Within 5 years, the world could widely accept that we are within striking distance of a post aging world

Within 5 years, the world could widely accept that we are within striking distance of a post-aging world. This could be with the achievement of mice that would normally die at the age of three getting life extension at the age of two and living beyond 5 years. It might be after that with the similar treatments to reverse aging in dogs. It could be with the first age reversal treatments in humans that make people look significantly younger but also restore muscle and other body functions.

Investors would then accelerate any funding needed to complete several very promising anti-aging treatments which are currently being worked upon.

One of the many George Church companies is Rejuvenate Bio. This is a stealth company that has been running tests to reverse aging in dogs.

They are performing aging reversal trials on dog this year and next year. Human trials would be in 2019-2022 and about 2025 before they are done.

They have a pipeline of more than 60 different gene therapies, which they tested on old mice, alone and in combinations. The Harvard group now plans to publish a scientific report on a technique that extends rodents’ lives by modifying two genes to act on four major diseases of aging: heart and kidney failure, obesity, and diabetes. According to Church, the results are pretty eye-popping.

How soon will we see results of medical regeneration revolution?

Michael D. West, Ph.D., CEO of AgeX Therapeutics, discusses the medical regeneration revolution by looking back at how advances in recombinant DNA and monoclonal antibodies helped usher in new products that improved the quality of human life after decades of research. Dr. West also addresses pluripotent stem cells and how unlocking their potential will spur the next big medical revolution: regenerative medicine.

West indicates that the technologies that make up regenerative medicine have already been under development for 20 years. The technologies are already maturing.

A Post aging world will be good

Michael D. West, Ph.D. and CEO of AgeX Therapeutics, and Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D., Vice President of New Technology Discovery for AgeX, discuss the societal impact of a post-aging world and how society currently views efforts to extend human longevity.

HIV mostly under control but HIV testing and treatments are not universal

Let us imagine that the promising anti-aging and aging reversal treatments live up to their promise and are developed over the next 10-20 years. What might this look like? The developments with HIV treatments could be instructive.

Consider the relatively recent success with HIV treatments. There were approximately 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2016.

An estimated 1.8 million individuals worldwide became newly infected with HIV in 2016 – about 5,000 new infections per day.

Approximately 70% of people living with HIV globally were aware of their HIV status in 2016. The remaining 30% (over 11 million people) still need access to HIV testing services.

As of June 2017, 20.9 million people living with HIV were accessing antiretroviral therapy (ART) globally, up from 15.8 million in June 2015, 7.5 million in 2010, and less than one million in 2000.
1 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2016, bringing the total number of people who have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic to 35.0 million.

It took about 15 years to get to 50% of the target population treated with HIV treatments.

Successful treatments for aging could see similar rollouts.

Aging is the cause of 2 out of 3 deaths. There are about 157,000 deaths every day. 105,000 deaths are aging-related. If aging reversal added 80 years of longevity, then 10 years after the successful development of anti-aging treatment, perhaps 10,000 deaths per day could be delayed many decades. In 20 years perhaps 40,000 deaths per day could be delayed. Over those 20 years, there would be many more healthy people and 100 million total deaths would have been avoided. If it took 10 years to develop the treatments from today, then by 2050 the population would be 100 million higher. It would be 9.9 billion instead of 9.8 billion. People who are 80-110 would be as healthy and active and productive as people who are 50-80 today.

In the 10 years after that another 250 million lives are saved that would have died from aging. The world population is 10.5 billion instead of 10.15 billion.

Then another 2 billion lives are saved from 2060-2100. The world population is 15.2 billion instead of 12.7 billion. People who are 80-170 would be as healthy and active as people who are 35-60 today.

Aubrey de Grey discusses restoring embyronic regeneration in organisms

Aubrey de Grey, Ph.D., Vice President of New Technology Discovery for AgeX Therapeutics, discusses how primitive organisms have better regenerative capacity than more complicated organisms such as humans. In humans, Dr. de Grey notes, our best regenerative abilities are at the embryonic stage. During the Embryonic Fetal Transition, out ability to regenerate plummets and continues to diminish as we age. Dr. de Grey discusses the role evolution plays in this and how scientists may be able to “revive” our regenerative power.

Evolution chose to turn off most of the regeneration capabilities at the embryonic stage. Evolution has good reasons for making this choice but evolution has different goals than we do. Evolution does not care about individual longevity. Evolution only cares about the longevity of genetic information. It is okay for evolution if the genetic information is handed off to the next generation through reproduction.

Evolution has different tools. Evolution can make smaller changes with sperm and eggs. We can make larger changes with the new genetic engineering tools.

Telomerase and regeneration could be used to create virtual immortality in humans

Michael D. West, Ph.D. and CEO of AgeX Therapeutics, discusses why humans age. Dr. West notes that somatic cells primarily make up the human body and that those cells have a finite ability to replicate. As each cell divides, the DNA (or genetic blueprint for the cell) has to be copied. Each time this happens, the telomere at the end of each DNA strand is shortened. The telomere shortening acts as a clocking mechanism that causes cells in the body to have a finite lifespan which, in turns, causes humans to have a finite lifespan. This differs, Dr. West says, from our reproductive lineage cells which are passed on from generation to generation. These cells include telemorase (which is an immortalizing enzyme). Dr. West and other scientists are looking at how telomerase can be turned on in other cells in the body so that they too can be immortal. The goal being to not only extend human life, but to extend healthy human life.

254 thoughts on “Within 5 years, the world could widely accept that we are within striking distance of a post aging world”

  1. Thats not the case though. Gravity plays a very little role in aging. I think its even negligible. Aging is just the process of decreasing cellular activity, i.e. „regeneration“. If we can help our cells to regenerate indefinitely without slowing down, we could live multiple times longer.

  2. (pls can we get the ability to add links in comments reinstated?).” Probably not so long as Brian sticks with Vuukle; I did some searching and it doesn’t even seem to be an option. At best he *might* be able to get urls omitted from the censorship function, so that they could be cut and paste to the address window.

  3. (pls can we get the ability to add links in comments reinstated?).””Probably not so long as Brian sticks with Vuukle; I did some searching and it doesn’t even seem to be an option.At best he *might* be able to get urls omitted from the censorship function”””” so that they could be cut and paste to the address window.”””

  4. Regarding HIV one of the Sens Research Foundations’ spin off companies Covalent Bioscience is developing an electrophilic vaccine to the conserved GP120 region of HIV’s CD4 binding site (almost all other capsid surface proteins of HIV are mutated rapidily leading to a cancer like antigen loss and immune escape for HIV).Google Covalent Biosciences and Abaentek for more info. (pls can we get the ability to add links in comments reinstated?).Abzentek E-vaccine for HIV infection. Ordinary vaccines do not work against HIV for two reasons: most HIV coat regions mutates faster than the immune cells (B cells) produce antibodies” and the few constant coat regions stimulate a defective B cell response. Abzentek corrects the defect enabling production of broadly neutralizing antibodies. All HIV strains require this coat region to initiate infection. Abzentek is the only HIV vaccine candidate documented to induce production of such broadly neutralizing antibodies. Most of the E-vaccine induced antibodies are catabodies and their molecular cousins irreversible antibodies – both catabodies and irreversible antibodies display superior HIV neutralization compared to ordinary antibodies. Our E-vaccine approach is ready for testing prophylaxis against HIV world-wide” and it also has potential for a functional cure of the infection.””Covalent are trying to raise $9 million dollars to start a phase 1 trial.”””””””

  5. If B.Wang doesn’t actually mind URLs, we could try to make pseudo URLs a standard. Like, just the specific part of the standard TinyURL address. e.g. The latter would be three w’s, tinyurl, dot com, fwd slash, then the specific part that we “link” to would be ybsduqyu. Which leads to this NBF article.

  6. The biggest obstacle to this isn’t the technology, it’s getting it past the FDA approval process. I believe it will be available in other countries long before the US.

  7. If B.Wang doesn’t actually mind URLs we could try to make pseudo URLs a standard. Like just the specific part of the standard TinyURL address. e.g. The latter would be three w’s tinyurl dot com fwd slash then the specific part that we link”” to would be ybsduqyu. Which leads to this NBF article.”””

  8. The biggest obstacle to this isn’t the technology it’s getting it past the FDA approval process. I believe it will be available in other countries long before the US.

  9. The more years regained from therapy, the more uncompetitive other countries like the US would be for not having a longer lived population, the sooner the US will be forced to adopt it. Or see their population drawn to longer lives abroad.

  10. In principle, governments have an interest to subsidize anti-aging treatments if it means people stay healthy longer. But they need to realize that first. There are major savings to be had in old-age medical care costs, and economic benefits if older people remain productive. I can see such subsidies being on the condition of a later retirement age, so you’d choose either retire early but age normally, or get anti-aging treatments but work longer. Otherwise the necessary higher retirement age would be unpopular. Insurance companies may be ok with this, since their customers would be paying them longer before the company has to pay back pensions. Drug companies actually have the largest possible market for these treatments, so they have a high incentive both to invest in R&D and to keep the treatments affordable to a large segment of the population (give or take subsidies). For FDA these really need to be labeled as “anti-(some-relevant-aging-related-disease)”, rather than “life extension” or even “anti-aging”. Then there are measurable markers that you can test for to demonstrate that it works. Might even be able to fast-track it in some cases, on account of reducing mortality from said disease. For your last objection, what sudden death mechanism do you envision here for people to “drop off fast”? 90+ y/o people die from age-related diseases because their bodies are frail. But if a treated person functions at 90 like they were 40 y/o, then their body isn’t frail. There’s no reason he would die from age-related diseases at that point. So he would keep aging as long as the treatments can keep him below the frailty threshold, which may well be indefinite. Every age-related disease that we cure would push that limit further.

  11. The market is a growing number of customers (reproduction) who never stop paying for the product (lifespan). Nothing that happens anywhere in the world, politically and economically, does’t happen for the sake of people going about their lives. So, nothing outprioritizes curing aging. Even if we were to curb all other spending, it would turn out to be worth it because the sooner aging is cured, the sooner people stop dying unnecessarily, and the sooner people accumulate and put to use their 100+ years of wisdom. If govt funding isn’t enough (look at Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security’s budgets) then people will pay for it the same way they pay for things they can’t afford to pay today, even if it means that their healthspan belongs to a drug company. For a while. Because the way things are going, the status quo for working to pay bills, education, etc, are all going to see major changes well within the next 50-100 years even before you also have an increasing proportion of the population effectively un-aging.

  12. Everyone does everything they do not because they’re in a hurry to die but because they’re planning to reap the benefits of their work. There’s no arguing against undoing aging that doesn’t also argue against being alive. Corollary: Big Pharma is “big”.

  13. Even if life extension is not in the cards and just health extension is achieved, people will not need to depend on government or their insurance to cover it. If I can work until my 90’s as well as I can today, I’ll pay for it myself. Most people, given a choice of old age and decrepitude or these treatments to stay healthy and strong, will likely pay for it themselves. It just requires creative financing in some cases. The more these companies sell, the less expensive it will be through volume. “Without a big guaranteed market” WHAT!!! Are you kidding! We have an overabundance of elderly in the US and the world. If that is not a captive and guaranteed market I fail to see what is. I will be very happy to be a salesperson for these products! Easy easy sell.

