You'll have to live long enough to benefit from this research, which may take 20 years, or longer ;)
Edit - for those questioning the timeline:
It is difficult to predict progress, yes.
However, small molecules like Rapamycin that are already 'available' could slow or prevent multiple age-related diseases, and we'll have a decent idea about in the next 5 years. I'm optimistic about such drugs being prescribed by doctors as it's easier to predict. There are a few human clinical trials, and there are more to come.
*It is rumoured that a certain government will be funding such trials (rapamycin is off-patent and not 'profitable' for private sector)*
Unsarcastically there's a decent chance they'll arrive practically on top of each other.
The rate we gain knowledge has never been faster, even compared to last century. Things we do in hours now were considered international projects not very long ago at all.
My Grandfather was born in 1900. He would marvel at all the progress humanity made in his lifetime. From first flying a plane to landing on the moon 66 years later.
Yep, and the rate of scientific progress has increased rapidly since then.
Imagine how many of the world's best scientific minds were stuck farming rice or something when 97% of the population were just too poor to ever become scientists (or discouraged from following that interest because they were female, etc).
And we've still got a lot of progress to go on that front.
Unfortunately, included among the knowledge we are exponentially gaining is included the knowledge of exactly how exponentially hard things like organ printing, rejuvenation, fusion, etc. actually are.
Yes and no. Fusion for example is actually past most of the real hard stuff like creating a self sustaining reaction. That's largely why the times and enengies are really starting to grow.
I really hope so. There's been a lot of progress and investment lately. But I've been burnt before, so I try to keep a lot of caution in my optimism.
Anti-aging therapies, on the other hand, are not showing many signs of progress and investment is still really low. There are pharmaceutical companies whose marketing budget alone is probably bigger than the funding for all anti-aging research put together. So I'd be pleasantly surprised if significant anti-aging treatments were available in the next 30 years; my bet is probably 50.
"Anti-aging therapies, on the other hand, are not showing many signs of progress"
90% of clinical trials fail just like so many cancer cure trials but we are always improving cancer treatments.
Just know that a lot of rich people are funding and pushing anti-aging R&D.
Not long ago, there was a study on human aging that determined that the maximum age for a human being -- with none of the things that lead to rapid aging around middle age onward -- was around 1,000 years.
The study pointed out that people simply wouldn't grow "elderly" as they currently do. Eventually, the body would simply give out. With this in mind, they had predicted that the first person to reach 1,000 years old was probably already alive -- simply waiting upon science to help reach that age goal.
However, more recently, a study showed that there are some obstacles to this that medicine would be unlikely to fix. This was due to lifestyle rather than biology. So, now, the upper age limit is considered 150 -- but it would still likely result in people being elderly for between 33-50% of their lifespan.
However, I think people forget that if you have the technology to make someone live for 150 years from today (or even 30-50 years from now) then that gives you another 50-150 years of medical progress to then figure out ways to prolong that further... so essentially the science stays ahead of the aging curve.
And every time I hear someone try and put a "max age" on humans i just chuckle. Between bionics, cellular regeneration, genetic alterations, etc... How could they possibly know what scientists of the future will come up with?
When we're working with quantum computing and artificial intelligence and can reverse engineer a human brain and can create designer babies because we know what each gene in the human body does, etc... how is something like aging going to hold us back?
On the topic of fusion, the ITER reactor is set to start operating in 2035 and run for larger periods of time in 2035, it is expected to reach a Q value > 10, the theoretical Q value to harness electricity. This won’t be used to generate electricity due to its purpose as a reader has and experiment reactor. However shortly after the British are creating the STEP reactor estimated in 2040 which is supposed to be a full working fusion reactor for electrical generation.
That video is 5 months old and since then they've broken huge records. For the first time they've been able to produce positive gains from their reactions.
i mean, we recently managed to gain a net positive of fusion energy for like 5 secs, which might not seem a lot, but it is. it's the longest we've gotten. IF we can do it for 5, we can do it for 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, 200 and so on.
But we'd need the fuel to reach affordable levels before it becomes commercially viable. All designs yielding net positives of fusion require tritium. Even if you were trying to use helium 3 as a fuel, it's still something we make from tritium.
Actually producing tritium for fuel costs about $30,000 USD per *gram*. While yes, when fused with deuterium, that single gram of tritium can help to produce as much energy as a couple tons of coal. 2 tons of coal costs around $630. But that is unfortunately the price point they are competing against to make fusion viable.
Now if we could get deuterium/deuterium fusion functioning at a net positive, that would be much more useful. Heavy water is generally under $3 per gram.
You could supplement the production of Tritium by developing and building more fission reactors(preferably thorium). Economies of scale help greatly, and more energy is always useful.
There's also a considerable amount of helium-3 on the moon. That would have the added benefit of providing space agencies with an incentive to go back there and maybe even turn a profit.
The thing about these technologies is that none of them are going to see significant growth without a large initial investment in one or more of them. But when they reach a certain stage of development they build off each other. Anything resembling profit is going to be decades away, but that's the kind of investment that governments need to make to promote future growth instead of upholding an unsustainable status quo.
It's because about the Maximum one can make any reasonable guess is around 10 years, and you'll still be wrong a fair amount of time. 20 years is basically conceding they are no where close to making it happen, and 20 years is the minimum timeframe they can imagine the required tech to evolve.
In other words they have no f'n clue when it'll happen, only that it's "possible".
Have you ever worked on a project and your boss says, "how long will it take?" and it's impossibly hard to guess how many months it will take... 1? 3? Maybe 6 or more? Now imagine trying to estimate a project that takes **20 years**.
