Gene glitches may hold secret of a long life

[nkb]

Professor Chaos wrote

By the way, lucky gal, I'm 29, I ache a lot, and I rarely get laid. Things weren't much different last year.

That's what you get for getting married.

[Professor Chaos]

nkb wrote

That's what you get for getting married.

Yep. And having two kids. The aching part is health-related, though. I guess I should be grateful it's not the other way around...

[Sternwallow]

oldhippychick wrote

Interesting article, and thanks for the link. Knowledge is good, wonderful to read about, but then I worry about the application of knowledge like this.

I'm probably older than a lot of the forum members, and I wonder if that skews my perspective, but every time I read about the life-extension movement, I have to skeptically ask, what is the reason people want to live 200 years? Man, everything already hurts a little at age 50...150 years of increasing and painful deterioration? the last 100 years with Alzheimers? And all of it uninsured and without a national health care plan? Please, don't sign me up!

Also, humans are severely overpopulated anyway. if 4999 out of every 5000 of us died tomorrow from some pandemic, that might balance the animal community a bit, at least for awhile, and slow down the so-called sixth extinction. Thus, extending life through manipulation of genes does not seem like a smart move to me. Not that I personify "mother" nature, or think that there's a "plan," but there is, I think, a natural order, and I'm really not that enthusiastic about the idea of messing with it in these sorts of ways. But then, I'm the oldhippychick, and I would think that way, eh? Hey-ho, go with the flow. It's my job as a mammal to die when I'm scheduled to die, and get recycled back into the ecosystem, so that newer forms of life can take my place.

Eventually, ya pervert the natural order, and the piper will be have to be paid. Strep becomes resistant to antibiotics, insects become resistant to insecticides, Roundup quits working on weeds, the "progress" of lead-ing gasoline resulted in all of us having low-level lead poisoning and the horrible pollution at the mines (yeah, so your granddaughter downstream of the mine died at age 10 screaming in pain of cancer, but at least your car didn't knock on the way to the funeral). You manipulate longevity and you trade in temporary gains for the people who can afford it for long-term costs for every living creature. I just read the Bird/whoever biography of Oppenheimer and it sounds as if he understood that a bit too late. But the bomb will never get put back in the box--just crazier and crazier religious nuts get access to it.

Now, I'm not a total Luddite -- love my telescope, which is inexpensive but Galileo would have coveted -- but am I the only atheist who worries that there is something inherently wrong (not morally, but practically) with trying to circumnavigate nature?

Wanting to do so is a sort of hubris that reminds me of the hubris of religion: "we're so special. We're the chosen people/species." But we aren't. There is no Choser. And we're no "higher" or better than a slimemold or maple tree and don't "deserve" more than our natual lifespan.

Your posts have been so congenial that I regret having to disagree with you at what appears to be a pretty fundamental level.
It seems to me that all animals including us are biologically disposed to live for just as long as is possible to do without being in great pain or fear or dread. As I see it, my time to die is when I choose it or when my body fails to continue living. Anything that can prolong that life, and as long as I still have the right and the means to pull the switch when I deem it appropriate is fair game. I would, of course, hate to be immortal with no exit.
As to the hubris of trying to change the natural scheme of things, every time primitive man peed in a river he was exercising human power to change nature. Tilling the soil imposes man's will on nature. Animal husbandry over the tens of centuries has produced animals that would have been unrecognizable to their forebears and which are completely incapable of surviving without human support. We left our natural habitat in the trees to wander the savanna to the lasting detriment change in nature.

So, I think that we, as part of the natural order, change that order with every move we make. This is not a perversion. There is no way that nature "ought" to be other than what is embodied in us and the earth around us. The order of nature is not fixed and there is no preferred agent of change. So, does it matter to you if the impending global warming was caused by the automobile or the volcano? Either way we can and should come to an understanding of it and, if appropriate and practical, maybe even do something about it. Finger pointing will not get progress made.

