The possibility of longevity in humans

[aTOMiC2]

I seem to spend more and more time watching the science channel and managed to tune in at a point when the current program was discussing the possibility of extreme longevity in humans. It was explained that the body is pre programmed to age and therefore eventually die but that it may be possible to genetically interfere with the status quo and re program the natural life cycle to the point that a person could exist indefinitely and maintain the physical appearance and relative health of a 30 year old. Sounds pretty cool on the surface but what do you do with all of that spare time? There are only so many re runs of Seinfeld I can watch. Don't get me started on the resulting population explosion. I'm sure the earth would defend itself as best it could with hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions to help keep matters in check. Heck humans themselves are their own worst enemy but we're so dad blasted resourceful I expect a large part of the population would continue on until the sun eventually expanded into a red giant and consumed our precious earth. If this theory has any truth to it I really hope video game developers and blockbuster movie makers would be able to keep me entertained well into the 54th century. I expect by then the 40th Chronicles of Thomas Covenant would be just about complete in order to save us all from a boredom induced psychosis. Here’s to a future worth staying up for.

[Xar]

The problem with that theory is that you'll get cancer. the mechanisms that regulate senescence in living cells are those that, as soon as they are deactivated, prompt the cells towards uncontrolled proliferation and cancer. Even if it were possible to deactivate aging - which is still a sci-fi possibility with today's technology - chances are you wouldn't die of old age - but you'd die of multiple carcinoma.

[Loredoctor]

I remember a short story my brother and I wrote some years ago. It was about some Japanese soldiers (during WWII) who found a spring of eternal youth. We put in a twist that if they were to be immortal the bacteria on their bodies would be too. In the end a large mass of organisms killed them.

[Zarathustra]

I don't understand the nearly universal tendency to describe human longevity in negative terms--complete with the idea that the earth "defends" itself from us. Hurricanes aren't Gaia's revenge, no more than lightning is Zeus's weapons.

On cancer: don't you think that if we're advanced enough to indefinitely prolong our lives, that we might also be advanced enough to cure cancer? If we're talking about sci-fi possibilities, why the pessimissm?

And there is no reason why the earth can't support a human population of 100 billion or more. Our ability to get use out of resources is increasing exponentially. We are barely scratching the surface in terms of utilizing the available energy. Most of the energy of the earth-sun system is being wasted.

We will not always be limited to growing food in dirt, or carving it from animals. Those are crude technologies we'll soon see made obsolete. Cloning of animal body parts, and nanomanufacture of proteins, carbs, etc., will replace farming and butchering for food sometime later this century.

The general trend--which has been happening for several hundred years--of humans living longer, healthier lives with more resources, more entertainment, more knowledge, greater communication, and more freedom . . . these trends will continue to increase beyond your wildest pessimism. Take care of your body now so that you will live long enough to see it.

The first immortal humans have already been born.

[iQuestor]

I think the approach to longevity is to treat aging as a disease. If we can 'cure' that, as research suggests, I see no reason we cannot conquer it.

And Cancer -- I also think it can be conquered. it is inevitable we will get it naturally, but I do beleive it can be overcome.

[Zarathustra]

I think the approach to longevity is to treat aging as a disease. If we can 'cure' that, as research suggests, I see no reason we cannot conquer it.

And Cancer -- I also think it can be conquered. it is inevitable we will get it naturally, but I do beleive it can be overcome.

Good points, iQuestor. The general belief among "futurists" and some pioneering scientists and doctors, is that this century we will see breakthroughs which allow humans to live to be 150-200. I'm talking about breakthroughs only 20-30 years away. (Can you hang on that long?) Considering that some people have lived to be 120 with 20th century technology, that's not unreasonable. And then this exention will allow those same humans to take advantage of breakthroughs next century, extending life span to 500-1000. And so on. The technology available to humans in a 1000 years will be like magic to us.

And not only will we be living longer, but we'll be able to grow younger bodies. We'll reverse aging, so that we'll (that's you and me, folks) not only be very old, but have very healthy, "young" bodies. Your body regrows nearly all of its cells many times over. There's no reason why science cannot help us regrown undamaged versions of those cells. The process would take time, but it would literally be reverse aging.

[Xar]

I think the approach to longevity is to treat aging as a disease. If we can 'cure' that, as research suggests, I see no reason we cannot conquer it.

And Cancer -- I also think it can be conquered. it is inevitable we will get it naturally, but I do beleive it can be overcome.

