RE: World faces challenge as life expectancies lengthen, scientist says

In the 21st century, state-of-the-art anti-aging technologies may extend human lifespans at an unprecedented rate, bringing with them a host of social and economic challenges, says biologist Shripad Tuljapurkar of Stanford University. He will present his findings on Feb. 17 at the annual AAAS meeting in St. Louis.

[Via EurekAlert! - Medicine and Health]
This article on EurekAlert concerns a paper written by Shripad Tuljapurkar, concerning how old age will affect the economy. My reading of the initial article leads to several concerns with the assumptions. The first concern is that it is assumed that 20 years will be added to healthy life, bringing our life expectancy to about 100, but there is no assumption that people will continue to work for 20 more years, instead it is assumed (with all that normally goes with that saying) that people will continue to retire at age 65, and the sit on their ass for 35 years drawing social security. I find this a ludicrous assumption for a couple of reasons. One is that if anyone under age 50 is counting on social security to provide for their retirement, then they are an idiot, and I find it hard to believe there are that many idiots in the country. The second is that someone could sit around doing nothing for that long. I know I can't see it. I can see maybe taking periods of a year or more off at a time, as by that time you wouldn't have the monetary obligations that a family bring, so you would be able to save up some cash to be able to take extended vacations, but I for one would get bored doing nothing all the time. The other problem I have is with the social security program in general, the fact that the government thinks they need to take responsibility for us as we get old. I am perfectly capable of planning and saving money for myself (which would be a bit easier if the government weren't taking 12% out of my check that I never expect to see again), and I expect to have to take responsibility for myself. That's what this country was founded on, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Liberty being the freedom and responsibility to have to take care of yourself. Too many people these days forget the responsiblity that freedom brings in addition to the choice.

I have, however, seen additional articles that Shripad Tuljapurkar is advocating raising the age of retirement to 85, which seems to be a somewhat reasonable compromise. I would however like to see people retire both when they want to and when they are financially able to do so, instead of being coddled like children.

RE: Web program simplifies artificial gene design

This is where we're going to get the biggest jump in health benefits, the combination of "GNR" (Genetics, Nanotechnology, Robotics/Computing). This is the first step to combining the power of two of these fields. The combination is going to allow us to create completely new gene sequences, and then new proteins. Once we can simulate protein folding and chemical reactions with any certainty, this will allow us to engineer our own proteins, hopefully better than the ones that were chanced upon us (albeit through a long history of selective breeding), that we can test many orders of magnitude faster than mother nature can. Once the third, nanotechnology, is integrated, we will be able to correct or improve our own genetic code.

Software that handles many tricky steps in creating artificial DNA is released, but its writers acknowledge the technology has the potential for misuse

[Via New Scientist - Latest Headlines]

RE: Collagen On Demand

This could go a long way toward alleviating some of the affects of aging (mainly the cosmetic ones, but could have application in other connective tissue as well).

Another step forward for tissue engineering appears at innovations-report: collagen "is the most important structural protein in the body ... collagen has defied the efforts of biomedical researchers who have tried mightily to synthesize it for use in applications ranging from new wound-healing technologies to alleviating arthritis. The reason: Scientists were unable to synthesize the human protein because they had no way to link the easily made short snippets of collagen into the long, fibrous molecules necessary to mimic the real thing." Now, the problem has been solved. "We can make collagen that duplicates nature exactly, but we can diverge from that when it is desirable ... Now we can make synthetic collagen that's longer than natural collagen. We just don't have to take what nature gives us. We can make it longer and stronger."



View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life_sciences/report-55291.html

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

[Via Longevity Meme]

RE: Complete Breast is Grown from Single Stem Cell

This could be the first step toward engineering organs with three dimensional structure.

A complete, functioning breast has been grown from a single stem cell, by researchers in Australia. It was done in a mouse, but experts believe it won't be long before it happens in humans

[Via Hype & Hope]

RE: Prions may hold key to stem cell function

This article confused me in a couple of places. First, I thought prions were misshapen proteins themselves, but this article implies otherwise. Second, but based on that assumption, I can't see the benefit we would derive from having prions in our system generating other prions, compartively virus-like. If my first assumption is incorrect however, this would help to resolve the second problem, as if prions are just a special class of proteins that simply cause other proteins to change shape, I can see how this could be beneficial

The curative properties of stem cells may rely on prions, a new study suggests, the type of protein made infamous by mad cow disease

[Via New Scientist]

RE: Christianity and Immortality

Excellent article via Longevity First about Christianity and seeking to cure aging. I think this could apply in general to all religions, but I am not familiar enough with their concept of an afterlife to say for sure.

