How Silicon Valley is trying to cure ageing

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11413041/How-Silicon-Valley-is-trying-to-cure-ageing.html

by sergeant3 • 11 years ago

48 60 11 years ago

telegraph.co.uk

melling3• 11 years ago

A million dollars doesn't seem like much of a prize considering the result. For that kind of money, we should be X-Prize Kickstarter projects.

ekr• 11 years ago

Obviously, the market value of such a result is in the order of billions, if not trillions.

lotsofmangos4• 11 years ago

I'm not sure that financial prizes give much of an incentive either way for people trying to stop aging.

melling3• 11 years ago

Financial prizes have worked for centuries. Have to be specific on a goal.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_%28book%29

cpursley• 11 years ago

Perhaps the Valley should figure out it's housing problem before exacerbating the issue.

reasonattlm4• 11 years ago

You are of course being facetious, but as for any objection to working on extension of healthy life, you should ask yourself how exactly your speculative problem is worse than the real problem of 100,000 horrible deaths every day, as well as the ongoing pain and suffering of hundreds of millions of people trapped in failing bodies.

klipt2• 11 years ago

Extension of healthy life doesn't solve the problems you mention, it merely delays them (unless the extension is forever, which is impossible given our current understanding of physics).

And population will be an issue - but I think that's largely self correcting. If everyone lives 1000 years, it may well take 500 of those to be financially stable enough to have kids, because you're competing against other people who can also plan on 1000 year spans.

lotsofmangos4• 11 years ago

Easy. Just pass a law requiring immortals to take jobs constructing orbital habitats after they reach their 100th birthday.

reasonattlm4• 11 years ago

The prize site:

http://paloaltoprize.com/

The heart rate variability thing is an interesting take on a biomarker for aging. I'm not sure I agree with its utility, but the prize should at the very least inspire enough attention to figure out whether you can artificially tinker with heart rate variability without having much of an impact on anything else. I'd expect that to be possible given (a) the existence of various heart function targeted drugs, and (b) the fact that aging results from the downstream consequences of cellular and molecular damage that is in and of itself many steps removed from large-scale systems level functions like heart beat regulation.

Some thoughts on prizes in aging-related medical research and why it is that we don't have more of them even though we should:

------------------

Establishing a research prize is a form of investment in progress only available in the philanthropic world. At the very high level it is easy to say that philanthropists pay people to work on specific tasks. This is simple enough for smaller amounts: transfer a few thousand dollars to a research group and you have bought a very small slice of the time and equipment needed to achieve any particular goal. When we start talking about much larger amounts of money, millions or tens of millions, then there are important secondary effects that occur when making such investments. In these amounts money has gravity, money makes people talk, and money changes behavior and expectations in a far larger demographic than just the recipients. This is well known, and thus investment activities, philanthropic and otherwise, become structured to best take advantage of this halo of effects. Most of the experience in doing this comes from the for-profit world: it doesn't take too long spent following the venture capital industry to see that investment is a lot more complicated than choosing a target and writing a check, and this is exactly because there are many secondary effects of a large investment that can be structured and harvested if investors go about it in the right way.

I theorize that the reason why research prizes remain comparatively rare is that firstly they are an investment strategy restricted to philanthropy, and thus people with the money to burn have little direct experience, and secondly the whole point of the exercise is not in fact paying people to do things directly, but rather creating a situation in which near all of the benefit is realized through the secondary effects generated by the highly publicized existence of a large sum of money. A research prize works by being a sort of extended publicity drive and networking event conducted over a span of years, a beacon to draw attention to teams laboring in obscurity, attract new teams, and raise their odds of obtaining funding. Connections are made and newly invigorated initiatives run beneath the light of a large sum of prize money, but at the end of the day that money becomes more or less irrelevant. It wasn't the important thing, it was merely the ignition point for a much greater blaze of investment and publicity. By the time a team wins, they are typically in a position to raise far more funding than the prize amount provides.

