
Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality? - mhb
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-jellyfish-unlock-the-secret-of-immortality.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all
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kghose
Also, this fascinates me <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa>

These are cells from a person, Henrietta Lacks, which can be grown in a dish
and which keep dividing, for ever.

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pooriaazimi
From Wikipedia article: _"The cells were later commercialized, although never
patented in their original form."_

Patenting a human cell? That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard.

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travisp
Nobody patented "a human cell". What can get patented is the method for
creating this cell line. Here's the classic (and controversial, but for
different reasons) patent related to the Mo cell line (T-lymphoblasts):

<http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4438032.html>

These cell lines do not exist in nature and what is patented was the creation
of a new immortalized cell line.

~~~
Dylan16807
I can understand patenting the _creation method_ of the line, but please tell
me the line itself won't somehow inherit protection from that patent.

But I have a sinking feeling that it could.

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louischatriot
If you don't have time to read this very long (albeit great) piece, the tldr
version is: <http://tldr.io/tldrs/50b64589bb2203997700060f>

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javajosh
Yes, thanks. As much as I love the flowery prose of the article, it was really
far too long and this tl;dr was much appreciated.

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reasonattlm
There are the same arguments to be made here for a lack of relevance to humans
as in the case of hydra:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/11/investigating-
the...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/11/investigating-the-
agelessness-of-hydra.php)

Or lobsters, for that matter, but much more so for these tiny organisms with
potent regenerative capacities.

~~~
kghose
And birds which regenerate hair cells responsible for hearing.

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Tipzntrix
"Increasing human longevity has no meaning, it is ecological nonsense."

This is an interesting quote from the article given by another biologist
Stefano Piraino, not the main focus of the article. If we did find the secret
to immortality, it would be stupid to give it to everyone. In that case, who
gets it?

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JVIDEL
Easy: if you want to be immortal you have to be sterilized too.

And you can't adopt nor rent a womb.

There, no overpopulation problem.

~~~
maaku
Ridiculous. There's a lot more space in this universe than just planet Earth.

~~~
Unfortune
Unfortunately, there is only a small push for extra-planetary life. The fat
cats on top would much rather sit back, and wait for an extinction level
event.

Also, if humans do go extra/multiplanetary, most religious apocalypse' are
MOOT.

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aresant
Fun article but as you'd expect from the title "we won’t know for certain what
this means for human beings until more research is done."

~~~
michael_dorfman
If a headline is phrased as a question, the answer is always "no." If the
answer were "yes", they wouldn't have phrased it as a question.

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indiecore
Hacker News law of Betteridge's law of headlines: If the headline is
applicable Betteridge's Law will _always_ be mentioned.

~~~
zerostar07
That's because geeks like to back their answers with science (or almost
science)

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georgemcbay
More like geeks like to prove they've already heard of the idea behind
something.

Dropping the name Betteridge or Dunning-Kruger or Godwin tells everyone "I
heard about this phenomenon before it was cool and even know the name for it".

Basically a geeky way to be a hipster.

~~~
zerostar07
I don't think so. Geeks like to win arguments and value facts above opinions.
Scientific arguments are generally irrefutable. Of course the only scientific
of the 3 is the Dunning-kruger effect.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"Geeks like to win arguments and value facts above opinions."_

I'd rephrase that to be "geeks like to win arguments and like to think they
value facts above opinions"

In my experience geeks are no more objective than any other messed up human
being on this planet. We just have a giant collective superiority complex
about our own supposed factualness.

This is related to the many, many posts you see on HN where programmers
belittle professionals of other fields as if they were economists, political
scientists, biologists, medical doctors, rocket scientists, architects,
structural engineers, or what have you.

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peteretep
Spoiler: no.

~~~
Tipzntrix
I think these biologists are betting on "not yet".

