physical immortality/mortality...

[floyd]

do you think aging is a disease, why or why not?

[SheepDog]

What do you mean, "disease"?

[Sam172]

aging is a lesson, not a disease :). The reason being that aging reminds us of our own mortality. Aging can be benefitial, if only it is taken in the right way.

[Arcael]

some day i will be a robot and I wont need flesh to run around in the fields of alfalfa

[Utopmk]

I have had this article bookmarked for several weeks:



A 'cure' for old age?
by Neil Sands
Posted Fri, 05 Mar 2004 http://health.iafrica.com/cm_pics/health/6-2035-0-0_182697.jpg

Humans could live for hundreds of years as scientists develop treatments to "cure" old age like any other disease, a US researcher said on Thursday.

Michigan State University clinical professor of medicine Michael Fossel said researchers had already "rejuvenated" skin cells in the laboratory and the potential existed to expand the technology to turn back the entire ageing process.

"We're altering the amount of gene expression and in skin cell tissue in the labratory we can actually reset the clock and take old cells and make them act like young cells," he told AFP.

"The question that we want to ask ourselves is 'can we do this to people?'

"The idea that you cannot reverse ageing in cells or tissue is wrong, you can. We just don't know if it will be useful clinically. A lot of us suspect it will but we haven't tested it yet."

Fossel, in Sydney to address a conference on longevity, said scientists had altered the way cells act.

"What we essentially do is reset the cells to do what they used to do when you were young," he said. "We don't change them, alter them, no, we just reset them to do exactly what they did decades prior to what they're doing now.

"What sets the clock in you is a change in gene expression that occurs as you get older. It has to do with dividing cells and the damage they cause to all the other cells.

"For example, in your heart, when people die of heart attacks they die because their vessels have problems, and that clock is set right in the cells that lie in the vessels and what we can do is reset those clocks. So the question is what happens when we do it? In the lab it works beautifully, but again it's different trying it in people."

He said the research had the potential to dramatically affect ageing.

"If we reset that clock we don't know what the limit becomes," he said.

"There's a guy at Cambridge who says it's 5000 years, others say it won't change.

"Personally, at a guess I'd say it probably would be a couple of centuries but the way I often described the limit is indefinite, because really I don't know."

Asked if people should simply accept ageing as a part of life, Fossel said people already treated it as a disease.

"That same biologist who'll tell you that ageing is not a disease will be dying his hair and using retin-A for his skin and so on," he said.

"It's treating the symptoms of ageing, not the root cause, which is what I'm talking about."

Fossel admitted many of his peers were sceptical about his theories but said the idea of reversing ageing challenged fundamental concepts.

"I find its the medical and biology students who are the most receptive," he said. "It reminds me of that old adage in physics — old theories don't die, just their proponents do'."

Fossel, who will publish a book called 'Cells, Ageing and Human Disease' next month, said scientists were constantly making new discoveries relating to ageing.


Personally, I think if there were a "cure" for age, we'd be in alot of trouble.

[Hypnos]

That's just a semantic question.

Does aging suck? Yes.

[Claverhouse]

aging is a lesson, not a disease :). The reason being that aging reminds us of our own mortality. Aging can be benefitial, if only it is taken in the right way.


You are 17.



Claverhouse

[int]

I'm only 25, but I'd never want to be a kid again. Especially a teen. I actually look forward to getting old and eventually dying. It's natural.

[Sam172]

You are 17.



Claverhouse
Then ask me the same question when i'm 75 :)

[SensEye]

Sam's right, aging sucks. But he shouldn't be aware of it at 17. Biologically, you don't really start deteriorating until your early 30's. It's all downhill from there.

[Strephonade]

I've always wanted to be old. Wisdom comes with age, and there's no better way of getting it than living through it all.

[SheepDog]

That's just a semantic question..
:) see my comment above...