The ideal end result is that a field of science and technology is rejuvenated, taken from obscurity and thrust into the public eye, made attractive to investors, and numerous groups are given the attention and funding they need to carry on independently. This is how it worked for the Ansari X Prize for suborbital flight, and more quietly, for the Mprize for longevity science: in both cases the entire field changed as a result of the existence of the prize and the efforts of the prize organization to draw attention, change minds, and build new networks. But the award of money wasn't the transformative act, and in fact that award didn't really occur at all for the Mprize, but rather change was created through the sum of all of the surrounding effects.

So consider this: people who arrive at the state of being wealthy and wanting to change the world through philanthropy, often after decades of for-profit investment participation, don't have much in the way of comparable experience to guide them in the establishment and operation of research prizes. Thus creation of a research prize falls low in the list of strategies under consideration by high net worth philanthropists. Few people do it, and so there are few examples from which others can learn. It is the standard vicious circle of development, in which steady, grinding bootstrapping is the only way to create change.

Why care? Because research prizes work well. They work exceedingly well. Depending on how you care to plug numbers into equations, a well-run prize of $10 million will generate $150 to $500 million in investment in an industry, and that is just the easily measured result. Just as important is the following change and growth enabled by that initial burst of attention and funding. The Ansari X Prize spawned a number of other prizes in various industries, but I think it remains the case that medicine and biotechnology is poorly served in this respect. Outside of the efforts of the X Prize Foundation, the New Organ prizes, and other independent efforts such as the Palo Alto Longevity Prize, there is little going on. Given the proven utility of prizes there should be many more of them, and yet there are not.

klipt2• 11 years ago

Given the proven utility of prizes there should be many more of them, and yet there are not.

Economically speaking, if the utility of a prize is greater than its cost, that is an arbitrage opportunity. Once enough people take advantage of that opportunity to create prizes, there will be far more prizes to choose from and the utility of the effort spent towards each prize will drop to equal its cost.

A prize is somewhat like a dollar auction, but the result of any effort you bid is more random.

CalRobert• 11 years ago

Warning: autoplay video with sound not muted.

forloop5• 11 years ago

It's YouTube. They have autoplay on vids, unless you disable it.

marincounty• 11 years ago

I'm kind of with Gate's with this one. Work on alleviating pain and suffering we can cure today? Maybe work on making the process of death less painful. My fathers death was beyond painful. He had good insurance, and under the care of Hospice? It's like they sent him home and didn't give him enough medication. When the doctor says, "Sorry--I can't do anything. Look into getting your affairs in order.". You shouldn't need to ask a doctor for more Pallitive care medications? You should be able write your own scripts. No wonder people commit suicide when diagnosed with a disease--even a manageable one? It's not always clinical depression. I think about a guy I knew who was given a few months; He went right to the streets to buy herioin. He felt it was easier than waiting until a doctor who felt his pain/anxiety warranted a script? My best friend died of COPD, and something else. That something else was never diagnosed. He was racked with pain until he died in his sleep. I did take him to one of the best pain clinics in San Franciso. He got in my car and said, "They don't prescribe pain pills?" "They offered to cut some nerve?" I still don't get it. Yes, people abuse the system, but look beyond your stereotypes and alleviate the pain that's sitting in front of you? It's just going to get worse now that politicians are looking into prescription drug abuse. It's fine and dandy until you are the one seeking real relief from misery?

Happy Sunday-

pcthrowaway• 11 years ago

I thought Silicon Valley was phasing out old people, not 'curing ageing'

pgeorgi• 11 years ago

Silicon Valley billionaires are getting older, too.

guylhem• 11 years ago

Mortality is the #1 bug of human hardware (with cancer a close #2). It may have been a feature a few thousand years ago, with limited resources, but it's now hampering our progress.

I don't want mankind achievements to be limited by our limited lifespan. The first 20 to 30 years are wasted on learning - almost like 1/3 of a average life. But with linespans in the 200 to 300 years, that would be 10% - and these added productive years could bring so many more good things. Imagine if Feynman and Einstein were still alive today, having new ideas, discovering new things. Imagine if we still learn during 1/3 of the lifespan - the amount of knowledge that would be acquired, and the marvels we could achieve with it.

