
Delayed aging is better investment than cancer, heart disease - ph0rque
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131007162357.htm
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jamie_ca
Reminds me of
[http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html](http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html)

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didgeoridoo
In other news, unicorns considered a better investment than puppies, ponies.

Seriously though, I wouldn't want to live much longer if two major sources of
pain and fatigue are still haunting us in our later years.

~~~
heurist
you would be 'young' longer and wouldn't have to worry as much about age
related diseases at an age we currently consider old. So you might get aging
related cancer when you're 120 instead of 60, sure, but those 60 years might
also be enough time to fix those diseases then you'd never have to worry about
them.

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BIair
Ironic that Google wants to essentially extend the useful life of workers,
given that the average Google employee is 29-30 years old (depending on
source). Among the youngest of any industry.

~~~
ericd
Maybe they'll find a way to delay the onset of decreased neuroplasticity, and
make it so old engineers can learn new things as quickly as young ones. At
least that's my hope :-)

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tokenadult
As usual, I prefer reporting by professional journalists to the press-release
recycling service ScienceDaily, the source of the link kindly submitted here.
On a drive today, I heard a report on this newly published study on National
Public Radio,

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/08/230175345/delayin...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/08/230175345/delaying-
aging-may-have-a-bigger-payoff-than-fighting-diseases)

and the strength of that report, brief as it is, is that other researchers
were interviewed besides those with the new publication in _Health Affairs._
The _Health Affairs_ study, at bottom, is an argument for a change in public
policy to have more funding of basic research on slowing aging. And maybe that
is a good idea. (My bias would be to support that kind of research, as I am a
good bit older than most participants on Hacker News.) Whether doing a lot of
that kind of research will actually result in safe and effective means to slow
aging and thus prolong healthy lifespans is the $7.1 trillion question.

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exratione
Delayed aging looks much harder to achieve than rejuvenation. A couple of
billion dollars and ten years or so have gone into trying to just replicate
the effects of calorie restriction, in which you have state A (short-lived)
and state B (long-lived) of metabolism clearly laid out for you. So far a lot
has been learned, but it's clear that that is just a starting point.

People in the field expect it to take decades more to get to a point of safely
adjusting human metabolism to slightly slow down aging.

Funnily it should be far easier to rejuvenate the old (very useful) than to
slow their rate of aging (pretty useless). Aging is damage, and rejuvenation
is just damage repair. See the SENS Research Foundation outline, for example.
The research community already knows exactly how it could be done, since the
root forms of damage that cause aging are well-enumerated, and it would only
take a decade and a billion dollars to demonstrate that in mice. Full
understanding isn't needed, only the understanding of what to target and how
to repair it: a fraction of the knowledge needed to slow aging.

Unfortunately this is a radical departure from running a drug development
pipeline. The therapies look like infusions of bacterial enzymes,
mitochondrial gene therapy, and more exotic things. So it remains a minority
position in the research community simply because of inertia, I think - it's
so much easier to raise funds when you can point to every existing Big Pharma
project and say "it'll be like that." This is how incremental, expensive
projects that add little value continually suck up the majority of funding in
any field.

~~~
Udo
Can you point me to some research that indicates caloric restriction leading
to a higher life expectancy in _humans_ (compared to normal nutrition, not
obesity of course)?

~~~
exratione
Here's a starting point to summarize thoughts on that question from some of
the better known researchers involved in human studies.

[http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html](http://impactaging.com/papers/v5/n7/full/100581.html)

"Whether or not CR will extend lifespan in humans is not yet known, but
accumulating data indicate that moderate CR with adequate nutrition has a
powerful protective effect against obesity, type 2 diabetes, inflammation,
hypertension, cardiovascular disease and reduces metabolic risk factors
associated with cancer."

My summary of calorie restriction research is that it (a) produces similar-ish
short term changes in metabolism and measures of health in mammals tried so
far, and (b) is expected to have much smaller effects on life span in humans
than in mice.

The present consensus is that 5 years in humans would be on the high end, as I
recall.

The most interesting thing to resolve with certainty in this subfield is how
the short-term measures can be so similar, how the expected reduction of age-
related disease in humans can be so large, and yet the life expectancy outcome
be so small. Should be interesting, in a post-facto sort of a way, as the time
taken to figure that out will place us well into rejuvenation therapy
territory, achieved through means that have nothing to do with CR or CR
mimetics.

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photorized
Except delayed aging will increase the occurrences of cancer.

Everyone gets cancer if they live long enough.

~~~
ekianjo
>Everyone gets cancer if they live long enough.

Not true. There are tons of people above 100 years old who die of causes
unrelated to cancer. Obviously there are well known mechanisms that link
cancer to aging but it does not mean there's a probability of 1 to get cancer
as you get older.

~~~
photorized
Cancer isn't linked to "aging", but rather to the nature of DNA replication.
That process results in gradual accumulation of inaccuracies. Enough mutations
-> cancer.

~~~
ekianjo
Nope, it's not about the number of mutations you get. It's also about the
repair mecanisms of your DNA not working as well anymore. That's why cancer
occurs more frequently with aging.

I forgot the actual source link, but I remember seeing a publication showing
how autopsies on young people who died of accidental circumstances showed tiny
cancer tumors in their bodies even in their 20s-30s, and that simply these
would not grow further because of the repair mechanisms being highly effective
in younger organisms.

So basically you get mutations in your body the whole time. Not just when you
age.

~~~
photorized
reading about tumor suppressor genes... fascinating stuff. Those do seem to
get worse with aging.

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drpgq
This seems to be one of those things that are easier said than done.

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janameri
Immortals? Not quite yet there, but with combining the digital revolution we
may live forever.

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kayoone
But isnt one of the biggest problems the overpopulatin of the planet ? So
living longer doesnt really make that better.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Because we'll have the imagination, will, science, and technology to cure
aging ... and then we'll just turn that imagination and drive off and live in
cages?

~~~
kayoone
It might be unethical to prolong our lives in a way nature didnt intend us
to...then again we are already doing that for decades. Im just saying we also
should look onto the consequences of something like this.

