If you "cure" aging you induce cancer.

Get used to it. Mortality is a necessary part of our survival and the engine of our evolution.

Nonsense, VT. There's no insurmountable reason why we can't conquer old age and sickness. It's hard for us to imagine now of course, but it also would have been hard for someone from 100 years ago to imagine today's world.

I'm not entirely sure how much of Aubrey's stuff to take seriously, not being a biology expert, but I do know one thing: Ray Kurzweil has repeatedly stated his confidence that he'll be able to live long enough to see the day when aging becomes haltable or reversable. The man is 54, and he has a good reputation for winning bets and making accurate predictions about technological advancement. I take the man seriously, and based on the advances I've seen in the last several years I think he's not too far off the mark.

Actually, VT, the linked interview notes that short-circuiting the pathways for cancer is one of the prime to-dos in order to begin speaking of aging as "curable."

I might recommend reading the article links before commenting next time...

It's easy to cure aging. Die young.

Joe,

Look at each of his catagories of curable killers and consider how many very different medical conditions can be lumped into each catagory. If he could cure ONE THING; for example, pancreatic cancer, the Pharm cmpanies would be making him as rich as Bill Gates. Instead of getting rich he's giving interviews. He's got a cute cocktail party discussion, not a revolution.

Practical Imortallity, and Sentient A.I. are singularities due to arrive about 20 years after the first commercial fusion reactor goes online.

There've been a couple of breakthroughs in the last few years with regards to aging - the insulin-like daf-2 biochemical pathway mapped out in c.elegans that seem to significantly increase (1.5-2x) the worms's lifespan when knocked out, the (apparently related) research on calorie restriction diets that extend lifespan (120-130%) in a variety of animal research models, as well as the potential replacement therapies that stem cell research (and tissue engineering for replacement organs) presages. All of these discoveries suggest a good medium term future for anti-aging therapies. As longevity pathways are discovered and mapped at the genetic/proteomic level, new opportunities for pharmacogenomic interventions and gene therapies will present themself for development.

It's also worth mentioning that the ongoing reverse engineering of the brain (http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65422,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1) and advances in imaging technologies may create the possibility of preserving memories and preference structure or imaging fine neural maps, until some of the more um, intractable problems of consciousness preservation/storage and biological maintenance/reploacement can be resolved (insert standard extropian ranting here, bonus points for invoking a singularity based black box solution). This work is way outside of my field of expertise, but it's pretty sexy science, just the same.

That said, there are some daunting scientific challenges that remain - probably the hardest (IMO) is the one that's bedeviled gene therapy since it's inception - basically how to get a genetic patch/mod (via vector, artifical chromosome, tamed virus, what have you) into enough of the 10^12-14 cells in a human body to make a difference (which, to his credit, de Grey emphasises). Still, effective anti-aging therapies are tantalisingly close (some people are actually on extreme calorie restriction diets based on the animal studies, under the assumption that they'll buy enough time for drugs that mimic calorie restriction to be developed, for example). It's a risky bet. Perhaps in a 15-20 years?

The next few decades may make a huge difference in this (the research trends look great), provided that a couple of different political realities remain constant - there are a number of decidedly non-scientific challenges that may stall this research.

The funding for basic research needs to continue, the incentive structure for private drug development oughtn't be messed with (like socialized medicine, which'll ruin profit driven pharmacogenomic R&D in the US), and of course if one of the research centers of the US goes up, or the US economy fails catastrophically (or has to be diverted to total war), or politicisation of science cuts federal funding into, say, promising avenues of basic research, all bets are off. Mostly this will simply slow down the rate of progress, but of course, that means WE won't likely benefit from it. And given that of the ~2.4 million Americans that die each year, (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm)
maybe, say, a million deaths a year could be prevented with really good replacement therapies? Cardiovascular, diabetes, lots of cancer related deaths could probably be addressed by progress in these fields of research, so the real cost in human lives in the US for stalling this research is something on the order of 75,000 people a month. As a humanist/mad scientist, I'm optimistic about the research (particularly the fact that so many different research approaches are being developed in parallel), but it all exists in a pretty fragile social web.

