
World’s first anti-ageing drug could see humans live to 120 - phodo
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/worlds-first-anti-ageing-drug-could-see-humans-live-to-120/
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teslabox
This "anti-ageing drug" is actually just Metformin, an old drug commonly used
to not help those suffering from type-2 diabetes. Some people like it, some
people hate it.

> Scientists think the best candidate for an anti-ageing drug is metformin,
> the world’s most widely used diabetes drug which costs just 10p a day.
> Metformin increases the number of oxygen molecules released into a cell,
> which appears to boost robustness and longevity.

Metformin actually inhibits cellular respiration by poisoning the
mitochondria. The saturated fatty acid palmitate is an antidote for the
effects of Metformin [1].

[1]
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005272812...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005272812000552)

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mccoolman
Exactly what we need to help stop overpopulation! Hooray!

~~~
maxander
If you want to die to assist the population-control efforts, be my guest. : )

More seriously, what would happen if the average number of children per family
was 3.5, rather than 2.5 [1]? Probably nothing absolutely catastrophic, and
that's roughly what would happen in a pessimistic scenario of an ageless
society- instead of simply generating a batch of new people that will later
reproduce, there's a batch of new people _and the original parent_. Maybe some
outliers will just keep having children constantly (until they just physically
give out- that would be an extreme strain), but I'd think most people would
allow a decade or two between families.

More _more_ seriously, birth rates are declining drastically in highly
developed countries, to the point that many places are worried about
population _decline_. Overpopulation is a problem in developing nations, but
realistically, anti-aging won't make a big difference there- they're already
typically dying of _more preventable_ things than old age.

[1] Source; that old apocryphal statistic we all know from the 90s or
something. Its probably different now, but I'm too lazy to look it up.

~~~
exception_e
relevant documentary: "No Sex Please, We're Japanese" \- Link is
[https://vimeo.com/80542212](https://vimeo.com/80542212) (this appears to be
the director's account, so I don't think it's a random/pirate upload)

