Post: #26

Nice share OP. Ray Kurzweil has been predicting significant advances in this area over the next 20 years and he has a pretty good track record of predicting things. A fascinating topic both the science and the potential results. The ramifications of adding another 20+ years of life and to be in middle age and still be "young" would be very interesting in terms of career opportunities, dating, families, etc. For example, you could have 4 or even 5 generations of a family living together.

Post: #27

(02-17-2018 08:21 PM)TIOT12 Wrote:  Nice share OP. Ray Kurzweil has been predicting significant advances in this area over the next 20 years and he has a pretty good track record of predicting things. A fascinating topic both the science and the potential results. The ramifications of adding another 20+ years of life and to be in middle age and still be "young" would be very interesting in terms of career opportunities, dating, families, etc. For example, you could have 4 or even 5 generations of a family living together.

Yes - that will happen - if you do the right thing in terms of diet, supplements, high-tech treatments then I predict that those who can afford it will look like well-kept 50 year olds in their 80s.

Even today you have this happening. But that does not make you immortal.

Also the tech will be certainly super-expensive. 99% of humanity won't afford even the poor-man-package. If there will be a technology out there to expand it to 120 while looking bangable, then it will be something that only people worth over 100 mio. $ will be able to afford.

Post: #28

(02-18-2018 04:38 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  Also the tech will be certainly super-expensive. 99% of humanity won't afford even the poor-man-package. If there will be a technology out there to expand it to 120 while looking bangable, then it will be something that only people worth over 100 mio. $ will be able to afford.

At first, this will certainly be the case but I think you would see prices drop over time much like you have with dna sequencing where it ran as much as $10 million and then is now at $1,000. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/10/unlockin...th-it.html

There will always be pressure to make such things available to the masses whether for political reasons or philanthropic. Plus, like everything else they will be able to discover cheaper ways of doing the same thing or something very similar with time.

Post: #29

(02-18-2018 04:38 AM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  

(02-17-2018 08:21 PM)TIOT12 Wrote:  Nice share OP. Ray Kurzweil has been predicting significant advances in this area over the next 20 years and he has a pretty good track record of predicting things. A fascinating topic both the science and the potential results. The ramifications of adding another 20+ years of life and to be in middle age and still be "young" would be very interesting in terms of career opportunities, dating, families, etc. For example, you could have 4 or even 5 generations of a family living together.

Yes - that will happen - if you do the right thing in terms of diet, supplements, high-tech treatments then I predict that those who can afford it will look like well-kept 50 year olds in their 80s.

Even today you have this happening. But that does not make you immortal.

Also the tech will be certainly super-expensive. 99% of humanity won't afford even the poor-man-package. If there will be a technology out there to expand it to 120 while looking bangable, then it will be something that only people worth over 100 mio. $ will be able to afford.

I think this will be true in the beginning,(if it indeed works) but as with most technology it tends to get cheaper as things progress. You really need rich people to get in first. That`s not a bad thing! Whether it`s automobiles, air travel, personal computing or flatscreens, they story repeats itself. Without the wealthy buying in first, it get`s difficult to finance mass production/development of any product or service, that will eventually lead to cost reduction.

Post: #30

(02-17-2018 07:49 PM)Running Turtles Wrote:  I want this to be true as much as anyone, but I feel like they're selling a dream in order to get investments. Even the website feels like a landing page.


Screenshot from the bottom of their page:


The e-mail is a Gmail address.

I think there will be major breakthroughs in aging in our lifetime, but taking things with a grain of salt never hurt.

I agree that the site looks like nothing but a sales pitch. They have nothing to do with the science behind it though. That`s all Sierra. They`re just the money/marketing people.

Correction. Thought you meant the Libella site Sierra is a solid company though. However, what you see on the front page has nothing to do with the research being done.

Post: #31

Johnny, I really hope you're right and they're legit. I want to be wise, rich, and have the health of a 24 year old too!

Post: #32

Liz Parrish's gene therapy is real. However, it will not be that effective at eliminating aging. It turns out that telomere shortening, which is what her gene therapy is designed to cure, is not a root cause of aging. Its looking more and more that mitochondrial dysfunction is the root cause of aging, most likely mtDNA damage.

