
Is Aging a Disease? - benryon
https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/aging-disease-classification.html
======
ausbah
honestly, it the question shouldn't matter. no matter what aging really "is",
it is still a universally horrible affliction that leads to nothing but
increasing lower qualities of life those who are afflicted by it, and so
should be dealt with as such

~~~
xiphias2
Actually it matters a lot for research funding and accepting papers in
journals. One of the biggest things the anti-aging community has achieved is
to finally get to a stage where aging is categorized as a disease modifier.

Please don't underestimate the effect of this achievement.

~~~
balfirevic
That's true, but it's important to acknowledge that "aging is a disease" and
"aging is not a disease" are statements about the word "disease", not about
aging.

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tejohnso
I was watching Aubrey De Grey on JRE last night and was surprised to hear that
ADG no longer prefers the disease label for aging. It's too dissimilar from
what we're familiar with regarding diseases: something that we get, treat, and
is gone.

Aging is an ongoing system maintenance issue. He indicated that he prefers to
simply call it a "health problem".

From the article: "Maybe the ancients weren’t wrong, and aging can be not only
delayed but cured like a disease"

It seems that's exactly the mindset ADG was distancing himself from.

~~~
oarabbus_
>It's too dissimilar from what we're familiar with regarding diseases:
something that we get, treat, and is gone.

That's absolutely not what a disease is. Off the top of my head, Multiple
Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, Guillain-Barré, are
some diseases that one gets, which only progressively worsens over time. A
significant portion of diseases are never "gone".

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xiphias2
At this point it's classified as a disease modifier. Diabetes and age related
diabetes are different diseases and need to be treated differently.

On the long term as we get a better understanding of aging, it can be
reclassified as a disease with a cure to be found, but right now it's a bit
too early for that.

~~~
bionhoward
Since when did the definition of a disease require the existence of a cure?
This whole topic feels like semantic quibbling...we could spend more time
designing anti-aging plasmids and less time debating which human sounds to use

It doesn’t matter what we call it, we’re all too noob at programming biology
to fix it (or know it’s not fixable e.g. halting problem), the healthcare
industry is bottlenecked by expensive regulations, bureaucracy, and status
documents, we’re too scared or dense to run the experiments, and even if we
knew how to fix aging, we don’t have the infrastructure to deliver these fixes
affordably at scale

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bionhoward
Aging is a disease because it is a “disorder [disruption] of structure or
function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific
signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a
direct result of physical injury.”

100% incidence doesn’t make problems disappear

See also:
[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html](https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html)

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carapace
IMO If you're into space travel you should also be into longevity research,
eh?

~~~
mdorazio
Only if you think humans should be the ones traveling. I’m personally more in
favor of better AI and robotics. Carting meat bags around the galaxy is a
pretty poor proposition on way too many fronts.

~~~
melling
Yes, in the short term for the next 75-100 years. Let’s rapidly iterate and
improve AI and robotics.

After that for the following 500 years, humans should get out there.

~~~
carapace
Bingo!

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quakegen
The only cure for powerful and rich

~~~
melling
Yeah this is a common response for some reason.

If you thought about it for two seconds, you’d realize once the cats out of
the bag, everyone will eventually have it.

~~~
saiya-jin
If you thought about it for 2 seconds more, you would realize that it will
take up much longer to truly expand to even Solar system - I mean offloading
billions, not some tiny colony.

Meaning that almost immortal general population would be doom long term and
thus has to be managed. Either by bans, which might be circumvented in more
favorable jurisdictions (ie orbits or moon), or by setting the price too high.

You would think management via price is impossible? Look how one of the first
gene therapy single-pill 'cure' for spinal muscular atrophy Zolgensma is
priced - 2 mil USD. Small cute kids are dying in pretty horrible ways because
of this price all over the world.

When saving babies lives is (also) about money, why aging wouldn't be?

~~~
1996
> Small cute kids are dying in pretty horrible ways because of this price all
> over the world.

No, they are dying because other companies have not found ways yet to
duplicate that. In the end, it's all just information - recipes if you will.
Nothing magic. When most drugs just become gene therapy, I'd suspect it will
be a matter of days until they are copied and released for all - like movies
high quality rips.