I've been thinking back to the article by Christian writer William F. Harrell, entitled "FIRST-PERSON: The death of death"

I originally linked to it because it made me think of "the Christian backlash against the healthy life extension movement". For example, from Harrell's article I've extracted the following quotes (leaving aside for a moment the religious portions of the message):

[Aubrey de Grey] is being heralded as the man who will "murder" death. I don’t want to throw water on Mr. de Grey’s fire, but "murdering" death just won’t happen.

Mr. de Grey is simply trying to do something that is impossible -- he is trying to solve a spiritual problem through medical and "mechanical" means. He is trying to do what man has been trying for thousands of years to do -- and that is to get back into the "garden of Eden" relationship with God. All of human history attests to this desire of man. … Mr. de Grey is trying to restore the eternal life characteristic to man without so much as dealing with the spiritual nature of the problem we now face with death.

…

But remember this: Death is still universal. Everyone dies physically, eventually. Mr. de Grey can postulate all he desires, but he is not going to solve the problem of physical death.

…

Mr. de Grey is trying to solve a problem the world almost universally wants to reject, and that is the problem of judgment. … So, Mr. de Grey and all others who might hold to his views are coming at the problem of death and eternal life from the wrong direction. They want life to continue by solving the medical and physical side of aging. They should be looking at it from a spiritual perspective. The solution to death is found when one comes at the issue from God's perspective

Leaving aside the thinly veiled ad hominem of referring to Dr. de Grey as Mr. de Grey, I'd like to say that this view isn't entirely controversial, depending on your point of view. He isn't advocating that we end medical research into healthy life extension, nor that we should ban the practice of life extending medical procudures. He's merely expressing his opinion that those who wish to do so through medicine are trying to solve the right problem in the wrong way. Just about everyone wants Eternal Life, but according to Harrell—and the greater portion of the pro-death Christian camp—Eternal Life can only be attained by following a spiritual path.

Pro-Death Bioethics

Like I said, this isn't terribly controversial, and it is here that I have a certain respect for Harrell. For that reason, I'll leave his essay behind, and move on to the more influential front of the pro-death movement.

Harrell doesn't seem to go nearly so far as Leon Kass and other conservatives who, in addition to thinking that seeking better medicine is a fool's errand, go so far as to say that it's wrong, so morally wrong that we must put an end to any and all such attempts. As Leon Kass famously said:

We are still early enough in the game, I think, that at least a certain amount of public discussion might be in order. We might try to hope to separate those interventions that deal with the degenerations that are not necessarily life-prolonging.

I mean, if one could do something about Alzheimer's, if one could do something about chronic arthritis, if one could do something about general muscular weakness and not, somehow, increase the life expectancy to 150 years, I would be delighted.

This is scary enough: at the time, Leon Kass was the Chair of the President's Council on Bioethics. This was a man in a position to advise the President on a variety of issues related to future medicine, based on possible restrictions on today's research. Months, perhaps years, of research time has already been lost due to this man's self-righteous politics, and with 100,000 deaths a day from attributable to aging, I'll leave it an exercise to the reader to figure out how much blood is on his hands. And you might be interested to note that the man is still active in his pro-death writings.

An associate of Kass's, Francis Fukuyama, also exemplifies the current dogma of pro-death bioethics.

Indeed, as Kass has repeatedly stated, "the finitude of human life is a blessing for every individual, whether he knows it or not." And frighteningly, when asked … if the government has a right to tell its citizens that they have to die, Fukuyama answered, "Yes, absolutely."

(emphasis mine)

Immortality and Eternal Life

Pro-death bioethics is currently in vogue in the Republican-controlled federal government, at least the "Religious Right" portion. So I'm left to wonder, what's the big deal? Why is seeking longer life so morally wrong? (Let's leave aside for a moment that the federal government's role should not be to legislate morality upon its citizens, but to derive its morality from them. The government should be a reflection of its people, not vice versa.)

One answer I came up with is that seeking longer life is like playing God. Or perhaps, more to the point, it's a vain effort to seek Eternal Life, that most glorious gift which is God's, and God's only, to give. The thought, so it seems, is that God has cornered the market on Eternal Life and will accept no competitors.

But this thought is almost immediately, self-evidently wrong. Perhaps it's a weak imagination that thinks that talk of 1,000-year lifespans, or even one million year lifespans, is somehow treading into God's territory. God has the monopoly on Eternal Life, and nothing Man could ever attempt to do will obviate this. You see, there is a very fundamental difference between immortality and Eternal Life.

