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Seeking Longer Lives; Slower Aging; Even Immortality

would u take a pill to live forever?

  • yes

    Votes: 7 43.8%
  • maybe

    Votes: 6 37.5%
  • no

    Votes: 2 12.5%
  • no, and would outlaw it

    Votes: 1 6.3%

  • Total voters
    16
Many would 'want to live to 100'

Many people want to live to be 100
Many Britons would give up favourite things, including sex, to reach 100 years of age, a poll suggests.
Some 40% said they would give up sex - half of women and a third of men - 39% food and drinks and 42% travel.

But the Bupa survey of 1,003 people found 94% would not give up the company of family and friends and three quarters would not sacrifice money.

People cited being there for family and seeing grandchildren grow up as the main reasons for wanting to reach 100.

What society needs is a little help in becoming healthier by cutting back on unhealthy food and drink

Angela Mawle, of the Public Health Association


Send us your comments

The poll, carried out by Mori for Bupa, also revealed half thought scientists should continue to keep trying to prolong people's lifespans, while 45% thought it was everyone's duty to live as long as possible.

But the point at which people thought old age was reached differed between age groups. The 16 to 24-year-old aged group see it as starting at 61, while those over 75 said it kicked in at 71.

However, people did acknowledge they were concerned about how society would cope with an ageing population.

The over 80s population is predicted to double to 5m by 2031, according to the Office of National Statistics.

Struggle

A third said society would struggle to support a growing number of elderly, while nine out of 10 said the current healthcare system would have to change.

Bupa medical director Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen said: "Britain is facing an ageing time bomb with major challenges presented by retirement, the desire to live longer and the increasing burden of caring for older people.

"However, the question has to be asked can society cope?"

Angela Mawle, of the Public Health Association, said: "I think what we can take from this is that it shows people do want to live a longer, healthier life. They want to change their habits, but their actions do not always mirror this.

"What society needs is a little help in becoming healthier by cutting back on unhealthy food and drink."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5367780.stm
 
How will giving up sex make us live longer? Does masturbation count?
That's baffled me for a long time.
I should live to 300, given the amount of sex I haven't had during my life. :roll:
 
Cigars and sex 'boost Cuba lives'

Centenarians say cigars, sex and coffee boosted their life expectancy
Cuba's high number of centenarians say their longevity is down to laying off alcohol, but indulging in coffee, cigars and sex.
The findings are the result of a study that looked into the lives of 54 out of the more than 100 centenarians who live in Villa Clara province.

More than 60% of them had parents who also lived to be over 100.

Cuba, with a population of 11.2 million, has about 3,000 people who have lived for more than a century.

The results of the study were reported to the National Geriatrics and Social Work workshop in Santa Clara town, the newspaper Juventud Rebelde said.

In the study, the lives of the centenarians were found to be disciplined, but not austere.

None was alcoholic, and they said they loved coffee and cigars, which they consumed in large quantity.

They had a healthy interest in a number of areas, including sex, said Dr Nancy Nepomuceno, who carried out the study.

Most of the centenarians were mentally alert, had a good lifestyle and did manual labour in rural areas.

Almost all ate a diet which included fish, eggs, milk, white meat and vegetables, cooked with little salt and natural seasonings.

The life expectancy in Cuba is 76, but in Villa Clara province, where the study was carried out, it is 78.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5407636.stm
 
The reason is clear: rapid advances in medicine and biology have been one of the biggest achievements of the past century and we are all living longer.

I’d like to see the figures on this and proof of the overly optimistic statement.

I recall in the seventies I think it was, that my insurance agent told me that, “We make our money from these people who work in factories, - they die shortly after retirement”.
These “dark satanic mills” have all but disappeared now and this is just one of the possible causes of increased longevity.
It is well known that the “better off” of bygone ages lived as long as we do, with the rest starving or worked to death, living in appalling conditions in many cases.

As for the improvements in health care, this is also debatable. The figures that I’ve seen seem to indicate that more people than ever are getting cancer and the increased survival may be due to increased numbers. There are reports from doctors that the present cancer treatment does not work. I have a magazine report from two biologists who have given up after a lifetime of working on cancer with one quote saying, “We can cure cancer in mice and rats, but not in humans”.

The cancer charities are inundated with cash and still no results as I can vouch for with the death and present condition of two extended family members. The second has had so much treatment that she is in despair of having more and her health is fast deteriorating.
Having a cushy job and millions to spend on research is not, it seems, conducive to finding a cure.
 
Back around 1958 the Galup polling organization in connection with the now-long-defunct Look Magazine carried out a major study of American centurnarians, one of the first of its kind.

One of the subjects studied was an Afro-American lady from the American South, born a slave, at the time something like 105 years old and in surprisingly good health.

She revealed her "secret recipe" for her long, healthy life - "Every day for the past 80 years I've eaten at least five pounds of collard greens soaked in lard."

Come to think of it, I will have sour cream on my baked potatoes this evening.
 
One of the most genuinely beautiful women I've ever known was still an absolute knockout in a two-piece bathing suit in her seventies. 5' 7", 128 pounds (the same weight she was in high school), perfect figure, honey-blond hair (no dye), only very light makeup.

Her "secret"? According to her, she'd not visited a physician in over 60 years. (Dentists, yes, physicians, no.)

Now I'm not claiming that that's a good idea, but it sure as heck doesn't do much for the theory that people are "growing younger" due solely to improvements in medical care.
 
Looking at the average life spans over the last two centuries or so, it seems somewhat obvious that people now are living longer, healthier lives. However, I don't believe this to necessarily be because of better medicine. While medical care does of course play a part, I would say other contributing factors to longer life spans would include better diet, better working and living conditions, and a greater access to basic medical knowledge in the home(ie first aid, home remedies, etc).
 
... and sewage systems, and hygiene, and dental hygiene, all apparently only in the UK 100 years ago and in China long before that.
 
coldelephant said:
... and sewage systems, and hygiene, and dental hygiene, all apparently only in the UK 100 years ago and in China long before that.

Yet our homes (in the US, Canada, Britain and so on), and our hospitals too, remain connected to sewers directly beneath us. "Sanitary sewer" has such a whistle-in-the-dark quality about it.

I understand there's a Canadian toilet which is connected only to the fresh-water intake, and which after use flash-vaporizes both liquids and solid matter, leaving only a trace of sterile ash which can be swept into a dust pan.
 
How to live long and prosper
10:02 25 November 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition.
WANT to be the first one on your block to live to 100? You are in with a fighting chance if you're the first-born child of a young mother.

Natalia Gavrilova and Leonid Gavrilov of the University of Chicago sifted through data gathered on 991 centenarians born in the US between 1875 and 1899 and used US census and Social Security Administration records to reconstruct the family histories of 198 of them, searching for anything they had in common.

