- cross-posted to:
- longevity@mander.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- longevity@mander.xyz
Age Reversal Breakthrough: Harvard/MIT Discovery Could Enable Whole-Body Rejuvenation::In a pioneering study, researchers from Harvard Medical School, University of Maine, and MIT have introduced a chemical method for reversing cellular aging. This revolutionary approach offers a potential alternative to gene therapy for age reversal. The findings could transform treatments for age-re
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Why a cure for ageing would benefit everyone and not solely the ultra wealthy
If you put aside ethical and humanitarian reasons for making a cure for ageing widely available, there is still economic considerations, i.e. if you are a government you will be presented with a choice between:
Do I pay to treat people for ageing, even though the treatment might initially be expensive, or do I let them age without intervention?
The former option might actually be significantly cheaper because people in an advanced state of ageing cost more money. They have more diseases, since many diseases are age related such as dementia, cancer and cardiac disease, and need more healthcare and also can’t work anymore.
If instead, the government pays for rejuvenation treatment they save on all the other healthcare costs and their people don’t have to stop being productive.
So perhaps in the future when a cure for ageing is actually developed it will be made available for everyone rich and poor alike
Let me start by saying that I haven’t read the article or the study, but I would be very suspicious that this could stop, slow, delay or reverse cancer. In fact, I would guess that it would actually cause more cancer. I hope I’m wrong.
We would also have to consider the impact of people living longer would have on the environment. People will still be having kids, and if you were going to live longer you might want to have many more kids while you’re young. Our rock is going to get pretty crowded really fast if people stop dying of old age.
Then there’s the point about people still being ‘productive’ to society. Honestly, if I’m going to live longer, I don’t want it to be so I can continue to be productive. I don’t like being productive as it is. I’d prefer that humanity focus first on fixing our economy before trying to extend our lives.
Despite appearances, I’m not trying to argue with you for the sake of argument, but more just putting other ideas out there to consider. I do hope your vision is right, and this will be something available to everyone and helps to make our final years more pleasant.
Horray, the rich will live forever! All hail our immortal overlords!
Don’t worry we’ll live forever too since now we won’t have to retire
Another article that vastly exaggerates the implications of the source text. This is very much still a small-scale, mainly in-vitro proof of concept. An awesome read and thanks for sharing, but I wouldn’t go worrying about immortal super-rich as of just yet.
The full journal article says “in vivo” not “in vitro”. They have already successfully regenerated mice which are organisms biologically similar to humans.
Edit
I was wrong about this. The journal article does only talk about results obtained “in vitro” but mentions other studies that have successfully reversed cellular ageing “in vivo”.
The ability of the Yamanaka factors to erase cellular identity raised a key question: is it possible to reverse cellular aging in vivo without causing uncontrolled cell growth and tumorigenesis? Initially, it didn’t seem so, as mice died within two days of expressing OSKM. But work by the Belmonte lab, our lab, and others have confirmed that it is possible to safely improve the function of tissues in vivo by pulsing OSKM expression [22, 23] or by continuously expressing only OSK, leaving out the oncogene c-MYC
So in this study the results were only in vitro but other studies have successfully reversed cellular ageing in vivo.
Yeah it was confusing and I had to read the source article a couple of times. If I’m recalling correctly I think the mouse model they’re referring to used gene splicing to reverse aging in-vivo—which to my understanding is a hell of a lot riskier and invasive than a molecular/biochemical based technique as described by the primary researchers (but only done in vitro). I would’ve been impressed if they used a biochemical technique in vivo because that would mean they had solved an issue of drug delivery, which is the thing that’ll halt the progress of this stuff becoming mainstream.
Worry? I’m excited for it man.
They don’t realize they’re messing with a monkeys paw.
The first gen lifers are gonna live to regret their discovery.
Yet so many upvotes :/
Nobody wants to die
Don’t worry if they did invent this, it would never be made available to me or you
Pointless comment as it has nothing to with mine. Thanks anyway
Couldn’t you wait until Mitch Mconnell died until you released this? I’d rather not him be in the senate forever.
So aging will become a sign of poverty?
It already is
Heh, science journalism.
Ahh, immortal super-rich people whose views get more and more conservative as they age forever… What an exciting future to look forward to!
The only upside I can think of is they’d actually start caring about the planet instead of thinking they’ll be dead in 100 years anyway.
They try to get so rich no matter what, so they can evade all consequences. (That’s not possible, but they want to believe it)
I see one potential good thing though: maybe people would be less interested in killing the only planet that supports human life if they knew they were going to be on it forever.
Full journal article here
https://www.aging-us.com/article/204896/text
“Thus, rejuvenation by age reversal can be achieved, not only by genetic, but also chemical means.”
– Journal article abstract
Even if for the rich, this would be good news. The rich and powerful will stop ignoring things like distant climate related deadlines, if they think they’ll be alive to feel their effects.
This is the such a silver lining take I never would have thought of. Well done.
Full text of actual paper: https://www.aging-us.com/full/204896
Tldr; seems like decent science and the compounds used are fairly ordinary ones for the most part. Note however this is all in vitro so far and it might be a challenge to deliver the same chemicals in the same concentrations to all the senescent cells of the body.
Prepare to see these ingredients added in insignificant amounts to expensive skin creams before the year is out, whether they can penetrate the epidermis or not
Ugh. I barely want to live my whole life on this planet with the ways it is going… let alone reverse back into my 20s with no actual “new game+”
Biochemist here, It’s almost certainly an overhyped study. The operative term being used here is “potentially” full body rejuvenation is possible. It doesn’t address issues such as administration of the therapy in tissues with virtually no turnover rate, including cardiac tissue, skeletal muscle, and nervous tissue. You cannot renew something that the body doesn’t naturally replace via the cell cycle.
The sci-fi type implications of this would be astounding. We would see a rapidly increasing global population with high natural resource use. On a philosophical level, is living forever a blessing or a curse?
It’s not a path to living forever; cells can’t reproduce once they burn through their telemeres. What this is is a way to have a youthful body at an older age so you won’t spend the last years of your life frail and wrinkly
this is the worst it’s just going to be available to rich assholes
And we will have the T-virus outbreak in 3… 2… 1…
Or the Krippin virus.