Finite Versus Infinite

Immortality literally means something along the lines of "without physical death". An immortal is unable to die a physical death, and perhaps we should clarify what Aubrey de Grey's research aims for: an end to aging. Aubrey de Grey is not talking about making us both unaging and completely indestructible. A nuclear bomb, a bullet, or even just a speeding car can all still kill an unaging person. (Of course, with future medicine, the latter two will become less and less of a problem.)

Immortality is frequently confused with spiritual eternal life, but we must make the distinction: Eternal Life is a spiritual blessing. Eternal life is to the spirit or soul as immortality is to the body. Part of the confusion comes from the literary use of the term "immortal" to describe the gods and other beings who were not mortal as we humans are; indeed, humans are often referred to in religions as "mortals".

But eternal life makes a more clear point: eternity is outside of time as we know it. An immortal might never die and yet not live for eternity, depending on your view of the math involved. Take for example the following German poem, roughly translated as I recall it from memory:

There is a jagged mountain, miles tall,

And once each millinium there comes to call

A passing bird, which sharpens its beak,

Way up upon the mountain's peak.

Yet when the mountain is worn away

To a low valley of serenity,

It will have been as though a day

When compared to God's Eternity.

You can google and find dozens of versions of the original poem (I made this version up, if you can't tell by the cheesy rhyming), some with the birds coming once every ten thousand or million years, some with the mountain being a thousand miles tall or made of diamond, some comparing the time it takes for the birds to wear down the mountain to a mere second.

The point is, no matter how big of a number you can think of, it's no closer to infinity than the number one.

You might object that … the numbers are so astronomical that it would make no difference if they were infinite. This objection illustrates what might be called the "fallacy of the virtually infinite": the conflation of the distinct concepts of "arbitrarily large" and "infinite". That we humans regularly commit this fallacy is understandable: the ability to distinguish between, say, eight goats and ten goats undoubtedly carried an evolutionary advantage, but a prehistoric human who pondered the difference between 10^1000 goats and infinitely many goats would only be wasting valuable hunting time. And in informal remarks about the vastness of space or of Bill Gates' wealth, we all understand "virtually infinite" means. But in serious discourse, the fallacy of the virtually infinite can only create confusion. …

The ancient Greeks were suspicious of infinity because of �paradoxes’ related to the Fallacy of the Virtually Infinite, and because of their suspicion humanity had to wait two millennia for Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz to discover differential calculus. But you can avoid the fallacy by remembering this simple rule: that for every whole number N, there are infinitely many whole numbers larger than N. This rule implies that 2, 17, and the number of possible human life experiences are all equally distant from infinity.

No period of mortal time, whether it be a second, a day, a year, a century, a millenium, a million years, a trillion years, or a googolplex of years, would be any closer to Eternity than any other period of time. In this sense, attempts to live longer are definitely not attempts to attain Eternal Life. To reach that route, one must take the spiritual path, or transcend this universe entirely. Attempts to live longer are merely that: attempts to live longer. For the same reason a person with an infection takes antibiotics, to avoid an early death (rather than to defy the will of God and seek Eternal Life through penicillin), one would seek an extended lifespan to avoid a death that comes all too early for us mere mortals.

For behold, this is [God's] Work and [His] Glory

Some Christian religions are more aware of this distinction than others:

For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. (Moses 1:39)

Here we see a view that God's plan for humans is not only that they attain immortality, but that they gain Eternal Life as well. There are two deaths that we humans face: the first death, being the physical death of our bodies, and the second death, being a death in the spirit. This second death might more accurately be called Hell, an eternal torment, bound by Satan's evil, and completely and forever removed from God's loving presence.

Immortality seeks to prevent the former death, but in a strict physical and mathematical sense, it cannot prevent the latter. Even if we never physically die, we can't live as long as an eternity. There always remains the possibility of physical death, of returning to a judgment before God, and potentially the second death, the death of the spirit or soul. In this sense, Harrell was right on the money when he said, "…that is the problem of judgment. But judgment is no problem to those who … have trusted in God’s way…"

The Same Goal?

In that sense, seeking immortality is not even in the same ballpark as seeking eternal life. They are two very different goals. As Vincent and Jules might argue in this situation:

VINCENT: It's seeking immortality. Is it as bad as seeking eternal life?—No, but you're in the same … ballpark.

Jules stops Vincent.

JULES: Whoa...whoa...whoa...stop right there. Seeking an artificial Eternal Life, and seeking medical immortality, ain't even the same … thing.

VINCENT: Not the same thing, the same ballpark.

JULES: It ain't no ballpark either. Look, maybe your method of living longer differs from mine, but trying to add healthy years to your life, and sneaking uninvited into the Holy of Holies, ain't the same ballpark, ain't the same league, ain't even the same … sport!