It turned out that first-born children were 1.7 times as likely as their siblings to live to be 100. An even stronger predictor of longevity was how young their mother was when they were born. Those whose mothers were less than 25 years old were twice as likely to survive beyond a century.

While the researchers aren't certain why this should be, they suspect younger mothers are less likely to have acquired latent infections during their life that could damage the health of the fetus. Younger mothers may also have better-quality eggs. "If the best, most vigorous maternal ova cells are used first - very early in life - this could explain why particularly young mothers produce particularly long-lived children," Gavrilov says.

The results were presented at a meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in Dallas, Texas, this week.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn10656-ho ... osper.html
 
According to my own physician, a quite orthodox young GP, "65 is the new 45 and 85 the new 65."
 
By Cathy Tran

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NEWS
Caloric restriction slows immune aging
Study finds that calorie-restricted rhesus monkeys have a higher percentage of naïve T cells


[Published 5th December 2006 03:53 PM GMT]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The link between caloric restriction and longevity may be mediated by reduced susceptibility to disease, researchers report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists found that calorie-restricted older adult rhesus monkeys have at least 30% more naïve T cells than controls.

"This is the first study that shows caloric restriction maintains naïve T cells in primates," study co-author Ilhem Messaoudi of the Oregon National Research Primate Center told The Scientist.The link between calorie restriction and naïve T cells was previously demonstrated in mice by Richard Miller and his team at the University of Michigan.

"Some people said there's something special about short-lived animals and that this wouldn't work in humans," Miller, who was not involved in the monkey study, told The Scientist. "This is one of the very best pieces of evidence that show those doubters may be wrong. If it works in something as long-lived as a rhesus monkey, then there's reason to hope that caloric restriction principles can work in people as well."

The research team, led by Janko Nikolich-Zugich at the Oregon National Research Primate Center, fed 13 rhesus monkeys 30% fewer calories than a control group of 29 monkeys for 13 to 18 years, with caloric restriction starting at three to five years of age, which is around puberty for monkeys. The experimental and control animals received the same levels of vitamins and minerals.

Research at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center had shown that monkeys restricted in calories for two to four years showed minimal differences from controls in terms of naïve T cells. But that research may have been too short-term, said Nicklich-Zugich, explaining that "caloric restriction is a form of stress, and the organism needs to adapt, so fluctuation [during the early years] is very possible." For his group of monkeys, the earliest point of sampling was after 10 years of caloric restriction.

Using peripheral blood collected at four points over 42 months, the researchers calibrated for white blood cells, lymphocytes, and neutrophils and used flow cytometry to distinguish naïve and memory T cells. The stained samples illustrated that control monkeys had a lower percentage of naïve T cells (20-25%) than the calorie-restricted monkeys (30-35%).

This is a "fairly striking difference," said Richard Weindruch of the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the study. "This is the strongest evidence to date that in a primate species, caloric restriction is able to slow down immunological aging."

What the T cell differences mean in terms of lifespan remains an open question. "It's not clear if improvements in immune function would increase maximum lifespan as well as reduce morbidity," Susan Roberts, senior scientist at Tufts University's Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, told The Scientist in an email. Roberts was not involved in the current study.

According to Messaoudi, the team will follow the monkeys through the end of life to address this issue. But Miller would like to see another focus.

"Whether diet extends lifespan may be the wrong question to be asking," he told The Scientist, pointing out that the cause of death in monkeys may have no link to aging. "What I'd love to see is how caloric restriction affects hearing, eyesight, muscle strength, wound-healing...If caloric restriction slows down the change in three or four of these systems, then [there is] a strong case that aging is being slowed regardless of how the lifespan data comes out."

The new finding maps onto recent studies proposing mechanisms that underlie caloric restriction and aging, including temperature effects and how resveratrol may influence the same metabolic pathways as caloric restriction.

Cathy Tran
[email protected]

Links within this article:

P. McCarthy, "Scientists Finding Evidence Of Caloric Restriction's Benefits," The Scientist, May 26, 1997
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/17566

J. Olshansky et al, "In pursuit of the longevity dividend," The Scientist, March 2006
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23191

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
http://www.pnas.org

M. Anderson, "Sir2: Scrambling for Answers,"The Scientist, December 6, 2004
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15122

Oregon National Research Primate Center
http://onprc.ohsu.edu

Richard Miller
http://www.pathology.med.umich.edu/facu ... index.html

Janko Nikolich-Zugich
http://www.ohsu.edu/vgti/nikolich.htm

Wisconsin National Primate Research Center
http://www.primate.wisc.edu

J. Roberts, "Flow Cytometry," The Scientist, May 5, 2003
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/13756

Richard Weindruch
http://aging.wisc.edu/research/affil.php?Ident=67

Susan Roberts
http://hnrc.tufts.edu/scientists/people/sroberts.php

C. Choi, "Cooler mice live longer,"The Scientist, November 2, 2006
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/27374'

Baur JA et. al., "Resveratrol improves health and survival of mice on a high-calorie diet," Nature. 2006 Nov 16;444(7117):337-42. Epub 2006 Nov 1.
http://www.the-scientist.com/pubmed/17086191

comment:
Caloric restriction slows immune aging - NIA scientists were essential
by Dr. Janko Nikolich-Zugich

[Comment posted 2006-12-06 04:45:13]


This piece is very well written. Unfortunately, the only essential thing that got omitted is that we have collaborated with the National Institute on Aging (NIH) intramural program scientists, and that without them this study would not have been possible, particularly without Drs. Ingram and Mattison. It is therefore important to recognize their critical contribution.


http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/37246/
 
Gene Tied To Longevity Also Preserves Ability To Think Clearly And Could Help Delay Onset Of Alzheimer's Disease
Main Category: Genetics News
Article Date: 02 Jan 2007 - 7:00 PST

A gene variant linked to living a very long life - to 90 and beyond - also serves to help very old people think clearly and retain their memories, according to new research by scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

Led by Dr. Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at Einstein, the researchers examined 158 people of Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish descent who were 95 or older. Compared with elderly subjects lacking the gene variant, those who possessed it were twice as likely to have good brain function based on a standard test of cognitive function.

Later the researchers validated their findings independently in a younger group of 124 Ashkenazi Jews between the ages of 75 and 85 who were enrolled in the Einstein Aging Study led by Dr. Richard Lipton. Within this group, those who did not develop dementia at follow up were five times more likely to have the favorable genotype than those who developed dementia.

Dr. Barzilai and his colleagues had previously shown that this gene variant helps people live exceptionally long lives and apparently can be passed from one generation to the next. Known as CETP VV, the gene variant alters the Cholesterol Ester Protein. This protein affects the size of “good” HDL and “bad” LDL cholesterol, which are packaged into lipoprotein particles. Centenarians were three times likelier to possess CETP VV compared with a control group representative of the general population and also had significantly larger HDL and LDL lipoproteins than people in the control group.