Joe, currently our chances of dying of cancer are exponential, doubling every year after some base age, it used to be 63, but may have changed.
One of my profs said we could reasonably expect to live to be 100 with good quality of life, but he based that theory on results from mice studies involving pre-cancerous environment. In the EEA, we were lean, active hunter gatherers, and so the systems evolved for optimum performance under conditions including irregular feeding and high activity. Translating, the mice who were half starved and had to work for their food stayed younger appearing and did not develop cancers (and wrinkles!) like the mice that were allowed a sedentary life of unrestricted eating.
It would be interested to see how many of the seven are directly related to overweight and inactivity. :)

Gene Thug;
The problem with your consciousness container replacement ideas (or anyone else's, almost) is that the layout and content of any digital or electronic device can be duplicated at will ad infinitum. So how many of you do you want? And unless the "downloading" is unavoidably destructive to the original, simultaneous meat and metal yous will be possible. Same problem with Star Trek "beaming" or other transmat ideas. If one perfect received copy, why not many?

This is a drastic form of the conundrum: after any period of unconsciousness or sleep, prove that you are not a new identity with the memories and equipment of the previous occupant (now vanished forever) and hence the illusion of being the same old same old. Hell, never mind proving it: just think about it seriously for a while and try and 100% convince yourself!

Prof. De Grey. Dorian Grey?

I ran a check on Prof. de Grey and he's legit - this information site on his work is clearly hosted on Cambridge's web servers.

As for "Portrait of Dorian Gray," amusing catch that there's a phonetic resemblance with Prof. de Grey - but not a literal one.

>>Same problem with Star Trek "beaming" or other transmat ideas. If one perfect received copy, why not many?

Sounds fine to me. Think of how much more work I could get done!

The present rate of discovery in biology is amazing. More will be learned in the next ten years than in the preceding ten thousand years.

Progress against cancer:

The New York Times:

"Cancer will become a chronic disease that we will manage much the same way we manage high blood pressure or diabetes," said Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, the director of the National Cancer Institute.

Progress against heart disease:
Stem Cells Heal a Broken Heart
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,57944,00.html
“The teenager's therapy began Feb. 17 with a four-day regimen of a drug that stimulated the production of stem cells in his blood. On Feb. 21, doctors harvested Bonnville's stem cells. Using a heart catheter, they transplanted the stem cells into the artery that supplies blood to the front of the heart.
He was discharged about a week later and is now recuperating at home. His doctors say they have never seen a recovery like his.”

The first anti-aging therapies will come from treatments for common diseases of aging. These treatments will delay death and improve quality of life.

Then there will be treatments to restore body systems to younger states, e.g., the immune system, the circulatory system, hormonal levels, hair and skin etc.

Such treatments will extend lives so that people presently in their fifties and sixties may eventually benefit from the research pursued by de Grey.

Anti-aging does not mean immortality. People will continue to die.

Nor does anti-aging mean no evolution or change. Much as people enhance their bodies with cosmetic surgery today, they will enhance their minds and bodies with biotech and cybertech.

Joe, this is what William Hamilton, my personal idol and IMHO the greatest geneticist that ever lived says--

"Therefore one last confession. I, too, am probably coward enough to give funds for 'elixir' gerontology if anyone could persuade me that there is hope: at the same time I want there to be none so that I will not be tempted. Elixirs seem to me an anti-eugenical aspiriation of the worst kind and to be no way to create a world our descendents can enjoy."

He died at 63 in 2000 after contracting malaria doing AIDS research in Africa.

Brian,

The problem with your consciousness container replacement ideas (or anyone else's, almost)...

Well, first off, thanks for going through the trouble of decyphering my atrocious typing ;). These certainly aren't my ideas (I'm on much sturdier ground discussing molecular genetics), but you do raise some interesting questions re:

1) unique identity - that is, if consciousness is digitizible in some extremely processing and memory storage abundant future, it'll be easy enough to copy, and

2) The inevitable divergence of identity between copies or stored "snapshots" of our consciousness, and our actively experiencing consciousness, which'll be changing in response to new experiences.

These, to me, seem like philosophical or aesthetic problems with consciousness storage, rather than technical ones. Anyone who's played enough videogames have likely addressed issues of copying and making multiple "saves" for various reasons. Is the fact that something can be done inherently a flaw? Well, it can't be done yet, so we may just end up agreeing to disagree about potential/imaginary technology applications, but now's a fine time to discuss it (remember how cloning caught all the bio-ethicists by surprise? Man, that's lame!). I don't have any personal problem with letting people have as many 'selves' as they can afford, (with the usual libertarian/classical liberal caveats about respecting everyone's property rights, equality before the law, universal 'human' rights, etc.). Other people may disagree.

