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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)

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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?