Researchers believe that larger cholesterol particles are less likely to lodge themselves in blood vessels. So people with the CETP VV gene (and the larger cholesterol particles they produce) run a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes, which may explain their unusual longevity.

The findings of this new study suggest that CETP VV also protects the cognitive integrity of the brain - either through the same vascular “anti-clogging” benefit that prevents heart attacks and strokes or through an independent protective mechanism that remains to be found.

“Without good brain function, living to age 100 is not an attractive proposition,” says Dr. Barzilai. “We’ve shown that the same gene variant that helps people live to exceptional ages has the added benefit of helping them think clearly for most of their long lives. It’s possible that CETP VV’s cognitive effect is to protect against the development of Alzheimer’s disease. In studying these centenarians, we hope to learn why they’re able to resist diseases that affect the general population at a much younger age. This knowledge should greatly aid our efforts to prevent or delay the onset of age-related diseases.”

###

These findings were published in the December 26, 2006 issue of Neurology.

Other Einstein scientists involved in the study were Dr. Gil Atzmon, Dr. Carol Derby, Dr. Jonathan Bauman and Dr. Richard Lipton. The study was supported by grants from the Einstein Aging Study, the Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholar in Aging Award, the Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar Award, the National Institutes of Health, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the Baltimore VA Geriatric Research and Education Clinical Center.

Contact: Karen Gardner

For further information please go to:
Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
http://www.aecom.yu.edu/



http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medical ... wsid=59518
 
The Art Of Prolongevity
Main Category: Seniors / Aging News
Article Date: 15 Jan 2007 - 0:00 PST


The dream of perpetual life and eternal youth is not new. Notions of how to achieve it are roughly the same today as they were 300 years ago. But technological change has stretched the boundaries somewhat.

To remain young, or at least to look young, is an ideal that is growing stronger and stronger. Aging and death must be combated; staying young and living a long life are important. You have to work out and maintain your health.

This may seem to be a modern ideal, but it isn't really. Humankind's struggle to extend longevity, and the dream of perpetual youth, is rooted far back in history. Notions of how to achieve the dream have also been surprisingly similar throughout the ages.

"The foundations of the practical advice are the similar from the 18th century to our day. It's a matter of healthy or even ascetic diet, natural life, sleeping well, exercising, simple country life, and hygiene," says Janicke Andersson, who is defending her doctoral thesis at NISAL, ( National Institute for the Study of Ageing and Later Life) Linköping University, in Sweden. She has studied historical handbooks on how to prolong life and compared them with contemporary debate and advice books.

In the 18th century, the idea was that humans had an optimal age, all the way up to 250 years (which was supposed to be the age of the patriarchs), but that we had degenerated and thus lived considerably shorter lives. If so, it should be possible to reach our optimal age by living properly.

Today there is no upper limit to for the notions on the extension of life. Institutions like the Immortality Institute and Life Extension Institute and associations like the Transhumanists strive for longer, or even eternal, life on earth. With transplant surgery we are able to replace worn-out body parts; hormone injections and pills are used to prevent the aging process; and dead people are frozen down in the hope of being thawed out again when it has become technologically possible to revive them.

Maintaining ones health and striving for a long life have become moral issues. The message is that with the right lifestyle it is possible to prevent aging and retain a youthful appearance. Being decrepit is thus a sign of moral turpitude. The life cycle itself has become a personal project that is all about self-control and self-discipline.

It's not simply a matter of living a long life but also of living actively. Successful Aging and Active Aging are movements of our time.

"How you age is something you yourself decide. It's up to you­ it depends how you deal with the situation," is advice from a modern handbook.

Previously religion was used to underpin this message. Only a good Christian could achieve a long life. Today, health movements have taken over this old rhetoric frame works. The popular stone-age diets, for instance, are based on the notion that we have lost our state of paradise, the Garden of Eden, which we can find our way back to.

"We want to attain eternal life, but we want to do it all here on earth and make up the rules of the game ourselves," writes Janicke Andersson.

The Swedish Research Council

The Swedish Research Council bears national responsibility for developing the country's basic research towards attainment of a strong international position. The Council has three main tasks: research funding, science communication and research policy. Research is the foundation for the development of knowledge in society, and the basis of high-quality education. Research is also crucial as a means of enhancing welfare through economic, social and cultural development.

http://www.vr.se

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medical ... wsid=60787
 
No Longevity Benefit With Growth Hormone

Growth hormone is naturally produced by the pituitary gland (pictured, red area), a pea-sized organ at the base of the brain. Growth hormone is critical to proper development in children, particularly their height, and injections of growth hormone are considered a legitimate treatment for short children and for adults whose pituitary glands don't produce enough growth hormone to maintain normal metabolism. But most promoters of growth hormone as an anti-aging therapy target the healthy elderly.
by Ed Susman
Washington DC (UPI) Jan 16, 2007
Doctors said Monday their analysis of 31 scientific papers found that human growth hormone -- oft-touted as an anti-aging wonder -- does nothing to help a person live longer. However, the papers do show that use of the expensive therapy has the potential to create adverse side effects.
"There is certainly no data out there to suggest that giving growth hormone to an otherwise healthy person will make him or her live longer," said Dr. Hau Liu, a research fellow in the Division of Endocrinology and in the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, Calif.

Liu and colleagues' conclusions will be published in Tuesday's edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine, the journal of the Philadelphia-based American College of Physicians.

"We did find that there was substantial potential for adverse side effects," Liu said, including such problems as joint swelling and pain, carpal tunnel syndrome and a trend toward increased new diagnoses or pre-diabetes. "You're paying a lot of money for a therapy that may have minimal or no benefit and yet has a potential for some serious side effects," Liu said. "You've got to really think about what this drug is doing for you."

"Growth hormone has been touted by people practicing fringe medicine for decades," Dr. Barry Horowitz, co-director of the Metabolic Research Institute in West Palm Beach, Fla., told United Press International. "They say growth hormone is an anti-aging therapy, can make your skin look better and improve your sex drive.

"But there is no proof -- as Dr. Liu has demonstrated -- that growth hormone does anything to extend a person's life," Horowitz said. "Our great fear is that in patients with occult, asymptomatic cancer, the administration of growth hormone may cause that cancer to grow and spread."

He said that growth hormone has been approved for treating children who have growth hormone deficiencies and to treat some adults with growth hormone deficiencies due to injury or disease to the pituitary gland.

"In many anti-aging clinics, growth hormone is prescribed willy-nilly off-label, without any proof that patients are better off," he told UPI. He also noted that the drug is highly expensive, and is not reimbursed for its off-label (unapproved) use.

