than our no longer ageing meat containers [1]...

[1] http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html

delinquentme4• 15 years ago

> people need to keep dying or the population increase caused by them not dying is going to make the standard of living for everyone very low.

as peter theil said: " this is a problem, i think we want to have"

Life Extension [pdf]

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