Only one thing is needed: a marketplace, so companies can compete on price for
the customers who leave feedback to select the best providers.

This won't happen here, because of the FDA, regulations etc. But I don't see
why a country with more appetite for risk (and thus money) will not become a
hub for medical tourism, 1 flight away, with drugs and treatments cheap thanks
to competition, and readily available thanks to the lack of regulations.

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Astropop
A lot of people that discuss this issue decide that "they don't want people
living forever". What about you stop living after a while, and let the rest of
us live longer? Keep your decision for yourself; die if you want to!

~~~
ergothus
I used to feel as you do.

Looking at history, though, it seems like most (all?) significant social
progress comes about because old people that bitterly cling their views and
(most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new.

We live in a world that isnt controlled by feudal powers owning a good portion
of the population not because of wars, but because younger and less invested
people forced those conflicts. The results of those conflicts are accepted
because the people for whom the old way was normal die off. The new
generations are able to make their own mistakes, get invested in the nest
normal, and be replaced in turn.

Now I fear we will make anti-agathics before we develop a means to actually
change without people dying.

I still hope. Someday we might live with death as a choice AND without
oppression. Pretty sure I wont be around for it.

~~~
magduf
>because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly)
their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new.

This is just wrong. My 80-year-old mother is far more progressive politically
than many 20-35 year old men in this country. Remember the heavily armed Neo-
Nazis in Charlottesville protesting the removal of Civil War statues? Those
weren't elderly people.

~~~
ergothus
I have no doubt she is. And certainly being young is no guarantee of progress.

But let's compare the numbers of moms like that to the number of racist
uncles. From whom do you think those angry neo-nazis learned their rhetoric?

~~~
magduf
Well of course, values and prejudices are usually passed down through
generations. But my point is: age isn't a very good indicator of
progressiveness. Just look at the whole 20th century: back in the 1920s, there
was huge social change, and a loosening of social mores. Then it all changed,
and by the 40s-50s, things were much more conservative than before. The
60s-70s were the age of the hippies, and then that all went away with the 80s
and the Reagan years.

People always seem to have some weird idea that progress will come if we can
just get rid of the old people through aging and attrition, but this just
isn't the case. New generations can bring progress or setbacks, and it's
happened historically over and over.

Speaking of Neo-Nazis, how about the actual Nazis? Were they a bunch of old
farts? No, at the time, they were all young people, led by people who weren't
old at all (possibly middle-aged). They weren't preceded by generations of
people who were even worse than themselves, in fact it was the opposite.

Finally, just look at the current US elections: the most progressive
candidate, who others in his party think is too "radical" and "extreme", is
one of the oldest.

~~~
ergothus
Ah, I see the misunderstanding.

I'm not (meaning to be) saying old people are conservative. I'm saying people,
as a whole, don't change their views. The only way for new views to gain
purchase in society is for the people with different views to die off of old
age.

Most often those new views ARE more progressive, but not always.

But my core point is that if those in power don't die, they aren't going to
change their views, and their power will only concentrate. "in power" doesn't
just mean rulers, it also means numbers. Those racist uncles, those people
deeply offended by same-sex marriages, etc. Unless the young are automatically
more progressive (as you've just argued is not the case), then they won't go
away, and won't be marginalized, and they'll keep holding their views.

Exceptions will exist, but numerically, it's an issue.

~~~
magduf
I think eliminating aging would probably bring more stability to society:
people would stop forgetting the past so much, because there'd still be people
around reminding them of it, who had personal experience. History tends to
work in cycles, and a lot of that is because populations forget what they
learned through experience, because the people who went through the experience
die off and the younger generations don't learn the lesson properly. Sure, it
might mean some change will be slower, but you'll also avoid highly damaging
short-term aberrations (like the Nazis).