Growth hormone is widely promoted on the Internet, and its use as a purported anti-aging drug has caught the attention of the popular media, ranging from the "Today Show" to Business Week. Between 20,000 and 30,000 people in the United States used growth hormone as an anti-aging therapy in 2004, a ten-fold increase since the mid-1990s, according to the authors of an unrelated study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2005.

Growth hormone is naturally produced by the pituitary gland, a pea-sized organ at the base of the brain. Growth hormone is critical to proper development in children, particularly their height, and injections of growth hormone are considered a legitimate treatment for short children and for adults whose pituitary glands don't produce enough growth hormone to maintain normal metabolism. But most promoters of growth hormone as an anti-aging therapy target the healthy elderly.

Liu's team undertook a systematic review and analysis of published studies, excluding any that looked at diseases for which growth hormone is an accepted therapy. They focused solely on studies using growth hormone to treat the elderly, specifically those whose main maladies were nothing worse than age and being mildly to moderately overweight. They also included only studies that evaluated the use of the hormone in randomized, controlled clinical trials.

Of all the papers contained in two of the largest databases of medical literature in the world, only 31 met the team's criteria. The 31 studies had a combined total of slightly more than 500 participants, and the average duration of therapy was about six months, said Liu, adding that he was surprised at the limited amount of data in the literature.

"These studies were designed to look at what happens when you give growth hormone to a healthy elderly person," said Liu. "For example, what happens to their bone density, to their exercise levels and to their exercise capacity."

The researchers found that growth hormone had a modest effect on body composition, increasing lean body mass, or muscle, by slightly more than 2 kilograms and decreasing body fat by roughly the same amount.

But, Liu said, "It did not change other clinically important outcomes, such as bone density measurements, cholesterol and lipid measurements, and maximal oxygen consumption." In short, the studies provided no real evidence that the therapy resulted in increased fitness.

"From our review, there's no data to suggest that growth hormone prolongs life, and none of the studies makes that claim," said Liu.



www.terradaily.com/reports/No_Longevity ... e_999.html
 
Social status helps you live longer
13:24 17 January 2007
NewScientist.com news service
New Scientist staff and AFP

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Andrew Oswald, Warwick University
Matthew Rablen, Warwick University
Nobel Foundation
Scientists who have won a Nobel prize live nearly two years longer than those who were merely nominated, according to a new study. The findings suggest that social status confers "health-giving magic", the researchers say.

Previous research has found a link between status and health in monkeys, but it has been difficult to investigate the link in humans because status often brings more wealth, which improves living standards and medical care.

Andrew Oswald and Matthew Rablen, economists at Warwick University in the UK, focused on Nobel prize winners "as an ideal group to study as the winners could be seen as having their status suddenly dropped on them".

The researchers studied 524 men – 135 winners and 389 nominees – in the competition for the physics and chemistry prizes between 1901 and 1950 – the cut-off point because the full list of nominees are kept secret for 50 years. They looked only at men to avoid differences in life span between sexes, and because the male winners provided a bigger sample size.

Like for like
Prize winners lived 1.4 years longer on average – or 77.2 years – than those who were nominated for the award. But when the survey was restricted to only comparing winners and nominees from the same country, the longevity gap widened, by about another eight months on average, the researchers found.

"Walking across that platform in Stockholm apparently adds about two years to a scientist's life-span. How status does this, we just don't know," Oswald says.

Though the prize money increased with time, the actual amount had no effect on the longevity of the recipient, he says. "Actually winning the Nobel prize was what counted," Oswald says.


www.newscientist.com/article/dn10972-so ... onger.html
 
I was a little surprised at the number of celebrities who died last month, December, 2006. One of the "factoids" I grew up with was that many people tend to will themselves to live through December, both to experience one last Christmas season and to survive at least a day or two into the New Year.
 
Did anyone else see the Aubrey DeGrey prog just now on Channel 4?

Thought it was well made and compelling in the way it unravelled his approach.



-
 
Rrose_Selavy said:
Thought it was well made and compelling in the way it unravelled his approach.

So what exactly did it say ag'in him?
 
Well he may well be right - it didnt say he wasn't but showed you couldn't easily prove a theory was wrong. looked at how he takes an over view and can seem superficially impressive yet doesn't seem to to know how difficult and time consuming real science and research can be.-

How his personal circumstances - eg. not wanting children so wouldn't be able to pass on his "Immortal " genes that way may have coloured his motivations and too much passion and not enough distance doesn't make for good science.

How he left Cambridge University because he was implying and being incorrectly described as a Cambridge Professor when he was actually employed as a Computer Technician but using their resources for his "hobby" .

-
 
The guy was a computer technician implying that he was a professor (without actually saying that he was).
He will not contribute anything to the science of gerontology without doing any experimental science, any more that I'll contribute anything to interstellar exploration by reading wikipedia about it.
 
I thought I knew the guy's name; he has been lecturing on the Transhumanist circuit recently, and I've seen photos of him.

Here is a link to Wiki about the controversy over the article in Technology review;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Grey_Te ... ontroversy
The editor of Technology Review wrote this article as well, which is quite funny;
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/14146/

But what struck me is that he is a troll. For all de Grey’s vaulting ambitions, what Sherwin Nuland saw from the outside was pathetically circumscribed. In his waking life, de Grey is the ­com­puter support to a research team; he dresses like a shabby graduate student and affects Rip Van Winkle’s beard; he has no children; he has few interests outside the science of biogeron­tology; he drinks too much beer. Although he is only 41, the signs of decay are strongly marked on his face. His ideas are trollish, too. For even if it were possible to “perturb” human biology in the way de Grey wishes, we shouldn’t do it. Immortality might be okay for de Grey, but an entire world of the same superagenarians thinking the same kinds of thoughts forever would be terrible.
Actually I am becoming quite fond of this 'troll', and his disturbing idea that we could live forever. He wants to make the sorts of thing we write about at OA come true; good luck to him in that enterprise, but he might be just a little ahead of his time.
 
Here is a pic of the guy with Anders Sandberg, at a Transhumanist conference;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tmalin/223806735/
some of you might know that Anders was a major contributor to Orion's Arm in the early days of that sci-fi website, which I am still deeply immersed in. Anders brought the transhumanist elements into OA, as well as most of the early detail. The idea is that ten thousand years from now most of what constitutes humanity will be unrecognisably changed.

As a precept it is an intriguing one, and I am quite happy to write for and help to edit the site, despite not being a transhumanist myself. If people like Aubrey De Gray and Sandberg get their way, the future of humanity could be much stranger than the wildest dreams of science fiction.
 
For even if it were possible to “perturb” human biology in the way de Grey wishes, we shouldn’t do it. Immortality might be okay for de Grey, but an entire world of the same superagenarians thinking the same kinds of thoughts forever would be terrible.

That's hardly a scientific objection.

I have to confess that I am also becoming fond of de Grey, "warts and all."