I plan to continue applauding the tireless workers who stretch "three score and ten" years to five score or fifty score. By the way, I'll gladly match infirmities and impending loss of function with you, youngster.

Also, I have Alzheimer's, but, thank goodness I don't have Alzheimer's yet.

Benefits of Alzheimer's disease:
You can hide your own easter eggs
You keep meeting new people
You can laugh at the same jokes every day
You can hide your own easter eggs

An oldie, but a goodie.

[clambake]

mmfwmc wrote

Benefits of Alzheimer's disease:
You can hide your own easter eggs
You keep meeting new people
You can laugh at the same jokes every day
You can hide your own easter eggs

An oldie, but a goodie.

Stolen from some comedian many years ago explaining why we have easter egg hunts:

When they opened the tomb of Jesus and didn't find him, somebody said, "Hey, did you look behind the couch?"

[Sternwallow]

clambake wrote

When they opened the tomb of Jesus and didn't find him, somebody said, "Hey, did you look behind the couch?"

'till it hurts!!!!

[PhilOchsLives]

I recall some years back when a prominent Southern evangelist got caught with a big dick in his mouth. This guy had spent his life denying evolution, but when caught sucking another man's dick, he said it was "a genetic problem".

Sternwallow, I get your position, and it's fine to respectfully disagree. Intelligent people will, and there's meaning and interest in that to me.

There's a great moment in Nevada Barr's first novel, set at a national park, where the philosophy of "let nature take its course" is taken to cruel extremes. A rebellious ranger nurses hurt wild animals back to health nevertheless, and when the protagonist finds this out and asks him about it, he says, "I AM nature, and I am taking my course." A great moment in the novel, and much like what you're saying. If we evolved to be able to do something, it's "nature," of a sort. It's our nature to be technological, even when that technology makes certain our own demise.

I can't help thinking, though, what if Strom Thurmond had lived to 200? Shudder.

[Sternwallow]

There are a lot of parallels between humanity on Earth and an algal bloom in a river. The algae reproduce as fast as though a creator had told them to. They collectively use up all of the available resources in the river without a single thought for the future, the other organisms in the river or the long-term algae benefit of moderation. The colony grows until, in growing competition with itself for ever scarcer food and oxygen, it forces access to such resources as had been sequestered in prior times in the river thereby ensuring that their destructiveness lives on for a long time after the bloom has died.

So, the river becomes foul, dead and stagnant. All of the fish and plants in the river die with no renewal for a very long time. The algal bloom, itself dies from its own thoughtless greed.

Take any single individual, though, it only does what it was designed to do with the tools and capabilities and material it was given, in order to thrive and prosper.

Looking at the destruction and decay caused by these creatures, nothing could be more "natural".

I don't know the science of it but the idea of extending life spans seems like a baaaad idea. Unless we can find another planet that can support life it sounds like a baaaaaaaaaaaad idea.

[Sternwallow]

Ross_videosprint wrote

I don't know the science of it but the idea of extending life spans seems like a baaaad idea. Unless we can find another planet that can support life it sounds like a baaaaaaaaaaaad idea.

Would you feel better about it if extended life carried a corresponding decrease in birth rate?

Sternwallow wrote

There are a lot of parallels between humanity on Earth and an algal bloom in a river. The algae reproduce as fast as though a creator had told them to. They collectively use up all of the available resources in the river without a single thought for the future, the other organisms in the river or the long-term algae benefit of moderation. The colony grows until, in growing competition with itself for ever scarcer food and oxygen, it forces access to such resources as had been sequestered in prior times in the river thereby ensuring that their destructiveness lives on for a long time after the bloom has died.

So, the river becomes foul, dead and stagnant. All of the fish and plants in the river die with no renewal for a very long time. The algal bloom, itself dies from its own thoughtless greed.

Take any single individual, though, it only does what it was evolved to do with the tools and capabilities and material it was given, in order to thrive and prosper.

Looking at the destruction and decay caused by these creatures, nothing could be more "natural".

Fix't