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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
ANSWER TO RYNNER

sure thing! ever notice how the brain cells function so much better on those days when u are flooded with positive feelings? That makes possible a level of problem solving that is objectively not there, when pessimistic.
John
 
I think if this was true then we would have to find a way to cap the human population. Less death = more people = greater harm to the earth. Not good

I recommend 5 billion. better get started .:p
 
Not aging is not the same as living forever. These longevity treatmeants would 'cure' old age, but not many of the deseases associated with old age.

But I think that's a good thing. You wouldn't live forever you'd just stay young and relatively healthy till one of the deseases associated with old age killed you off. I like that idea. I want to be fit enough to enjoy my grandchildren and great gradchildren.

Cujo
 
inf
skyh
brains
............infinite cosmos, infinite support for infinite population. excess goes to settle space.
see unknowncountry.com for details on new caarbon nanotubles, making possible space elevator, and cheap cheap putting people into space.
or, just birth control.
Also, with our current geniuses living longer, they come up with new ways to feed larger population....plus new geniuses in that larger population.
John
 
underly
live till
...........thanks for nice reply....
the diseases associa. with aging, are mostly result of underlying aging....so no aging, and those diseases vanish.

as to infections of youth, eg maliria, as decades pass, new cures will be found in the middle future,,,,say 2030 and near beyond. So , just live till then, and u escape even the dis of youth. So, u really do grab onto immortality. except for accidents and war.
go to grg.org for excellent discussions of this "bridge to better science era " concept , as well as best news on immort. to be found on the we b. all legit university research, not radio ad snake oil .
cordally,
john newtol
 
CUJO ANSWER

Originally posted by john186
underly
live till
thaks, cujo, for good ideas.
Your idea of staying healthier in old age than we do now, then dying rapidly, never slowly, is described at the grg.org site, and given a name. they even have a graphic of it, at the top of their pages...or in the body of one.

it is called 'squaring the curve', where the curve describes the decline of vitality. 'squr. the curve' is a major intermediary goal of the grg group, on the way to true immortality.

You might also like to learn about the "gompertz tail" to the curve of how apopulation slowly dies off over time. seems a fraction of humans have the knack of living ten or more years longer than the rest of us. they cause a tail to appear to the curve's right end. It is a good place to be!

also note that centenarians usually stay vital till near the very end. grg.org has, i think, a data file on centenarians .....look at left column on home pg. , for button on something like resources or archives, or other one that might be it. They also post news items on who is currently the oldest human. note..one twenty two is alltime record, for well documented case. french lady.....the french know HOW TO LIVE. LOL.
cordially,
John Newtol
Click to expand...
 
450 YEAR HUMANS? NEW GENE ALTERING MAKES IT POSSIBLE

U. of San Francisco..USA.. prof., Cynthia Kenyon, also with Elixir pharm. of boston,
published results on turning off two genes, and getting some lab worms to live six times longer. (average of double, but some six times longer.) With full youthful vitality.
fm betterhumans.com see page of News, "Gene Tweaking..." oct 25 02 and Science mag , same date, and Juvenon news, nov 24 02
[the genes are daf2 and daf12]

In humans, this would be six times seventy five, or 450.

to shut off a gene in an adult mammal, the "top discovery of 2002"..Science mag....use the new method using siRNA, sometimes called RNA-I. The 'I" stands for interfering. si stands for short interfering. [see current...dec?..issue of Science on newsstands] [free explanation of siRNA found at above ref to betterhumans.com, news item..link within the news item]

Well, seems to me that combining these two gives us an immediate possibility of humans that live to age 450. (warning..the worms lived an average of only twice as long...but a few lived six times as long. Even if you yourself get only the doubling, wouldn't age 150 be worth an experiment?)

In short, daf2,12 turned off by RNA-I, gives 450 year old humans.

