The Future of Aging: Pathways to Human Life Extension

[MachineGhost]

The Future of Aging begins with nutrition, exercise, and supplementation as basic first steps to extending life. Writer and inventor Raymond Kurzweil, author of several books on futurism, employs a “bridge”? metaphor, adopting present-day therapies to enable people to remain healthy long enough to take advantage of later advancements. Kurzweil cites modified caloric restriction (CR) as a proven viable method of increasing life span across a broad range of animal species.

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Exercise, says Kurzweil, is a basic tool of life extension that everyone can and should be utilizing. He cites an eight-year study that logged a 60% lower overall death rate for even moderate exercisers, particularly with respect to cardiovascular disease.

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Michael R. Rose, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine, takes Kurzweil’s notion a huge leap further: Rose and his research colleagues suggest that the best future strategy for radically extending human life span several-fold may well be nutritional supplementation. “Evolutionary nutrigenomic agents,”? Rose believes, “can emulate the process of natural selection, using nutritional supplements in lieu of genetic variation.”?

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Cryobiologist and biogerentologist Gregory M. Fahy, originator and editor-in-chief of The Future of Aging, goes beyond Kurzweil’s basic recommendations to suggest that resources for basic control over aging in fact reside in our own genomes. Citing examples of “zero aging”? in certain species of juvenile mollusks and insects that wait for biochemical signals to develop into their mature forms, Fahy believes aging is not only malleable, but even preventable and reversible in mammals.

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Building on the idea of biological control, biotechnology entrepreneur Michael D. West feels the neglect of stem cell research is a specific example of the dearth of medical research in gerontology in general. “Many researchers quickly ascribe the aging process to entropy, and then just conclude that reversing aging is, for all practical purposes, impossible,”? West comments. He feels these conclusions ignore the fact that the lineage of germ-line cells, unlike their somatic counterparts, replicate in an immortal process of cell division. “This means that these cells must possess sufficient repair mechanisms to allow enough individuals to survive in order to perpetuate their species,”? he says.

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“In the mid-to late 1800s, clinicians noticed a profound association between bacterial infections and miraculous regressions of incurable malignancies,”? he says. “Nowadays, we know that a common theme of human response to all bacterial infections is a massive increase of human granulocytes entering the circulation within days or even hours.”? Aggressive cancer cells are always metabolically active, with a negative surface charge similar to bacteria. Cui surmises that this trait makes them ideal targets for neutrophils, the most abundant type of granulocyte. In effect, the neutrophils could be used to “tag”? cancer cells, functioning as a type of early warning system.

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There is evidence that nearly all age-related illnesses involve some degree of damage to DNA. The advances in genetic engineering in the last decade offer great potential for the treatment of acquired or inherited genetic disorders associated with aging, says Clifford Steer, a University of Minnesota professor in the Department of Medicine, Genetics, and Cell Development.

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Robert A. Freitas, Jr., senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, believes nanorobotic control of human aging—a technology once relegated to the realm of science fiction—is now of great relevance to our present-day medical reality. “The comprehensive knowledge of human molecular structure, so painstakingly acquired during the previous century, will be extended and employed in this century to design medically active microscopic machines,”? Freitas forecasts. These machines, rather than being tasked with discovery, will be sent on missions of cellular inspection, repairing and reconstructing whole cells. Moreover, Freitas predicts that systems based on nanomachines will be “more compact and capable than those found in nature.”?

These were just a few of the 40 authors featured in this most excellent book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/9048139988/

MG

[MediumTex]

This is a picture of Raquel Welch from her book cover when she was 69.  She's 71 now.



Even if she's had a lot of work done and the picture has been airbrushed a little, that's still pretty darn good for 69 years old.

I think that aging is clearly a process that can be dramatically slowed with the right program.

[Storm]

This is a picture of Raquel Welch from her book cover when she was 69.  She's 71 now.

Who knew?  The secret to immortality is Crystal Light: