Is Aging a preventable or curable disease? or is it natural?

sxt

Do you think that technology and medical advancement could ever cure the diseases of old age?..





1.aging is a disease, to be combated by medical knowledge and technology (i)


2.aging is a natural event, not a disease; which is uncurable (ii)

Wacker The Attacker

Yes. It will turn it into middle age.

When we all live to be 200

nocoverart

So old people are a disease?

Chucken

nocoverart wrote: »

So old people are a disease?

No. They have a disease called age. Keep up will you?


Ah look he ruined it not with his quick edit.

RachaelVO

Seen a documentary on aging a while ago, and they had living cells from a woman who died in 1951, and they keep on reproducing and reproducing, with no degeneration to the cells, problem with them is that they were cancer cells, and that's what the poor unfortunate woman died of. Was quiet chilling.

Sunnyisland

There are 3 Ages of Man: youth, middle age, and you look good! -

ScumLord

As far as I know aging is caused by your cells combusting oxygen, which goes onto damage the DNA and RNA in each cell so that when it's replicated the code is damaged. There's very little you can do to prevent that.

Canis Lupus

ScumLord wrote: »

As far as I know aging is caused by your cells combusting oxygen, which goes onto damage the DNA and RNA in each cell so that when it's replicated the code is damaged. There's very little you can do to prevent that.

Very little now... Given that aging is error in the code how about genetically changing humans to prevent this or drastically slowing the degradation?

Karl Stein

Everything is a disease these days.

They'll say being alive is a disease next.

Artful_Badger

They already have a cure to stop old age, its called freezing.

Redlion

Cathal Cloch wrote: »

Everything is a disease these days.

They'll say being alive is a disease next.

Well, you'll eventually die from it.

sxt

ScumLord wrote: »

As far as I know aging is caused by your cells combusting oxygen, which goes onto damage the DNA and RNA in each cell so that when it's replicated the code is damaged. There's very little you can do to prevent that.

Is it possible that any damaged caused ?, could be prepared ...

Zab

sxt wrote: »

Do you think that technology and medical advancement could ever cure the diseases of old age?..





1.aging is a disease, to be combated by medical knowledge and technology (i)


2.aging is a natural event, not a disease; which is uncurable (ii)

I can't agree with anything you've written here the way you've phrased it. Why didn't you just ask whether we reckoned we'd ever be able to stop or drastically slow down ageing?

ScumLord

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Very little now... Given that aging is error in the code how about genetically changing humans to prevent this or drastically slowing the degradation?

The unfortunate side effect of oxygen is that it just destroys everything it touches in one form or another. Maybe if we could replace oxygen with something less volatile but then we'd probably run slower too. I just don't see how you can protect the cells from their own actions and the actions of all the cells surrounding them. It can probably be done but it's going to be extremely difficult and beyond our current understanding I think.

sxt wrote: »

Is it possible that any damaged caused ?, could be prepared ...

Repaired? You would have to have a copy of the original code I suppose even then how do you rewrite the code of individual cells?

MagicMarker

RachaelVO wrote: »

Seen a documentary on aging a while ago, and they had living cells from a woman who died in 1951, and they keep on reproducing and reproducing, with no degeneration to the cells, problem with them is that they were cancer cells, and that's what the poor unfortunate woman died of. Was quiet chilling.

The woman was called Henrietta Lacks, there's a good book about her. Millions, if not billions have been made from her cells, and her family haven't received a cent.

rolliepoley

Is it no rot, dosent everything rot?

endacl

Cathal Cloch wrote: »

Everything is a disease these days.

They'll say being alive is a disease next.

It is. Its a sexually transmitted condition, with a 100% fatality rate.




Agree with the 'everything is a disease' bit. If it can be medicalised, by definition it can be treated. And if it can be treated, there'll be somebody with a nice expensive treatment to sell...

mr lee

if your worried about ageing or growing old,just think about all the people that died young and never had a chance to grow old, ageing is nothing to be worried about,from the moment your born you start ageing

endacl

OP, your poll is ambiguous. 'Can the diseases of ageing be cured', is not the same thing as 'Is ageing a preventable or curable disease'.

Which do you mean?

For the former, yes. Many conditions of ageing can certainly be managed and treated. For the latter, No. That is a daft premise.

titan18

I suppose eventually evolution will change things, but doubt not aging would ever happen, just perhaps aging more slowly

ScumLord

rolliepoley wrote: »

Is it no rot, doesn't everything rot?