In the very first article I read concerning de Grey he openly admitted that he was largely an autodidact in the field of genetics, which surely doesn't sound like a man falsely claiming to be a professor. Those types usually go about claiming all sorts of advanced and rarified degrees from schools they never even attended.
 
We challenged experts across fields to imagine a new way to solve the problems of human aging. Our question:

What if Humans were Designed to Last?

By S. Jay Olshansky, Robert N. Butler, and Bruce A. Carnes
Illustrations by Thom Graves

When Michelangelo painted The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he portrayed the Renaissance view of humanity as having been molded by the hand of its creator, a "perfect" physical specimen. Charles Darwin, when drafting his theory of evolution, presented imperfections in humans' anatomic structures and functions as the strongest evidence for his theory. It now appears they were both right.

A coordinated network of molecular processes providing cells with nearly flawless surveillance, maintenance, and repair capabilities exemplifies the "perfection" of the human body. Living things need this precision in order to survive to reproductive maturity in the face of a hostile environment and the toxic debris that the cellular machinery of life generates. Meanwhile, subtle changes and imperfections at every level of biological organization give rise to the diseases and disorders associated with aging and impose limits on the duration of life, but ultimately, these changes and imperfections drive the evolutionary process itself. The juxtaposition of Michelangelo's perfection and Darwin's flaws embodies the linked stories of reproduction and death.

Evolution has given humans a beautifully orchestrated set of genetic programs to carry most of us through to sexual maturity, but we have also been given a brain large enough to ponder our demise. Yet, if the molecular, cellular, and genetic machinery used to conceive, develop, and operate a human were designed rather than the result of evolution, humans would be different and life would look different. This is our challenge. We asked experts in gerontology, neuroscience, genetics, cell biology, development, and health and fitness science to devise a human that would stand the test of time. Here's what they've come up with.

In the absence of planned form and designed function, what we have is a living machine that appears well thought out, but which fails when operated beyond its biological warranty period. Some anatomic fixes could make a difference in aging populations: Most men older than age 50 can attest that the prostate gland has the functional plan of an apprentice's first effort rather than the end result of intelligent design. Anyone who understands how time takes its toll on the body and mind, however, will recognize that designing a human body built to last requires far more substantive changes than meddling with simple anatomy.

So we've asked our experts to fiddle with physiology and tinker with the inner mechanics of life at its most basic biologic level. Although it is inevitable, for now, that all systems in the body experience some level of functional decline with the passage of time, not all components of the body degrade at the same rate. Furthermore, some structures are more vulnerable than others.

Particularly troublesome are two kinds of cells in the body that generally stop replicating past the stage of growth and development - neurons and muscle fibers. Two of our expert fixes deal with these problems specifically. John Q. Trojanowski, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of the Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Disease Center suggests that the problems of neurodegenerative disease could be avoided if neurogenesis in the brain worked better, replacing spent neurons before they begin to cause problems for themselves and surrounding tissue.

Similarly, the nerve loss that may invariably lead to muscle loss in the body (sarcopenia) could be avoided with excess motoneurons, suggests Michael Bemben, professor of health and exercise science at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Some of the fixes strive to uncouple the links in our body's systems. The associations between endocrine function and bone formation invariably doom bone to deteriorate as hormone levels in the body decline. Other intriguing clues have shown us that senses such as taste and smell may influence the rate at which we age. Might parsing out these systems help us enjoy longer, more healthy lives?

Perhaps the best solutions would occur at a cellular or even a molecular level, increasing the quality and durability of life's most basic building blocks. Mopping up excess free radicals is a start. But even that covers only one theory as to the potential causes of aging. Leonard Hayflick, who demonstrated the finitude of repeated cell divisions so elegantly in the 1960s (see Foundations ) offers perhaps the most fantastic if most unattainable fix: Perfect or near perfect synthesis, maintenance, and repair of every biomolecule in the human body, he says, would make the risk for most age-related diseases and disorders simply vanish. Even this is not without tradeoffs, however. Such perfection would also wipe out those subtle changes and mistakes that made us what we are, tipping the scales in favor of Michelangelo.

Technologies are emerging that extend survival by delaying death from chronic fatal diseases. Pushing this envelope may briefly quench our insatiable thirst for extended life and temporarily quell our fear of death, but continuing to do so may turn out to be harmful unless it soon becomes possible to scientifically engineer an extension of the vigor of youth in both body and mind. In this article we go beyond usual scientific reasoning and imagine how the human body might have been designed differently if biology were goal-oriented. Meddling with such features is an inherently tricky business, but imaginative and innovative approaches to tackling the problems of an aging body is certainly worth encouraging.

Here, we imagine how the inner workings of the human body might have been designed differently, had a healthier and longer life been the motivating force that shaped life. Our goal is not to create new methods of combating disease, but rather, to spark an idea, trigger a thought, and inspire others to think outside the box by first imagining a new future of human health that is better than the present - and then working to make it so.

THE REJUVENATING BRAIN: The most troubling part about aging is our ability to contemplate it, and for this reason perhaps, the consequences to our brains are the most frightful. I study neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer, Parkinson, and frontotemporal dementias, which become more common with advancing age but are not always associated with age specifically. Many of these disorders are closely associated with filamentous aggregates, such as those containing amyloid, tau, and -synuclein. These aggregates quickly gum the normal physiology of neurons and often become cytotoxic.


The Fix: An improved system to fold proteins and destroy unwanted proteins could drastically reduce the propensity for aggregation. Perfecting the physiology of chaperone proteins and improving the efficiency of lysosomes, proteasomes, and all the enzymes that eliminate the accumulation of disease-causing proteins would significantly reduce the likelihood of these diseases occurring. However, this fix wouldn't address neurological damage resulting from head trauma or stroke. A simple, cell-for-cell replacement model of neurogenesis might provide a more elegant solution. If a cell dies, a population of adult neural stem cells would quickly replace it.

The Tradeoffs: One downside of improving regenerative capacity is that increased cell division to make more cells and replace those that degenerate could presumably spiral out of control and flip over to cancer. Moreover, the precise wiring of the brain is not something to be taken lightly. If neuroregeneration overcompensated only slightly, dysregulation of neuronal crosstalk could lead to conditions such as schizophrenia or seizure.



-John Q. Trojanowski, University of Pennsylvania



LONGER IN TOOTH: The deterioration and loss of teeth that comes with old age affects more than smiles; gum disease has been associated with increased risk for heart disease and might quicken the pace of aging. Poor nutrition after tooth loss could also cause problems. P. Holm-Pedersen of the University of Copenhagen has been presenting data on a 600-member aging cohort in Denmark, which shows a statistically significant association between tooth loss and the onset of disability, although the link is not necessarily causative.

The Fix: Stronger, more resilient enamel might stave off decay. A more elegant fix would entail a third set of teeth erupting at the age of 55.