For those who will lament on how this would be bad/capitalism/not respecting nature or (insert your favorite deity), nobody will force you do to anything. Die of old age at 90 if you want.

Personally, I want extended life or immortality to do crazy thing when I'm still young in my early 200 (or young again thanks to cures we can't even imagine at the moment)

manmal• 11 years ago

My only concern is overpopulation. What about that?

forloop5• 11 years ago

Intuitively it seems to be an issue. The mathematics, however, say not! The trouble with mathematics being correct is it doesn't convince most people, imo. Really it needs someone who people trust to tell them life extension is OK. Possibly a film star. Anyway, since we're on HN, here's a paper.

'Demographic Consequences of Defeating Aging'[0].

'A common objection against starting a large-scale biomedical war on aging is the fear of catastrophic population consequences (overpopulation). This fear is only exacerbated by the fact that no detailed demographic projections for radical life extension scenario have been conducted so far. This study explores different demographic scenarios and population projections, in order to clarify what could be the demographic consequences of a successful biomedical war on aging. A general conclusion of this study is that population changes are surprisingly slow in their response to a dramatic life extension. For example, we applied the cohort-component method of population projections to 2005 Swedish population for several scenarios of life extension and a fertility schedule observed in 2005. Even for very long 100-year projection horizon, with the most radical life extension scenario (assuming no aging at all after age 60), the total population increases by 22% only (from 9.1 to 11.0 million). Moreover, if some members of society reject to use new anti-aging technologies for some religious or any other reasons (inconvenience, non-compliance, fear of side effects, costs, etc.), then the total population size may even decrease over time. Thus, even in the case of the most radical life extension scenario, population growth could be relatively slow and may not necessarily lead to overpopulation. Therefore, the real concerns should be placed not on the threat of catastrophic population consequences (overpopulation), but rather on such potential obstacles to a success of biomedical war on aging, as scientific, organizational, and financial limitations.'

[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192186/

photonic283• 11 years ago

If longevity becomes so prolific that overpopulation becomes a credible concern, then the right of the living will supercede the right of nonexistant future people. It makes a lot more sense to ration birthrates than it does to ask someone to die so that they may make room.

Brakenshire• 11 years ago

I agree in the long run.

But you don't have to get very old before it's obvious that a lot of ageing is an accumulation of small infirmities that build up over time. There may well be a switch that can turn on or off the dramatic downturn that occurs in old age (perhaps to do with telomeres, or lossy DNA replication, or whatever), but it seems unlikely the same switch will also reverse that accumulation of infirmities. Returning a 60 year old body to the same maintenance processes as a 20 year old body won't fix torn cartilage, sciatica, or cardiovascular damage. So obviously we should be investigating the former processes, but the techniques for the latter small problems must be substantially fixed beforehand, or else we'll end up in this nightmarish middle zone of people getting more and more unwell, but not dying.

ENGNR• 11 years ago

My limited understanding is that the repair processes also play a big part. For example bones become brittle because stem cells no longer fill the gaps as quickly as they appear. The body also fully replaces every cell every seven years. If they could find a way to just restore the repair mechanisms a whole host of problems could slowly start to disappear.

Houshalter2• 11 years ago

All we need to worry about is the brain. We could just grow headless clones and do brain transplants to fix everything else.

And soon after that we will be able to replace the brain too. Whether uploading to a computer, or adding so many artificial neurons, only a small part of you is still biological.

pron5• 11 years ago

But there will surely be other Feynmans and Einsteins. What difference does it make if that's the same person? Also, why do you assume that we'll acquire more knowledge than we already have? It makes sense to think (as the human brain is a huge energy sink), that our brains are just large enough to process information for one human lifetime. I don't remember most of what I learned at university, and that wasn't even two decades ago.

jostmey• 11 years ago

The truth is we have no idea how to stop aging. That is why it is better to fund the heck out of basic science. When you don't know where to start, then you have to wait on that amazing breakthrough. No one really knows where that may come from.

reasonattlm4• 11 years ago

Various factions within the scientific community have a lot of very good ideas as to exactly how, in great detail, to go about research and development with a high probability of producing effective treatments for aging at the end of the day. For example, these laundry lists:

SENS: http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research

Hallmarks of Aging: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2013.05.039

Seven Pillars: http://buckinstitute.org/CellCommentary

owly• 11 years ago

Listen. As a 473 year old vampire, I can tell you it's really not all that it's cracked up to be.