[jimkopelli]

Effective immortality could cause a lot of problems... who decides who gets the treatment? The last thing we need is 400 year old rich people and politicians... and also, if you make it available to the masses, then you have food supply problems...
Say, what's the leading cause of death these days? Is it age? If you remove that, then your next ones are medical problems and accidents... we might have to set up more "accidents" as population control... or develop a way to make people spread out... (space?)

Anyway, Heinlein plug time. Time Enough For Love covers people who live in a society that has treatments to indefinitely prolong life.

[floyd]

physical (which includes mental decay) begins around 18-22, that's when fluid intelligence (abstract thinking / pattern recognition) starts to drop based on research. crystalized intelligence (factual/experiential memory) does not tailspin till around 50 but that's a lower brain center function.

in so far as exercise and not overeating seem to be the most universal treatment to increase health, i wonder why people think medicine or some extrinsic therapy will be the answer to aging. i think research is key but i think the solution to aging (if there is one) will be lifestyle changes not some magic pill.

the more physically deteriorated you are the less freedom you have (physically and intellectually), so i don't understand the argument for the benefits of aging. if you like living, why would you want to deteriorate?

hypothetical question...

at some point in the future a solution for eliminating aging is found, how would you react? how would you explain how you once thought that aging is a natural part of life?

do you think its a waste of money for the goverment to spend money researching the causes of aging and how to reverse them?

[hemanthraz]

yeah, its something like too much of a good thing.With the expectation of infinite life peoplw wont be motivated to do so many of the things that kep them moving.I for one would permanently assign everything to be done tomorrow, and how will that solve any problems.

Also reminds me of Anne Rices vampire novels, immortality has a lot of problems associated with it, apart from practical problems.

[floyd]

it being problematic is not relevant to whether or not old age will some day not exist.

i think if you find death less problematic than life than you probably don't like living very much.

[INTrPosr]

I recall reading something, in the early 80's, which alluded to scientist being baffled why the body stops regenerating. They have no viable reason for aging.

[Vagabond]

Well you know what they say... "some age... others mature". :D

Mortality is nature's safety key to preserve its balance, definitely not a disease. (You might as well call it an adjusting natural choice of different species in order to continue existing). Don't just think humans and don't just think of us here and now, think of the big picture...

[floyd]

/Mortality is nature's safety key to preserve its balance, definitely not a disease. /

definitely? how can you be definite?

[Aryan]

Thinking of immortality, i sometimes imagine, what if my brain and memories could be fit into a machine which derives it energy source from the cosmi particles or something else which are omnipresent. In this way, although my body has died, my brain would still be alive, and taking in information and thinking would be still possible.

Wonder how much information can i analyse in this state, or suppose if i am flung into space i can spend the entire time observing the universe until i reach its borders.
So much thinking, makes me bored sometimes, so i think i will also include a self destruct mechanism in the machine :)

[Vagabond]

/Mortality is nature's safety key to preserve its balance, definitely not a disease. /

definitely? how can you be definite? Okay, add a "in my opinion" before that and there you go. Sometimes I forget it doesn't go without saying for everyone.

[Jezebel]

If you define disease as nothing more than something that weakens and deteriorates the body, then I can see how aging can be considered a disease. But I think it is also important to remember that most definitions of disease also include that it is an abnormal condition of the body. Since aging happens to every creature eventually (even those in otherwise optimal health), then I do not think it can be considered a disease. The exceptions being if you are referring to abnormal aging processes such as progeria (rapid aging syndrome).

[floyd]

i think its very simpleminded to say that aging is not a disease because it happens to everyone.

//////////
dis·ease Audio pronunciation of "disease" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-zz)
n.

1. A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms.
///////////

i think aging falls under genetic defect. the more commonly old age is thought of as natural and unavoidable (now and forever) the less likely resources and minds will expend energy on curing it. if aging is an avoidable disease, what's more important than finding that cure? if not, what is the harm in being open to the possibility that it is a disease?

it goes beyond finding a cure for aging. if in 50, 100, 200, 2000 years suddenly aging is cured, there will be huge population problems that will need to be solved. now if people start thinking about a world without aging now, the world will be more ready for that.