Some science fiction authors like Greg Egan (Permutation City, Diaspora, etc.), Cory Doctorow (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom), Richard Morgan's Altered Chrome, etc., have done a pretty good job taking ideas from Pinker's theories of consciousness and extrapolating out some of the entirely human difficulties that show up in a future where consciousness backups/dubbing/p2p are ubiquitous. Some of their solutions are quite clever in this regard.

If memories and preference structure are encoded in neural structure (I'll grant that this is a big 'if', but I also think that this'll be testable fairly soon), then scanning/storing/modelling someone's brain really is just a function of current technical limitations in imaging/storage/processing power, and the trend lines on all of these look promising.

jinnderella

> It would be interested to see how many of the seven are directly related to overweight and inactivity.

Well, of the 700,000 people in the US who die of heart disease (& the ~170,000 lung cancer deaths), it's arguable that most (if not all) of these are lifestyle induced (via nicotine associated p53 inactivation, dietary fat and sloth). That's what, a third of all annual deaths in the US?

I'm a bit more of an optimist than you on the cancer front, I think. Progress in this field seems glacially slow, but it's occurring on so many fronts that who knows where the next beakthrough will come from? Certainly, as people age, the genetic insults/errors accumulate, but advances in tissue engineering (and ubiquitous regular high resolution body imaging) may make this particularly manageable, at least for people who can afford to have their solid tumors excised, or their organs "hot swapped" as necessary. And who knows? Maybe the next iteration of angiogenesis inhibitors or cancer specific tailored viruses (that feast on p53 inactivated cancerous cells) will live up to the bench data, and cancer will just be another chronic but treatable disease.

Joe,

futurepundit's been all over de Grey (and related researchers) here. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/cat_aging_reversal.html Well worth perusing if you're interested in the topic.

I recall that a research group's recently developed a vector to replace the 13 genes that get damaged in mitochondria over time (one of de Grey's seven big killers of aging). Now the only problem is how to get the vector into every cell, as needed...

But, Gene Thug, like Hamilton says, is that really where our attentions should be directed? Is preventing "aging" the ethical choice when we could be preventing "death" (eg AIDS research) ?

jinn,

Is preventing "aging" the ethical choice when we could be preventing "death" (eg AIDS research)

Here's my rambling take on it. I'm not gonna bag on your hero (I'm a big fan of Borlaug, m'self), but aging inevitably leads to death, and when one looks at the diseases of aging (the various big C's, Alzheimers, cardiovascular, neurodegeneration, etc.), these are all huge killers, and I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that mapping out the underlying processes that lead to these diseases, and developing preventative measures or therapeutic interventions is basic science well (and ethically) invested in (as a quick bias alert, as long as we're discussing ethics, I do some cancer research, FWIW, and it definitely involves slapping around the occasional punk ass gene on occasion - hence the name).

Check this graph out: (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/graphics/images/l285/l285-8.htm) This is a log scale, so the differences are compressed considerably, but I hope it makes a point (and it's considerably more succinct than I'll ever be!).

In the US (and I'm sticking with the US 'cause I know where to get the stats, and, like the Tick, it's where I keep my stuff), about 16,000 people died in 2003 of AIDS or hiv related complications, and I don't mean to be dismissive of these deaths in any way. The loss of any person is a tragedy. But if one's means testing the limited time/funds/intellectual resources to devote to research (a la, say, Lomborg), I think there's a strong argument to be made for basic research into Hamilton's elixir. Roughly 4X as many people die in the US of Alzheimer's than AIDS in the US, and that ratio is likely to increase over time (as aging populations increase the total Alzheimers deaths, and better hiv drugs/public health education/affluence, etc., lowers the number of US AIDS deaths), at a tremendous social cost. So where to rationally/preferentially/ethically allocate limited resources? When navigating the sometimes difficult ethical decisions out there, I often find it useful to step back and just start counting corpses and try to figure out how best to minimize them (though to be fair, some people use as a metric the expected years remaining lost due to a disease, and by this measure HIV most likely would rank as a worse disease than Alzheimers). Still, few 12 year olds die of heart failure (cell atrophy, by de Grey's list) or breast/prostate cancer (epimutations/mutations, by de Grey's list), Alzheimers (intracellular aggregations, by de Grey's list), etc., so I'm thinking it's a safe bet that basic research into the aging process and discovering the underlying causes of these diseases of aging will overlap considerably. You are, of course, welcome to disagree - this is the internet, after all...

A little off topic, but to make sure you don't lose your mind as you are older -

Drink tea! It helps prevent Alzheimer's

Learn more about diabetes mellitus from "this Wikipedia-based article."http://www.voyager.in/Diabetes_mellitus