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

Wibbs · 28-07-2013 10:48PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:02PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:02PM

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

anncoates · 28-07-2013 11:03PM

Life is long enough.

Live it and get over it

endacl · 28-07-2013 11:03PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:04PM

endacl wrote: »

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

Some people will always want children.

endacl · 28-07-2013 11:06PM

Fox_In_Socks wrote: »

Some people will always want children.

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

Jonny Blaze · 28-07-2013 11:12PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:18PM

"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 · 28-07-2013 11:18PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:22PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:24PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:24PM

Jonny Blaze wrote: »

Unless we all get wolverine skeletons...

Who wouldn't want that?

endacl · 28-07-2013 11:24PM

Jonny Blaze wrote: »

Unless we all get wolverine skeletons...

I'm in!

Turtwig · 28-07-2013 11:27PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:29PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:30PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:32PM

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 · 28-07-2013 11:32PM

Jernal wrote: »

Life is suffering; then you die.

An understandable 'Monday morning soon' sentiment.

Jonny Blaze · 28-07-2013 11:37PM

jill_valentine wrote: »

Who wouldn't want that?

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

ressem · 28-07-2013 11:39PM

Jonny Blaze wrote: »

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...

An amount of that can be reduced today by injections of synthetic versions of lubricants to replace the diminishing natural ones (e.g currently as a relief for arthritis every 3 months).

But continuing bone growth to repair ablation isn't dissimilar to the overall problem of DNA repair.

numnumcake · 28-07-2013 11:43PM

mr lee wrote: »

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

I agree with this 100%. Ageing should be viewed as a positive thing as opposed to negative. As you get older you get to experience a lot in life, travelling, love, careers, family's. A lot of people never get this chance so try to forget about trivial things like wrinkles and grey hairs and enjoy your life

Jonny Blaze · 28-07-2013 11:45PM

ressem wrote: »

An amount of that can be reduced today by injections of synthetic versions of lubricants to replace the diminishing natural ones (e.g currently as a relief for arthritis every 3 months).

But continuing bone growth to repair ablation isn't dissimilar to the overall problem of DNA repair.

Totally, just being facetious!

I mean even certain gene therapy techniques could some day become viable and effective for preventing or controlling the aging process in most tissue.

I still prefer the wolverine skeleton approach though..

jill_valentine · 29-07-2013 12:01AM

So we're agreed then. Wolverine skeletons are the future.

Sprog 4 · 29-07-2013 12:04AM

ScumLord wrote: »

We're effectively cutting off our access to random but beneficial mutations.

Great point. If we could live forever then that would be the end of us. We wouldn't be reproducing fast enough to survive things like virus epidemics and such. As Wibbs pointed out earlier it is an engineering problem. Oxidative stress is only one issue but there are also hard-coded genetic mechanisms that ensure that our cells get more and more unstable with each division. Messing about with something as fundamental to life as DNA replication is so risky but there are many crazy people working on it

Have a read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere

There is a definite plateau as to how long we can live with modern medical care and I would say we're nearing that. If we want to live longer we will have to start fiddling with our genes.

Frank Lee Midere · 29-07-2013 12:22AM

ScumLord wrote: »

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.

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 oxygen destroyed cells in animals then we would start to to get worse immediately after birth. Clearly we don't, in fact despite the depredations of oxygen in 25 years a squealing mewling child of eight pounds of flash and little muscle can turn into a line backer. Ageing doesn't mean getting worse for the first third of a life, so external factors are not the main reason we get worse for the rest. Thats an internal clock.

endacl wrote: »

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?

Sprog 4 wrote: »

Great point. If we could live forever then that would be the end of us. We wouldn't be reproducing fast enough to survive things like virus epidemics and such. As Wibbs pointed out earlier it is an engineering problem. Oxidative stress is only one issue but there are also hard-coded genetic mechanisms that ensure that our cells get more and more unstable with each division.

We aren't evolving now to survive those epidemics; in fact the only way to evolve to survive epidemics is to allow the epidemics to hit without any medical intervention. Only then would the survivors have the genes that have the better chances of surviving the next epidemic. Mostly the modern world is dysgenic. If you are worried about humans not evolving for fitness you should oppose medical advances, welfare, and so on. Otherwise get with the gene program. There is no reason to not program children to be smarter if we could. And to program genes to be better resistant to diseases. Again, if we could. In fact that is the only way for humans to evolve - at least for fitness - from now on.

As for if we can do it. We can do it with worms.

TED talk on the issue here.

http://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_kenyon_experiments_that_hint_of_longer_lives.html

Frank Lee Midere · 29-07-2013 12:25AM

numnumcake wrote: »

I agree with this 100%. Ageing should be viewed as a positive thing as opposed to negative. As you get older you get to experience a lot in life, travelling, love, careers, family's. A lot of people never get this chance so try to forget about trivial things like wrinkles and grey hairs and enjoy your life

Why would that be any different if people lived to 200?

wil · 29-07-2013 12:42AM

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.

That's almost biblical.
However dolphins already have a name for it - translates roughly as "Pain in our ass"

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.

I suspect you might not be far off. Physics and biology are not compatible with our desires. Look what happened when we struggled to engage with space travel, we started navel gazing and invented the internet instead. So as a progression of that, eventually a human will be written in html 93.0

Some octogenarian with a trillion dollars in a trust fund will be the first adopter to change provider to Samsong Life. But after a disastrous power outage, some expensive lawyers and clever small print will provide the opportune funding to acquire the first truly uninterruptable indestructible UPS and offer an immortality service level guarantee under the name Samsong Infinite Life. Eventually even non-terminal people will move to new life providers and forego their frail bodies which will be archived in really deep freezers.......
sorry got carried away

Guy:Incognito · 29-07-2013 12:46AM

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.

Henrietta lax iirc

Edit. Lacks not lax.

Wibbs · 29-07-2013 09:44AM

ScumLord wrote: »

We're effectively cutting off our access to random but beneficial mutations.

We're already doing that to some degree and in a possibly bad way, by ensuring more of us survive to reproduce where they would have died before. A reverse eugenics if you will. We're driving our evolutionary map more than ever.

Some reckon we'll meld with "machines", become less biological, well less in nature biological as we are already machines, just not very well built ones. If/when that happens brain power will expand exponentially and when that happens all bets are off.

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

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