Curing aging – feasibility and desirability

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60991675

Researchers have rejuvenated a 53-year-old woman's skin cells so they are the equivalent of a 23-year-old's.

Just an interesting graph I've found

I've been wondering how will this graph look in a few thousand years, like with the red line or like with the green line assuming humanity survives

Feasibility, quite sure. Desirability, probably none.

@jacdec:

That's a strange thing to say.

I would understand if you wanted to argue that the undesirable aspects of preventing aging outweigh the desirable aspects, but I don't see how one could think there's zero desirability.

As they approach adulthood, everyone becomes aware of their life expectancy. This is the period that is allocated to us to do what we have to do. That's the challenge, to do what is necessary in the allotted time. Real life is not a video game. We only have one life, one health, limits within which we can evolve. I believe it desirable to protect health and physical condition in order to achieve what one might expect to achieve. Removing aging is a cheat that will never satisfy those who want more than what was meant for them. Life with a restart button is meaningless. Life is a journey with a start and an end. Each action has its consequences, the counter is ticking, you never escape your responsibilities, at the end you have to take stock. Aging is not a defect, it is the path to fulfillment. Let's make it less painful, less disabling, or even extend it, all right. But that we suppress it, no, it is absolutely not desirable.

Even if dying at some point is preferable to living for you, I don't see why would you choose aging as a preferred method of dying.

Let's say you want to die at the age of a 100.

Would you not prefer to be healthy, capable, mobile and attractive for the whole 100 years, and then just died on your own terms, with whichever method is the most preferable to you, rather than to gradually decay, become less capable, more dependent, and generally experience various degrees of suffering for decades, before dying?

I personally don't know if I want to live forever, or even for a 100 years, but I do know I want to have the option to live to 100 once I'm 99, rather than to have that choice removed from me by my progressively declining health.

From whichever angle you look at this, the aging seems like a bad thing.

@mortein: Yes, putting the nuances correctly, I agree with you.

Unity biotechnology has released positive results from a stage 2 human trial with senolytics. Which might be the solution for one of the categories of damage which are causing aging.

What's interesting is that while the value of the company skyrocketed once the announcement was made, there was also a smaller jump in value just a week before the announcement was made publicly.

I guess if you don't have an insider information, it makes no sense to gamble with stock market

https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-ceo-sam-altman-investment-longevity-startup-retro-2023-3

Sam Altman Open AI CEO has invested 180 million dollars into an Anti-aging company Retro.

Would be cool.

Epigenetic reprogramming rejuvenates the eyes of primates.

Which organ would you like to see getting rejuvenated next?

https://www.freethink.com/health/gene-therapy-naion?fbclid=IwAR3ZJo8Bg9bQFDViViafBcVDtT0llHqqeKvaL6qNIISdN0VtlryDLP7NCgM

I think it would have to be obligated that you sterilize when you do it.

It’s scary how world changing it would be.

I wouldn't be jumping to that, there are plenty of steps we could take before sterilization, and maybe no steps will be necessary at all.

We are experiencing the population decrease all over the developed world, as people live longer, they are less likely to have children early in life, but because of the biological clock women are kinda pressured into having children in their late 20s early 30s.

We don't know how the culture will change, but it's entirely possible that people will choose to spend the first few hundred years playing around and learning, then the next few centuries building a career, exploring the universe, then after a few hundred years they might settle down and start a family.

It's possible that the anti-aging technologies will simply counter the demographic winter most countries are experiencing, and things will balance themselves out.

If it turns out that the governmental intervention is necessary, they might simply make it so that your therapies will not be subsidized by the government, unless you agree not to have the children.

Or people who choose to have children and get these therapies subsidized by the government, will have to pay higher taxes and the resources collected this way could be used to increase the carrying capacity of the planet.

On so on.

I'm sure different places will have different approaches.

I think how we lived our lives will determine what happens to us after we die. If we were good people while we lived, then we either go to Heaven and meet God or we get reincarnated into a better being. If we were bad people while we lived, then we either get punished in Hell (the people who get punished in Hell will meet God after they have learnt the lessons from their punishment because God always forgives) or they get reincarnated into a lesser being. Isn't there a limit to how much you can extend a human's lifespan? Yes, let's say someone's life could be extended so that they live up to maybe 110 years old...what if there is a craving to live longer all the time? Maybe scientists will find a way to reverse the effects of aging as you get older...like worse bones and wrinkled skin and lower mobility and loss or reaction speed and loss of memory. Let's say you could live for around 1000 years but you have to do so by taking your brain and organs out of your body and putting it in a machine and stuff...that is weird and is that really something you want? Humans can't live forever, and there will be things like pandemics and perhaps asteroid strikes and Climate Change events and stuff that will kill a lot of people and could cause a human extinction. Also, Earth won't last forever because the Sun will expand and engulf the Earth in the future, even though that is way way into the future. So the craving to live for longer and the craving to colonize other planets just to live seems pointless to me, because trying to escape from death seems less sensible than embracing death. The only one that exists forever is God.

Epigenetic reprogramming with the cocktail of chemicals, much cheaper than what they were doing so far

https://www.aging-us.com/article/204896/text

Sam Altman, a dude behind the ChatGPT has invested 180 million into Retro Biosciences

Retro Biosciences, a startup with $180 million in funding from OpenAI’s Sam Altman, opened the doors to a laboratory that’s working to add a decades to every human’s life

Looks like US government will be investing billions into development of anti-aging medicines.

https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/fy_24_lhhs_report.pdf

It's very desirable, it will likely be slowed greatly.