You Cannot Compel a Man to Enter Heaven

The scriptures give the religious a guide on how to live. But one thing that seems almost obvious, and yet is underappreciated by many who would force their morals on others, is that you can't compel someone to be good.

Yes, you can compel someone to do outward acts of "goodness". But it is what is within our hearts that defines righteousness or a lack thereof. Just as an untruth spoken with no knowledge of its falsehood would not be considered a lie, an act of telling the truth could be considered a lie if the teller had honestly believed he was lying. It is the intent to deceive, and not so much the act of deception, that makes someone a liar.

More to the point, a person who intends to commit a crime and is prevented from doing so is not viewed innocent in the same respect as someone who never had the intent.

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he… (Prov. 23:7)

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matt. 5:28)

For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God. (Moro 7:8)

The Gospel of Christ attests to the fact that a person is judged by his thoughts as well as his actions. Because of this, you cannot force people to be righteous. More to the point, forcing others to act righteously is in itself a sin, for you are taking *away that person's God-given right to choose Eternal Life or Eternal Damnation. When you interfere in that right, not by gentle persuasion but by virtue of your political, financial, or physical power, you are as a slavemaster, a tyrant.

I speak this point especially to those in political power who would legislate bans on medical research solely because they think that it is not God's plan that human beings live longer than threescore and ten years. If it is God's plan, then HE will be the one to disrupt such research. And don't give the tired "How do you know that God isn't disrupting the research through me?" routine, as if you were God's instrument. If God does not want man to live longer than 120 years, he will prevent it from happening. But if such lifespans can be attained in the coming decades through the marvels of biotechnology, then is this not God's plan?

Remember, a man could live a thousand years, a million years, and he wouldn't be one day closer to Eternal Life than any of the rest of us. Attempting to prevent that man from pursuing that goal is no different than compelling someone to give to the poor when he has no such desire in his heart: it profiteth him nothing. Worse, it makes you a tyrant. If you don't want to live to 150 or 300, fine, don't support medical research, and don't use the fruits of such research. But attempts to prevent such research are morally wrong, tantamount to murder, for you are denying that choice to millions of others, and you are not God.

[Via Longevity First]

Mitochondrial Transfer and Removing Senescent Cells

These two new developments look very promising, and I think that together they could effect a big jump in healthy human lifespan. Senescent cells not only don't divide, but the appear to actively create proteins that interfere with the workings of surrounding tissue. This coupled with the replacement of failing or damaged mitochondria, the cells powerhouses, brings some great news to the field of longevity.

A most interesting New Scientist article looks at hints of an existing mechanism by which age-damaged mitochondria could be repaired. Given the central role played by mitochondrial degeneration in aging, this would be a very big deal if it could be exploited: "Healthy cells seem to have shown an amazing ability to breathe new life into damaged ones by rejuvenating their defunct mitochondria. It is an extraordinary and controversial claim. But if confirmed it could offer a way to prevent a range of harrowing metabolic diseases that affect millions of people. Experts in mitochondrial research have yet to be convinced. They say the work purporting to show the effect has yet to be comprehensively peer-reviewed, and is so potentially ground-breaking that more evidence is needed."



View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18925364.200

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

[Via Longevity Meme]

Dealing with the accumulation of senescent cells is one of the seven Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senesence (SENS). This profile of researcher Judy Campisi at The Scientist gives some insight into where the mainstream of aging research is on this topic: "senescent cells not only exist in vivo but also accumulate in aging tissue. ... in culture, these nonreplicating cells are far from inert. They produce a plethora of unpleasant proteins that can, among other things, destroy the structural integrity of the tissue that surrounds them. ... The critical test would be to create an organism in which you prevent senescent cells from accumulating ... She and her colleagues are working on devising a system to do that test. They are developing a mouse in which an inducible promoter allows them to activate a gene that will selectively eliminate senescent cells."



View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.thescientist.com/2006/2/1/60/1/

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

[Via Longevity Meme]

Is Hormone Therapy Helpful After All?

This kind of back-and-forth waffling by what the media reports is most unhelpful. Most doctors and probably almost all laymen only know what the media tells them, which is bad as the media often, deliberately or otherwise, either misinterpret or incorrectly generalze the findings of research projects. If we could get a reliable media source to report on these types of research, i.e. the kind that have the potential to affect a large number of people's lives, that would go a good way toward positive publicty for the scientific community in general, and longevity research in particular. The public currently has the impression that scientific research is unreliable at best.

Researchers have found that estrogen therapy for menopause might not be as bad as previously thought -- especially for younger women.

[Via WebMd]