John Newtol

PS for discussions of other methods to lengthen lifespan, and even immortality, go to the excellent site

imminst.org

John Newtol
 
It would be really hard to judge the other effects in worms that humans would encounter. Insanity for one.

also if all humans lived to 150 the population would rocket and we already are overpopulated to the point of destroying the environment. so what do we do ? Restrict birth ?


The same people doing all the thinking all the time will mean no fresh points of view.

I think this could be a very very bad thing :(
 
CAROLINE ANSWER, AND OTHER TOO

HI, now to caroline...
senility not a problem..see my sentence..Full youthful vitality.

briefly, the other post...sorry i forgot your name...
one, births can be controlled...the pill, etc.
two, expansion into space is an outlet for population...space may be infinite.
three, with more knowledge of how the brain functions, stale ideas can be countered with treatments that increase creativity. Such research facilitated by longer research careers on the part of increasingly knowledge-accumulating oldsters, something never seen before.
john newtol
 
If only I could live to 450, I might actually see my favourite football team win something! :D

Imagine a snippet of conversation like this:
"How long you been working here then, Bill?"
"Oh - 236 years"

I guess if you did live that long, you could always find something new to do. Whether it would better the human condition, I doubt. For life to be worth living, you need to be in at least a reasonable physical and mental condition. Besides, imagine being someone's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather....

What lifetime would be long enough? There is a beautiful SF short story by Larry Niven on this subject, entitled Cautionary Tales. Set in the far distant future, it involves a meeting between a human and an alien. Over lunch, they speak in the trade language of that time. The alien complains that life is too short; that he has tried eight different faster-than-light transport systems, and always he has arrived older, and that time is growing short....The human is aghast when he learns that the alien is already over ten thousand Earth-years old. Even in that distant time, the human lifespan is far shorter. The human then realises the only true answer to this puzzle - no lifetime is ever long enough, unless one lives it in such a way as to make it enough. :) Fifty-two years was enough for Shakespeare...

Bill Robinson
 
Always difficult to extrapolate these results across wildly differing species. If the average lifetime of a worm was 1 month, then we're talking, at best, an improvement of 6 months. Perhaps 6 months is the improvement that you would see in humans? ;)
 
replies to all

ASIDE..ANYONE TELL ME HOW TO CLICK BACK TO SEE AGAIN YOUR POSTS, FROM REPLY PAGE, WITHOUT LOSING WHAT IS BEING TYPED ON REPLY PAGE?
thanks all for comments...
to robinson ..frog icon...
reasonable condition is met by the observation of "full youthful vigor". No life is long enough..is met by the possibility of other life extending means being found in the next 150 to 450 years.
Highly likely, if you but look at science's progress over the last 450years.
hmmmm i think the year 1550 was that long ago.

Fortis, good point. one hopes for proportional increases.We need more experiments.Did i hear you volunteer? LOL

caroline, ...the worms were not eternal babies, but vigorous adults. Good point about gene interaction...we need more experiments to look for such.
john newtol
 
I have heard of this reasearch, but I dont see it being turned into a drug that cures aging. Think of the problems that would cause. The world holds 10 times more people that it should hold. One cause of that is because people are living longer because of new medicines, now immagine if no one ever died, or even if just half the population of earth never died. We'd be walking on each other's heads! Plus the whole social security system would have to be re-designed. And there are too many people who believe that giving birth and dying are the natural ways. And there is no such thing as immortality. If you have ever seen Star Treck: Generations, remember Sauron's speech to Picard. "Time is like a predator, its always stalking you, oh sure you can try and out-run it with doctors, medicines, new technologies, but in the end, it will hunt you down, and make the kill."
 
It is of course possible that nature will take a hand and put a check on human reproduction, there is evidence of this happening at least in the west as the quality of human sperm seems to be dropping.
 
john answers all

HI all,, and thanks for comments. good ones.
YEA YEA...as to population, space is effectively infinite, so we can expand population out there. As to people being used to the idea of mortality, ...they once were used to slaves, and kings everywhere. times change.

