
Scientists reverse ageing in mammals and predict human trials within 10 years - walterbell
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/12/15/scientists-reverse-ageing-mammals-predict-human-trials-within/
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reasonattlm
Original publicity materials: [http://www.salk.edu/news-release/turning-back-
time-salk-scie...](http://www.salk.edu/news-release/turning-back-time-salk-
scientists-reverse-signs-aging/)

As I've said in the past, it has always been pretty random as to what the
popular press picks up versus what they ignore in the output of the aging
research community. Possibly it doesn't much matter, as they'll horribly
mangle the significance and meaning regardless.

In this case, this is an intervention which falls into the same general area
as telomerase gene therapy and stem cell therapies that work via temporarily
altering the signaling environment rather than integration of transplanted
cells. It is putting damaged cells back to work, getting them to do more than
they would otherwise have done.

The question mark on all of these things has been the degree to which they'll
produce cancer - and certainly, inducing pluripotency in random cells
throughout the body sounds very much like a terrible idea on that front. The
decline in tissue maintenance in response to rising levels of cellular damage
(e.g. over the course of aging) is thought to be an evolved balance between
death by cancer and death by frailty. So far it seems that there may be more
leeway than was feared when it comes to putting a thumb on the scales to shift
things back to increased cellular activity.

But this isn't rejuvenation. This isn't reversing aging. This is (very)
partial compensation for downstream effects of aging, achieved without
addressing any of the root causes. The outcomes are going to be limited
because root causes are allowed to continue as they are. The outcomes only
look good by comparison to present day medicine for age-related conditions
because that is even more limited, since it acts on consequences even further
along the chain.

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anentropic
A variation on this idea of an "evolved balance between death by cancer and
death by frailty" is described here:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/opinion/sunday/octopuses-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/opinion/sunday/octopuses-
and-the-puzzle-of-aging.html)

basically that evolution favours traits that are beneficial during
reproductive age, regardless of negative effects later in life

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nrjdhsbsid
My god the clickbait is getting bad. This is the kind of title I would expect
to see in a supermarket rag

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nom
For some reason all topics involving the ageing progress have clickbaity
headlines when repeated by the news. How come that they always call it
'reversing', when it obviously can't be nothing more than 'slowing down'?

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gnode
Why can't it be 'reversing', or at least reversing effects of ageing? A major
part of ageing is the progressive degradation of the body's ability to repair
itself, resulting in illness. If a therapy improves the ability of the body to
repair itself, and age related illnesses are thus overcome, then arguably
ageing has been reversed.

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bobsgame
Would it be possible to apply machine learning to the human genome to discover
other therapies similar to this one? I'm sure there are groups working on
something similar, does anyone know of any offhand?

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etangent
People have been applying ML to genome analysis ever since it was first
sequenced.

~~~
dotancohen
Arguably, bioinformatics was one of the driving forces which differentiated
early machine learning methods from classical statistical methods.

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rbjorklin
Obligatory XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/678/](https://xkcd.com/678/)

~~~
Rainymood
Title: Researcher Translation

Alt: "A technology that is '20 years away' will be 20 years away
indefinitely."

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beedogs
Just what we need: baby boomers who never die.

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sharkjacobs
I'm not proud to say I'd have a lot of schadenfreude if they wait until after
Kurzweil passes before they make the world changing breakthrough which
eliminates natural death

~~~
nathanasmith
I see some mean spirited stuff on here from time to time but this really takes
the cake.

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transfire
> Obviously, mice are not humans and we know it will be much more complex to
> rejuvenate a person.

No, not really.