Good points, iQuestor. The general belief among "futurists" and some pioneering scientists and doctors, is that this century we will see breakthroughs which allow humans to live to be 150-200. I'm talking about breakthroughs only 20-30 years away. (Can you hang on that long?) Considering that some people have lived to be 120 with 20th century technology, that's not unreasonable. And then this exention will allow those same humans to take advantage of breakthroughs next century, extending life span to 500-1000. And so on. The technology available to humans in a 1000 years will be like magic to us.

And not only will we be living longer, but we'll be able to grow younger bodies. We'll reverse aging, so that we'll (that's you and me, folks) not only be very old, but have very healthy, "young" bodies. Your body regrows nearly all of its cells many times over. There's no reason why science cannot help us regrown undamaged versions of those cells. The process would take time, but it would literally be reverse aging.

Malik, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but most of the theories and ideas you propose are simply far-fetched in comparison to where science is today. Cloning of animal body parts, reverse aging, an extended lifespan of millennia, unlimited resources, the complete defeat of cancer in all its forms - all these goals may be possible, of course, but even if they are - and that's a big IF with today's knowledge - they are well into the future (and I'm not talking about 20 years now, I'm talking at least 100 years before this kind of technology could conceivably appear AND be marketable for the masses).

Consider this. Any single pharmaceutical drug usually takes about 10 years (if not longer) from first synthesis to the end of the third-stage trials, and is only commercialized after the results of those trials demonstrate it is safe. And this is true for drugs which either we engineered ourselves (by knowing what we wanted to block or activate, where, and how), or that have a natural origin and which were demonstrated to have the property the company was looking for. But right now, we have not even definite clues as to what makes cells older, much less how to block, slow, or reverse that process. We know it might be something to do with telomeres and their shortening, but there's no final proof of that, and there is actually proof that cells with very short or no telomeres can still reproduce healthily. And we have no idea whether that's the only reason for obsolescence or not. "Methuselah mice" were generated in the lab, and they lived twice as much as a normal mouse - but they were genetically engineered for such a purpose (something we can't do to ourselves) and the same genes that gave them this lifespan also made them dwarves, adding several other abnormalities as well. Would any responsible parent decide that dwarfism and other abnormalities (including progressive blindness) are a small price for his child to pay in exchange for a doubled lifespan?

Cloning is also a very inefficient process. It takes, on average, 200-300 attempts in order to get a single clone, and the technology's improvements haven't significantly changed those odds in the last five years. Even if the odds were reduced to one success every 20-30 attempts, that would still be too inefficient for cloning livestock, and cloning specific body parts is even more far-fetched, given that we have no clue how to do that in the first place.

Now consider that even if longevity were accomplished - let's say humankind found a way to live up to 300 years - you would deal with a host of new problems. Unless cloning is perfected, and a host of other equally complicated technologies are as well, food and land would become scarce; unless a cure for cancer and other diseases (such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and so on) were also found (which is not necessarily the case) people would still have the same chances of suffering from these ailments, except that chance of getting these diseases increases as one gets older, so eventually you'd have a higher net chance of suffering from, say, cancer, than you would have now.

In short, while I admire your optimism, and I'm no pessimist myself, I think we should all be realist about this. Yes, there is a possibility of breakthroughs, but we cannot count on them to work exactly the way we want. And even if they happened, chances are it would be a long time before people would benefit from them.

[Zarathustra]

Malik, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but most of the theories and ideas you propose are simply far-fetched in comparison to where science is today.

I don't find that comment to be disrespectful. I'm pretty thick-skinned.

I realize these breakthroughs seem far-fetched, especially if you're going to compare it to what we can do today. But these aren't my own ideas. They are based on the research of people like Michio Kaku (physicist) and Ray Kurzweil (futurist). Most people do not realize that last century, humans figured out the three key componants of knowledge that will allow us to gain mastery over our physical being: genetics, quantum mechanics, and computer science. The discoveries have already been made. Now we just have to work out the details. (Granted, that's going to be an effort which takes up much of this century).

You use a figure of 100 years. I use a figure of 20-30 years. Neither of us knows. But I think you're not accounting for the fact that technological advancement is accelerating. The human genome project finished 2.5 years ahead of schedule and under budget. We continuously find ways to do things faster and cheaper. And the more we figure out, the more those discoveries will speed up future discoveries.