What is significant about Parrish's gene therapy is that she developed it on a shoe string budget in a home lab, and that it did indeed work in a technical sense (it did restore her telomeres). Why this is significant is that its a demonstration that a lot of the bio-engineering stuff really can be done on a DIY "home lab" level. This suggests that aging will be cured within the next 20 years or so and will not require a multi-billion dollar "Apollo-style" government funded program like was commonly thought back in the 1980's.

My guess is that it will be a CRISPR-like therapy to repiair or replace mtDNA. It will not be CRISPR itself because it does not work for mtDNA. CRISPR works only for nuclear DNA.

Post: #33

You will realize if it is working when guys like that look like 35 again:



He is a well-kept 86 year old, won't get cancer and no old-age disease, his skin is certainly softer than that of an average 55 year old, his T-count is likely x-times higher than the ones by the current 25yo soyboys, but all of that can be achieved for a few grand per month if you know what to do.

The true movers and shakers have tech decades in advance. You will see some of them be very young looking long before the technology is being offered to a select few.

But you may get the virtuality-reality transfer-kit - they simply "download" you online and shoot a bullet through your head to help ease the suffering of your no-longer needed body.

No - neither the immortal technology will come nor the VR-immortality and downloading. Longevity is another matter - and we may live to 140/150 while looking like 55, but that's about it.

Post: #34

Quote:The true movers and shakers have tech decades in advance. You will see some of them be very young looking long before the technology is being offered to a select few.

Exactly.

Post: #35

(02-14-2018 06:25 PM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  I know this for a fact for a different reason.

What do you mean by this, Zelcorpion?

Post: #36

(04-09-2018 04:52 AM)Fortis Wrote:  

(02-14-2018 06:25 PM)Zelcorpion Wrote:  I know this for a fact for a different reason.

What do you mean by this, Zelcorpion?

Nothing that I would like to share in public for now.

Post: #37

(04-08-2018 07:33 PM)Abelard Lindsey Wrote:  Liz Parrish's gene therapy is real. However, it will not be that effective at eliminating aging. It turns out that telomere shortening, which is what her gene therapy is designed to cure, is not a root cause of aging. Its looking more and more that mitochondrial dysfunction is the root cause of aging, most likely mtDNA damage.

What is significant about Parrish's gene therapy is that she developed it on a shoe string budget in a home lab, and that it did indeed work in a technical sense (it did restore her telomeres). Why this is significant is that its a demonstration that a lot of the bio-engineering stuff really can be done on a DIY "home lab" level. This suggests that aging will be cured within the next 20 years or so and will not require a multi-billion dollar "Apollo-style" government funded program like was commonly thought back in the 1980's.

My guess is that it will be a CRISPR-like therapy to repiair or replace mtDNA. It will not be CRISPR itself because it does not work for mtDNA. CRISPR works only for nuclear DNA.

As most things that seem promising, they are only a part of the story and then sadly made simple for reasons of scientific paper production, marketing, notoriety, or all of the above. With processes so complex, it's silly to think of them as anything other than silver bullets in a hyped culture of "science". This is not to say they are not meaningful in some way, just that they are only a part (mostly small) of the larger picture, which you get at here. Telomere shortening is a clear corollary but not the big picture, just part of the picture, of aging.

The complexity is so great it will be the similar conundrum of why exercising is far more impactful on your physiology with local and long lasting metabolic effects --- as opposed to smoking, or taking a drug, which like exercise also raises heart rate --- but doesn't produce intrinsic change that is meaningful to the person to see REAL, meaningful change (both genotype and phenotype).

Post: #38

Ageing is very likely deeply encoded not only in our DNA, but in our bio-magnetic field that is currently shunned as an area of research (as published by Dr. Sheldrake).

Essentially the only way of truly changing it would be to utterly change our genetic makeup - and it is even possible that this is not possible. My guess is that even with linear technological development, that this won't be possible even as far as year 30.000.