  14. FDA and insurance. Insurance is all about playing the odds. People pay less into insurance than the cost of providing for something expensive, with the idea that most people won’t need that expensive treatment (at least not before they qualify for Medicare and the government has to foot the tab), and the company gets to keep the extra money. If this is something everybody wants, than that model doesn’t work. Who pays for life extension, particularly if its expensive? Will only rich people live long lives? It will probably start that way. Without a big guaranteed market, the drug companies won’t even put the billions needed into human trials. But finally, I’m pretty skeptical that we’ll extend lives significantly. I can see “squaring the curve”, so that nearly all people live to 90, and then they start dropping off fast, and pretty much nobody lives past 120. That should be doable with knowledge and treatments that can come to market in the next 10-20 years.

  15. Half? From World Hunger Statistics website, it’s one in nine. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, the number of hungry are one in four. Which is still terrible, don’t get me wrong, but let’s keep it somewhat accurate. Most hunger is from war (or hunger/poverty starts a war, in a brutal cycle), particularly in places like Yemen and the Sudan, where international aid trucks are attacked and the supplies stolen. Without that, we could feed everybody on Earth with today’s production. That’s before you consider that an estimated 1/3 of all food produced is wasted.

  16. The more years regained from therapy the more uncompetitive other countries like the US would be for not having a longer lived population the sooner the US will be forced to adopt it. Or see their population drawn to longer lives abroad.

  17. In principle governments have an interest to subsidize anti-aging treatments if it means people stay healthy longer. But they need to realize that first. There are major savings to be had in old-age medical care costs and economic benefits if older people remain productive. I can see such subsidies being on the condition of a later retirement age so you’d choose either retire early but age normally or get anti-aging treatments but work longer. Otherwise the necessary higher retirement age would be unpopular.Insurance companies may be ok with this since their customers would be paying them longer before the company has to pay back pensions. Drug companies actually have the largest possible market for these treatments so they have a high incentive both to invest in R&D and to keep the treatments affordable to a large segment of the population (give or take subsidies).For FDA these really need to be labeled as anti-(some-relevant-aging-related-disease)”””” rather than “”””life extension”””” or even “”””anti-aging””””. Then there are measurable markers that you can test for to demonstrate that it works. Might even be able to fast-track it in some cases”” on account of reducing mortality from said disease.For your last objection”” what sudden death mechanism do you envision here for people to “”””drop off fast””””? 90+ y/o people die from age-related diseases because their bodies are frail. But if a treated person functions at 90 like they were 40 y/o”” then their body isn’t frail. There’s no reason he would die from age-related diseases at that point. So he would keep aging as long as the treatments can keep him below the frailty threshold”” which may well be indefinite. Every age-related disease that we cure would push that limit further.”””

  18. The market is a growing number of customers (reproduction) who never stop paying for the product (lifespan). Nothing that happens anywhere in the world politically and economically does’t happen for the sake of people going about their lives. So nothing outprioritizes curing aging. Even if we were to curb all other spending it would turn out to be worth it because the sooner aging is cured the sooner people stop dying unnecessarily and the sooner people accumulate and put to use their 100+ years of wisdom.If govt funding isn’t enough (look at Medicaid Medicare Social Security’s budgets) then people will pay for it the same way they pay for things they can’t afford to pay today even if it means that their healthspan belongs to a drug company. For a while. Because the way things are going the status quo for working to pay bills education etc are all going to see major changes well within the next 50-100 years even before you also have an increasing proportion of the population effectively un-aging.

  19. Everyone does everything they do not because they’re in a hurry to die but because they’re planning to reap the benefits of their work. There’s no arguing against undoing aging that doesn’t also argue against being alive. Corollary: Big Pharma is big””.”””

  20. Even if life extension is not in the cards and just health extension is achieved people will not need to depend on government or their insurance to cover it. If I can work until my 90’s as well as I can today I’ll pay for it myself. Most people given a choice of old age and decrepitude or these treatments to stay healthy and strong will likely pay for it themselves. It just requires creative financing in some cases. The more these companies sell the less expensive it will be through volume.Without a big guaranteed market”” WHAT!!! Are you kidding! We have an overabundance of elderly in the US and the world. If that is not a captive and guaranteed market I fail to see what is. I will be very happy to be a salesperson for these products! Easy easy sell.”””

  21. FDA and insurance. Insurance is all about playing the odds. People pay less into insurance than the cost of providing for something expensive with the idea that most people won’t need that expensive treatment (at least not before they qualify for Medicare and the government has to foot the tab) and the company gets to keep the extra money.If this is something everybody wants than that model doesn’t work. Who pays for life extension particularly if its expensive? Will only rich people live long lives? It will probably start that way. Without a big guaranteed market the drug companies won’t even put the billions needed into human trials.But finally I’m pretty skeptical that we’ll extend lives significantly. I can see squaring the curve””” so that nearly all people live to 90 and then they start dropping off fast”” and pretty much nobody lives past 120. That should be doable with knowledge and treatments that can come to market in the next 10-20 years.”””

  22. Half? From World Hunger Statistics website it’s one in nine. Even in sub-Saharan Africa the number of hungry are one in four. Which is still terrible don’t get me wrong but let’s keep it somewhat accurate.Most hunger is from war (or hunger/poverty starts a war in a brutal cycle) particularly in places like Yemen and the Sudan where international aid trucks are attacked and the supplies stolen. Without that we could feed everybody on Earth with today’s production. That’s before you consider that an estimated 1/3 of all food produced is wasted.

  23. Many people have no retirement savings. Meanwhile, most people that have retirement savings will see them shrink, and continue to shrink, after retirement; the great concern being whether or not they have enough to see them safely into the grave before they wind up eating cat food. Breakthroughs in life extension bringing about indefinite lifespans would certainly make it easier to know when you could afford to retire. It would have to be after you pass the tipping point where investment returns exceed both inflation and what you will take to live on (in the manner to which you would rather be accustomed). Of course, a great many people will never save a dime, even if they make a good wage until they are a thousand years old.

  24. Imagine the politician you hate most. Imagine them getting into office and never leaving it again, getting elected time after time after time… and never exiting of old age.

  25. Then you’ve already made up your mind and only seeing that happen, and then seeing it get completely outvoted by the whole bottom of the pyramid, will change your mind. ” You wish. “In the mean time you will argue for a death sentence for everyone, for the sake of denying a few rich people the ability to live longer.” I have not done any of that…

  26. Irrelevant. People will be forced to keep living their life as they did. And will be conditioned to think they don’t deserve anti-aging unless they earn it by getting filthy rich. As always.

  27. Then you’ve already made up your mind and only seeing that happen, and then seeing it get completely outvoted by the whole bottom of the pyramid, will change your mind. In the mean time you will argue for a death sentence for everyone, for the sake of denying a few rich people the ability to live longer.

  28. rather than see that aging can be cured if only “rich @$sholes” were made to share” As if this ever happens…

  29. So what? Does that mean that you would rather the rest of the world see the world as it is today, rather than see that aging can be cured if only “rich @$sholes” were made to share? That’s if we actually run with your strawman. People have rioted for way less, and arguably people will never have had such a cause for revolt as this – eternal life. Which it isn’t, but might as well be.

  30. Well, not starving is not the same as being properly nourished. The point is most of the planet won’t have the means or the wealth to get anti-aging. So “we” are not in the striking distance of anything. Only the wealthiest 2% or such.

  31. Many people have no retirement savings. Meanwhile most people that have retirement savings will see them shrink and continue to shrink after retirement; the great concern being whether or not they have enough to see them safely into the grave before they wind up eating cat food. Breakthroughs in life extension bringing about indefinite lifespans would certainly make it easier to know when you could afford to retire. It would have to be after you pass the tipping point where investment returns exceed both inflation and what you will take to live on (in the manner to which you would rather be accustomed). Of course a great many people will never save a dime even if they make a good wage until they are a thousand years old.

  32. Imagine the politician you hate most.Imagine them getting into office and never leaving it again getting elected time after time after time… and never exiting of old age.

  33. Then you’ve already made up your mind and only seeing that happen and then seeing it get completely outvoted by the whole bottom of the pyramid” will change your mind. “”You wish.””””In the mean time you will argue for a death sentence for everyone”””” for the sake of denying a few rich people the ability to live longer.””””I have not done any of that…”””

  34. Irrelevant. People will be forced to keep living their life as they did. And will be conditioned to think they don’t deserve anti-aging unless they earn it by getting filthy rich. As always.

  35. Then you’ve already made up your mind and only seeing that happen and then seeing it get completely outvoted by the whole bottom of the pyramid will change your mind.In the mean time you will argue for a death sentence for everyone for the sake of denying a few rich people the ability to live longer.

  36. rather than see that aging can be cured if only “”rich @$sholes”””” were made to share””””As if this ever happens…”””

  37. So what? Does that mean that you would rather the rest of the world see the world as it is today rather than see that aging can be cured if only rich @$sholes”” were made to share?That’s if we actually run with your strawman. People have rioted for way less”” and arguably people will never have had such a cause for revolt as this – eternal life. Which it isn’t”” but might as well be.”””

  38. Well not starving is not the same as being properly nourished. The point is most of the planet won’t have the means or the wealth to get anti-aging. So we”” are not in the striking distance of anything. Only the wealthiest 2{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} or such.”””

  39. I’d agree with that. I think about when I was in my 20s, and damn, I was dumb. I sometimes think that a lot of people aren’t fully sentient (no matter what the school systems may say) and it takes longer for some to ‘wake up’ than others. And of course, some never do.

  40. Sadly, US government does not work like that. In the US, it is about making things more expensive at the behest of industries who will make more money when their products and services are more expensive. Unless the healthcare industry can make more money making people healthy, they would prefer to treat them when they are sick. You would think that insurance companies would be happier if people were less sick. Not so. They make a percentage above care costs. So the more care costs there are, the more profit they make. It also helps to terrify people into buying insurance to show how much things cost without it. As long as elections are bought with money from special interests, politicians will do the bidding of those special interests. We have to get rid of campaign financing and special interests directly advertising supporting or undermining campaigns, if we want government that cares and serves the interests citizens in general. Though, that would still not stop gerrymandering, party politics and pork barrel spending. Massive improvement though.

  41. As always? Did Orwell not exist? How do you discount the revolts and wars that litter history over perceived injustice?

  42. Wish what? Can you be less snarky and cryptic? You do see that arguing against curing aging would mean condemning people to die unnecessarily? Are you trying to say that there’s a way to be neither for nor against it? And you do see that aging has nothing to do with what people do or don’t do while alive? Inequality already exists. People having a chance to live longer doesn’t make the odds of revolt less likely. That assertion goes against history and the burden of its proof is yours.

  43. Don’t deserve anti-aging? Have you actually met an American? There is nothing we don’t deserve. Ask any snowflake. /s

  44. With most humans there is something called “accumulated intelligence” which leads to accumulated productivity. The point being that most of us do not accumulate a wealth of wisdom or intelligence until we’re in our 50’s. Others take much longer. A very few attain it sooner. My point is that we need more time, not less… With more time we can work; be productive; and have the necessary strength and acumen to achieve our dreams and solve humanity’s problems. Twenty years of productivity simply isn’t enough time to realize one’s true potential. And as for those who are able to receive these emerging therapies; should they do nothing with the gift, then it will simply take a little longer to edit themselves out of the gene pool. I’m going to use my extra time to invent things that benefit mankind and build companies that provide perpetual funding for my planned philanthropies. I’m already doing this, but retaining my vitality for longer will merely enhance the entire process…

  45. I’d agree with that. I think about when I was in my 20s and damn I was dumb. I sometimes think that a lot of people aren’t fully sentient (no matter what the school systems may say) and it takes longer for some to ‘wake up’ than others.And of course some never do.