Also, you seem to believe that people never change their views. I don't think
that's really true either; people do evolve over time. My views are very
different than what they were when I was a teenager (and not more conservative
either). Older people do adapt to changing society. Look at, for instance, the
acceptance of various social changes in the US, such as gay marriage. These
things did not come slowly; they were breathtakingly fast. There'd be some
initial pioneers pushing it for a while, but not getting very far. But
eventually, like a dam breaking after a crack, suddenly the whole society
would adopt it. Go back in time 20 years and ask some random people if they
think gay marriage would be legal nationwide by now and they'd think you're
crazy. This didn't happen just because of some old people dying off; it
happened because the entire society got comfortable with the idea, though it
took many of them a while to accept it.

Finally, eliminating aging doesn't mean eliminating death or childbirth.
People will still have children, and people will still die (from accidents,
murder, diseases, etc.). Also, the biology of the brain that affects old
peoples' thinking will presumably be altered by anti-aging treatments, making
them think more like younger adults.

~~~
ergothus
> Look at, for instance, the acceptance of various social changes in the US,
> such as gay marriage.

We would both use this as an example - you think it is because people changed
their views, I think it is because a big group of people bitterly opposed to
this died off, opening the door to change.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. FWIW, I hope you're correct. I'd love
to see society avoid repeating mistakes, learning from alternative viewpoints
and expanding what they consider. Sadly, the one concrete case I can have of
changing viewpoints is my own: In my twenties I felt as you do. In the decades
since I've seen people embrace willful ignorance and proudly stand by
hypocrisy so long as they didn't have to accept anything that was outside of
their "normal". I retain the hope, but I've lost the expectation.

Here's to the hope that my conclusions are wrong.

~~~
magduf
>you think it is because people changed their views, I think it is because a
big group of people bitterly opposed to this died off, opening the door to
change.

A group of people bitterly opposing this did not all die off in the space of a
mere decade or less. That's the problem with your reasoning.

The same thing happened in the 60s with civil rights legislation.

Here's an article that graphically shows what I'm talking about:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-pace-of-social-
chang...](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-pace-of-social-change/)

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AllegedAlec
> Is Aging a disease

No, it is not.

~~~
echelon
> No, it is not.

What would you call Progeria?

What about cancer? Transition of a cell into a particularly nasty _disease
state_. (That term, by the way, is one the biologists throw around quite a bit
to describe broken or damaged cells that no longer function as intended.)

What if senescence can be slowed or stopped? What then?

Diseases need not be communicable.

~~~
lm28469
> What would you call Progeria?

> Progeria is an extremely rare autosomal dominant genetic disorder in which
> symptoms ___resembling___ aspects of aging are manifested at a very early
> age.

> What about cancer?

Cancer is cancer, aging is aging.

~~~
echelon
Aging is a slide into disease state. A non-healthy or misbehaving cell is in a
disease state. Accumulation of intracellular and extracellular garbage, DNA
point mutations, transpositions, malfunction of the cell cycle, abnormal
signalling, and a myriad of other break downs are disease state.

Cells are machines and they function in predictable biomechanical and
biochemical manners. Aging related disease state encompasses some population
of the space of deleterious state change.

In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other. It is the layperson
understanding of the word "disease" that does not fit.

~~~
speedplane
> In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other.

The difference is that the word "disease" is something that at least
theoretically can be cured. Aging does not have that implication. It follows
then that if you say "Aging is a Disease", you're effectively saying that
immortality is theoretically achievable. That's what makes the claim so
uncomfortable.

~~~
echelon
> The difference is that the word "disease" is something that at least
> theoretically can be cured.

Nowhere does the definition of disease imply that. There are many diseases
today that are patently incurable.

Aging, like cancer, is multifaceted. There are many low hanging fruit that we
can begin to tackle now.

> you're effectively saying that immortality is theoretically achievable.

I'm not saying anything about immortality. But I don't see how a 100, 120 year
average lifespan with expanded quality of life isn't achievable.

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hirundo
The _lack_ of aging would be a sort of population wide disease, in that
adaptation benefits from turnover, and a lack of adaptation would impair our
odds of survival as a species ... unless anti-aging includes some form of
neoteny that improves adaptation in the elderly.

~~~
vslira
Aging is a multidimensional process and if "lack of adaption" is targeted the
same way "control of bowels" will be/is, then it makes sense to include this
concern in anti-aging research. Speaking this way, resistance to change should
be a priority in anti-aging technology, no?