And even if we manage it - we probably create an utterly alien species. The repercussions of an immortal human race would be tremendous. The psychopaths would have infinite time to accumulate their power, the very behavior pattern of humans would change and not to forget the issue of having children - the entire universe would not suffice to take care of an immortal sentient species.

So don't count on it - we will find out our maximum genetic age and that can be as previously noted around 140 years at relatively top physical condition. The ad material of that woman reminds me of Theranos and the first female billionaire. They are dishonest to the x-degree with illusions of being able to turn everyone back to age 25. Utterly ridiculous thought. And she did this with a low budget?

Yeah - right. The trillionaires of our world likely have billions invested in that field - all with the goal of making them live as long as possible. They certainly put much more capable minds to it and have huge teams with hardly any limits to budgets - plus plenty of unethical behavior with human experiments. Also those groups are not bound by peer review and PC thinking - they will test out any and all venues. And they have not come up with anything so far. So I would not bet on it.

Post: #39

What you have to realize is that this technology compounds geometrically.

In 2000, I was working with a start up that got funding to compete with Celera. Their advantage was they developed software to alllow cheaper desktop computers to work in parallel instead of using expensive supercomputers. They figured they could beat Celera's 10-year time frame, but they didin't figure on Celera beating its own time frame so quickly.

So there will be small developments, and then big ones.

This guy is John Mauldin, he writes a free newsletter about financial markets among other things. He's 67. He was a small investor in a stem cell company. The company noticed that their workers who processed the stem cells had younger looking hands. So they formed a new company using the stem cell residue as an anti-aging cream. He uses the product because he's an investor and took about 15 years off of his appearance.



Sure, smoothing out this guy's wrinkles is a small step but there is a lot of work being done with regenerative medicines in various forms. I could list those things, but the skeptics will just say those are other small things. But eventually these small things build on each other and compound. It wasn't that long ago that Crispr (gene editing tool) was developed. So likely in our lifetimes we'll see the telemerase thing figured out.

And yes all of this will have profound implications for humans, and will redefine what it means to be human. Yuval Noah Harari wrote an intersting book on the convergance of man and machines/computers, and the implications. Its called Homo Deus.

Post: #40

(04-08-2018 07:33 PM)Abelard Lindsey Wrote:  Liz Parrish's gene therapy is real. However, it will not be that effective at eliminating aging. It turns out that telomere shortening, which is what her gene therapy is designed to cure, is not a root cause of aging. Its looking more and more that mitochondrial dysfunction is the root cause of aging, most likely mtDNA damage.

What is significant about Parrish's gene therapy is that she developed it on a shoe string budget in a home lab, and that it did indeed work in a technical sense (it did restore her telomeres). Why this is significant is that its a demonstration that a lot of the bio-engineering stuff really can be done on a DIY "home lab" level. This suggests that aging will be cured within the next 20 years or so and will not require a multi-billion dollar "Apollo-style" government funded program like was commonly thought back in the 1980's.

My guess is that it will be a CRISPR-like therapy to repiair or replace mtDNA. It will not be CRISPR itself because it does not work for mtDNA. CRISPR works only for nuclear DNA.

mtDNA damage likely arises mostly from short mitochondrial telomeres also. That`s why the mouse studies with telomerase transgenic mice (AAV treated) exhibit greatly increased energy. That is, old mice with little energy became young and energetic again, in addition to general rejuvenation in all biomarkers of ageing after the therapy. Whether the gene therapy vector is ubiquitous (reaching all cells) is a complicated issue, but based on the in vivo mice studies at least, it seems to be effecting the mitochondrial telomeres as well.

Liz Parrish and her company have really played a very minor role in this as I see it. She basically just happened to be the first patient. It`s other scientist and companies that deserve most credit. This is something that has been in the making since at least Leonard Hayflick`s discovery that cells have a limited proliferative potential, called the Hayflick limit, back in the 60`s.

Post: #41

Some vast misconceptions and ignorance about basic biology going on in this thread.

-No, telomere shortening is not the primary cause of aging. For starters, telomeres are irrelevant for the vast majority of cells in your body. It is only cells that divide throughout life such as those of the immune system, gut epithelia, and skin which go through the 60-80 replication cycles required to significantly shorten telomeres. Your skeletal and cardiac muscle cells do not divide past adulthood, and crucially, neither do neurons. Telomere maintenance would do nothing for your heart and brain and other organs.