Aging isn't the same as rotting. Rotting is mostly caused when the bacteria of the gut start to eat the organism from the inside out. Normally they break down your food but after death they turn on the body and turn it into sludge.

Non organic things react to the oxygen in the air or get worn away by weathering.

endacl

titan18 wrote: »

I suppose eventually evolution will change things, but doubt not aging would ever happen, just perhaps aging more slowly

No it won't. Death is a necessary factor in the process of evolution. No death, no evolution.

Wibbs

Aging is an engineering problem, so yes soon enough when the technology allows we can start to tweak it. At the moment we're staying alive mostly because of finding ways to stave off the things that kill us, but leaving the aging process untouched. The 'three score and ten and four score if you're strong' notion still holds true. The greatest impact we've had on overall longevity isn't at the end of life, but at the start.

In the late 19th century nigh on half of all people died before the age of five. That really skews the stats. There have always been old people, but before now there were also many graves of the very young.

I recall a thread here on AH where we were asked if medical science saved your life and there was a huge number of people who wouldn't have made it to 20 without medical intervention. Getting the same folks to 100 requires more than intervention and prevention, it requires really low level engineering.

Still, yep I reckon we're unlucky in one way in that while quite the number reading this will see 100, we're likely about 50-100 years away before a time when living to a thousand is near a given and death one chooses is mostly down to boredom. That's going to fundamentally change the way we see ourselves as human.

Boombastic

We could just stop measuring time

Captain Chaos

endacl wrote: »

No it won't. Death is a necessary factor in the process of evolution. No death, no evolution.

Reproduction = evolution, no? The next generation will be more evolved than the last, does not matter how long the older generation live.

endacl

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Reproduction = evolution, no?

Yep. But if there's nobody dying, why would a species introduce competition for resources by reproducing? The gene would attain its continuity without subsequent generations being necessary.

ressem

ScumLord wrote: »

Repaired? You would have to have a copy of the original code I suppose even then how do you rewrite the code of individual cells?

If you believe the wiki article, there are up to a million dna strand breaks per cell per week, most of which are repaired by enzymes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_damage_theory_of_aging wrote:

In humans and other mammals, DNA damage occurs frequently and DNA repair processes have evolved to compensate. In estimates made for mice, on average approximately 1,500 to 7,000 DNA lesions occur per hour in each mouse cell, or about 36,000 to 160,000 per cell per day (Vilenchik & Knudson 2000). In any cell some DNA damage may remain despite the action of repair processes.
...
Thus DNA damages in frequently dividing cells, because they give rise to mutations, are a prominent cause of cancer. In contrast, DNA damages in infrequently dividing cells are likely a prominent cause of aging.

Wibbs

endacl wrote: »

No it won't. Death is a necessary factor in the process of evolution. No death, no evolution.

I disagree on so many levels. The one thing that makes humans so very different to all others in the four billion years of life that stretches out behind us, is that we are the only animal that has externalised it's own evolution and yes that does makes us very special and it made us special from very early on. Feck off to those who wax banal and say "oh we're just another animal". Eh no. We even named the mechanism that got us this far.

Put it in nerdyspeak, previous evolution was based on replacing your PC, when we get into the mix evolution means upgrading your PC. NO death required.

Karl Stein

Redlion wrote: »

Well, you'll eventually die from it.

Death is the cure for old age.

endacl

Wibbs wrote: »

I disagree on so many levels. The one thing that makes humans so very different to all others in the four billion years of life that stretches out behind us, is that we are the only animal that has externalised it's own evolution and yes that does makes us very special and it made us special from very early on. Feck off to those who wax banal and say "oh we're just another animal". Eh no. We even named the mechanism that got us this far.

Put it in nerdyspeak, previous evolution was based on replacing your PC, when we get into the mix evolution means upgrading your PC. NO death required.

You may be missing an important point though. Even if evolution is designed and guided by brainy people, there has to be reproduction, and a mixing of maternal and peternal genetic material in order for it to happen. If nobody is dying, then the genetic drive to reproduce would inevitably dissipate. If the 'selfish gene' had an eternal host, why would it go to the trouble of making a new one? Aside from replacing people who had died in accidents, there would be no drive to reproduce. Where's the survival advantage for the gene?

George Huxley 1983

Transhumanism anyone?

Wibbs

We'll go beyond the gene. Well go beyond it's blind drive to reproduce. We'll tweak that and build our own descendants/replacements.

Fox_In_Socks

Wibbs wrote: »

We'll go beyond the gene. Well go beyond it's blind drive to reproduce. We'll tweak that and build our own descendants/replacements.