  46. Sadly US government does not work like that. In the US it is about making things more expensive at the behest of industries who will make more money when their products and services are more expensive. Unless the healthcare industry can make more money making people healthy they would prefer to treat them when they are sick. You would think that insurance companies would be happier if people were less sick. Not so. They make a percentage above care costs. So the more care costs there are the more profit they make. It also helps to terrify people into buying insurance to show how much things cost without it.As long as elections are bought with money from special interests politicians will do the bidding of those special interests.We have to get rid of campaign financing and special interests directly advertising supporting or undermining campaigns if we want government that cares and serves the interests citizens in general. Though that would still not stop gerrymandering party politics and pork barrel spending. Massive improvement though.

  47. As always? Did Orwell not exist? How do you discount the revolts and wars that litter history over perceived injustice?

  48. Wish what? Can you be less snarky and cryptic? You do see that arguing against curing aging would mean condemning people to die unnecessarily? Are you trying to say that there’s a way to be neither for nor against it?And you do see that aging has nothing to do with what people do or don’t do while alive? Inequality already exists. People having a chance to live longer doesn’t make the odds of revolt less likely. That assertion goes against history and the burden of its proof is yours.

  49. Don’t deserve anti-aging?Have you actually met an American? There is nothing we don’t deserve. Ask any snowflake. /s

  50. With most humans there is something called accumulated intelligence”” which leads to accumulated productivity. The point being that most of us do not accumulate a wealth of wisdom or intelligence until we’re in our 50’s. Others take much longer. A very few attain it sooner. My point is that we need more time”” not less… With more time we can work; be productive; and have the necessary strength and acumen to achieve our dreams and solve humanity’s problems. Twenty years of productivity simply isn’t enough time to realize one’s true potential. And as for those who are able to receive these emerging therapies; should they do nothing with the gift then it will simply take a little longer to edit themselves out of the gene pool. I’m going to use my extra time to invent things that benefit mankind and build companies that provide perpetual funding for my planned philanthropies. I’m already doing this”” but retaining my vitality for longer will merely enhance the entire process…”””

  51. Good. This may very well be the biggest social and existential transformation of humanity ever. It’s hard to overstate the impact of millions of productive life years added to every aspect of human endeavor, plus coming from people with a lifetime of experience on their shoulders, that instead of withering and dying continue doing whatever they do with their lives. As long as you aren’t an unrepentant criminal and/or an eternal tyrant, something good would come out of practically everyone. It’s surprising how many things one could do if everyone had more time. Several careers, years of sabbatical rest pursuing things you won’t have dreamed doing, having kids when you are really, really ready, everything left aside due to lack of time.

  52. US is just one country, with less than 5% of global population. If they end up shooting themselves in their collective foot, the rest of the world doesn’t have to follow their example. But the recent legal acceptance of gay marriage in the US shows that public attitudes can overturn politics even there.

  53. Good. This may very well be the biggest social and existential transformation of humanity ever.It’s hard to overstate the impact of millions of productive life years added to every aspect of human endeavor plus coming from people with a lifetime of experience on their shoulders that instead of withering and dying continue doing whatever they do with their lives. As long as you aren’t an unrepentant criminal and/or an eternal tyrant something good would come out of practically everyone.It’s surprising how many things one could do if everyone had more time. Several careers years of sabbatical rest pursuing things you won’t have dreamed doing having kids when you are really really ready everything left aside due to lack of time.

  54. US is just one country with less than 5{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of global population. If they end up shooting themselves in their collective foot the rest of the world doesn’t have to follow their example. But the recent legal acceptance of gay marriage in the US shows that public attitudes can overturn politics even there.

  55. You’re assuming people have disposable income. Recent polls say 60% of Americans say they don’t have savings to cover a $1000 emergency and 40% can’t cover a $400 emergency. We have no idea how expensive the treatments are, and that will define how big the market for it is. By market, I mean people who will actually buy it, not those who are interested but can’t afford it.

  56. You’re optimistic that what Aubrey de Gray is promising will really happen. I’m skeptical that we will get life extension that’s as successful as they promise. There’s a trade-off between natural senescence and getting cancer, it will be tricky to solve both problems without side-effects.

  57. True enough. It depends on how expensive the treatments are. Even the basic things like getting enough exercise and eating healthy foods seems to be out of reach for many.

  58. The obvious answer to that is term limits. The obvious problem with term limits is trying to get the very politicians affected by those term limits to actually pass that legislation. This is just one example of the many social, political, and other areas of life that would greatly be affected by this kind of science.

  59. Another point along these lines is the psychological impact on very long term planning this could have. Most of us can not envision the impact that our policies today (environment, politics, whatever) will have on distant future generations. We can usually get a sense of what may happen, but the psychological impact of the “here and now” on planning creates a situation where many people don’t think past their own lifetimes. Solutions that take generations to unfold, such as repairing the environment, do not get their proper long-term consideration from the majority of people. That hinders most truly long term planning. Something like this type of life extension could eventually have a positive impact on how very long term policies are viewed and how those solutions will unfold over very long time frames. It wouldn’t change in the early period of this kind of science, but eventually people would hopefully come to see solutions that take 100-200 years or longer as being easier to envision and implement.

  60. You’re assuming people have disposable income. Recent polls say 60{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of Americans say they don’t have savings to cover a $1000 emergency and 40{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} can’t cover a $400 emergency.We have no idea how expensive the treatments are and that will define how big the market for it is. By market I mean people who will actually buy it not those who are interested but can’t afford it.

  61. You’re optimistic that what Aubrey de Gray is promising will really happen. I’m skeptical that we will get life extension that’s as successful as they promise. There’s a trade-off between natural senescence and getting cancer it will be tricky to solve both problems without side-effects.

  62. True enough. It depends on how expensive the treatments are. Even the basic things like getting enough exercise and eating healthy foods seems to be out of reach for many.

  63. The obvious answer to that is term limits. The obvious problem with term limits is trying to get the very politicians affected by those term limits to actually pass that legislation. This is just one example of the many social political and other areas of life that would greatly be affected by this kind of science.

  64. Another point along these lines is the psychological impact on very long term planning this could have. Most of us can not envision the impact that our policies today (environment politics whatever) will have on distant future generations. We can usually get a sense of what may happen but the psychological impact of the here and now”” on planning creates a situation where many people don’t think past their own lifetimes. Solutions that take generations to unfold”” such as repairing the environment do not get their proper long-term consideration from the majority of people. That hinders most truly long term planning.Something like this type of life extension could eventually have a positive impact on how very long term policies are viewed and how those solutions will unfold over very long time frames. It wouldn’t change in the early period of this kind of science”” but eventually people would hopefully come to see solutions that take 100-200 years or longer as being easier to envision and implement.”””

  65. You know if you actually look at history people bear a lot of abuse and suffering before they reach a breakingpoint. Often obliviously, because that’s the only thing they are familiar with.

  66. You do see that arguing against curing aging would mean condemning people to die unnecessarily? Are you trying to say that there’s a way to be neither for nor against it? ” I wasn’t arguing against. I was saying we won’t get it even when it’ll be possible, because only rich will be able to afford it. “And you do see that aging has nothing to do with what people do or don’t do while alive?” Not true. People putting strain on their body age quicker. So not the rich. ” People having a chance to live longer doesn’t make the odds of revolt less likely. That assertion goes against history and the burden of its proof is yours.” Really? The way I see I have all the proof around my side, at present. Rich people have lots of things available to them due to time and money meanwhile lots of workers just go work their demanding 8-10-12 or more hours a day. Go home to rest and sleep, and start over again to make ends meat. There are no revolts. Maybe if there were widespread, mass-starvation like in the past.

  67. Gay marriage was something legalized by the courts, not Congress. The high courts are not elected. So campaign finance has very little if anything to do with the courts. In theory, they interpret the Constitution, but our Constitution is not very long and the founding fathers did not anticipate many things, as the Constitution was an experiment, and there were not many precedents to examine. I think they assumed there would be more Constitutional conventions, but there have been exactly zero since the original more than 230 years ago. Sometimes the Supreme Court has the honesty not to really make a ruling in a case that the Constitution has nothing to say about…like Gerrymandering. Sometimes they do though. The Constitution says squat about gay marriage…but they invented a verdict anyway. The US is the third most populous country, and other countries do copy what we have done, rightly or wrongly. And often lenders to many countries in the world dictate policies in those countries (the countries comply, to keep the money flowing) to keep the loans coming. And often they require things that are ideologically American or at least Western, often to their determent, but not always. The lending institutions often require the governments to stop managing natural resource extraction, and hand it to corporations, who may or may not be serious about mining or whatever and may just sell off the equipment or clear-cut the forests or other mismanagement for short term gains, and then flee, to do the same destruction somewhere else. While the automobile and freeways were invented in Germany, it was the US that built millions of cars and hundreds of freeways first. And airports too were built all over the US first. The US has 1/3 of the world’s airports. 1/4 of the worlds rail. We have 77,000km of “motorways” what we would call freeways, which dwarfs everyone except China which now has an incredible 136,500km. Canada is third with 17,000km. Mexico fifth with 15,

  68. Very interesting! Hope these predictions come true in my own lifetime, as it would be great to extend my semi retirement doing things I love, teaching and raising fish. But I did notice this howler: “Evolution chose to turn off most of the regeneration capabilities at the embryonic stage. Evolution has good reasons for making this choice but evolution has different goals than we do. Evolution does not care about individual longevity. Evolution only cares about the longevity of genetic information. It is okay for evolution if the genetic information is handed off to the next generation through reproduction.” Standard neo-Darwinian evolution is mindless. Unguided. Does not make choices nor have goals. Doesn’t care about anything. The language which treats it as an intelligent planner with design goals, though, seems to be inescapable. By the way, where does genetic information come from? Given that genetic algorithms are far more advanced than human software, and human software requires a great deal of intelligence to create, how are random, unguided processes supposed to explain something vastly more advanced?

  69. We need to change this model of “retirement savings,” where you build up wealth and then deplete it in your own lifetime. Instead we need to spread the alternative, working model of family fortunes, where some families have lived off of returns on invested wealth for generations, including prominent families in American politics. I read about a study of the family names on tax records in Florence, Italy, which showed that some of today’s wealthy Florentine families have stayed financially independent since the Renaissance 700 years ago! Now THAT’S the kind of long-term thinking we need if we’re serious about “living forever.

  70. Uh, hello? Reality check. Life expectancy in the U.S. has been DECLINING for the last few years. That’s the opposite of Aubrey de Grey’s notion of the actuarial escape velocity.

  71. Yeah, people who can’t cover a $1000 emergency because they spend $1000 a month having fun and trying to look cool. Being young again is the ULTIMATE having fun and looking cool. They’ll cut into the cappucino and skinny jeans budget to look 20 years younger. And if it makes them FEEL 20 years younger too..

  72. But big companies DON’T actually care how much money their industry can make serving sick people versus well people. They care how much money their particular company can make. That’s what drives their stock bonuses. If J&J can sell $25k worth of rejuvenation to everyone, but at the cost of destroying a market for Gilead, Novartis, Merck and Sonofi that adds up to 3 times that? Well sucks to be them, but J&J will jump on that with both feet as fast as they can. (Maybe short sell the other guys in the background.) And this is ignoring another major factor. A sick person who has been saving all their life might be able to pay $1 million in medical expenses before they are tapped out. Yes, you can shuffle those numbers with insurance, but it has to come from someone. But a healthy, strong person who needs to spend so that they stay healthy and strong? They can fork out $100k a year for the next 50 years. A LOT more money.

