Archive for the ‘life extension’ category: Page 553
Mar 14, 2017
Chemical Dye Doubles Roundworm Lifespan, Could Extend Human Longevity
Posted by Montie Adkins in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
—In a statement, co-author Monica Driscoll of Rutgers University said that “the real goal of aging research should not be longevity at all, but rather a person’s health span — how long they can maintain an active, disease free, high quality of life.”–
NO. The real goal is extending lifespan. The lifespan of the organism was doubled, that is why people will like this when I share it.
Most of us try to avoid artificial coloring, but a dye that is used to detect plaques in Alzheimer’s brains is being tested for its seeming ability to counteract the effects of aging.
Continue reading “Chemical Dye Doubles Roundworm Lifespan, Could Extend Human Longevity” »
Mar 13, 2017
Researchers Have Found a “Reset Button” for Aging Cells
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
Mar 13, 2017
Scientists Have Made a Huge Breakthrough In Cryogenics
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, cryonics, life extension
Cryopreservation is the process of freezing organs and tissues at very low temperatures in order to preserve them. While it sounds simple in theory, only a handful of cells and tissues have survived this method. This is because while science has successfully developed ways to cool organs to the very low temperatures required for preservation, thawing them out has proven far more difficult. As the specimen thaws, it forms ice crystals, which can damage the tissue and render organs unusable.
Right now, the process is only a viable option for small samples, such as sperm or embryos. Previous efforts using slow warming techniques have proven to be effective on samples of that size, but haven’t worked for larger tissue samples, like whole human organs. The inability to safely thaw the tissue has also precluded the theoretical concept of cryogenically preserving entire human bodies, with the intention of reanimating them later. The concept has roots in cryogenic technology, but is actually referred to as “cryonics”, and the scientific community generally considers it to be more science fiction than science fact — at least for the time being.
A recent study has made a significant breakthrough which may well begin closing that gap even more. Using a new technique, scientists were able to cryopreserve human and pig samples, then successfully rewarm it without causing any damage to the tissue.
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Mar 13, 2017
The future looks too grim to wish for a longer life
Posted by Nicola Bagalà in categories: existential risks, life extension
Is the future going to be so bad that longer, healthier lives will be undesirable? No, probably not.
The future looks grim? That’s quite an interesting claim, and I wonder whether there is any evidence to support it. In fact, I think there’s plenty of evidence to believe the opposite, i.e. that the future will be bright indeed. However, I can’t promise the future will certainly be bright. I am no madame clearvoyant, but neither are doomsday prophets. We can all only speculate, no matter how ‘sure’ pessimists may say they are about the horrible dystopian future that allegedly awaits us. I’m soon going to present the evidence of the bright future I believe in, but before I do, I would like to point out a few problems in the reasoning of the professional catastrophists who say that life won’t be worth living and there’s thus no point in extending it anyway.
First, we need to take into account that the quality of human life has been improving, not worsening, throughout history. Granted, there still are things that are not optimal, but there used to be many more. Sure, it sucks that your pet-peeve politician has been appointed president of your country (any reference to recent historical events is entirely coincidental), and it sucks that poverty and famine haven’t yet been entirely eradicated, but none of these implies that things will get worse. There’s a limit to how long a president can be such, and poverty and famine are disappearing all over the world. It takes time for changes to take place, and the fact the world isn’t perfect yet doesn’t mean it will never be. Especially people who are still chronologically young should appreciate the fact that by the time they’re 80 or 90, a long time will have passed, and the world will certainly have changed in the meanwhile.
Continue reading “The future looks too grim to wish for a longer life” »
Mar 11, 2017
Eternal Youth Is the Next Big Bet for Singapore Venture Capitalist
Posted by Alexander Rodionov in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
Mar 9, 2017
Life and death: When the end arrives, should we upgrade or shut down?
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: biotech/medical, cryonics, geopolitics, law, life extension, transhumanism
Transhumanism appearing in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) magazine: Science…
Modern technology and modern medical practice have evolved over the past decades, enabling us to enhance and extend human life to an unprecedented degree. The two books under review examine this phenomenon from remarkably different perspectives.
Mark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine is an examination of transhumanism, a movement characterized by technologies that seek to transform the human condition and extend life spans indefinitely. O’Connell, a journalist, makes his own prejudices clear: “I am not now, nor have I ever been, a transhumanist,” he writes. However, this does not stop him from thoughtfully surveying the movement.
Continue reading “Life and death: When the end arrives, should we upgrade or shut down?” »
Mar 8, 2017
Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan Runs For Governor of California
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: life extension, transhumanism
Mar 7, 2017
Future Human lifespan 140 years, 500 years, 1000 years or indefinite with aging damage repair and aging reversal
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, Peter Diamandis
Speaking at the Aspen Abu Dhabi Ideas Forum, Dr Brad Perkins, chief medical officer, Human Longevity, said: “Right now the most daunting and expensive human health problem that the world is facing is age related chronic disease. Our hypothesis at Human Longevity is that genomics and the technologies that support its application in medicine and drug discovery are going to be the next accelerant in extending a high performance human lifespan.
Dr. Brad Perkins and other anti-aging researchers at commercial companies made the more conservative for anti-aging researchers that within about 40 years human longevity (maximum lifespan) will reach 140 years. Current life expectancy is about 80 years but with some countries and states at about 90 years for women. The confirmed longest lived person reached 122 years of age.
Mar 7, 2017
Women, reproduction, and rejuvenation
Posted by Nicola Bagalà in category: life extension
How rejuvenation can make motherhood (and more generally, parenthood) better.
I’m not really a children person. I know some people really are into having children and think that it’s the most wonderful thing in life, but I’m just not one of them. This is perfectly fine. Whether having children is a wonderful thing or not is a matter of opinion, and it is not true or false in an absolute sense. What’s more, it’s not necessarily set in stone forever: I don’t like the idea now, but I can’t be 100% sure I never will; conversely, people who love the idea now might not like it any more in the future.
However, having children is a bit more serious than a simple matter of personal taste. A child is not a toy or a dress that you buy and just put away if it turns out you don’t like it as much as you thought you would: It’s a living human being whom was brought into the world because of someone else’s intentions and/or actions, and it’ll need love and care for quite a while. For this very reason, I think you should have children only if you’re pretty damn sure you really want to and are prepared to do all it takes to raise them. It’s not an easy job, and if it turns out you hate it, you’ll probably end up doing it wrong, messing up the child’s life and your own in the process. This is true of women and men, though women definitely picked the shortest straw. I’ll tell you why I think so in a moment.
Even if you think you are ‘pretty damn sure’ that you want children, you could still be wrong for a number of reasons that aren’t necessarily your fault. If you do decide to have children and then realise you don’t like it, you have good 18+ years ahead of you of bearing with the consequences of your wrong decision. The decision to not have children is, in a sense, safer, because it can easily be undone: Later on, you can change your mind and have children. If you already did make a child, changing your mind about it will not undo the child. However, not having children is only marginally safer, because as things stand you can postpone parenthood only so long before it becomes impossible or impractical (again, especially if you are a woman). The bottom line is that the current state of affairs imposes you a risky choice—having or not having children—that cannot easily (or at all) be undone.