Your general approach to frowning on tampering with nature, would it not result in avoiding all medicine?

Longevity pill would be just a "strong medicine".
P YOUNGER...well, nature has no real mind you knnow....sperm deterioration can be countered many ways. Frozen sperm banks from today could be used for thousands of yrs during any deterioration of new sperm
.
TO ALL...i urge you to look inward..are you letting a box contain your minds? The box of "death has always been there, let us only think in terms of that limit". I urge you to avoid chosing death, instead of "thinking out of the box." I am amazed how strong boxism is...you world rather die than think out of the box.
 
Well....yeah, space is infinite, but....is going into space as good as it seems? Oh sure we'll have plenty of room, but we dont even know if there are other inhabitable planets ANYWHERE. Plus how would we get there, the current laws of physicics prohibit warp travel. Anyways, we will invent a longevity drug before we master space travel, and I guarantee you that once the immortality or even life extending drug hits the market, you will see a population explosion like youve never seen it before.
 
replies

Suppose Fleming, newton, einstein, watson, etc had not had their careers nipped off at the outset, and kept on discovering for hundreds of years. Such wd be the result of longevity drugs. So greater food production and settling space would arrive quickly. end of problem...LOL, he said, half-seriously.
 
Re: john answers all

john186292 said:
TO ALL...i urge you to look inward..are you letting a box contain your minds? The box of "death has always been there, let us only think in terms of that limit". I urge you to avoid chosing death, instead of "thinking out of the box." I am amazed how strong boxism is...you world rather die than think out of the box.
Click to expand...



Wouldnt thinking outside of this box also take into consideration that many things would be harmed on earth before we could get the massive overpopulation into space. We dont even have the tech for that yet, not even a moon colony, yet we are already overpopulated and are already exhausting earth to the detriment of non human inhabitants Click for info

And why would people want to leave this beautiful planet anyway. Oh hang on... by then it will be a barren wasteland with dirty air, bugger all bio diversity, no natural (just recycled) drinking water etc etc etc.

Will mankind learn if they ever get into space. Of course they wont, they will just find another planet to rape and pillage.

This box you think out side of just leads to another more selfish box and I will be no part of it.

The population must go DOWN not up
 
answers

hi,
.....thinking outside the current box need not be selfish. One must use values to direct where the bigger box goes. Recommending death to everyone,as is what the current small old box dictates, is quite harmful. It kills billions, eh wot?? A close cousin of the harm fm selfishness

So, how to end death and also all harm fm larger population. That is the new question.
The carrying capacity of earth depends on how inventive we are in growing food, etc. scientists with centuries of additional knowledge, will inevitably find better ways of raising crops, etc.

Birth control can also slow any pop. increases. Current surprise is the pop shrinkage which no one had predicted. Catch up with the news, ol friend.
john newtol
 
What you have in mind seems so far ahead as to appear science fiction. How can we increase food growth without harming the environment and depriving species other than humans of their homes.

At the moment we are failing to do this BIG TIME. Mankind is not even working together yet. :sceptic:

example: People are trying to cure disease and trying to end poverty but curing disease will increase population which is the direct cause of poverty. Malaria kills approx 900,000 people a year in poverty stricken areas of Africa. Mankind is very close to ending malaria and if successful there will be 900k more mouths to feed in the above area plus these 900k more people a year will breed. Those who would have died of malaria will instead starve or die of malnutrition related illness. The only people who will really benefit are those with the money or might to buy or forcably take the food that does exist. Only the rich and mighty survive. Rather typical of mankind.

We have to look outside of the box alright, look ahead and take every possibility into account. We need to take risks to progress but we need to manage those risks and manage the greed that comes naturally to mankind.