  73. How many terrible politicians actually die of old age, compared to being voted out? People keep bringing this up, but almost all the examples didn’t actually stay in power until they died. They could still be alive without hurting anyone. And let’s face it, if they keep being re-elected, it’s because the majority of the voters don’t share your particular hatred of them. Maybe the problem is you are living in the wrong place?

  74. You know if you actually look at history people bear a lot of abuse and suffering before they reach a breakingpoint. Often obliviously because that’s the only thing they are familiar with.

  75. You do see that arguing against curing aging would mean condemning people to die unnecessarily? Are you trying to say that there’s a way to be neither for nor against it? “”I wasn’t arguing against. I was saying we won’t get it even when it’ll be possible”””” because only rich will be able to afford it.””””And you do see that aging has nothing to do with what people do or don’t do while alive?””””Not true. People putting strain on their body age quicker. So not the rich.”””” People having a chance to live longer doesn’t make the odds of revolt less likely. That assertion goes against history and the burden of its proof is yours.””””Really? The way I see I have all the proof around my side”” at present. Rich people have lots of things available to them due to time and money meanwhile lots of workers just go work their demanding 8-10-12 or more hours a day. Go home to rest and sleep and start over again to make ends meat. There are no revolts. Maybe if there were widespread”” mass-starvation like in the past.”””

  76. Gay marriage was something legalized by the courts not Congress. The high courts are not elected. So campaign finance has very little if anything to do with the courts. In theory they interpret the Constitution but our Constitution is not very long and the founding fathers did not anticipate many things as the Constitution was an experiment and there were not many precedents to examine. I think they assumed there would be more Constitutional conventions but there have been exactly zero since the original more than 230 years ago. Sometimes the Supreme Court has the honesty not to really make a ruling in a case that the Constitution has nothing to say about…like Gerrymandering. Sometimes they do though. The Constitution says squat about gay marriage…but they invented a verdict anyway.The US is the third most populous country and other countries do copy what we have done rightly or wrongly. And often lenders to many countries in the world dictate policies in those countries (the countries comply to keep the money flowing) to keep the loans coming. And often they require things that are ideologically American or at least Western often to their determent but not always. The lending institutions often require the governments to stop managing natural resource extraction and hand it to corporations who may or may not be serious about mining or whatever and may just sell off the equipment or clear-cut the forests or other mismanagement for short term gains and then flee to do the same destruction somewhere else.While the automobile and freeways were invented in Germany it was the US that built millions of cars and hundreds of freeways first. And airports too were built all over the US first. The US has 1/3 of the world’s airports. 1/4 of the worlds rail. We have 77000km of motorways”” what we would call freeways”” which dwarfs everyone except China which now has an incredible 136500km. Canada is third with 17000km. Mexico fifth with 15283. Not eve”

  77. Very interesting! Hope these predictions come true in my own lifetime as it would be great to extend my semi retirement doing things I love teaching and raising fish.But I did notice this howler: Evolution chose to turn off most of the regeneration capabilities at the embryonic stage. Evolution has good reasons for making this choice but evolution has different goals than we do. Evolution does not care about individual longevity. Evolution only cares about the longevity of genetic information. It is okay for evolution if the genetic information is handed off to the next generation through reproduction.””Standard neo-Darwinian evolution is mindless. Unguided. Does not make choices nor have goals. Doesn’t care about anything. The language which treats it as an intelligent planner with design goals”” though seems to be inescapable.By the way where does genetic information come from? Given that genetic algorithms are far more advanced than human software and human software requires a great deal of intelligence to create how are random”” unguided processes supposed to explain something vastly more advanced?”””

  78. We need to change this model of retirement savings””” where you build up wealth and then deplete it in your own lifetime. Instead we need to spread the alternative”” working model of family fortunes where some families have lived off of returns on invested wealth for generations including prominent families in American politics. I read about a study of the family names on tax records in Florence Italy”” which showed that some of today’s wealthy Florentine families have stayed financially independent since the Renaissance 700 years ago!Now THAT’S the kind of long-term thinking we need if we’re serious about “”””living forever.”””””””

  79. Uh hello? Reality check. Life expectancy in the U.S. has been DECLINING for the last few years. That’s the opposite of Aubrey de Grey’s notion of the actuarial escape velocity.

  80. Yeah people who can’t cover a $1000 emergency because they spend $1000 a month having fun and trying to look cool.Being young again is the ULTIMATE having fun and looking cool. They’ll cut into the cappucino and skinny jeans budget to look 20 years younger. And if it makes them FEEL 20 years younger too..

  81. But big companies DON’T actually care how much money their industry can make serving sick people versus well people.They care how much money their particular company can make. That’s what drives their stock bonuses. If J&J can sell $25k worth of rejuvenation to everyone but at the cost of destroying a market for Gilead Novartis Merck and Sonofi that adds up to 3 times that? Well sucks to be them but J&J will jump on that with both feet as fast as they can. (Maybe short sell the other guys in the background.)And this is ignoring another major factor. A sick person who has been saving all their life might be able to pay $1 million in medical expenses before they are tapped out. Yes you can shuffle those numbers with insurance but it has to come from someone. But a healthy strong person who needs to spend so that they stay healthy and strong? They can fork out $100k a year for the next 50 years. A LOT more money.

  82. How many terrible politicians actually die of old age compared to being voted out? People keep bringing this up but almost all the examples didn’t actually stay in power until they died. They could still be alive without hurting anyone.And let’s face it if they keep being re-elected it’s because the majority of the voters don’t share your particular hatred of them. Maybe the problem is you are living in the wrong place?

  83. We pretty much know what is needed to bring aging under a decisive degree of medical control and I would say we have a 60% chance of getting to this point within not less than 10 years but not more than 25, and a 90% or better chance this century. We only need a few more breakthroughs such as CRISPR-cas9 (first used for gene editing in 2013), Senolytic drugs to clear death resistant senescent cells, Stem Cell therapies such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) which can now be created easily because in 2012, when add in senescent cell clearance (another recent discovery) which is one of Aubrey de Grey’s big seven factors in damage caused by aging and it’s clear we are well on our way.

  84. I agree, and I don’t think any messing with telomeres is necessary, WILT or otherwise. Cancer can be treated by multiple other approaches, cells with telomere problems (weather cancerous or not) could be removed the same way that senescent cells would be removed, and missing cells can be replaced with stem cell therapy. For that matter, I think it may be unnecessary to replace mitochondrial genes either, since bad mitochondria may be taken care of by cell replacement. To some extent, that takes care of intracellular junk too. Which mostly just leaves extracellular junk and cross-linking. But anyway, these are just first generation treatment proposals. Hopefully the pros, cons, and risks of each treatment would be explained to patients before treatment, and they’ll be able to choose. The smart ones will investigate those details on their own.

  85. That’s my one disagreement with the SENS philosophy: Some of their proposals are good, like moving more mitochondrial genes into the nucleus, where they’re better protected. (Though my studies indicate it ought to be feasible to solve the problem of mitochondrial decay without doing that, it would help.) But on some fronts, like their aptly named “WILT”, (“Whole-body Interdiction of Lengthening of Telomeres”), they’re not trying to turn us into long lived organisms. They’re trying to turn us into organisms dependent on continual treatment to avoid a swift and horrifying death. Our goal here should be to make humans much longer lived. Not just make us into mayflies that can be kept alive by continual medical interventions.

  86. After another look at Aubrey de Grey’s “seven deadly things”, telomere extension isn’t even proposed. Telomere control is proposed for “division-obsessed cells”, but that really means *shortening* telemeres in such cells to stop division. “Division-obsessed cells” is basically cancer.

  87. From what I’ve read, senescent cells are actually more likely to become cancerous. That’s also supported by the fact that cancers are more prevalent in old people. One of the proposed treatments is removal of senescent cells, which should, in theory, reduce cancer risk. There’s still a risk that stem cells may become cancerous, or that telomere extension could cause it, but I’m not sure how high that risk actually is, and eventually we’ll learn to reduce it enough. Such treatments may not be approved if the cancer risk is too high. Meanwhile, we’re getting better at treating cancer, so the acceptable risk is gradually rising. Just clearance of senescent cells alone could have major benefits. Telomere extension may not even be necessary. Stem cell treatments may be enough to replace cell loss without telomere extension, and may well be safer, since stem cells still have the normal telomere regulation in place. In principle, the major age-related diseases could be cured without SENS approaches. That alone should extend life expectancy somewhat, since it eliminates the leading causes of death today. But the key question is whether frailty would be eliminated. If it is, then sudden death is unlikely. I think between senescent cell clearance, stem cell therapy, and cross-link removal, a large fraction of frailty would be mitigated even without the full SENS package.

  88. We pretty much know what is needed to bring aging under a decisive degree of medical control and I would say we have a 60{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} chance of getting to this point within not less than 10 years but not more than 25 and a 90{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} or better chance this century. We only need a few more breakthroughs such as CRISPR-cas9 (first used for gene editing in 2013) Senolytic drugs to clear death resistant senescent cells Stem Cell therapies such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) which can now be created easily because in 2012 when add in senescent cell clearance (another recent discovery) which is one of Aubrey de Grey’s big seven factors in damage caused by aging and it’s clear we are well on our way.”

  89. I agree and I don’t think any messing with telomeres is necessary WILT or otherwise. Cancer can be treated by multiple other approaches cells with telomere problems (weather cancerous or not) could be removed the same way that senescent cells would be removed and missing cells can be replaced with stem cell therapy. For that matter I think it may be unnecessary to replace mitochondrial genes either since bad mitochondria may be taken care of by cell replacement. To some extent that takes care of intracellular junk too. Which mostly just leaves extracellular junk and cross-linking.But anyway these are just first generation treatment proposals. Hopefully the pros cons and risks of each treatment would be explained to patients before treatment and they’ll be able to choose. The smart ones will investigate those details on their own.

  90. That’s my one disagreement with the SENS philosophy: Some of their proposals are good like moving more mitochondrial genes into the nucleus where they’re better protected. (Though my studies indicate it ought to be feasible to solve the problem of mitochondrial decay without doing that it would help.)But on some fronts like their aptly named WILT”””” (“”””Whole-body Interdiction of Lengthening of Telomeres””””)”””” they’re not trying to turn us into long lived organisms. They’re trying to turn us into organisms dependent on continual treatment to avoid a swift and horrifying death.Our goal here should be to make humans much longer lived. Not just make us into mayflies that can be kept alive by continual medical interventions.”””

  91. After another look at Aubrey de Grey’s seven deadly things”””” telomere extension isn’t even proposed. Telomere control is proposed for “”””division-obsessed cells”””””””” but that really means *shortening* telemeres in such cells to stop division. “”””Division-obsessed cells”””” is basically cancer.”””

  92. From what I’ve read senescent cells are actually more likely to become cancerous. That’s also supported by the fact that cancers are more prevalent in old people. One of the proposed treatments is removal of senescent cells which should in theory reduce cancer risk. There’s still a risk that stem cells may become cancerous or that telomere extension could cause it but I’m not sure how high that risk actually is and eventually we’ll learn to reduce it enough. Such treatments may not be approved if the cancer risk is too high. Meanwhile we’re getting better at treating cancer so the acceptable risk is gradually rising.Just clearance of senescent cells alone could have major benefits. Telomere extension may not even be necessary. Stem cell treatments may be enough to replace cell loss without telomere extension and may well be safer since stem cells still have the normal telomere regulation in place.In principle the major age-related diseases could be cured without SENS approaches. That alone should extend life expectancy somewhat since it eliminates the leading causes of death today. But the key question is whether frailty would be eliminated. If it is then sudden death is unlikely. I think between senescent cell clearance stem cell therapy and cross-link removal a large fraction of frailty would be mitigated even without the full SENS package.