GuiA• 11 years ago

That's just the hormones speaking. Once you pass your first millenia, you gain a perspective on things that significantly improves your life.

krapp6• 11 years ago

Trying to 'cure' ageing is strange and unnatural.

We're just another species of primate, we age and we die, and we rot, and then we're nothing. Worms and pinochle and whatnot.

The only thing we should try to cure is our self-delusion and our fear. It only wastes what little time we have. If some of us start living to 120, we'll still moan that it isn't enough. It's never enough.

photonic283• 11 years ago

The improbability of immortality does not mean that life extension is worthless. Is striving to reach 80 asinine because we'll just want more? Should we have been satisfied at 40? The status quo is no argument for what we should want to achieve.

In fact, I'll argue that any serious life extension will have to come with a similarly extended lease on quality. Senesence will need to be stemmed upstream, so more of your 120 years will be good years.

krapp6• 11 years ago

I'm not saying it's worthless, i'm saying we shouldn't act as if aging or death are diseases to be cured.

pron5• 11 years ago

Except there might be unseen consequences. It's all very hard to predict, but here's one example. Suppose human life is extended by 20 years. For some, it might be enough to start a second (or third) career. For others -- maybe not. Which means that people will need to remain in their career for a much longer duration, which might cause them considerable distress. Then again, maybe not.

SapphireSun• 11 years ago

That's only partially true. For instance, if I knew I was going to live to 120, it'd be much easier to decide whether to have kids (20 yr opportunity cost), do a PhD (4-7 yr opportunity cost), etc. Currently, you can have about 2-3 careers if you want them, but if you lived for 120 years, you could have 4-5. Basically, it makes commitment less costly in a very real way that makes several choices fall below various "go" thresholds.

delinquentme5• 11 years ago

An unhandled, appeal to nature, as a blatant coping mechanism. It's is escapist. IE " lets ignore the problem ".

This common of a fallacy is the top rated comment ... on HN. Please let that sink in.

Nothing more needs to be said. This forum is supposed to represent the top echelons of silicon valley thought. Not some echo chamber of common ( "well always want more" ... really?) memes.

krapp6• 11 years ago

Several people have disagreed with me here. I don't have the patience to wait for you to keep reediting your comment into something that no longer reads like it was written by a raging child on 4chan. Maybe you should read the other comments to see what an intelligent response is.

I'm not appealing to nature anyway, i'm appealing to physics.

Houshalter2• 11 years ago

People made similar arguments about the smallpox vaccine and just about every significant technology.

ggamecrazy2• 11 years ago

I think that before we get to be immortal we have to fix the basic vagaries of the human mind. I feel like the only way we can advance as human beings is by having the old with their backwards ideas (apartheid, anti-homosexuality) die and be replaced by new people with new ideas.

If we can fix the mind first then I'm all for immortality but not before.

prodigal_erik• 11 years ago

What if aging in the brain is the reason old people aren't disproving and correcting their invalid ideas?

ggamecrazy2• 11 years ago

Perhaps they are both linked, perhaps it's the way we are wired, I frankly don't know. I am just suggesting that we should fix the way we think before we change how long we live. Just my $.02

pron5• 11 years ago

While population growth is one obvious concern, I am actually more worried about more immediate effects (pretending, for the sake of discussion that the feat of significant lifespan extension, or even immortality is possible).

Although the outcome where the poor have more time to accumulate wealth is possible, I think that the more likely scenario is a significant increase in the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Estate taxes will have a much smaller (or no effect), while low income families won't be able to bequeath their houses to their children.

Of course, it's hard for us to imagine the how things might play out after such a complete revolution of human life, but it would be interesting to at least explore and investigate the possible ramifications.

How Silicon Valley is trying to cure ageing

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