And these three "pillars of knowledge" I mentioned above will produce feedback loops in which one will speed developments in the others, accelerating the process even more. Advancement in computer technology, for instance, will speed our knowledge of the incredibly complex genetic code. And quantum mechanics will help us build more powerful computers. Etc. They will all feed off each other in ways not possible in the past. That's why you can't use the past as an indicator of how fast progress will happen in the future.

Your point about pharmaceutical companies taking 10 years to make a drug depends upon the old model of drug development, which includes lengthy trials. These trials are necessary because we don't fully understand our DNA, and we can't predict how chemicals will interact with our cells. But once we do finally understand our DNA, we won't make drugs in this manner. We'll each have our own personal DNA analyzed, and have a drug tailor made for our particular genetic faults. Nanotech will be used to quickly synthesize drugs tailored to each individual. There will be no mass trials.

There is always the likelihood of being too optimistic. People 50 years ago thought we'd be flying around in hover crafts by the year 2000. However, computers and genetic research were in their infancy 50 years ago. In 50-70 years from now, just imagine how our knowledge in these two areas will have increased. I certainly expect to be around in 50-70 years. That expectation is in no way unrealistic, even with today's medical technology (not to mention the tech available then). And my children can be even more optimisic about seeing the 22nd century. If we can make it that far, I see no limits. Even you admit these things might be 100 years in the future. That's why I say the first immortal generation has already been born. Our parents won't see it. We might. But our children certainly will. To think that I'm right on the cut-off point is enough to motivate me to take care of myself!

Most of the things I'm talking about aren't science fiction. They are realities--though only in the developmental stages. The hurdle now is merely finding ways to implement them and make them efficient, which is a technical detail, not an issue of needing more breakthroughs. The discoveries have already been made. My point is that we are on this path. It's not imaginary. It's real. The matter of how long it will take depends on the rate of our accelerating advancement, which is easy to underestimate.

[iQuestor]

I think it will be sooner rather than later.

I agree with Malik that your take on drug development taking so long is not a technological bottle neck, but a procedural one. I happen to know something about this , as I write software for FDA applications and work with many chem/pharm manufacturers.

And do not forget stem cells. A few weeks ago, scientists were able to isolate stem cells from amniotic fluid. twice. Now, if we can un-controversally get these cells, we can begin to grow new organs and I would say this technology would be availabe in 30-40 years rather than 100.

Gains in technology are not only accelerating, they are exploding. COmputer science produces faster computers (Which is directly responsible for the success of the genome project) which will speed up discoveries in Science and biology; a lot of reasearch being done is modeling, where instead of brute force type research we can play it out simulated on a PC>

Now I dont know about immortality, but I can definately see 150 avg lifespan within the next 50 years.

[Zarathustra]

Good post, iQuestor.

One thing about people living longer, with fully functional brains, is that really old scientists will have greater chance of completing research that they couldn't complete due to, well, lack of time. But also due to being born too early.

Just think what Leonardo da Vinci would be doing right now. Or Newton. Or even Einstein. To benefit from seeing their early work in the light of discoveries made a century or more later. . . wow, I can't even imagine what they'd do with that opportunity. The benefits of a longer, productive life would help everyone, but it would exponentially help these rare individuals--which indirectly helps us all.

These types of geniuses only come around once in a century or so. The more people we have on the planet, the greater chance we'll see a one-in-a-billion genius, someone who might solve the cold fusion problem, or the Grand Unification Theory, faster-than-light travel, time travel, or some other issue we haven't even dreamed of because we lack the insight to see the problem. My point is, that I don't see a growing population as a problem. People are our greatest resource.

And, we WILL eventually populate the the solar system, if not the galaxy. We don't have to worry about running out of room. I expect an asteroid to get us long before we run out of room on the earth. In fact, our greatest danger as a species is complacency . . . trying to remain in the illusory safety of our terrestrial womb. This planet is a ticking timebomb. We MUST spread our genetic "eggs" to more than one planetary "basket." (How's that for mixing metaphors? Wombs, bombs, baskets. )

The only way to ensure the survival of our species to is transcend the limits facing us--because make no mistake, remaining here means extinction. And more people living longer will certainly help in the fight against those limits.