  93. Like DoctorPat said. Just move. The only reason that’s not a solution today is aging. — Imagine a world where your neighbour never ages and never stops [insert litany of pet peeves]. And you are stuck with that neighbour polluting your sundays for all of eternity. Not.

  94. I’ll go one further and say it’s part of the problem to argue what you do – that self-defeating lamentation that poor people are too tired and the rich are too powerful “for anything to change”. That’s as bad as Uncle Toms.

  95. You can’t speak for others. It’s arrogant to go against a multi millennium history that’s shown unrelenting and sometimes suicidal protests (US CIvil Rights? Warsaw WWII? etc) for much less than essentially the largest and deepest, most righteous and possibly the most meaningful development in all of human history, the overturning of a trend that’s needlessly killed more people than maybe everything else combined in all of history. If we had those, you have no basis for saying people will put up with this. It doesn’t matter if it first appears as a high priced loss leader before mainstream nor does it matter if somehow it needs to be coerced into mainstream. — 2. You missed the point. Whether we have aging or not makes no difference to whether people are good or not. Technology isn’t good or bad. — 3. No revolts? I don’t even know where to begin. “Maybe” if there were mass starvations? What do you think robbing someone of their piece of eternity is?

  96. You apparently don’t have first-hand experience with actual poor people. Yes, there are people who spend money on frivolous things, and we all certainly know people like that. They have good-paying jobs, but they’re still living paycheck-to-paycheck. But there are plenty of other people, here in the U.S., working hard 60 hours a week at menial jobs to raise their kids, or the elderly on a pension that barely covers their rent, or somebody who had to drop out of the workforce to take care of a parent with dementia, etc. They are certainly NOT spending money on skinny jeans or expensive coffee.

  97. I would go for the lowest hanging fruit in this sub argument and point out that they’re familiar with that in no small part because almost all people are very quickly conditioned to the pro-aging/morbidity trance. Compare a smart but average teenager with a smart but average beat-down washed-out “old person”.

  98. Agreed. Not everybody will have term limits. I read a book on deciphering ancient scripts, very interesting book. One of the statements made there was that the first researcher did important things for that particular language, but inevitably got stuck and wouldn’t make the necessary leap. Only after that person died and another generation of researchers got access to the artifacts that person was hoarding did the real breakthrough in deciphering an ancient script happen. You could apply this to businesses, new technology, anything. Everything needs to be cleared of old cells gumming things up, whether it’s your blood stream or the corporate office.

  99. It is indeed mindless, but “:survival of the fittest” is the filter that ensures that the genes that are good for securing the next generation are the ones that win. There’s nothing about intelligent design in their statement, just a bit of anthropomorphism.

  100. Another obvious answer is to go off and start your own political/social regime. Arbitrary aging ought to produce a comparable sort cambrian explosion of social experiments as happened over the last century with the increasing democratization in the world of art.

  101. The only valid case is tyrants who prevent “their” population from moving out. If nothing else, the new state of mind of the rest of the world (who now live effectively indefinitely) will make it clear that intervening to free those people is not merely for some small number of decades for them to enjoy freedom, but potentially centuries and all of the things those [ centuries x large population ] would produce. The same way today babies are the ultimate life worth protecting and saving when endangered, only now it’s everyone age 1-100.

  102. Those eternal tyrants will be the infamous first demonstration of how to deal with such for the rest of ageless history.

  103. Human software is not that intelligent nor un-random. Humans are only very good at what they evolved doing. Hence how alien “AI” is, even now that it’s still so rudimentary. Get rid of the anthropocentrism and suddenly it’s not all that special or foreboding.

  104. Like DoctorPat said. Just move. The only reason that’s not a solution today is aging. –Imagine a world where your neighbour never ages and never stops [insert litany of pet peeves]. And you are stuck with that neighbour polluting your sundays for all of eternity.Not.

  105. I’ll go one further and say it’s part of the problem to argue what you do – that self-defeating lamentation that poor people are too tired and the rich are too powerful for anything to change””. That’s as bad as Uncle Toms.”””

  106. You can’t speak for others. It’s arrogant to go against a multi millennium history that’s shown unrelenting and sometimes suicidal protests (US CIvil Rights? Warsaw WWII? etc) for much less than essentially the largest and deepest most righteous and possibly the most meaningful development in all of human history the overturning of a trend that’s needlessly killed more people than maybe everything else combined in all of history.If we had those you have no basis for saying people will put up with this. It doesn’t matter if it first appears as a high priced loss leader before mainstream nor does it matter if somehow it needs to be coerced into mainstream.–2. You missed the point. Whether we have aging or not makes no difference to whether people are good or not. Technology isn’t good or bad.–3. No revolts? I don’t even know where to begin. Maybe”” if there were mass starvations? What do you think robbing someone of their piece of eternity is?”””

  107. You apparently don’t have first-hand experience with actual poor people.Yes there are people who spend money on frivolous things and we all certainly know people like that. They have good-paying jobs but they’re still living paycheck-to-paycheck.But there are plenty of other people here in the U.S. working hard 60 hours a week at menial jobs to raise their kids or the elderly on a pension that barely covers their rent or somebody who had to drop out of the workforce to take care of a parent with dementia etc. They are certainly NOT spending money on skinny jeans or expensive coffee.

  108. I would go for the lowest hanging fruit in this sub argument and point out that they’re familiar with that in no small part because almost all people are very quickly conditioned to the pro-aging/morbidity trance. Compare a smart but average teenager with a smart but average beat-down washed-out old person””.”””

  109. Agreed. Not everybody will have term limits.I read a book on deciphering ancient scripts very interesting book. One of the statements made there was that the first researcher did important things for that particular language but inevitably got stuck and wouldn’t make the necessary leap. Only after that person died and another generation of researchers got access to the artifacts that person was hoarding did the real breakthrough in deciphering an ancient script happen.You could apply this to businesses new technology anything. Everything needs to be cleared of old cells gumming things up whether it’s your blood stream or the corporate office.

  110. It is indeed mindless but :survival of the fittest”” is the filter that ensures that the genes that are good for securing the next generation are the ones that win. There’s nothing about intelligent design in their statement”””” just a bit of anthropomorphism.”””

  111. Another obvious answer is to go off and start your own political/social regime. Arbitrary aging ought to produce a comparable sort cambrian explosion of social experiments as happened over the last century with the increasing democratization in the world of art.

  112. The only valid case is tyrants who prevent their”” population from moving out. If nothing else”” the new state of mind of the rest of the world (who now live effectively indefinitely) will make it clear that intervening to free those people is not merely for some small number of decades for them to enjoy freedom but potentially centuries and all of the things those [ centuries x large population ] would produce.The same way today babies are the ultimate life worth protecting and saving when endangered”” only now it’s everyone age 1-100.”””

  113. Those eternal tyrants will be the infamous first demonstration of how to deal with such for the rest of ageless history.

  114. Human software is not that intelligent nor un-random. Humans are only very good at what they evolved doing. Hence how alien AI”” is”””” even now that it’s still so rudimentary. Get rid of the anthropocentrism and suddenly it’s not all that special or foreboding.”””

  115. I should mention that in vivo mitochondiral replacement therapy is already an experimental treatment in treating certain conditions in the newborn. So the prospects for near term application as a treatment for aging aren’t bad.

  116. I think the same. If you have 250 years+ ahead of you, and you imagine two alternate you’s, one with healthy plasticity and the other not, the choice seems obvious. This seems to be yet another thing that 3+ digit lifespans bring out as an artifact of the old aging world.

  117. I believe some tests have indicated that it’s feasible to introduce unmutated mitochondria into cells that have already been taken over by non-functional mutants. The key thing is that mitochondria are an independently reproducing and evolving population within the cell. Under certain circumstances, evolution drives them to retain functionality, under other circumstances, non-functional mutants have a narrow evolutionary advantage. Under conditions of high turnover, functional mitochondria have the advantage because they can reproduce faster, being well supplied with energy. But under conditions of low turnover, the non-functional ones get the upper hand, because they can still reproduce fast enough, but accumulate less oxidative damage, and thus are less likely to draw the attention of cellular garbage collection mechanisms. What’s needed to rescue cells from mutant mitochondria is to induce conditions under which the functional mitochondria have that selective advantage, and then get at least one or two functioning mitochondria into the cell. They will gradually replace the non-functional ones, and the cell can escape senescence, if it is otherwise functional. This in part should help with the cancer issue, because part of cancer is defeating apotosis mechanisms, and the mitochondria are part of the apotosis system. With working mitochondria, many of these cells would immediately suicide.

  118. This may be mitigated somewhat once we learn to restore brain plasticity. On the other hand, with BCIs and AIs coming online later this century, we may see an acceleration of progress far beyond anything we’ve ever experienced. Maybe those two effects will balance each other out to some degree.

  119. Yeah, the biggest risk of this is a stalling of science and culture, due to the “old guard” on any profession or discipline no longer retiring or dying and the lack of term limits. People will eventually get bored and move on from any role, but it can take significantly longer than it does today, either by choice or by getting old and dying. I shudder thinking about what would have happened to our world, if old professors could continue refusing revolutionary new theories and ideas for decades upon decades, just out of ego or due to “not invented here (or by me)” syndrome. Probably all key positions in academia and culture will have to define mandatory term limits for anyone’s leadership and tenure. A way to emulate the effects of death in academic circles.

  120. I should mention that in vivo mitochondiral replacement therapy is already an experimental treatment in treating certain conditions in the newborn. So the prospects for near term application as a treatment for aging aren’t bad.

  121. I think the same. If you have 250 years+ ahead of you and you imagine two alternate you’s one with healthy plasticity and the other not the choice seems obvious.This seems to be yet another thing that 3+ digit lifespans bring out as an artifact of the old aging world.

  122. I believe some tests have indicated that it’s feasible to introduce unmutated mitochondria into cells that have already been taken over by non-functional mutants. The key thing is that mitochondria are an independently reproducing and evolving population within the cell. Under certain circumstances evolution drives them to retain functionality under other circumstances non-functional mutants have a narrow evolutionary advantage.Under conditions of high turnover functional mitochondria have the advantage because they can reproduce faster being well supplied with energy. But under conditions of low turnover the non-functional ones get the upper hand because they can still reproduce fast enough but accumulate less oxidative damage and thus are less likely to draw the attention of cellular garbage collection mechanisms.What’s needed to rescue cells from mutant mitochondria is to induce conditions under which the functional mitochondria have that selective advantage and then get at least one or two functioning mitochondria into the cell. They will gradually replace the non-functional ones and the cell can escape senescence if it is otherwise functional.This in part should help with the cancer issue because part of cancer is defeating apotosis mechanisms and the mitochondria are part of the apotosis system. With working mitochondria many of these cells would immediately suicide.

  123. This may be mitigated somewhat once we learn to restore brain plasticity. On the other hand with BCIs and AIs coming online later this century we may see an acceleration of progress far beyond anything we’ve ever experienced. Maybe those two effects will balance each other out to some degree.