Your views are interesting and I would love to see mankind leave earth and then live really long lives in space. Just as long as they do no unnecessary harm to any other species to get there. If earth is left intact and healthy then goodbye man, travel far and good riddence. Can't see it happening tho, sadly greed will get in the way. Politicians are more interested in themselves than the space projects, as soon as one nation starts to get the advantage in space there will be an arms race, a cold war. Scientists are more interested in fame and recognition than they are in thinking forward and those that do think forward are obstructed by the politicians (see above).

Once there is only one nation under totally democratic control with strict rules on population numbers and the abolition of greed...... blah blah blah :hmm: this is a depressing post to type but I think I have made my point .......


How will this mighty plan happen then ? Or are you thinking of the year 3000 for completion ? By then we will all be clones anyway :p
 
In most well off countries the population is decreasing because of wealth...
The population of some other countries is increasing because of poverty and the desire for the limited form of social support afforded by having children who may or may not support you in your old age.
Many countries, which would otherwise increase in population because of this desire for support, are decreasing because of disease or war-induced poverty.
The solution to all these problems it seems obvious to me is more wealth, available to all.
A wealthy world would very likely adjust itself until the population was something comfortable- which could be any where between 10 million and ten billion (the world is 9/10ths empty after all)
The population of space will go ahead, but Einstein's limitations mean that the expansion of population wil happen independently of what happens on earth- the speed of light is too slow for any population to spread out under any sort of Malthusian compulsion.
Here is a biography of a long-lived individual I invented, just to show that future humanity will find plenty of things to do with their time.
The great limitation will be memory, in my opinion, not lifetime- after a thousand years the human brain would have no room for any more memories, even with the most advanced data compression
 
There is an echo in here ... echo in here ... o in here ... n here...
 
Thank you Caroline, the Echo has now faded :)
I think 10 million would be preferable to 10 billion, but there is plenty of room in the galaxy for nature- terraforming could allow stacks of room for every biome imaginable
 
Ive had a solution to the poulation problem in mind for several years now....its somewhat cruel but it could work. Create a world wide population reduction program. Basically people get lethal injections. Its completely voluntary, a group of people reveiew each person who enters and decides if they die or not. If they get accepted, they goto a lab and get a lethal injection.
 
Yeh we could televise it and put it out every Friday night aswell...
I dont agree with that but seriously why not get rid of some of the worlds most inhuman criminals?
 
john returns...

hi all,
question..
tried to post a poll.
haven't seen it go up yet.
does the software still support putting up a poll hereon? No screen appeared for me to detail the poll question, adter i checkd the little box below the new thread screen.
thanks, john
 
CHROMOSOME,GENE REFERENT NOMENCLATURE ?

anyone know what the radioactive sign means on this forum? sometimes it is replaced by something that looks like a wax seal. same seal is also often above
the first title of the list of posts.
NEWS...elixirpharm.com is the site of the business that dr. kenyon founded. Gives good repeat validation of some of what i have posted here, in a much more restrained tone. seems the co. will search for molecules that shut down the gene daf2, among other aging genes.

QUESTION ....DAF2 explained?

can anyone explain just what each character refers to in the term daf2? I assume it has some connection to the no. of the chromosome and its two legs.
john newtol
 
Lifespans

Ok, I'm going to demonstrate my Biological ignorance now by asking what may be a simple question. Is it true, as I've heard said several times, that all environmental factors aside, an animals lifespan (humans included) is determined solely by the rate at which it uses its finite number of heartbeats up? The theory runs that all creatures have roughly the same number of heartbeats (I've seen many guesses, usually around 1 billion), and so creatures with faster heartbeats use them up faster and, thus, die sooner.

Is this 'true', ot perhaps just symptomatic of some other factor that 'really' determines lifespan?

It seems to largely be borne out (no exceptions spring to mind), but somehow it just doesn't sound right: too simple perhaps and certainly any theory that removes environmental concerns is not really all that useful.

Anyway, if someone can save me from my ignorance...
 
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