[Xar]

Well, I keep saying you are far too optimistic, and perhaps looking at these theories - especially the biology-related ones - with rose-tinted glasses. Things aren't as nearly as simple as the TV, the Internet or so on wish people to believe. Trust me on that - I am a researcher and a biologist, after all, and I do work in one of the most prestigious institutes in Europe.
I don't say this to brag, but to point out that I'm well aware of the situation in many different fields. Malik, understanding DNA is not an easy task: if it were, then yes, we would be well on our way. But consider this. There are about 30,000 known genes in the human genome, interacting with each other in pathways which, often, we don't fully comprehend. Whenever I go to a meeting or a convention, the most common phrase heard at a lecture is "we don't know". Analyzing even just one of these genes and the effect it has on the organism takes years, even if it done by various labs all over the world: to make an example, I'm studying a gene encoding a subunit of a receptor in the neuromuscular synapse, and the study began before I came along - in 2004 - but we still have only very vague ideas of how the subunit affects the receptor. Add to this kind of results the fact that many genes are especially difficult to study, because the most useful tool in genetics and molecular biology - the transgenic mouse - simply cannot live without them, so it is impossible to have a transgenic mouse to analyze in order to find out what exactly the gene does.
It will take decades for us to decipher the human genome - we're still trying to decipher the murine genome, after all! And even once we have deciphered the human genome, custom-tailoring drugs to every patient's organism is not an easy task either. It often takes years - sometimes decades - before people can find out which ligand binds to a certain protein; it takes even more time before people find out which drug can inhibit the protein or mimic the effects of the ligand. Proteins called plexins, which are necessary for life, have been discovered in the 1990s, and yet we still have no clue as to what ligand binds to some of them.
Even once this additional hurdle is solved, creating molecules that are subtly different based on each person's DNA is not easy either; it's likely to be a slower process than normal drug preparation. And in any case, I doubt that the safety procedures are going to be changed any time soon - the thalidomide accident should be enough to warn people of the dangers they risk in releasing drugs onto the market without first knowing for sure about their potentially detrimental effects. In fact, you don't hear about it through the TV or newspapers, but drug or treatment trials have sometimes displayed fatal results on humans, just because the company moved to the third stage (human trial) before analyzing all the data. I spoke with a scientist working in the field of spinal cord regeneration, and she described a human trial in which people were injected specially prepared stem cells to recover from spinal cord injury. The cells instead gave them cancer, and they died.

iQuestor, yes, stem cells have been extracted from the placental liquid. And yes, if the technique works well, it could allow us to get stem cells without ethical problems. But did you know that we still have no idea how to coax stem cells into becoming a specific type of tissue? We know about growth factors and so on, but we still have no ability to keep undifferentiated stem cells indefinitely alive, or to force them to turn into a specific tissue (such as muscle or liver tissue). In fact, stem cells - if implanted in animals - give rise to teratomas, strange kinds of cancers containing many different tissues. A paper published two years ago about the production of patient-specific stem cells turned out to be a fake. The technology is in its infancy, and it takes years for such hurdles to be completely solved, and even more before the technology is deemed safe enough to be used on humans.

The truth is, these technologies will likely improve with time, but it will be a very long time.

[Avatar]

Excellent post Xar.

There is one thing I have to say that could be considered to be in favour of Malik's argument though, and that is that it is impossible to predict instances or appearances of human genius.

But because it is impossible to predict, we cannot rely on that appearance to suddenly solve the problems either.

Amazing things will becomepossible. But like you, I expect them to take a very long time. Certainly longer than our life-times.

--A

[Xar]

Excellent post Xar.

There is one thing I have to say that could be considered to be in favour of Malik's argument though, and that is that it is impossible to predict instances or appearances of human genius.

But because it is impossible to predict, we cannot rely on that appearance to suddenly solve the problems either.

Amazing things will becomepossible. But like you, I expect them to take a very long time. Certainly longer than our life-times.

The problem isn't the stroke of genius, however... the whole scientific institution, and the ideas of the people, are remarkably resistant to change. Take a look at the reactions people have about transgenic food, such as tomatoes. Despite the fact that we know exactly what the transgene does, despite the fact that this kind of products are not covered with pesticides or pumped with hormones, and therefore are healthier, how many people actually choose to eat them? And this is a technology that is several years old now. In 2010 scientists will present the first stem cell-derived steak, and a person will volunteer to taste it. At the time, the steak will cost $1000 per pound. Once it is demonstrated that the steak has no side effects, doesn't hurt people, or cause cancer, or whatever - a procedure that will require at least 5 years - industrial production might begin. But how many people will actually choose to eat it? It won't look like a normal steak, it probably won't have the same texture, and it will be manifestly declared as a transgenic, stem cell-derived product. It might cost, say, $20 per pound. Given how people still react to "normal" transgenic plants, how many people will choose this meat over normal meat? And above all, why should they, if the cost is comparable to normal meat - and the latter is available?