  124. Yeah the biggest risk of this is a stalling of science and culture due to the old guard”” on any profession or discipline no longer retiring or dying and the lack of term limits.People will eventually get bored and move on from any role”” but it can take significantly longer than it does today either by choice or by getting old and dying.I shudder thinking about what would have happened to our world if old professors could continue refusing revolutionary new theories and ideas for decades upon decades”” just out of ego or due to “”””not invented here (or by me)”””” syndrome.Probably all key positions in academia and culture will have to define mandatory term limits for anyone’s leadership and tenure. A way to emulate the effects of death in academic circles.”””

  125. Yes, there are so many other promising methods to treating cancer that removing telemorase from the entire body seems like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.

  126. Yes there are so many other promising methods to treating cancer that removing telemorase from the entire body seems like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.

  127. Well of course human software is intelligent, otherwise we could let the proverbial chimps randomly typing on keyboards to create it. By the way, when we discovered the giant stone heads on Easter Island, was it “anthropocentrism” to conclude they were created by intelligent minds, or just good sense?

  128. Get Dawkins to answer the question how random forces created life, and DNA. After the arm waving, you’ll find nada.

  129. It is indeed mindless, but “:survival of the fittest” is the filter that ensures that the genes that are good for securing the next generation are the ones that win.” Well, here’s the problem: We now know that Fischer’s Theorem, with 50/50 beneficial vs harmful mutations per generation, inevitably leading to beneficial outcomes over multiple generations, is utterly false. Back in the 1930s Fischer could be excused for not knowing the real ratio, but there is no excuse for ignorance now. In point of fact, as geneticists all know, there are very VERY few beneficial mutations. Period. Most mutations are either neutral or mildly harmful. Some are lethal. Lethal mutations are weeded out quickly. But here’s the problem: Mildly harmful mutations are not. They add up in the genome over time, very gradually reducing overall fitness. The very few beneficial mutations are swamped by a rising tide of mediocrity. Remember that natural selection is not a creative force. It can only take what is given by random mutations and eliminate those that are the very worst. Unfortunately, that is not enough to create a new functioning body plan or complex organ.

  130. Sorry as a chess enthusiast I put an extra c”” in Fisher! :)Reference on Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem: utube com watch?v= ZA4LpDWZ2KA &feature = youtu.be”””

  131. Well of course human software is intelligent otherwise we could let the proverbial chimps randomly typing on keyboards to create it. By the way when we discovered the giant stone heads on Easter Island was it anthropocentrism”” to conclude they were created by intelligent minds”””” or just good sense?”””

  132. Get Dawkins to answer the question how random forces created life and DNA. After the arm waving you’ll find nada.

  133. It is indeed mindless” but “”:survival of the fittest”””” is the filter that ensures that the genes that are good for securing the next generation are the ones that win.””””Well”” here’s the problem: We now know that Fischer’s Theorem with 50/50 beneficial vs harmful mutations per generation inevitably leading to beneficial outcomes over multiple generations is utterly false. Back in the 1930s Fischer could be excused for not knowing the real ratio but there is no excuse for ignorance now.In point of fact as geneticists all know there are very VERY few beneficial mutations. Period. Most mutations are either neutral or mildly harmful. Some are lethal.Lethal mutations are weeded out quickly. But here’s the problem: Mildly harmful mutations are not. They add up in the genome over time very gradually reducing overall fitness. The very few beneficial mutations are swamped by a rising tide of mediocrity.Remember that natural selection is not a creative force. It can only take what is given by random mutations and eliminate those that are the very worst. Unfortunately”” that is not enough to create a new functioning body plan or complex organ.”””

  134. I shudder thinking about what would have happened to our world, if old professors could continue refusing revolutionary new theories and ideas for decades upon decades, just out of ego or due to “not invented here (or by me)” syndrome. ” Or money (Catastrophic anthropogenic climate change) or worldview (Darwinism must be right no matter how often contradicted by observational evidence).

  135. Have you ever tried cracking nuts with a sledgehammer? It works very well. And because the hammer is so heavy you don’t need to use any speed so the cracking is nice and controlled.

  136. Sorry, as a chess enthusiast I put an extra “c” in Fisher! 🙂 Reference on Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem: utube com watch?v= ZA4LpDWZ2KA &feature = youtu.be

  137. I shudder thinking about what would have happened to our world if old professors could continue refusing revolutionary new theories and ideas for decades upon decades” just out of ego or due to “”not invented here (or by me)”””” syndrome. “”””Or money (Catastrophic anthropogenic climate change) or worldview (Darwinism must be right no matter how often contradicted by observational evidence).”””

  138. Have you ever tried cracking nuts with a sledgehammer? It works very well. And because the hammer is so heavy you don’t need to use any speed so the cracking is nice and controlled.

  139. Is aging not a physical process? How can we prevent gravity and other laws of physics from slowly chipping away and weighing down our bodies over time, the ultimate Grim Reaper? Sure, we can replace parts of our bodies with sturdier ones but even that has a limit. Our bodies can only take so much physical abuse.

  140. Is aging not a physical process? How can we prevent gravity and other laws of physics from slowly chipping away and weighing down our bodies over time the ultimate Grim Reaper? Sure we can replace parts of our bodies with sturdier ones but even that has a limit. Our bodies can only take so much physical abuse.

  141. Is aging not a physical process? How can we prevent gravity and other laws of physics from slowly chipping away and weighing down our bodies over time, the ultimate Grim Reaper? Sure, we can replace parts of our bodies with sturdier ones but even that has a limit. Our bodies can only take so much physical abuse.

  142. “I shudder thinking about what would have happened to our world, if old professors could continue refusing revolutionary new theories and ideas for decades upon decades, just out of ego or due to “not invented here (or by me)” syndrome. ”

    Or money (Catastrophic anthropogenic climate change) or worldview (Darwinism must be right no matter how often contradicted by observational evidence).

  143. Have you ever tried cracking nuts with a sledgehammer? It works very well. And because the hammer is so heavy you don’t need to use any speed so the cracking is nice and controlled.

  144. Sorry, as a chess enthusiast I put an extra “c” in Fisher! 🙂

    Reference on Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem: utube com watch?v= ZA4LpDWZ2KA &feature = youtu.be

  145. Well of course human software is intelligent, otherwise we could let the proverbial chimps randomly typing on keyboards to create it.

    By the way, when we discovered the giant stone heads on Easter Island, was it “anthropocentrism” to conclude they were created by intelligent minds, or just good sense?

  146. “It is indeed mindless, but “:survival of the fittest” is the filter that ensures that the genes that are good for securing the next generation are the ones that win.”

    Well, here’s the problem: We now know that Fischer’s Theorem, with 50/50 beneficial vs harmful mutations per generation, inevitably leading to beneficial outcomes over multiple generations, is utterly false. Back in the 1930s Fischer could be excused for not knowing the real ratio, but there is no excuse for ignorance now.

    In point of fact, as geneticists all know, there are very VERY few beneficial mutations. Period. Most mutations are either neutral or mildly harmful. Some are lethal.

    Lethal mutations are weeded out quickly. But here’s the problem: Mildly harmful mutations are not. They add up in the genome over time, very gradually reducing overall fitness. The very few beneficial mutations are swamped by a rising tide of mediocrity.

    Remember that natural selection is not a creative force. It can only take what is given by random mutations and eliminate those that are the very worst. Unfortunately, that is not enough to create a new functioning body plan or complex organ.

  147. Yes, there are so many other promising methods to treating cancer that removing telemorase from the entire body seems like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.

  148. I should mention that in vivo mitochondiral replacement therapy is already an experimental treatment in treating certain conditions in the newborn. So the prospects for near term application as a treatment for aging aren’t bad.

  149. I believe some tests have indicated that it’s feasible to introduce unmutated mitochondria into cells that have already been taken over by non-functional mutants.

    The key thing is that mitochondria are an independently reproducing and evolving population within the cell. Under certain circumstances, evolution drives them to retain functionality, under other circumstances, non-functional mutants have a narrow evolutionary advantage.

    Under conditions of high turnover, functional mitochondria have the advantage because they can reproduce faster, being well supplied with energy. But under conditions of low turnover, the non-functional ones get the upper hand, because they can still reproduce fast enough, but accumulate less oxidative damage, and thus are less likely to draw the attention of cellular garbage collection mechanisms.

    What’s needed to rescue cells from mutant mitochondria is to induce conditions under which the functional mitochondria have that selective advantage, and then get at least one or two functioning mitochondria into the cell. They will gradually replace the non-functional ones, and the cell can escape senescence, if it is otherwise functional.

    This in part should help with the cancer issue, because part of cancer is defeating apotosis mechanisms, and the mitochondria are part of the apotosis system. With working mitochondria, many of these cells would immediately suicide.

  150. I think the same. If you have 250 years+ ahead of you, and you imagine two alternate you’s, one with healthy plasticity and the other not, the choice seems obvious.

    This seems to be yet another thing that 3+ digit lifespans bring out as an artifact of the old aging world.

  151. This may be mitigated somewhat once we learn to restore brain plasticity. On the other hand, with BCIs and AIs coming online later this century, we may see an acceleration of progress far beyond anything we’ve ever experienced. Maybe those two effects will balance each other out to some degree.

  152. Yeah, the biggest risk of this is a stalling of science and culture, due to the “old guard” on any profession or discipline no longer retiring or dying and the lack of term limits.

    People will eventually get bored and move on from any role, but it can take significantly longer than it does today, either by choice or by getting old and dying.

    I shudder thinking about what would have happened to our world, if old professors could continue refusing revolutionary new theories and ideas for decades upon decades, just out of ego or due to “not invented here (or by me)” syndrome.

    Probably all key positions in academia and culture will have to define mandatory term limits for anyone’s leadership and tenure. A way to emulate the effects of death in academic circles.

  153. Like DoctorPat said. Just move. The only reason that’s not a solution today is aging.

    Imagine a world where your neighbour never ages and never stops [insert litany of pet peeves]. And you are stuck with that neighbour polluting your sundays for all of eternity.

    Not.

  154. I’ll go one further and say it’s part of the problem to argue what you do – that self-defeating lamentation that poor people are too tired and the rich are too powerful “for anything to change”. That’s as bad as Uncle Toms.

  155. You can’t speak for others. It’s arrogant to go against a multi millennium history that’s shown unrelenting and sometimes suicidal protests (US CIvil Rights? Warsaw WWII? etc) for much less than essentially the largest and deepest, most righteous and possibly the most meaningful development in all of human history, the overturning of a trend that’s needlessly killed more people than maybe everything else combined in all of history.

    If we had those, you have no basis for saying people will put up with this. It doesn’t matter if it first appears as a high priced loss leader before mainstream nor does it matter if somehow it needs to be coerced into mainstream.


    2. You missed the point. Whether we have aging or not makes no difference to whether people are good or not. Technology isn’t good or bad.


    3. No revolts? I don’t even know where to begin. “Maybe” if there were mass starvations? What do you think robbing someone of their piece of eternity is?

  156. You apparently don’t have first-hand experience with actual poor people.

    Yes, there are people who spend money on frivolous things, and we all certainly know people like that. They have good-paying jobs, but they’re still living paycheck-to-paycheck.

    But there are plenty of other people, here in the U.S., working hard 60 hours a week at menial jobs to raise their kids, or the elderly on a pension that barely covers their rent, or somebody who had to drop out of the workforce to take care of a parent with dementia, etc. They are certainly NOT spending money on skinny jeans or expensive coffee.