-You start declining long before you get to an age where telomere shortening is a factor. Physical decline is biologically detectable beginning in your mid 20's, at which point your telomeres are still firing on all cylinders. DNA damage in dividing cells begins to accrue with the very first division because DNA replication is an error prone process (DNA polymerase proofreading function is excellent but there are billions of base pairs to check, so even a small error rate multiplied by billions yields significant damage per replication cycle). This doesn't even get into the fact that your DNA is under constant assault by free radicals, radiation, and other environmental mutagens completely unrelated to telomere shortening.

-Telomeres are carcinogenic. Cancer is a stochastic, dynamic process, you get mini-cancers likely thousands of time in your life but only rarely does a cancer locus manage to survive the immune system and accumulate the mutations needed to grow and become invasive. All cancers have mutations that either overexpress telomerase, or use alternative methods to elongate their telomeres and allow them to replicate endlessly. In other words, by artificially maintaining telomeres you are enabling the development of cancer by providing a pathological driver that the cancer would have to develop on its own to all cells in your body on a silver platter. When you're a geezer, all your cells have undergone decades of DNA damage and are just waiting to trip the fuck out and cause cancer, by upping teomeres you're literally mixing oxidizer into the fuel and waiting for the inevitable spark.

-Lastly, aging is not a "huge evolutionary advantage" like somebody here wrote and it is not selected for. Evolution doesn't care if you age or not, but since evolution doesn't go out of its way to make sure you live forever, entropy wins out by default.

Post: #42

(04-09-2018 04:16 PM)Higgs Bosun Wrote:  Some vast misconceptions and ignorance about basic biology going on in this thread.

-No, telomere shortening is not the primary cause of aging. For starters, telomeres are irrelevant for the vast majority of cells in your body. It is only cells that divide throughout life such as those of the immune system, gut epithelia, and skin which go through the 60-80 replication cycles required to significantly shorten telomeres. Your skeletal and cardiac muscle cells do not divide past adulthood, and crucially, neither do neurons. Telomere maintenance would do nothing for your heart and brain and other organs.

-You start declining long before you get to an age where telomere shortening is a factor. Physical decline is biologically detectable beginning in your mid 20's, at which point your telomeres are still firing on all cylinders. DNA damage in dividing cells begins to accrue with the very first division because DNA replication is an error prone process (DNA polymerase proofreading function is excellent but there are billions of base pairs to check, so even a small error rate multiplied by billions yields significant damage per replication cycle). This doesn't even get into the fact that your DNA is under constant assault by free radicals, radiation, and other environmental mutagens completely unrelated to telomere shortening.

-Telomeres are carcinogenic. Cancer is a stochastic, dynamic process, you get mini-cancers likely thousands of time in your life but only rarely does a cancer locus manage to survive the immune system and accumulate the mutations needed to grow and become invasive. All cancers have mutations that either overexpress telomerase, or use alternative methods to elongate their telomeres and allow them to replicate endlessly. In other words, by artificially maintaining telomeres you are enabling the development of cancer by providing a pathological driver that the cancer would have to develop on its own to all cells in your body on a silver platter. When you're a geezer, all your cells have undergone decades of DNA damage and are just waiting to trip the fuck out and cause cancer, by upping teomeres you're literally mixing oxidizer into the fuel and waiting for the inevitable spark.

-Lastly, aging is not a "huge evolutionary advantage" like somebody here wrote and it is not selected for. Evolution doesn't care if you age or not, but since evolution doesn't go out of its way to make sure you live forever, entropy wins out by default.

Some great points there but;

-It`s quite certain that ageing is an evolved trait. Our children are born young after all. Why? Because our reproductive line (gametes) doesn`t age. Why? Because those cells express telomerase. Other organisms that express telomerase in all cells are biologically immortal also, like lobsters and some clams etc. This proves that senescence evolved at a later stage in the history off life.