Assuming that we don't destroy ourselves and resources first.

Celly Smunt

To stop aging you'd need to regenerate every cell identically to "freeze" the process of aging.Not practical and won't happen.

anncoates

Life is long enough.

Live it and get over it

endacl

Wibbs wrote: »

We'll go beyond the gene. Well go beyond it's blind drive to reproduce. We'll tweak that and build our own descendants/replacements.

But that's my point. Why would descendants/replacements become necessary in that scenario?

Fox_In_Socks

endacl wrote: »

But that's my point. Why would descendants/replacements become necessary in that scenario?

Some people will always want children.

endacl

Fox_In_Socks wrote: »

Some people will always want children.

In this scenario, and from an evolutionary point of view, possibly not.

Jonny Blaze

Repaired? You would have to have a copy of the original code I suppose even then how do you rewrite the code of individual cells?

Actually each cell contains a full copy of the entire genome (all the genes) of the organism.

jill_valentine

"Ageing" is really two processes.

The first is "maturing" - growing into your prime as a fertile, healthy, independent adult. That's the active, deliberate phase.

The second is the passive, unfortunate bit, when the whole well oiled machine starts breaking down, and the wheels start falling off. All the little subsystems that add up to "You" start falling out of synch and you decline into a less healthy, less independent version of you. All you can do is try to shore up against the tide.

The first process is great. All for that. The second process, yes, we're already taking steps to arrest a lot of those individual issues. They aren't beneficial, they aren't "supposed" to happen. They represent a failure of the function, rather than a function in itself. I think it will take time to figure it all out, but there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to stop those things happening either individually or as a whole.

ressem

endacl wrote: »

But that's my point. Why would descendants/replacements become necessary in that scenario?

There is the question of what sort of brain changes will be involved in a long living altered human methuselah.
Plenty of SF suggests that you'd need to alter the brain to prevent it reaching a state resembling major depression, where it's extremely difficult to get any form of reaction to dopamine etc.

So what would be designed into driving these people from day to day could be very different to the current average.
Even today, when asked, there are geologists and scientists that claim that if offered a one way trip to Mars, ending a few months after arrival with their deaths, they would volunteer.

There are a huge range of human motivations within society, and the first few to make it to a long lived state might set a trend for the future of this form of humanity.

Jonny Blaze

Even if we could theoretically prevent cellular and tissue deterioration there is still the problem of sheer mechanical wear and tear on bones such.. Unless we all get wolverine skeletons...

wil

endacl wrote: »

It is. Its a sexually transmitted condition, with a 100% fatality rate.

...

It is a hereditary condition (don't forget about the nonstd people) with both parents carrying 99.999. % defective genes.
Have to allow for that one immortal person that's going to be born somewhere, sometime

jill_valentine

Jonny Blaze wrote: »

Unless we all get wolverine skeletons...

Who wouldn't want that?

endacl

Jonny Blaze wrote: »

Unless we all get wolverine skeletons...

I'm in!

Turtwig

Aging is a biological process. So it's definitely alterable. Whether we'll ever achieve that is another question. Given how far we've come in health related stuff I certainly wouldn't rule it out.

As for it being natural? What on earth difference does that make to it being curable or not? Most diseases that people die from are natural.

wil

anncoates wrote: »

Life is long enough.

Live it and get over it

I cant agree with that now, perhaps nearer EOL
so I prefer a slight edit

Life is short.

Live it and get it over with

Turtwig

wil wrote: »

I cant agree with that now, perhaps nearer EOL
so I prefer a slight edit

Life is short.

Live it and get it over with

Life is suffering; then you die.

ScumLord

Wibbs wrote: »

We'll go beyond the gene. Well go beyond it's blind drive to reproduce. We'll tweak that and build our own descendants/replacements.

That can work if we move into space but it we don't have the room on earth to allow people to live for ever and breed.

It's going to turn into a battle between people that want traditional family units and people that want to live forever. I also wouldn't trust people to make the correct decisions, natures had a lot of experience mixing genes there's a big potential to mess everything up. I can see us fixing natures errors but taking over complete control would be dangerous. We're effectively cutting off our access to random but beneficial mutations. When we make changes we'll be trying to prevent mutations and you'll probably have people working genes to whatever the current ideal of a person is.

endacl

Jernal wrote: »

Life is suffering; then you die.

An understandable 'Monday morning soon' sentiment.

Jonny Blaze

jill_valentine wrote: »

Who wouldn't want that?

Don't get me wrong.. I am all for this!