The scientific institution by itself is a machine that takes years to properly process any breakthrough, especially when talking about biological or chemical processes. Even after this is completed, people are notoriously afraid of change, despite how attractive change might be from an objective point of view. And changing people's minds about these things might literally take generations, especially since it requires a level of specialized instruction that many people simply don't have (how many people study transgenic products in science class?).

[Zarathustra]

Xar, what do you need to speed things up? What tools would make things go faster? Where are the bottlenecks, in your opinion?

Don't you think that more powerful computers would help? Or what about a leap forward in nanotechnology? A change in ethical restrictions? What's the holdup, in your opinion?

You obviously know more about the details, the mechanics, and the science than I do. But, again, people who knew a lot more than I do overestimated how long the human genome project would take. And I've read that it was increases computer processing power that led to the project finishing faster than expected and under budget. Couldn't a similar acceleration happen with the examples you mentioned?

[Nerdanel]

Approaching the problem from a programmer's perspective, understanding and manipulating the human genome is so hard because the human genome is a total mess, although a mess that works. If you tried to write software like the human genome, you'd get yourself fired - except that if it was an important and working piece you wouldn't, you would retain your employment for exactly the time required to fix your code to a semi-tolerable state, as nobody else but you could be expected to decode your work - except that you wouldn't, as you would never be able to program anything nontrivial that way, as you wouldn't be able to understand it yourself.

The human genome is pure "machine code" with no comments and no variable names, let alone intuitively named ones, except that real machine code is more readable than the human genome. All the low-level and high-level programming languages were developed because programming in ones and zeroes is an exercise in masochistic unproductivity, but that process is meant to be one-way. Decompilers exist - although not for the human genome - but the results are generally that good, as "irrelevant" information is thrown away in the compiling stage, and also compilers rearrange things in order to improve performance, which also has the side effect of making the compiled code harder to understand for humans.

The code structure of the human genome is pure "spaghetti code", meaning no structure at all. Neither there is a separation between code and data. And the human body is not a single-processor machine, not even a multiprocessor machine, but a custom thing with no single clock to synchronize things. Asynchronous circuits are known to be potentially far more fast and efficient than synchronous ones, but people keep making synchronous circuits (where all parts have to wait for the clock to let them continue, and the maximum clock speed is determined by the slowest part) since those things can be understood and debugged far better than the asynchronous ones.

I think bugfixing humans would be something like bugfixing the programs from the Obfuscated C Contest, except far, far worse to an unfathomable degree. You can change something, but you can never be quite sure if your fix really works and if there might be unexpected side effects in seemingly unrelated parts that cause all new and worse bugs, like becoming psychotic at puberty or some other scenario of the numerous possibilities, which would mean extensive and you-guessed-it long testing. The most efficient avenue of solution I can think of: develop an AI far smarter than a human and let IT tweak the human genome (unless it decides to destroy us instead).

[Fist and Faith]

[aTOMiC2]

I wonder how much opinions have changed in the 9 years since I posted this thread? I've not read much in the way of progress on the issue however I'm not exactly researching the subject either.

[JIkj fjds j]

Keep saving the bubblegum,
dude!

neat pic

[Vraith]

I wonder how much opinions have changed in the 9 years since I posted this thread? I've not read much in the way of progress on the issue however I'm not exactly researching the subject either.

There has been a ton of progress. But, related to what someone else posted above, aging [and cancer, and lots of things] turns out to be many caused. So the progress seems less than it actually is.

There may not be a master switch---OTOH, we're reaching a point where we don't need one switch, our knowledge will be able to balance them all, with appropriate timing and methods.

Just recently---taking stem-cell generated heart cells, put it on a real heart, they grow and fix the heart.
Take lab-grown baby neurons, put them in damaged part of the brain, they grow and fix it.

Some other things that people are looking at---it turns out that there are a LOT of living things that do not just die. They don't age, they don't get cancer, they don't deteriorate physically. They're effectively immortal unless something kills them.
[[that's fun in its dark way, to play with---think on it...Death is not the one "natural" think that all living things are subject to---but murder is.]]