  157. I would go for the lowest hanging fruit in this sub argument and point out that they’re familiar with that in no small part because almost all people are very quickly conditioned to the pro-aging/morbidity trance. Compare a smart but average teenager with a smart but average beat-down washed-out “old person”.

  158. Agreed. Not everybody will have term limits.
    I read a book on deciphering ancient scripts, very interesting book. One of the statements made there was that the first researcher did important things for that particular language, but inevitably got stuck and wouldn’t make the necessary leap. Only after that person died and another generation of researchers got access to the artifacts that person was hoarding did the real breakthrough in deciphering an ancient script happen.
    You could apply this to businesses, new technology, anything. Everything needs to be cleared of old cells gumming things up, whether it’s your blood stream or the corporate office.

  159. It is indeed mindless, but “:survival of the fittest” is the filter that ensures that the genes that are good for securing the next generation are the ones that win. There’s nothing about intelligent design in their statement, just a bit of anthropomorphism.

  160. Another obvious answer is to go off and start your own political/social regime. Arbitrary aging ought to produce a comparable sort cambrian explosion of social experiments as happened over the last century with the increasing democratization in the world of art.

  161. The only valid case is tyrants who prevent “their” population from moving out. If nothing else, the new state of mind of the rest of the world (who now live effectively indefinitely) will make it clear that intervening to free those people is not merely for some small number of decades for them to enjoy freedom, but potentially centuries and all of the things those [ centuries x large population ] would produce.

    The same way today babies are the ultimate life worth protecting and saving when endangered, only now it’s everyone age 1-100.

  162. Human software is not that intelligent nor un-random. Humans are only very good at what they evolved doing. Hence how alien “AI” is, even now that it’s still so rudimentary. Get rid of the anthropocentrism and suddenly it’s not all that special or foreboding.

  163. We pretty much know what is needed to bring aging under a decisive degree of medical control and I would say we have a 60% chance of getting to this point within not less than 10 years but not more than 25, and a 90% or better chance this century. We only need a few more breakthroughs such as CRISPR-cas9 (first used for gene editing in 2013), Senolytic drugs to clear death resistant senescent cells, Stem Cell therapies such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) which can now be created easily because in 2012, when add in senescent cell clearance (another recent discovery) which is one of Aubrey de Grey’s big seven factors in damage caused by aging and it’s clear we are well on our way.

  164. I agree, and I don’t think any messing with telomeres is necessary, WILT or otherwise. Cancer can be treated by multiple other approaches, cells with telomere problems (weather cancerous or not) could be removed the same way that senescent cells would be removed, and missing cells can be replaced with stem cell therapy. For that matter, I think it may be unnecessary to replace mitochondrial genes either, since bad mitochondria may be taken care of by cell replacement. To some extent, that takes care of intracellular junk too. Which mostly just leaves extracellular junk and cross-linking.

    But anyway, these are just first generation treatment proposals. Hopefully the pros, cons, and risks of each treatment would be explained to patients before treatment, and they’ll be able to choose. The smart ones will investigate those details on their own.

  165. That’s my one disagreement with the SENS philosophy: Some of their proposals are good, like moving more mitochondrial genes into the nucleus, where they’re better protected. (Though my studies indicate it ought to be feasible to solve the problem of mitochondrial decay without doing that, it would help.)

    But on some fronts, like their aptly named “WILT”, (“Whole-body Interdiction of Lengthening of Telomeres”), they’re not trying to turn us into long lived organisms. They’re trying to turn us into organisms dependent on continual treatment to avoid a swift and horrifying death.

    Our goal here should be to make humans much longer lived. Not just make us into mayflies that can be kept alive by continual medical interventions.

  166. After another look at Aubrey de Grey’s “seven deadly things”, telomere extension isn’t even proposed. Telomere control is proposed for “division-obsessed cells”, but that really means *shortening* telemeres in such cells to stop division. “Division-obsessed cells” is basically cancer.

  167. From what I’ve read, senescent cells are actually more likely to become cancerous. That’s also supported by the fact that cancers are more prevalent in old people. One of the proposed treatments is removal of senescent cells, which should, in theory, reduce cancer risk. There’s still a risk that stem cells may become cancerous, or that telomere extension could cause it, but I’m not sure how high that risk actually is, and eventually we’ll learn to reduce it enough. Such treatments may not be approved if the cancer risk is too high. Meanwhile, we’re getting better at treating cancer, so the acceptable risk is gradually rising.

    Just clearance of senescent cells alone could have major benefits. Telomere extension may not even be necessary. Stem cell treatments may be enough to replace cell loss without telomere extension, and may well be safer, since stem cells still have the normal telomere regulation in place.

    In principle, the major age-related diseases could be cured without SENS approaches. That alone should extend life expectancy somewhat, since it eliminates the leading causes of death today. But the key question is whether frailty would be eliminated. If it is, then sudden death is unlikely. I think between senescent cell clearance, stem cell therapy, and cross-link removal, a large fraction of frailty would be mitigated even without the full SENS package.

  168. You know if you actually look at history people bear a lot of abuse and suffering before they reach a breakingpoint. Often obliviously, because that’s the only thing they are familiar with.

  169. “You do see that arguing against curing aging would mean condemning people to die unnecessarily? Are you trying to say that there’s a way to be neither for nor against it? ”

    I wasn’t arguing against. I was saying we won’t get it even when it’ll be possible, because only rich will be able to afford it.

    “And you do see that aging has nothing to do with what people do or don’t do while alive?”

    Not true. People putting strain on their body age quicker. So not the rich.

    ” People having a chance to live longer doesn’t make the odds of revolt less likely. That assertion goes against history and the burden of its proof is yours.”

    Really? The way I see I have all the proof around my side, at present. Rich people have lots of things available to them due to time and money meanwhile lots of workers just go work their demanding 8-10-12 or more hours a day. Go home to rest and sleep, and start over again to make ends meat. There are no revolts. Maybe if there were widespread, mass-starvation like in the past.

  170. Gay marriage was something legalized by the courts, not Congress. The high courts are not elected. So campaign finance has very little if anything to do with the courts. In theory, they interpret the Constitution, but our Constitution is not very long and the founding fathers did not anticipate many things, as the Constitution was an experiment, and there were not many precedents to examine. I think they assumed there would be more Constitutional conventions, but there have been exactly zero since the original more than 230 years ago. Sometimes the Supreme Court has the honesty not to really make a ruling in a case that the Constitution has nothing to say about…like Gerrymandering. Sometimes they do though. The Constitution says squat about gay marriage…but they invented a verdict anyway.
    The US is the third most populous country, and other countries do copy what we have done, rightly or wrongly. And often lenders to many countries in the world dictate policies in those countries (the countries comply, to keep the money flowing) to keep the loans coming. And often they require things that are ideologically American or at least Western, often to their determent, but not always. The lending institutions often require the governments to stop managing natural resource extraction, and hand it to corporations, who may or may not be serious about mining or whatever and may just sell off the equipment or clear-cut the forests or other mismanagement for short term gains, and then flee, to do the same destruction somewhere else.

    While the automobile and freeways were invented in Germany, it was the US that built millions of cars and hundreds of freeways first. And airports too were built all over the US first. The US has 1/3 of the world’s airports. 1/4 of the worlds rail. We have 77,000km of “motorways” what we would call freeways, which dwarfs everyone except China which now has an incredible 136,500km. Canada is third with 17,000km. Mexico fifth with 15,283. Not everyone is following that lead. Russia only has 866km. India only has 1,394km. Indonesia 994km. Pakistan 708km. Nigeria 0km. 87 countries have 0km out of 222 countries

    The US has 6,650,000 km of roads in general…which is the most.

    Most of the world has elected politicians, and political ads.

  171. Very interesting! Hope these predictions come true in my own lifetime, as it would be great to extend my semi retirement doing things I love, teaching and raising fish.

    But I did notice this howler: “Evolution chose to turn off most of the regeneration capabilities at the embryonic stage. Evolution has good reasons for making this choice but evolution has different goals than we do. Evolution does not care about individual longevity. Evolution only cares about the longevity of genetic information. It is okay for evolution if the genetic information is handed off to the next generation through reproduction.”

    Standard neo-Darwinian evolution is mindless. Unguided. Does not make choices nor have goals. Doesn’t care about anything. The language which treats it as an intelligent planner with design goals, though, seems to be inescapable.

    By the way, where does genetic information come from? Given that genetic algorithms are far more advanced than human software, and human software requires a great deal of intelligence to create, how are random, unguided processes supposed to explain something vastly more advanced?

  172. We need to change this model of “retirement savings,” where you build up wealth and then deplete it in your own lifetime. Instead we need to spread the alternative, working model of family fortunes, where some families have lived off of returns on invested wealth for generations, including prominent families in American politics. I read about a study of the family names on tax records in Florence, Italy, which showed that some of today’s wealthy Florentine families have stayed financially independent since the Renaissance 700 years ago!

    Now THAT’S the kind of long-term thinking we need if we’re serious about “living forever.”

  173. Uh, hello? Reality check. Life expectancy in the U.S. has been DECLINING for the last few years. That’s the opposite of Aubrey de Grey’s notion of the actuarial escape velocity.

  174. Yeah, people who can’t cover a $1000 emergency because they spend $1000 a month having fun and trying to look cool.
    Being young again is the ULTIMATE having fun and looking cool. They’ll cut into the cappucino and skinny jeans budget to look 20 years younger. And if it makes them FEEL 20 years younger too..

  175. But big companies DON’T actually care how much money their industry can make serving sick people versus well people.

    They care how much money their particular company can make. That’s what drives their stock bonuses. If J&J can sell $25k worth of rejuvenation to everyone, but at the cost of destroying a market for Gilead, Novartis, Merck and Sonofi that adds up to 3 times that? Well sucks to be them, but J&J will jump on that with both feet as fast as they can. (Maybe short sell the other guys in the background.)

    And this is ignoring another major factor. A sick person who has been saving all their life might be able to pay $1 million in medical expenses before they are tapped out. Yes, you can shuffle those numbers with insurance, but it has to come from someone. But a healthy, strong person who needs to spend so that they stay healthy and strong? They can fork out $100k a year for the next 50 years. A LOT more money.

  176. How many terrible politicians actually die of old age, compared to being voted out? People keep bringing this up, but almost all the examples didn’t actually stay in power until they died. They could still be alive without hurting anyone.

    And let’s face it, if they keep being re-elected, it’s because the majority of the voters don’t share your particular hatred of them. Maybe the problem is you are living in the wrong place?

  177. You’re assuming people have disposable income. Recent polls say 60% of Americans say they don’t have savings to cover a $1000 emergency and 40% can’t cover a $400 emergency.
    We have no idea how expensive the treatments are, and that will define how big the market for it is. By market, I mean people who will actually buy it, not those who are interested but can’t afford it.

  178. You’re optimistic that what Aubrey de Gray is promising will really happen. I’m skeptical that we will get life extension that’s as successful as they promise. There’s a trade-off between natural senescence and getting cancer, it will be tricky to solve both problems without side-effects.

  179. True enough. It depends on how expensive the treatments are. Even the basic things like getting enough exercise and eating healthy foods seems to be out of reach for many.

  180. The obvious answer to that is term limits. The obvious problem with term limits is trying to get the very politicians affected by those term limits to actually pass that legislation. This is just one example of the many social, political, and other areas of life that would greatly be affected by this kind of science.