The Tradeoffs: The tooth buds from a third set of teeth might necessitate a larger jaw. Having teeth erupt from the rear like those in elephants might solve this. However, many people past the age of 20 can recall intense pain when wisdom teeth erupt; constantly growing teeth, similar to those in horses, might address this.

-Bruce Carnes, University of Oklahoma, Health Sciences Center



THE PERFECT EYE: In addition to some well known engineering flubs in the eye, more than a quarter of individuals age 75 years and older report vision impairment even with corrective lenses. Cataracts and other damage caused by aging and a lifetime of exposure to incidental ultraviolet radiation account for more than half of all blindness.

The Fix: The tiny pink lumps in the inner corners of human eyes are the vestiges of a nictitating membrane - a third eyelid still functional in sharks, birds, and even some mammals. A similar sideways sweeping membrane, if translucent and able to block harmful rays, could provide additional protection when needed and be retracted in the dark.

The Tradeoffs: As skin ages - also due in no small part to the sun - it becomes loose and less flexible. Surgery to correct drooping eyelids (blepharoplasty) is already the third most popular plastic surgery, and adding a third lid would entail more surgery. For this reason, a simpler solution would be engineering a photochromic cornea. A biomolecule with the same properties as silver halide and other materials used in so-called Transitions lenses would darken in the presence of UV light and protect the lens and retina.



-Bruce Carnes

SENSELESS AGING: The effects of calorie restriction on longevity in several animal species are well documented. Increasingly, evidence suggests that sensory systems such as smell may have a similar effect. Last month, our group showed that the life-extending effects of dietary restriction in flies are partially reversed when the flies are exposed to excess food odorants. Knocking out the odor receptor Or83b resulted in life extension that was largely independent of dietary intake. Other studies in Caenorhabditis elegans have implicated scent and gustatory pathways in modulating aging, partly through insulin-dependant (i.e., daf-16) signaling pathways. Although more studies are needed, the implication is that perceptual systems may play a major role in informing the organism of its environment, and in so doing may trigger physiologic decisions that result in altered longevity.


The Fix: Short of deleting human senses, uncoupling them from the burden of our evolutionary past would be useful. Relevant odorants likely tap into adaptive hormonal pathways that have been honed by evolution to alter life-history patterns and maximize individual fitness - for example, to maximize reproductive effort at all costs when we perceive nutrient abundance. We may rewire these systems to enforce somatic endurance in response to common odors.

The Tradeoffs: The apparent interconnectedness between the senses and longevity-modulating pathways is perceived as "bad" only according to today's values. That doesn't mean they don't serve a useful purpose. Perhaps a more elegant solution would be to engineer the ability to switch between states - for example, to maximize reproductive capacity when starting a family, and to increase stress resistance when raising those children.

- Scott Pletcher, Baylor College of Medicine

TAKING THE BITE OUT OF CHOLESTEROL: The modern human diet is high in animal fat and processed foods. Excess low-density lipoprotein in the blood appears strongly linked to a process in which plaques form along arterial walls, causing narrowing and sometimes blocking of blood vessels. About half of all Americans exceed guideline levels for cholesterol. As an older population has become more commonplace, so too have heart disease, stroke, and all the attendant costs of a lifetime of plaque buildup.


The Fix: While enhancing the systems to reduce serum cholesterol levels seems attractive, the extra enzymatic activity required to process these lipids would likely necessitate a substantial size increase in what is already the body's largest internal organ, the liver. So, the best solution is a functional one: Coat the entire vascular system with a Teflon-like surface. Polytetrafluoroethylene is inert, has no net charge, and has the lowest friction coefficient of any known solid. A biomolecule with these properties, if expressed on the surface of endothelial cells lining the vasculature, would greatly reduce plaque buildup.

The Tradeoffs: An effective coating would have to be sufficiently breathable so that it doesn't inhibit the transfer of nutrients and oxygen. Moreover, arteries need to be elastic. The hardening effects of a polymer like Teflon could reduce pumping efficiency.

-P. Michael Conn, Oregon National Primate Research Center

BONE REGAINED: Osteoporosis, characterized by a decline in bone mass and a weakening of its micro-architecture, appears to be caused by an imbalance in bone remodeling. The three phases in the bone remodeling cycle - activation, resorption, and formation - involve different cells. Osteocytes activate the cycle in response to mechanical signals. Osteoclasts synthesize lysosomal enzymes that can degrade bone matrix components, resulting in the bone resorption phase. Hormones and local growth factors stimulate osteoblasts to produce collagen that forms the new matrix, completing the remodeling cycle. Bone loss occurs when resorption occurs faster than formation, a process that begins in humans in their early 30s.

The Fix: Age-related changes in endocrine function greatly affect bone mass and fracture risk. Decreasing the sensitivity of bone cells to systemic hormones might help. If bone cells could rely on their own intracellular signals for remodeling, a normal balance between resorption and formation would persist. The mechanism for the decreased sensitivity could be analogous to the decreased insulin sensitivity observed with aging. One could impose a decreased number of hormone receptors, such as parathyroid hormone (PTH) on the bone cells, or a change in the biological effect of the hormone-receptor interaction within the bone cells.



The Tradeoffs: Bone tissue functions as an important reservoir for calcium, but with a decreased number of PTH receptors, PTH would not be as effective in mobilizing calcium from the skeleton in response to lowered blood calcium levels. Moreover, it has been shown in animal models that the estrogen receptor mediates bone response to mechanical loading, suggesting that a decrease in estrogen receptors would decrease the bone response to weight-bearing exercise.

-Debra Bemben, University of Oklahoma

LIVING STRONGER LONGER: The loss of muscle mass associated with aging accounts for a decrease in basal metabolism and in muscular strength, which can lower physical activity levels, resulting in diminished postural reflex, a loss of balance, and an increased risk for falls. Sarcopenia is a multifaceted problem with two potential primary mechanisms. The problem might be myopathic in nature, but evidence also indicates that a loss of muscle innervation might cause sarcopenia. Strong evidence suggests a progressive loss of high-threshold motoneurons (those that innervate fast-twitch fibers) as demonstrated by the proportional loss of fast-twitch fiber numbers.


The Fix: If loss of neural innervation to the muscle fiber is the primary cause for the loss of muscle mass, then muscle fiber number could be maintained as long as neural integrity is stable. In the brain, it appears that humans have roughly four-fold neuronal redundancy. In most people, as many as 30% of the cerebral neurons are lost due to wear and tear of normal life, but far less than the approximately 80% reduction necessary to produce clinical symptoms. One way to ensure an adequate number of functioning motoneurons would be to build a similar redundancy into the anterior or ventral horns of the grey matter in the spinal cord.

The Tradeoffs: The extra space needed to 'house' these extra nerve cells within the spinal cord would necessitate an increase in size of the spinal cord and concomitant increase in the vertebral column, which could influence posture, balance, and gait. A second problem might be a greater incidence of peripheral nerve diseases such as shingles or systemic lupus with increased age.

-Michael G. Bemben, University of Oklahoma

UNFREE THE RADICALS: Metabolic free radicals are thought to be a significant cause of biomolecular damage. The accumulation over time of unrepaired damage caused by free radicals has been linked to a host of diseases and has been prominently implicated in the aging process itself.

The Fix: The solution to this problem must be systemic. While natural antioxidants are produced endogenously and occur in food, more powerful antioxidants also exist, such as amifostine (WR-2731), a radioprotector compound produced in the laboratory and used to ameliorate damage caused by radiation therapies. In addition, they tend to concentrate within the mitochondria where metabolic free radicals are produced, and they adhere to nuclear DNA. The latter attribute is significant: As it increases the structural stability of the DNA, it may also slow the cell cycle. If a gene to produce such compounds were introduced into the mitochondrial genome, the rate of aging should be slowed, and cancers should be reduced or delayed along with all other degenerative diseases that free radicals cause.

The Tradeoffs: Free radicals do participate in a number of important functions. Immune cells use free radicals to attack and destroy invaders and infected cells. Free radicals participate in the detoxification of harmful chemicals, and are involved in hormone production, enzyme activation, and mediation of cell signaling. Disrupting these important processes could easily jeopardize the health of the individual. So, a more powerful endogenous antioxidant system would have to be finely tuned.

-Bruce Carnes

The best solutions might occur at a cellular or even molecular level.

STOP AGING AT THE MOLECULAR LEVEL: Theories to explain the finitude of life are based either on a purposeful genetic program like that for biological development, or on the occurrence of random events that produce errors in essential biomolecules. It is now believed that genetics governs longevity but that random events produce age changes. Age changes result from the increase in molecular disorder that, after reproductive maturation, slowly begins to exceed the capacity for repair, turnover, and synthesis of biomolecules. The very systems that are engaged in repair, turnover, and syntheses are themselves subject to randomly accumulating errors.


The Fix: Developing a perfect human being, built to live a life that is longer and healthier than what is experienced now, would simply require that all processes designed to maintain, turn over, or repair proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, or nucleic acids be carried out with near-perfect fidelity. With this ability in place, age changes and the consequent vulnerability to age-related pathology would decrease to the vanishing point.

The Tradeoffs: Beyond the ethical implications of creating such long-living beings with no reasonable exit strategy, we would be deleting a rich and fundamental source of biological diversity. Mistakes in the synthetic and repair machineries of the cell have created us as we are today. Turning off the power of this engine for evolutionary change would put us at a great disadvantage in adapting to new challenges and environments and leave us at a biological dead end.

-Leonard Hayflick, University of California, San Francisco

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/home/52872/
 
We Die Too Soon
Wise Methuselahs could save the world.

By Jack Woodall

Here's why we should solve the medical problems of aging.

George Bernard Shaw commented on how ridiculous it is that just as we are reaching the age at which we begin to acquire some wisdom, our faculties start to deteriorate and our bodies let us down. So, when we should be applying our hard-won experience to solving the problems of human conflict, overpopulation, and the degradation of our planet, we spend a disproportionate amount of our remaining lifespan worrying about our failing health and memory.


How different our lives could be if we lived twice as long and retained full possession of our health and senses, and no one would have to retire unless they wished to. (For some ideas on how to do this, see article here.) A doubling of current average life expectancy to 160 years does not imply that everyone will live that long. There will still be attrition due to accidents and disease, with many people dying before they reach their 100th or even 50th birthday, and others living to 200 or more.


I'm not talking about a doubling of our lifespan overnight, but rather, an acceleration of current trends in developed countries. Anything much more rapid would be too disruptive. In Switzerland, during the decade 1990-2000, the number of centenarians doubled in 8.4 years for men and 9.8 years for women; in the decade 1970-1980 the doubling time was even shorter, at 6.5 and 6.0 years, respectively. If this time could be markedly reduced, countries would find their cohorts of Methuselahs dramatically increased, and interestingly, more than 80% of them would be women, with implications for a possible change of perspective in decision-making.


Such increasing longevity would require us to develop a progressively deeper understanding of apoptosis, cancer, and diseases such as Alzheimer, and how to conquer them or, at the very least, significantly delay their onset. We would not want to abolish death altogether, at least until we had a better idea of the implications of a much longer lifespan.


The downside would be the perpetuation of presidents-for-life. You have no doubt noticed that the rich and powerful, if they survive assassination attempts, tend to live for ages, hanging on to their positions well past their sell-by-dates. A similar problem is with the people who fill their positions without actually contributing anything - the deadwood found in any organization. Solving these problems would be a priority for the new generation of wise men and women.


On the other hand, the upside would be that people who knew they stood a good chance of living for two centuries or more would be more likely to take seriously the problems of global warming and environmental pollution, since they would start to feel the severity of the impact. Just imagine, if only Methuselah had had the wisdom of Solomon, we might be much farther ahead today in our understanding of human nature. If Einstein could have lived for a couple of hundred more years, imagine where we could be in our understanding of the universe.


Although the world's problems linked to overpopulation will continue to increase, if current trends continue, the proportion of older people in the population will increase faster, producing an ever larger pool of wise people. So, solutions to world problems should increase even faster as those minds cooperate to attack them.


Global problem-solving by the new wise could work like this: Groups of specialists, paid by both government and public-interest foundations, would brainstorm the parts of the overall problem that particularly interested them. By video-consulting together through the Internet, without any of the constraints of time or space that an office demands, they would filter, organize, and review the vast mass of data and information available in cyberspace in their fields of expertise, using the Semantic Web. Groups of wise bi- or tricentenarians would meta-analyze the output, connecting relevant solutions to solve the larger problem. The results would then be passed on to a global council of millenarian sages, called the Solomothuselahs, who would live wherever their surroundings were most conducive to deep thought, be it mountain-top or desert. These geniuses would thus have the best possible advice to enable them to confront and resolve the world's biggest challenges, and see their efforts to completion.


So, all we need do is hurry up and solve the medical problems of aging - the sooner the better for all of us.


Jack Woodall is director of the Nucleus for the Investigation of Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Institute of Medical Biochemistry at Brazil's Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

[email protected]

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/home/52887/
 
I've often wondered how far along the human race might be if individuals such as Imhotep, Aristotle, Cleopatra, Mary the Jewess, Al-Geber,Roger Bacon, Leonardo, Newton, Edison, Tesla or Einstein at least occasionally reached the 200 - 400 year mark, remaining productive until the end.

Out among the stars, I should think, and not merely the nearer ones.
 
Monks may live longer

Mar. 15, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Monks may live longer than other men, according to a German study.