-Telomere length is not irrelevant for the vast majority of cells. It`s true that some celle divide much faster than other`s, and those are also the cells that are most likely to go cancerous. The epithelium is not just the gut lining, but the breast duct, prostate, epidermis, colon, ovary, esophagus etc. All the linings of the body. All the most common cancers except for lung cancer, which is primarily caused by smoking, occur in these cells, mostly because they get to a point where the telomeres get critically short and radical mutations occur as a result. (There are dietary factors like elevated blood sugar and insulin/IGF-1 elevation at play here also.)

Leucocyte telomere length have essential roles in the pathogenesis of heart disease,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2900586/ and also neurodegenerative diseases.
They attenuate the effects of inflammation/oxidative stress, thereby reducing the risk of disease developing in those organs. Importantly short fibroblasts telomeres are involved in fibrosis, which in turn is a crucial element in heart disease. (There are different cell types in an organ.) Fibrosis causes an excess of collagen production which can destroy the function of an organ/tissue. This process is triggered by short telomeres (often accelerated as a result of environmental factors like smoking and alcohol etc.) and is at the core of the aetiology of numerous diseases like heart disease, cirrhosis, COPD, perhaps even male pattern baldness. I could go on and on about this, but the point is that different cells types effect each other in many ways. Weakest link basically.

Physical decline is a gradual process as you said, but that fits well with how ageing progresses. Again I refer back to our gametes (sperm and egg cells.) they accrue mutations at a rate of only about a 1/10th of what somatic cells do, yet they have the same repair mechanisms as somatic cells. This fits the model of things like reduced endogenous antioxidant function when telomeres get shorter. Evolution probably "allows" for some mutations in order to have adaptability by the way. The renowned biologist Cynthia Kenyon was able to prove that UV rays can`t cause DNA damage on it`s own. A gene must be switched on for it to happen, indicating that evolution has come up with a solution in the first place, but again organisms need some adaptation.

You point about cancer is a very good one, and I agree that this is not settled science, as I mentioned in the OP. Yes cancer uses telomerase to immortalize itself, but studies show that when you introduce telomerase (over-expression) into cells, both in vitro and in vivo (mice) you reduce the rate of cancer. Also if you take mice cells grown in vitro that have critically short telomeres and introduce them into living mice again they cause cancer every time. The tumor actually evolves before telomerase is expressed in the tumor. So cancer it seems is caused by mutations, and short telomeres is a source of radical mutations, hence it causes cancer. But that doesn`t mean you can`t get cancer if you have long telomeres, since the rest of the DNA can accumulate mutations faster than even well functioning cells can repair them. Environmental elements that evolution did not account for might play a role here, like radiation, unnatural toxins, smoking, alcohol, refined carbs etc. So if you have cells that are badly damaged by these elements, then even things like antioxidants can be causative in cancer development. Beta-carotene is for example proven to increase the risk of lung cancer, but only in smokers. It has the opposite effect in all other studies. In this context I agree that longer telomeres can cause cancer. But the telomeres are not long enough in that scenario to help repair cells properly, however they can (like antioxidants) help the cells past the cyclin checkpoints and thereby avoid apoptosis. This allows the cells to accumulate even more radical mutations that will "turn on" the cancer metabolism. But if the telomerase was fully expressed it would have the opposite effect.

Post: #43

I had an idea for a story once about a company that actually did find a way to halt, or even reverse, aging to an extent. The issue was, how could the "average man" ever afford a technology that the .001% would immediately hog for themselves?

The answer: Indentured Servitude.

You can't outright buy the therapy, so how do you get it? In exchange for the treatment(s), you sign a contract to work for The Company for, say, 100 years in whatever capacity they deem you most suited for. In less than a generation, The Company would become the most powerful polity on the planet.

The twist of the story was: what if the therapy (in my case, delivered via a virus), escaped captivity and a "plague" of immortality broke out?

Post: #44

(1) One of the main ways wealth moves anywhere is via death. Part of the reason we have an economic disaster in the making in the West is because the Baby Boomers are not keeling over as fast as previous generations did and have not been winnowed out by a large conventional war. If anti-ageing treatment means the lifespan lasts longer, wealth therefore is not passed down as quickly, or if it does transfer it leaves you with more long-time pensioners around and less jobs to go round, particularly as AI and robot work gets stronger. Stopping ageing is going to exacerbate these problems.