  181. Another point along these lines is the psychological impact on very long term planning this could have. Most of us can not envision the impact that our policies today (environment, politics, whatever) will have on distant future generations. We can usually get a sense of what may happen, but the psychological impact of the “here and now” on planning creates a situation where many people don’t think past their own lifetimes. Solutions that take generations to unfold, such as repairing the environment, do not get their proper long-term consideration from the majority of people. That hinders most truly long term planning.

    Something like this type of life extension could eventually have a positive impact on how very long term policies are viewed and how those solutions will unfold over very long time frames. It wouldn’t change in the early period of this kind of science, but eventually people would hopefully come to see solutions that take 100-200 years or longer as being easier to envision and implement.

  182. Good. This may very well be the biggest social and existential transformation of humanity ever.

    It’s hard to overstate the impact of millions of productive life years added to every aspect of human endeavor, plus coming from people with a lifetime of experience on their shoulders, that instead of withering and dying continue doing whatever they do with their lives. As long as you aren’t an unrepentant criminal and/or an eternal tyrant, something good would come out of practically everyone.

    It’s surprising how many things one could do if everyone had more time. Several careers, years of sabbatical rest pursuing things you won’t have dreamed doing, having kids when you are really, really ready, everything left aside due to lack of time.

  183. US is just one country, with less than 5% of global population. If they end up shooting themselves in their collective foot, the rest of the world doesn’t have to follow their example. But the recent legal acceptance of gay marriage in the US shows that public attitudes can overturn politics even there.

  184. I’d agree with that. I think about when I was in my 20s, and damn, I was dumb. I sometimes think that a lot of people aren’t fully sentient (no matter what the school systems may say) and it takes longer for some to ‘wake up’ than others.

    And of course, some never do.

  185. Sadly, US government does not work like that. In the US, it is about making things more expensive at the behest of industries who will make more money when their products and services are more expensive. Unless the healthcare industry can make more money making people healthy, they would prefer to treat them when they are sick. You would think that insurance companies would be happier if people were less sick. Not so. They make a percentage above care costs. So the more care costs there are, the more profit they make. It also helps to terrify people into buying insurance to show how much things cost without it.
    As long as elections are bought with money from special interests, politicians will do the bidding of those special interests.

    We have to get rid of campaign financing and special interests directly advertising supporting or undermining campaigns, if we want government that cares and serves the interests citizens in general. Though, that would still not stop gerrymandering, party politics and pork barrel spending. Massive improvement though.

  186. Wish what? Can you be less snarky and cryptic?

    You do see that arguing against curing aging would mean condemning people to die unnecessarily? Are you trying to say that there’s a way to be neither for nor against it?

    And you do see that aging has nothing to do with what people do or don’t do while alive? Inequality already exists. People having a chance to live longer doesn’t make the odds of revolt less likely. That assertion goes against history and the burden of its proof is yours.

  187. With most humans there is something called “accumulated intelligence” which leads to accumulated productivity. The point being that most of us do not accumulate a wealth of wisdom or intelligence until we’re in our 50’s. Others take much longer. A very few attain it sooner. My point is that we need more time, not less… With more time we can work; be productive; and have the necessary strength and acumen to achieve our dreams and solve humanity’s problems. Twenty years of productivity simply isn’t enough time to realize one’s true potential. And as for those who are able to receive these emerging therapies; should they do nothing with the gift, then it will simply take a little longer to edit themselves out of the gene pool. I’m going to use my extra time to invent things that benefit mankind and build companies that provide perpetual funding for my planned philanthropies. I’m already doing this, but retaining my vitality for longer will merely enhance the entire process…

  188. Many people have no retirement savings. Meanwhile, most people that have retirement savings will see them shrink, and continue to shrink, after retirement; the great concern being whether or not they have enough to see them safely into the grave before they wind up eating cat food.

    Breakthroughs in life extension bringing about indefinite lifespans would certainly make it easier to know when you could afford to retire. It would have to be after you pass the tipping point where investment returns exceed both inflation and what you will take to live on (in the manner to which you would rather be accustomed). Of course, a great many people will never save a dime, even if they make a good wage until they are a thousand years old.

  189. Imagine the politician you hate most.

    Imagine them getting into office and never leaving it again, getting elected time after time after time… and never exiting of old age.

  190. “Then you’ve already made up your mind and only seeing that happen, and then seeing it get completely outvoted by the whole bottom of the pyramid, will change your mind. ”

    You wish.

    “In the mean time you will argue for a death sentence for everyone, for the sake of denying a few rich people the ability to live longer.”

    I have not done any of that…

  191. Irrelevant. People will be forced to keep living their life as they did. And will be conditioned to think they don’t deserve anti-aging unless they earn it by getting filthy rich. As always.

  192. Then you’ve already made up your mind and only seeing that happen, and then seeing it get completely outvoted by the whole bottom of the pyramid, will change your mind.

    In the mean time you will argue for a death sentence for everyone, for the sake of denying a few rich people the ability to live longer.

  193. So what? Does that mean that you would rather the rest of the world see the world as it is today, rather than see that aging can be cured if only “rich @$sholes” were made to share?

    That’s if we actually run with your strawman. People have rioted for way less, and arguably people will never have had such a cause for revolt as this – eternal life. Which it isn’t, but might as well be.

  194. Well, not starving is not the same as being properly nourished. The point is most of the planet won’t have the means or the wealth to get anti-aging. So “we” are not in the striking distance of anything. Only the wealthiest 2% or such.

  195. The more years regained from therapy, the more uncompetitive other countries like the US would be for not having a longer lived population, the sooner the US will be forced to adopt it. Or see their population drawn to longer lives abroad.

  196. In principle, governments have an interest to subsidize anti-aging treatments if it means people stay healthy longer. But they need to realize that first. There are major savings to be had in old-age medical care costs, and economic benefits if older people remain productive. I can see such subsidies being on the condition of a later retirement age, so you’d choose either retire early but age normally, or get anti-aging treatments but work longer. Otherwise the necessary higher retirement age would be unpopular.

    Insurance companies may be ok with this, since their customers would be paying them longer before the company has to pay back pensions. Drug companies actually have the largest possible market for these treatments, so they have a high incentive both to invest in R&D and to keep the treatments affordable to a large segment of the population (give or take subsidies).

    For FDA these really need to be labeled as “anti-(some-relevant-aging-related-disease)”, rather than “life extension” or even “anti-aging”. Then there are measurable markers that you can test for to demonstrate that it works. Might even be able to fast-track it in some cases, on account of reducing mortality from said disease.

    For your last objection, what sudden death mechanism do you envision here for people to “drop off fast”? 90+ y/o people die from age-related diseases because their bodies are frail. But if a treated person functions at 90 like they were 40 y/o, then their body isn’t frail. There’s no reason he would die from age-related diseases at that point. So he would keep aging as long as the treatments can keep him below the frailty threshold, which may well be indefinite. Every age-related disease that we cure would push that limit further.

  197. The market is a growing number of customers (reproduction) who never stop paying for the product (lifespan).
    Nothing that happens anywhere in the world, politically and economically, does’t happen for the sake of people going about their lives. So, nothing outprioritizes curing aging. Even if we were to curb all other spending, it would turn out to be worth it because the sooner aging is cured, the sooner people stop dying unnecessarily, and the sooner people accumulate and put to use their 100+ years of wisdom.

    If govt funding isn’t enough (look at Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security’s budgets) then people will pay for it the same way they pay for things they can’t afford to pay today, even if it means that their healthspan belongs to a drug company. For a while.

    Because the way things are going, the status quo for working to pay bills, education, etc, are all going to see major changes well within the next 50-100 years even before you also have an increasing proportion of the population effectively un-aging.

  198. Everyone does everything they do not because they’re in a hurry to die but because they’re planning to reap the benefits of their work. There’s no arguing against undoing aging that doesn’t also argue against being alive. Corollary: Big Pharma is “big”.

  199. Even if life extension is not in the cards and just health extension is achieved, people will not need to depend on government or their insurance to cover it. If I can work until my 90’s as well as I can today, I’ll pay for it myself. Most people, given a choice of old age and decrepitude or these treatments to stay healthy and strong, will likely pay for it themselves. It just requires creative financing in some cases. The more these companies sell, the less expensive it will be through volume.

    “Without a big guaranteed market” WHAT!!! Are you kidding! We have an overabundance of elderly in the US and the world. If that is not a captive and guaranteed market I fail to see what is. I will be very happy to be a salesperson for these products! Easy easy sell.

  200. FDA and insurance. Insurance is all about playing the odds. People pay less into insurance than the cost of providing for something expensive, with the idea that most people won’t need that expensive treatment (at least not before they qualify for Medicare and the government has to foot the tab), and the company gets to keep the extra money.

    If this is something everybody wants, than that model doesn’t work. Who pays for life extension, particularly if its expensive? Will only rich people live long lives? It will probably start that way. Without a big guaranteed market, the drug companies won’t even put the billions needed into human trials.

    But finally, I’m pretty skeptical that we’ll extend lives significantly. I can see “squaring the curve”, so that nearly all people live to 90, and then they start dropping off fast, and pretty much nobody lives past 120. That should be doable with knowledge and treatments that can come to market in the next 10-20 years.

  201. Half? From World Hunger Statistics website, it’s one in nine. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, the number of hungry are one in four. Which is still terrible, don’t get me wrong, but let’s keep it somewhat accurate.

    Most hunger is from war (or hunger/poverty starts a war, in a brutal cycle), particularly in places like Yemen and the Sudan, where international aid trucks are attacked and the supplies stolen. Without that, we could feed everybody on Earth with today’s production. That’s before you consider that an estimated 1/3 of all food produced is wasted.

  202. If B.Wang doesn’t actually mind URLs, we could try to make pseudo URLs a standard. Like, just the specific part of the standard TinyURL address.

    e.g. The latter would be three w’s, tinyurl, dot com, fwd slash, then the specific part that we “link” to would be ybsduqyu. Which leads to this NBF article.

  203. The biggest obstacle to this isn’t the technology, it’s getting it past the FDA approval process. I believe it will be available in other countries long before the US.

  204. “(pls can we get the ability to add links in comments reinstated?).”

    Probably not so long as Brian sticks with Vuukle; I did some searching and it doesn’t even seem to be an option.

    At best he *might* be able to get urls omitted from the censorship function, so that they could be cut and paste to the address window.

  205. Regarding HIV, one of the Sens Research Foundations’ spin off companies, Covalent Bioscience, is developing an electrophilic vaccine to the conserved GP120 region of HIV’s CD4 binding site (almost all other capsid surface proteins of HIV are mutated rapidily, leading to a cancer like antigen loss and immune escape for HIV).

    Google Covalent Biosciences and Abaentek for more info. (pls can we get the ability to add links in comments reinstated?).

    “Abzentek E-vaccine for HIV infection. Ordinary vaccines do not work against HIV for two reasons: most HIV coat regions mutates faster than the immune cells (B cells) produce antibodies, and the few constant coat regions stimulate a defective B cell response. Abzentek corrects the defect, enabling production of broadly neutralizing antibodies. All HIV strains require this coat region to initiate infection. Abzentek is the only HIV vaccine candidate documented to induce production of such broadly neutralizing antibodies. Most of the E-vaccine induced antibodies are catabodies and their molecular cousins, irreversible antibodies – both catabodies and irreversible antibodies display superior HIV neutralization compared to ordinary antibodies. Our E-vaccine approach is ready for testing prophylaxis against HIV world-wide, and it also has potential for a functional cure of the infection.”

    Covalent are trying to raise $9 million dollars to start a phase 1 trial.

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