The Benedictine publication Missionblatter has published the findings of a demographic survey by Marc Luy of Rostock, Germany, who analyzed the age of monks in different monasteries and found that on average, monks live 4 years longer than other men.

Professor Luy admitted that he still does not know why monks live longer. His hypothesis is that monks smoke less, have a regular daily routine, and do not cease working at age 65. He also believes that monks’ spiritual lives help them to deal with daily stress.

The reserarcher also found that there is no difference between the average life span of monks and consecrated women.

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=49891
 
Professor Luy admitted that he still does not know why monks live longer. His hypothesis is that monks smoke less, have a regular daily routine, and do not cease working at age 65. He also believes that monks’ spiritual lives help them to deal with daily stress.

They also don't go off to war, take up mountain climbing or sky diving or drag racing or suffer from road rage. They don't worry about paying bills or coming up with the rent. They don't sit and pound themselves in the head come tax time.
 
Youth
19 Mar 2007

The early development of humans and animals, the time between conception and maturity, has an enormous influence on their lifespan. With a subsidy of 10 million euro, Prof. Dr Rudi Westendorp (geriatric medicine) and Dr Bas Zwaan (evolutionary biology) will be pooling European expertise on this theme.

'It's as if you're the doctor,' says Rudi Westendorp, Professor of Geriatric Medicine to evolutionary biologist Bas Zwaan. Zwaan, who is researching the complex relationship between genotypes and phenotypes of butterflies and fruit flies, had just been stressing how important it is for the medical world to become convinced that factors at the very start of life have an enormous influence on life expectancy. So that we can make an early start on taking appropriate, and preferably preventive, action. Don't wait until middle age!

Westendorp himself, a doctor born and bred, is no less enthusiastic about the importance of evolutionary biology in studying ageing: 'The majority of doctors don't think in biological terms. But, if you want to research ageing mechanisms, you have to. If you have to wait until people are old to see whether your hypothesis is right, it will take too long. So you have to start constructing experiments, you have to use animal models. Doctors still all too often think that an illness is determined either by genetics or by environmental factors. Evolutionary biologists always explain the variation between individuals as the interaction between genes and environment.'

The discussion is a good demonstration of how each of the scientists thinks from the perspective of the other's field. They and other Leiden scientists, like molecular geneticist Prof. Dr Eline Slagboom (LUMC) and her research group, have been working together for some four years on ageing in humans and animals, in species and individuals. It's not common to find such a synergy between doctors and biologists, and colleagues in other countries are often jealous of Leiden in this respect.

'Early influences late'

These colleagues will now be able to participate in the research. The European Union has this week awarded Westerndorp and Zwaan 10 million euro for the LifeSpan project, within the Sixth Framework Programme. They have the opportunity to set up a network of excellence which has five years to develop research into the influence of the early development of organisms on their eventual lifespan. In recent years there have been an increasing number of indications that early development has considerable influence, and may even be definitive. 'Early influences late,' according to Zwaan. 'But how does it work? We're all well aware by now that pregnant women shouldn't smoke. But there are many more things we are not aware of. These are the things we want to find out more about. And more importantly: we want to understand the biology behind them.'

Honey bees

Westendorp continues: 'This is the opportunity to set out one consistent line with the best partners in Europe. At this early stage it's particularly important to avoid fragmentation and to make good use of the work which has already been done. In Scandinavia, for example, researchers started early with research on twins. Now we can all benefit from their work. Here in the LUMC we are carrying out research into longevity, and we are following a large group of 85-year-olds and older. And the Leiden biologists have already done a lot of work to get selection lines of fruit flies. In Norway they are working with honey bees. These are very interesting because larvae with the same genetic baggage can develop into long-lived queen bees as well as into short-lived worker bees. And in Austria there is great deal of expertise in cell biology in the area of ageing of the immune system.'

Food

Whether a person will live to old age is not only a matter of their genes. Zwaan: 'From time to time somebody will claim to have found the gene for longevity. The rest of the field is then silenced. And it means so little. The fact that a mutated gene may lead to longer life, does not mean that the gene contributes to variation in natural populations, including that of man.'

One of the most important environmental factors is food. Westendorp: 'Ten to fifteen thousand years ago the composition of the diet was dramatically different from today. Now there is a mismatch between our diet and our genes. A comparable mismatch seems to be very important at individual level. If you receive very little food during your early development, for example while you are still in the womb, and you then have a surfeit of food later, this has an enormous influence on your health. As well as on the health of your children. In India there has been a rapid change in the food situation in a very short space of time. A study there shows that relatively small mothers with overweight, obese children develop a disturbance in their blood sugar level.' Zwaan: 'We do know that some genotypes react differently to this. If you know which genes are involved, you can advise those people accordingly. It is important to also stress the positive side. It's about growing old and staying healthy.'

Hunger winter

Because food is so important, a lot of experimental biological research is conducted on the relationship between resistance to starvation and longevity, for example in fruit flies, and on insuline management in animals. Human groups which are ideally suited for research into the trio of food, development and ageing, are the so-called 'hunger winter' people: those people who were in their mother's womb during the winter of 1944-45, when food in the Netherlands was extremely scarce. Researchers at LUMC are also following a group of people of different ages in part of Ghana where there have been no changes to the traditional food pattern.

Epigenetics

Research into the relationship between 'cradle and grave' can provide important guidelines for human health. But research into these early mechanisms is also important for fundamental science. The expectation is that it will provide important informatin about the role of epigenetics. This branch of research studies the expression of genes, the - in some cases hereditary - changes, and the mechanisms and proteins which are related to it. Epigenetics wants to explain the variation between individuals, and poses such questions as: why does one half of a single-egg twin have a cleft lip or palate and the other not? Zwaan: 'We are also going to use it differently. We are, for example, going to examine how cells are 'regulated', how they use their energy.'

Not intentional

The newness of research into development and ageing is apparent from the way in which the first expression of interest by Westendorp and Zwaan for the Sixth Framework Programme was received. That was four years ago. One of the themes in which researchers could indicate their interest was Development and Ageing. At least, that's what they thought. Westendorp: 'We had only just started, so we submitted something. But that was apparently not the intention. The development and ageing themes were only linked because they were each too small for their own section.' The Leiden researchers were able to demonstrate with their three position papers (see below) that this combination had the potential of becoming a very promising research field. They have been successful with their final proposal for LifeSpan.

But there is still some missionary work to do. Westendorp: 'Critics say: "Life expectancy is still increasing, isn't it? So why are you making things so difficult?' It's true, we have managed to overcome most infectious illnesses, so that we no longer live to only 40, but to 90 in many cases. But I can then point to research which shows that the overall mortality rate may be decliinng, but that mortality among those suffering from obesity, for example,i s actually increasing.'

LEIDEN UNIVERSITEIT
Rapenburg 70
Postbus 9500
2300 RA Leiden
http://www.leidenuniv.nl


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