(2) If these treatments remove mutations, obviously we're not getting the X-Men any time soon.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #45

(04-10-2018 02:04 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  (1) One of the main ways wealth moves anywhere is via death. Part of the reason we have an economic disaster in the making in the West is because the Baby Boomers are not keeling over as fast as previous generations did and have not been winnowed out by a large conventional war. If anti-ageing treatment means the lifespan lasts longer, wealth therefore is not passed down as quickly, or if it does transfer it leaves you with more long-time pensioners around and less jobs to go round, particularly as AI and robot work gets stronger. Stopping ageing is going to exacerbate these problems.

(2) If these treatments remove mutations, obviously we're not getting the X-Men any time soon.

We`re not talking about lingering in an old and decrepit state here Paracelsus, but actually getting younger. The problem with baby boomers is that they will get old and sick soon, and there are so many of them. There is just no way that young Westerners can pay for all that sick-care. So it would be better if they stayed young, at least a portion of them.

A bigger point here is that this treatment might be the only way to save the European genome. Let`s face it, we will never get our women to breed in numbers above the replacement rate again. It`s just dropping every year in both Europe and the US for whites. In fact I think the Eurozone will have a fertility rate (if you exclude migrant women, and miscegenation) of closer to 1 child per women by mid century. This means you cut the population in half in just one generation. (25 years.) So the only way to save (genetic) Europeans might be to develop these treatments.

Post: #46

(04-10-2018 01:25 PM)Johnnyvee Wrote:  Let`s face it, we will never get our women to breed in numbers above the replacement rate again. It`s just dropping every year in both Europe and the US for whites. In fact I think the Eurozone will have a fertility rate (if you exclude migrant women, and miscegenation) of closer to 1 child per women by mid century. This means you cut the population in half in just one generation. (25 years.) So the only way to save (genetic) Europeans might be to develop these treatments.

You really think all of this "wealth" is going to last, don't you

As has been seen in the past, everything always comes full circle. Until the true end of things.

Post: #47

(04-10-2018 01:25 PM)Johnnyvee Wrote:  

(04-10-2018 02:04 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  (1) One of the main ways wealth moves anywhere is via death. Part of the reason we have an economic disaster in the making in the West is because the Baby Boomers are not keeling over as fast as previous generations did and have not been winnowed out by a large conventional war. If anti-ageing treatment means the lifespan lasts longer, wealth therefore is not passed down as quickly, or if it does transfer it leaves you with more long-time pensioners around and less jobs to go round, particularly as AI and robot work gets stronger. Stopping ageing is going to exacerbate these problems.

(2) If these treatments remove mutations, obviously we're not getting the X-Men any time soon.

We`re not talking about lingering in an old and decrepit state here Paracelsus, but actually getting younger. The problem with baby boomers is that they will get old and sick soon, and there are so many of them. There is just no way that young Westerners can pay for all that sick-care. So it would be better if they stayed young, at least a portion of them.

If these treatments are given to someone who has already retired at the age of 65, it is highly unlikely they'll willingly return to work. Why would they? They qualify for the age pension by benefit of not dying for 65 or 70 odd years, either they get a pension or they hang onto their residences or demand outsize prices for them from a younger generation that simply won't be able to afford them. The expense doesn't just lie in the reduced medical care bill, it lies in all the other benefits old farts get after they hit the magical age of retirement.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #48

Remember when cloning was a big hit in the news a while back? This will probably be similar

Post: #49

(04-09-2018 04:16 PM)Higgs Bosun Wrote:  Some vast misconceptions and ignorance about basic biology going on in this thread.

-No, telomere shortening is not the primary cause of aging.

Perhaps, but scientists have reversed aging dramatically in mice by shortening telomeres in mice. Mice biology is not directly translatable to humans but the concept has promise.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010...ice-humans

When you consider that this science is compounding geometrically, its likely we'll see significant life extension during our lifetimes (no pun intended).

Post: #50

Calorie restriction with full nutrient density increases life expectancy of mice even further.