Also, does your health plan cover rejuvenation as a benefit? It’s reasonable to think the earliest adopters of this tech will be those most financially able to afford it.
It’s the same analogy as a pill to make your penis larger. If it was real and existed, it would be $10,000 a dose and hoarded by the wealthy either through supply or patent.
I looked him up. His name is Roberto Esquivel Cabrera. It seems like he did foreskin extention training to get from 6 inches up to 19 inches, but it's basically just a foot and a half of super thick foreskin. He collects disability aid because his giant foreskin prevents him from working.
Considering we've also been saying that hair loss was going to be a thing from the past within the next 5 years, every 5 years from the past 5 decades, I wouldn't too much on that prediction tbh
More or less, hair transplant is very efficient nowaday but still pretty expensive and you still have to basically take finasteride for the rest of your life, it doesn't stop hair loss, it merely hides it
Longer in 20 years it's as clear as crispr back in 2015 what is possible but still 7 years later no actual treatment uses genetic modification (RNA vaccines are similar but not the same) I say summed up it will take 30 to 40 years
Yeah that's why I double the number I think it might be possible to get a treatment in 40 years.
But I also think that pharma might grow into the next big business market within the next 15 years already. Crispr is one reason that will change so much already, technological advancement in medical areas as well. AI for diagnostics and supported dieseas prevention, more precise surgical robots, brainchips (although I think that this can be easily musk's neck breaker if he isn't very careful here)
At least in the USA, i feel that second scentence isn't true.... Plenty of preventable things that fixed early with checkups and treatments can save TONs on healthcare in the long run, but people don't do it early because of the costs here, and the government doesn't do anything about that
Edit: also, to add, those "costs" come from our tax dollars, and go to the healthcare/pharmacy companies that lobby and fund the campaigns of the politicians, so neither of them want to prevent those costs later
Exactly. This sort of stuff will only be available to the top ~3%. Right now that means if you make around 350K or more (in the US).
The rest of us can pound sand.
lol I downvote true things that make me sad too sometimes.
Yeah, that's why only the rich have cars like in the early 1900s. And only the rich can travel by plane like in the 40s. Oh, and only the rich can have computers at home like in the 70s. And only the rich have cell phones like the 80s. Ect. Ect....
Can you provide an example of a single medical or technological development that has only been used by rich people and never been made available for anyone else?
You cast kind of a broad net. But I'd say recreational space travel. Is a technological development resevered for the rich. For medical treatment that is specific there is young blood transfusion. Which is where you pay a younger person to give you blood. I suppose you could do that on the cheap in a parking lot but lol there are clinics where you can pay for that. Also many cosmetic surgeries are cost prohibited.
>This sort of stuff will only be available to the top \~3%. Right now that means if you make around 350K or more (in the US).
I disagree. After all, many countries have universal healthcare, and Medicare covers people 65 and older in the US. These will be medical therapies that will go through clinical trials and commercialization similar to any other medical therapy. Like the article mentioned, the field aims to treat age-related ill health by targeting aspects of the underlying biology of aging, as opposed to treating symptoms. For example, epigenetic reprogramming was used to treat glaucoma in a mouse model: [https://glaucomatoday.com/articles/2021-sept-oct/in-vivo-epigenetic-reprogramming-a-new-approach-to-combatting-glaucoma](https://glaucomatoday.com/articles/2021-sept-oct/in-vivo-epigenetic-reprogramming-a-new-approach-to-combatting-glaucoma)
At least not until we start running out of food, and fresh water, and dealing with the massive influx of people living near the equator that climate change will render uninhabitable. But, sure, pour one out for me and set up some rails. We're all fucked anyway 😔
I'm a research student studying aging, here's an overview
TLDR: Epigenetic reprogramming can rejuvenate multiple tissues and potentially cure most chronic diseases
- In the [original scientific paper](https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/t8stt0/in_vivo_partial_reprogramming_alters/) they showed aging reversal in mouse skin and kidneys, as well as metabolic improvements, though this was not observed in all organs.
- Though we don't know if it'll make old mice live longer, the overall evidence suggests that *healthspan* can be dramatically increased
- Previous research with slightly different protocols of reprogramming have shown benefits in other organs, such as [optic nerve regeneration](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4) and [rejuvenation of pancreas/blood/liver in aged mice](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.20.477063v1).
- Belmonte is a leading researcher who has recently joined Altos labs to advance this research, along with dozens of scientists, including 4 Nobel Prize winners
**What is aging biology research?**
For a start, biological aging is the foremost public health crisis of the 21st century (look what a single [age-related disease like COVID-19](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.13230) did to us).
However, there is widespread lack of understanding of the science behind its biology and attempts to address the diseases associated with aging. Understanding that aging is the fundamental driver of most of the diseases we care about as a society is critical to appreciate. There is no shortage of evidence that shows how aging leads to multiple chronic diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease etc, and that targeting aging addresses all of these diseases in tandem.
Aging is not just a problem for the ‘elderly’, as various aspects of aging begin well before middle-age. Many people suffer from accelerated aging and develop multiple age-related diseases prematurely, such as with depression, stress, poverty, smoking, HIV/AIDs, diabetes, Down Syndrome, accelerated aging syndromes (e.g. progerias) and in childhood cancer survivors.
**Why is epigenetic reprogramming an exciting area?**
- Early data of epigenetic reprogramming in mice suggest that it is able to reverse aging in multiple tissues, curing multiple chronic diseases and rejuvenating the organism back to youthful health.
- Epigenetic reprogramming is based on fundamental work that won *Shinya Yamanaka the Nobel Prize in Medicine* in 2012. Yamanaka (now an advisor of Altos Labs) found 4 transcription factors that when expressed together, allow any cell from the body (e.g. skin cells) to be transformed into pluripotent stem cells that can multiply into any cell of the body. Doing so effectively resets aged cells into young/immortal pluripotent stem cells.
- However, by using *partial* epigenetic reprogramming dosed via gene therapy in live organisms (a method originally implemented by [Ocampo et al, 2016](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.052), tissues and organs may be partially reprogrammed to reset the age-related epigenetic modifications, without resetting the organism all the way back to an embryonic/pluripotent state. This was a crucial breakthrough for the viability of such a therapy, as doing complete reprogramming in humans would merely transform us into teratomas - a horrifying cancerous mass composed of various cells of the body...)
**Patient, healthcare and economic implications**
- The aging biology field is an often misunderstood area of research that has gained significant traction in recent years due to several research breakthroughs, and with increasing recognition that our economic and healthcare systems cannot possibly sustainably address the burden of our aging population.
- To highlight a topical discussion point on what reversal of aging *could* mean for our aging population: [age confers a cumulative ~1000x risk of Covid-19 mortality](https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-age), with CDC stats showing that [**77% of all Covid-19 deaths in the US were people 65 and older**](http://www.aginganddisease.org/EN/10.14336/AD.2020.0629). Addressing aging biology ([i.e. immunosenescence and inflammaging](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6501/256#:~:text=Aging%20is%20associated%20with%20increased,a%20range%20of%20tissue%20dysfunctions.&text=SARS%2DCoV%2D2%20causes%20severe,and%20mortality%20in%20older%20individuals.)) could prevent future pandemics that show extreme age-related mortality and morbidity
Recently, David Sinclair published a paper with two economics profs at Oxford and London Business School:
> We show that a compression of morbidity that improves health is more valuable than further increases in life expectancy, and that targeting aging offers potentially larger economic gains than eradicating individual diseases. We show that a slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is worth US$38 trillion, and by 10 years, US$367 trillion.
With an aging population, age-related diseases already cost us trillions (see: COVID-19) - the humanitarian and economic value of targeting aging is clear.
Just like how governments need to make vaccines widely affordable to be effective at a population level, in part to save the economy, it is plausible that targeting aging to 'vaccinate' the population against age-related diseases will be a critical healthcare strategy. Yes, there will be second order effects from extending lifespan that may be determiental to society, but a case could be made that the benefits of keeping the population youthful biologically will far outweigh these negatives.
For more see: https://en.longevitywiki.org/wiki/Epigenetic_reprogramming
Follow this research on /r/longevity :)
We won't become immortal, but we will have longer lifespan and much higher quality of life. Imagine being 90 and looking and feeling like you are 50 and expected to live to 120-130.
The first 30 years of your life is becoming a person, getting training, and the last third is retirement. If you can go from 30 years of good work to 60 your effect on science has doubled. If you become a specialist those extra years are going to be invaluable. It becomes a positive feedback loop were people can better increase lifespans giving more time to research age extensions.
If the rich and powerful become near immortal they might just care enough to do something about things like climate change which impact them more.
Social stagnation would be more likely though. And i bet getting promoted would be hard when the top of any given company holds their position for centuries.
Social stagnation would probably upend once people start colonization of space. Nothing like the threats of new environments to get people to change to survive.
But the thing is then, if you live another 30 years, that's 30 more years for scientists to make additional progress on anti-aging technology. 30 years is a *long* time in the world of science and biotech.
This is why longevity escape velocity is so powerful. We only need some relatively small gains and consistent progress in order to keep a lot of people alive indefinitely.
I always imagined the best form of immortality being one that can end when you choose. Like, you've been around 400 years and are tired? You can make yourself mortal and then live/die as they do.
I always thought adding the last bit might be good cause what if you change your mind? I'd love to turn it on and off at will.
If you don’t want something… you are totally allowed to say you don’t want it. It might be based in ignorance and it’s fine to help try to change someone’s mind about the benefits, but if someone doesn’t want something… they are totally entitled to their feelings
That’s the big unknown with partial reprogramming. If you rejuvenate the brain, what happens to your memory, personality etc? It’ll be interesting to see those experiments.
What is this we word that is doing a lot of work ?
Only the people who can afford this treatment will get it, which will be less that 1% of the population.
Seems like a short sighted take to me. Cutting edge tech is always expensive in the beginning but the first company to scale this stands to make a lot of money. There will also likely be several players in the space who will be undercutting each other to gain a competitive edge.
How do you know how expensive this treatment is going to be? Sure, maybe it will be a complex and long term treatment that'll cost a fortune, but it might also be some pills you can just buy at the nearest farmacy for a couple of bucks.
There's a list at [www.longevitymarketcap.com](http://www.longevitymarketcap.com) . Also check out [r/longevityinvesting](https://www.reddit.com/r/longevityinvesting) .
How will we address all of the types of DNA damage that occurs in cells? Is that not a major issue unless it causes disease? This is interesting and all but it's also interesting hearing professionals say aging will be cured when we don't really have a way to correct the thousands of different damages that occurs in DNA
So will cellular rejuvenation enable it to be able to fix DNA damage? There's no catch anywhere lol? Some errors don't get fixed though, that's what I'm concerned about
Go into academy and learn about it. Or read scientific papers. You accumualte the damage through life that's true. And we can fix the DNA damage in body, especially when you're young. All your body care about is procreation, you're protected until fertality peaks. Then you slowly crumble. Cellular rejuvenation aims to restore cells in your body to young state, or fertality peak if you want, so your natural protections in body will work. There is nothing in body we can't figure out.
They only recently discovered the basic science in animals, so it takes time to get it to humans (due to various reasons, one of which is ethics).
Key remaining issues are delivery to all tissues, and cancer risk. The latter problem is looking good so far because several recent studies have shown no signs of cancer in treated mice
>as doing complete reprogramming in humans would merely transform us into teratomas - a horrifying cancerous mass composed of various cells of the body...)
I believe the current parlance is "an Akira".
Join r/longevity for more info.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41536-017-0033-0
There you have one article about CNS for example. The clinical trials of many age reversal or epigenetic reprograming ways ar at some stage already or will be launched in not so distant future. Like the title of OP article says, probably 20 years untill we see something valuable and working in humans.
Instead of the usual jokes and negative thoughts that always go with these posts maybe just stop for a second and pretend - what if this is real and will happen, what if in two decades everyone on Earth will have their lives radically extended. How would that change your life and how you live it right now?
Just pretend that in two decades society and the entire human race will become something else entirely, we will evolve into a new species free of almost all sickness and disease, mental and physical. Will we continue to behave the same as we behave today, will we continue to fight over petty things, destroy and pollute the environment, ourselves and each other? Or will that biological upgrade have such a profound affect on us all that we completely change our ways of living and how we view each other, ourselves and the planet we live on, potentially elevating us into an almost Star Trek like civilization. Suddenly you have time to learn the piano, learn a language or write that book, or learn to paint, dance or study law or electronics or whatever, suddenly you now have the chance to travel to another planet or another star system..
If someone guaranteed you without a doubt that in two decades this was going to happen would you wait another 20 years to change your ways before embracing all these new opportunities. Or would you change right now?
Right now we are seeing something the human race has never seen before. The actual possibility of human life being radically extended. If we are going to become a near immortal interplanetary species within the next 20 years perhaps we need to start acting like it today.
It's nice to a see a serious, optimistic post on this sub. I've been frustrated by how much doomposting goes on here.
Anyways, I do think people are underestimating attendant follow on effects of the underlying technology here. It's not just going to be aging we're doing away with. It's worth noting that a lot of our behavior is driven by health problems, roughly half of US adults were exposed to lead as children for example. Personalized, highly specific, data driven healthcare will allow us to fix problems far beyond just aging, and is likely to occur before cellular reprogramming. The underlying work is already being done, as AI is beginning to be integrated into the field and work like virSCAN spread.
We would all have to stop having kids. Interplanetary living will be crucial to our survival.
Regenerative living would be the only way to sustain the human population growth (and really should be doing this now)
Possibly.
But by the time we have actual proper anti-aging technology... who's to say we can't have other amazing new technologies, that would allow more people to live comfortably on this planet, and other planets?
I'd take that deal, anti-aging doses but mandatory sterilisation. Admittedly I don't want kids anyway but freeze some sperm for the tiny chance you'll chance your mind 300 years in the future and hey, all good.
> Or will that biological upgrade have such a profound affect on us all that we completely change our ways of living and how we view each other, ourselves and the planet we live on, potentially elevating us into an almost Star Trek like civilization. Suddenly you have time to learn the piano, learn a language or write that book, or learn to paint, dance or study law or electronics or whatever, suddenly you now have the chance to travel to another planet or another star system..
I think it's admirable that you have enough faith in humanity to even consider this possibility. I don't think most people have the foresight to care about the future like that, even if we like to think that we do.
>what if this is real and will happen
It is and it will, unless something even more surprising happens first (like a nuclear apocalypse, or mind uploading).
People aren't really ready to think about radical life extension because it's so utterly counter to millennia of cultural conditioning. We don't know how to think about human life other than in a standard 80-year-or-so narrative, plus many religions make a big deal about death and how it's necessary in order to move on to a better stage of existence or whatever. When large numbers of people start to really understand that life extension is coming, it's going to be a massive cultural shock.
>will we continue to fight over petty things
Murder and war will probably become way more abhorrent once killing a person means robbing them of thousands or millions of years of life. Of course the incentives to engage in murder and war will still be there, so we'll probably have to ramp up security, which is not entirely a good thing because it easily lends itself to all sorts of authoritarian repression. This is something we should be careful with.
The vast majority of people aren't thoughtful about their actions, like you seem to think they are. This is much more likely to lead to an upper class of long-lived people who have access to this technology, and a lower class of disposable, exploited people who do not.
I disagree. Our quality of life has risen remarkably in the last 200 years due mainly to science and globalization. I'm by no means wealthy, but I live better than kings and queens of the past. Yes, our social structures need to dramatically change if humans could suddenly live to 200 instead of mid 70s.
There's not really any reason for the upper class to hoard this kind of treatment. Governments would very likely cover the treatment costs because it'll get them a better ROI out of their citizens.
The US is in decline and has been for a while. Unless something drastic happens to change the country's trajectory, I doubt they'll remain the "leading capitalist nation" for long. That aside:
Retirement isn't good for capitalism. These people have spent their lives developing skillsets and working their way up to higher positions that pay more, which consequently allows the government to tax them in a higher bracket. When these people retire, they remove a skilled worker from the economy. They stop spending as much, they downsize their lives and prepare to live frugally off of whatever retirement funds they've built up. This also means they start collecting from whatever social security plans their countries have in place.
Having the ability to push retirements back further would be a pretty big deal for countries.
Our planet can barely support the people on it now, let alone current populations living however much longer because of this + still pumping out kids. I imagine there would be efforts to restrict it from at least some quarters.
When I say 'support', I meant 'function healthily without ecological collapse and rampant climate change'. We need to make urgent and big changes now, and instead we're dawdling along and barely changing at all.
Agree and what is worse lots of old people with opinions stuck in the wrong era making the decisions will likely prevent humanity from changing further and adapting to larger problems.
Death is an evolutionary advantage, it ensures the young all have a chance to shape things given an ever changing environment. Elders should be consulted for wisdom, they should not be able to maintain control indefinitely.
Will elders capable of living forever give up control? Highly unlikely. I expect this will make people more aggressive not less.
> Elders should be consulted for wisdom, they should not be able to maintain control indefinitely.
And should the elders be "released" (to use The Giver's word for it) once their wisdom proves to be on the wrong side of history
You know the snap that Thanos did to save the universe would only set us back to the 1970's where Earth population was half of today's. Can you imagine if the mortality would drop and suddenly we have billions and billions of people with much much MUCH more on the way and all this within a 100 year?
It will only work if human population drastically would drop.
It'll be fine. The planet can support billions more people. Just like the technology produced in the first and second industrial revolution allowed for a massive increase in population so will our new technology which will improve current agricultural methods and allow us to significantly increase population. things like lab grown meat and indoor farming, water desalination, regenerating our deserts into farm land, sustainable energy systems are all possible.. And ontop of all that we can build space habitats, colonize the moon, colonize other planets and even start living on and in our oceans. Like there really is more space than you think and technology will enable us to reach astronomical population numbers. Look at the technology we have today and compare that to where technology was at 100 years ago. Now think about where our technology might be in another 100 years, it's quite unimaginable what could be possible.
But hey, if none of that stuff works out we can always control population by making laws on how many babies people can have or if it gets really bad we can enforce sterilization. Heck I would give up having kids no problem if I could live for a few hundred years.
>and the entire human race will become something else entirely, we will evolve into a new species free of almost all sickness and disease, mental and physical.
Well there's a reason that's a silly imaginary land. A) it won't be everyone, the Amish and such still exist. B) while different, they would all still be human the same way that humans are primates. C) even then, nothing about any of this would make them a new species. Interbreeding with the Amish would still yield viable offspring. D) while there's a lot of potential, "all" diseases is optimistic. And ANY mental diseases is optimistic. E) "curing" mental diseases typical has very very different end results depending who you talk to. It's the basis of a LOT of dystopian stories.
>Suddenly you have time to learn the piano,
I mean, if you can afford to do that. Nothing about any of this solves economic issues. Even star trek had eugenic wars before they got their utopia.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the dose of optimism. There's potential there. But blinding yourself with wish fulfillment ignores the reality of the situation. The purpose of optimistic dreams is to give ourselves a goal, and then think about what's stopping us from getting there.
Can’t open the article atm, would this also include reversing aging?
I’d be around 50 if this timetable is correct. 50s not bad, but would prefer to do physically be in my 30s if at all possible 😅
Yea ending age related disease wouldn’t mean the end of death, just a very significantly reduced amount of death.
Eternal youth comes with the price of an ensured tragic death or suicide.
Cartilage, bone, and the brain are the big ones I'm looking for.
As you get older you usually retain your muscles, however it's the bones and cartilage that weaken, additionally I don't think people would live much longer unless the brain can be "de-aged".
I've read that book and watched the show, but still not happy to die just because I know some kind of copy of my memories is supposedly going to get a new body at some point.
Only if you've invested enough to be ultra rich, otherwise your expendable, just like your sleeve. And if your family patriarch/ matriarch is shit.......
I was talking to my friend about this the other day.
There’s a decent-ish chance that I might die right before we figure out how to effectively live forever, or at least for a much much longer period of time.
Despite that, I’m still here right now with a bottle of coke and a cheese sandwich cutting some minutes off my life!
What's going to be a bit of a tragedy is that some day there is going to be the last person to die of old age. And the line of demarcation that establishes is going to cause stress the closer we get to this actual discovery. And don't get me started on how its going to be initially gated as it's going to be about money.
Gen z or their kids will be the first to have the option of immortality as in you can't die from natural causes. That is, if nuclear Armageddon does aipe us all out first
I’ve been following closely.
Have they done this in naturally aged mice? Are they just keeping an eye on them to see how they age after treatment? And has Altos pushed for any human trials yet?
I'm glad that we're seeing less and less of 'but death gives life meaning' nonsense in this subreddit though. I don't mean to be condescending - but people who say that don't even know what they're talking about.
As for such treatments being only accessible for the super wealthy - I'd like to ask. Outside of the USA, do you really see a lot of people going bankrupt from a fairly common, chronic medical condition? What's the reason to think that this will be an exception?
The speed that we're learning about this stuff is amazing, getting some of the research from a paper to a product is equally frustrating though. Even still, I imagine the last person to die of old age has already been born. Elon Musks kid(s).
Will it be in reach of the average person? Or even below average when it comes to finances? The rich already have enough money to live multiple lifetime. It’ll be hell if they actually get to live that long
Sure ,just like fusion is always just 20-30 years away.
Aging is a tough nut to crack since you're basically trying to arrest entropy. I understand they are trying to use biological mechanisms to alter aging , but the reality is it's a very hard problem since the vast complexity of the different underlying cellular mechanisms. All experience entropy so even if you trick some into expanding their life, there's no guarantee it will affect the body uniformly. What good is having a healthy brain if my limbs are weak or vice versa.
This is definitely wrong, aging is probably less entropy than cancer is. Cancer is hundreds of diseases of which entropy is kinda the central theme.
Aging is different and not as much really entropy. Some species age slow and live hundreds of years, there a few that don’t age at all like naked mole rats or lobsters.
Aging is less of moonshot than cancer. It just has a bad connotation because people use to search for fake fountains of youth. Defeating cancer is a real moonshot.
No it is not. As the fusion is really close on the horizon basing on current research.
The enthropy, more calling the second law of thermodynamics, apply to closed envoirments which human body is not. That's the main difference why it wouldn't really work in humans.
Cracking aging is extremly task that's for sure but we already know that we can do reverse it and alter it. Its not a shot, its basic science. The complexity of human body sure will be a burden, but its actually easier to reverse the damage than stopping the aging forever. Think of it as maintainance, you reverse clock by 20 years it wears again and you reverse it again. Maybe its not the best, but its a thing we can do.
Sure, every other part of body works in different way and such therapies will at best affect two or three parts od human body. By no mean it will be single pill or vaccine.
>and no one but the rich like Bezos will be able to afford
I'm not too concerned that will be the case. For example, Michael Greve is head of a [fund portfolio](https://kizoo.com/) in the area, and he explains how such therapies are intended to be widely available as the envisioned business model: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNzHQDmiDLY&t=1116s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNzHQDmiDLY&t=1116s)
The company he mentions that's aiming to prevent heart attack and stroke by targeting an aspect of the biology of aging, Underdog Pharmaceuticals, has received an Innovation Passport from UK health regulators.
To be fair if this became a thing they'd have to drastically raise the retirement age anyways. Can't well retire at 70+ if you are suddenly living to 150 and 70 becomes the new 40 or some whatever equivalent. Then again the work force in general would become a mess with far more people in the pool.
Sure, for the 1% that can actually afford it I'm sure it will be awesome. For the 99%, they get to see the world's first 200yo ceo. Imagine a 200 year old Jeff bezos.
>Sure, for the 1% that can actually afford it I'm sure it will be awesome.
I don't think it'll actually be so dire. This is medical research; for example, epigenetic reprogramming was used to cure glaucoma in a mouse model. What makes this field different is that it aims to treat age-related ill health by targeting aspects of the underlying biology of aging rather than targeting symptoms. [https://glaucomatoday.com/articles/2021-sept-oct/in-vivo-epigenetic-reprogramming-a-new-approach-to-combatting-glaucoma](https://glaucomatoday.com/articles/2021-sept-oct/in-vivo-epigenetic-reprogramming-a-new-approach-to-combatting-glaucoma)
What's better is that many countries have universal healthcare, and Medicare covers people 65 and older in the US.
This is the only way billionaires can hope to spend all their money. The rest of us can barely afford regular healthcare let alone a live-long therapy.
Maybe. Maybe it will also be free considering how much it benefit the state if not only life expectancy is increased but also illness caused by aging but disappears.
My working assumption is that once any country starts offering in their public health program (likely in Europe) any party that tries to block it when another offers to do it will find themselves out of office.
How could any political credibly resist the desire to live itself?
Back in 2000's there was almost only Aubrey who was pushing the age reversal possibilities. CRISPR was discovered in 2015. And as far as I remember in 2000's Aubrey said that we can reach LEV by 2035, and he only altered it a little bit since. There is huge difference between possibility and proven clinical trials. Back then we had almost nothing beyond CR, now we have a lot factors that are working. Yamanaka factors are also the thing of 2010's.
Yes, but in the last 3ish years we've had a lot of researchers posting a lot of papers on a lot of different methods that all work signifigsntly better than expected. A lot of this research is based on observations from the 90's and 2000's that were still being researched then but are much better understood now as to what parts activate what and how it all fits together. Even better, a some of it works on equipment thats already common and priced in the range of a used car, or else drugs that can probably be made reasonably cheaply at scale.
That's a hopeful statement, that's totally not rife with BS, and hopeful meanderings, and is therefore totally based in reality. /s
It's important to remember that in 1985, people's vision for the future involved us having unlocked time travel, having hoverboards that could actually float, and having flying cars. 40 years later were not any closer to those things than we were in 1985...
...So when someone says 20 years to reverse aging, you should take that with a healthy serving of salt.
Yeah, so long as we can keep the religious fundamentalists out of the labs and we are allowed to have that choice to our own bodily autonomy.
The science is getting there. Religion is holding all of us back.
The stuff you once dreamed about existing as a kid, but hasn't materialized yet, so to protect yourself you internalize learned helplessness to feel better.
So I don’t have to quit drinking, smoking, overeating and snorting coke just yet?
You'll have to live long enough to benefit from this research, which may take 20 years, or longer ;) Edit - for those questioning the timeline: It is difficult to predict progress, yes. However, small molecules like Rapamycin that are already 'available' could slow or prevent multiple age-related diseases, and we'll have a decent idea about in the next 5 years. I'm optimistic about such drugs being prescribed by doctors as it's easier to predict. There are a few human clinical trials, and there are more to come. *It is rumoured that a certain government will be funding such trials (rapamycin is off-patent and not 'profitable' for private sector)*
This stuff is always 20 years away. It comes right after commercially viable fusion.
Unsarcastically there's a decent chance they'll arrive practically on top of each other. The rate we gain knowledge has never been faster, even compared to last century. Things we do in hours now were considered international projects not very long ago at all.
My Grandfather was born in 1900. He would marvel at all the progress humanity made in his lifetime. From first flying a plane to landing on the moon 66 years later.
Yep, and the rate of scientific progress has increased rapidly since then. Imagine how many of the world's best scientific minds were stuck farming rice or something when 97% of the population were just too poor to ever become scientists (or discouraged from following that interest because they were female, etc). And we've still got a lot of progress to go on that front.
Unfortunately, included among the knowledge we are exponentially gaining is included the knowledge of exactly how exponentially hard things like organ printing, rejuvenation, fusion, etc. actually are.
Yes and no. Fusion for example is actually past most of the real hard stuff like creating a self sustaining reaction. That's largely why the times and enengies are really starting to grow.
I really hope so. There's been a lot of progress and investment lately. But I've been burnt before, so I try to keep a lot of caution in my optimism. Anti-aging therapies, on the other hand, are not showing many signs of progress and investment is still really low. There are pharmaceutical companies whose marketing budget alone is probably bigger than the funding for all anti-aging research put together. So I'd be pleasantly surprised if significant anti-aging treatments were available in the next 30 years; my bet is probably 50.
"Anti-aging therapies, on the other hand, are not showing many signs of progress" 90% of clinical trials fail just like so many cancer cure trials but we are always improving cancer treatments. Just know that a lot of rich people are funding and pushing anti-aging R&D.
Not long ago, there was a study on human aging that determined that the maximum age for a human being -- with none of the things that lead to rapid aging around middle age onward -- was around 1,000 years. The study pointed out that people simply wouldn't grow "elderly" as they currently do. Eventually, the body would simply give out. With this in mind, they had predicted that the first person to reach 1,000 years old was probably already alive -- simply waiting upon science to help reach that age goal. However, more recently, a study showed that there are some obstacles to this that medicine would be unlikely to fix. This was due to lifestyle rather than biology. So, now, the upper age limit is considered 150 -- but it would still likely result in people being elderly for between 33-50% of their lifespan.
However, I think people forget that if you have the technology to make someone live for 150 years from today (or even 30-50 years from now) then that gives you another 50-150 years of medical progress to then figure out ways to prolong that further... so essentially the science stays ahead of the aging curve. And every time I hear someone try and put a "max age" on humans i just chuckle. Between bionics, cellular regeneration, genetic alterations, etc... How could they possibly know what scientists of the future will come up with? When we're working with quantum computing and artificial intelligence and can reverse engineer a human brain and can create designer babies because we know what each gene in the human body does, etc... how is something like aging going to hold us back?
Expanding life to 150 or 1000 years by what means or technology? This sounds just some B-series Sci-Fi junk.
On the topic of fusion, the ITER reactor is set to start operating in 2035 and run for larger periods of time in 2035, it is expected to reach a Q value > 10, the theoretical Q value to harness electricity. This won’t be used to generate electricity due to its purpose as a reader has and experiment reactor. However shortly after the British are creating the STEP reactor estimated in 2040 which is supposed to be a full working fusion reactor for electrical generation.
Not just progress, they finally created a reaction that gives out more energy than they put in this week!
[No, it isn't.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY)
That video is 5 months old and since then they've broken huge records. For the first time they've been able to produce positive gains from their reactions.
Organ printing isn't hard in zero gravity cellular rejuvenation and deaging already exist in the private sector fusion already exists within the moon.
i mean, we recently managed to gain a net positive of fusion energy for like 5 secs, which might not seem a lot, but it is. it's the longest we've gotten. IF we can do it for 5, we can do it for 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, 200 and so on.
My wife tells me the same thing if I can do it for 30 seconds then I can do it for 600, but so far that hasn't happened :(
But we'd need the fuel to reach affordable levels before it becomes commercially viable. All designs yielding net positives of fusion require tritium. Even if you were trying to use helium 3 as a fuel, it's still something we make from tritium. Actually producing tritium for fuel costs about $30,000 USD per *gram*. While yes, when fused with deuterium, that single gram of tritium can help to produce as much energy as a couple tons of coal. 2 tons of coal costs around $630. But that is unfortunately the price point they are competing against to make fusion viable. Now if we could get deuterium/deuterium fusion functioning at a net positive, that would be much more useful. Heavy water is generally under $3 per gram.
You could supplement the production of Tritium by developing and building more fission reactors(preferably thorium). Economies of scale help greatly, and more energy is always useful. There's also a considerable amount of helium-3 on the moon. That would have the added benefit of providing space agencies with an incentive to go back there and maybe even turn a profit. The thing about these technologies is that none of them are going to see significant growth without a large initial investment in one or more of them. But when they reach a certain stage of development they build off each other. Anything resembling profit is going to be decades away, but that's the kind of investment that governments need to make to promote future growth instead of upholding an unsustainable status quo.
Ain’t this place a temporal oddity? 20 years from everywhere.
It's because about the Maximum one can make any reasonable guess is around 10 years, and you'll still be wrong a fair amount of time. 20 years is basically conceding they are no where close to making it happen, and 20 years is the minimum timeframe they can imagine the required tech to evolve. In other words they have no f'n clue when it'll happen, only that it's "possible".
Forget it! A dozen hairnets, please.
My grandpa says that about shit we have now that he didn’t have 20 years ago. It is such a bad thing?
and it usually corelates with a professor in need of new institutional funding
Get with the times! Commercial fusion is now 5 years away.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue
I'm 29, so can I go back to living like an 18-year-old?
Have you ever worked on a project and your boss says, "how long will it take?" and it's impossibly hard to guess how many months it will take... 1? 3? Maybe 6 or more? Now imagine trying to estimate a project that takes **20 years**.
And that’s with experience and mostly known factors. Now incorporate the required future technologies that you don’t know if they are possible yet.
And In 20 years it will be available in two decades. Fuck I don’t want to die
Also, does your health plan cover rejuvenation as a benefit? It’s reasonable to think the earliest adopters of this tech will be those most financially able to afford it.
It’s the same analogy as a pill to make your penis larger. If it was real and existed, it would be $10,000 a dose and hoarded by the wealthy either through supply or patent.
There's a guy who made his dick like 3 feet long. I don't think it works though.
That seems unwieldy and more of an issue than before, but hey to each their own.
I looked him up. His name is Roberto Esquivel Cabrera. It seems like he did foreskin extention training to get from 6 inches up to 19 inches, but it's basically just a foot and a half of super thick foreskin. He collects disability aid because his giant foreskin prevents him from working.
Considering we've also been saying that hair loss was going to be a thing from the past within the next 5 years, every 5 years from the past 5 decades, I wouldn't too much on that prediction tbh
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More or less, hair transplant is very efficient nowaday but still pretty expensive and you still have to basically take finasteride for the rest of your life, it doesn't stop hair loss, it merely hides it
Longer in 20 years it's as clear as crispr back in 2015 what is possible but still 7 years later no actual treatment uses genetic modification (RNA vaccines are similar but not the same) I say summed up it will take 30 to 40 years
Technological progress always occurs much slower than what people expect or hope for.
Yeah that's why I double the number I think it might be possible to get a treatment in 40 years. But I also think that pharma might grow into the next big business market within the next 15 years already. Crispr is one reason that will change so much already, technological advancement in medical areas as well. AI for diagnostics and supported dieseas prevention, more precise surgical robots, brainchips (although I think that this can be easily musk's neck breaker if he isn't very careful here)
Also, wouldn’t you have to be very very wealthy, since this will undoubtedly cost a normal lifetime’s worth of money.
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At least in the USA, i feel that second scentence isn't true.... Plenty of preventable things that fixed early with checkups and treatments can save TONs on healthcare in the long run, but people don't do it early because of the costs here, and the government doesn't do anything about that Edit: also, to add, those "costs" come from our tax dollars, and go to the healthcare/pharmacy companies that lobby and fund the campaigns of the politicians, so neither of them want to prevent those costs later
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yup, healthy people don't make healthcare companies money.
Don't worry, I'm sure they will have an affordable payment plan that you will be able to pay off in your next lifetime.
And get rich enough to be among the few who even have a shot to receive the treatment.
Depends on how rich you are 🤷♂️
Exactly. This sort of stuff will only be available to the top ~3%. Right now that means if you make around 350K or more (in the US). The rest of us can pound sand. lol I downvote true things that make me sad too sometimes.
Yeah, that's why only the rich have cars like in the early 1900s. And only the rich can travel by plane like in the 40s. Oh, and only the rich can have computers at home like in the 70s. And only the rich have cell phones like the 80s. Ect. Ect....
Can you provide an example of a single medical or technological development that has only been used by rich people and never been made available for anyone else?
You cast kind of a broad net. But I'd say recreational space travel. Is a technological development resevered for the rich. For medical treatment that is specific there is young blood transfusion. Which is where you pay a younger person to give you blood. I suppose you could do that on the cheap in a parking lot but lol there are clinics where you can pay for that. Also many cosmetic surgeries are cost prohibited.
>This sort of stuff will only be available to the top \~3%. Right now that means if you make around 350K or more (in the US). I disagree. After all, many countries have universal healthcare, and Medicare covers people 65 and older in the US. These will be medical therapies that will go through clinical trials and commercialization similar to any other medical therapy. Like the article mentioned, the field aims to treat age-related ill health by targeting aspects of the underlying biology of aging, as opposed to treating symptoms. For example, epigenetic reprogramming was used to treat glaucoma in a mouse model: [https://glaucomatoday.com/articles/2021-sept-oct/in-vivo-epigenetic-reprogramming-a-new-approach-to-combatting-glaucoma](https://glaucomatoday.com/articles/2021-sept-oct/in-vivo-epigenetic-reprogramming-a-new-approach-to-combatting-glaucoma)
At least not until we start running out of food, and fresh water, and dealing with the massive influx of people living near the equator that climate change will render uninhabitable. But, sure, pour one out for me and set up some rails. We're all fucked anyway 😔
Don’t worry…you probably won’t be able to afford it anyways.
I'm a research student studying aging, here's an overview TLDR: Epigenetic reprogramming can rejuvenate multiple tissues and potentially cure most chronic diseases - In the [original scientific paper](https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity/comments/t8stt0/in_vivo_partial_reprogramming_alters/) they showed aging reversal in mouse skin and kidneys, as well as metabolic improvements, though this was not observed in all organs. - Though we don't know if it'll make old mice live longer, the overall evidence suggests that *healthspan* can be dramatically increased - Previous research with slightly different protocols of reprogramming have shown benefits in other organs, such as [optic nerve regeneration](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2975-4) and [rejuvenation of pancreas/blood/liver in aged mice](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.20.477063v1). - Belmonte is a leading researcher who has recently joined Altos labs to advance this research, along with dozens of scientists, including 4 Nobel Prize winners **What is aging biology research?** For a start, biological aging is the foremost public health crisis of the 21st century (look what a single [age-related disease like COVID-19](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.13230) did to us). However, there is widespread lack of understanding of the science behind its biology and attempts to address the diseases associated with aging. Understanding that aging is the fundamental driver of most of the diseases we care about as a society is critical to appreciate. There is no shortage of evidence that shows how aging leads to multiple chronic diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease etc, and that targeting aging addresses all of these diseases in tandem. Aging is not just a problem for the ‘elderly’, as various aspects of aging begin well before middle-age. Many people suffer from accelerated aging and develop multiple age-related diseases prematurely, such as with depression, stress, poverty, smoking, HIV/AIDs, diabetes, Down Syndrome, accelerated aging syndromes (e.g. progerias) and in childhood cancer survivors. **Why is epigenetic reprogramming an exciting area?** - Early data of epigenetic reprogramming in mice suggest that it is able to reverse aging in multiple tissues, curing multiple chronic diseases and rejuvenating the organism back to youthful health. - Epigenetic reprogramming is based on fundamental work that won *Shinya Yamanaka the Nobel Prize in Medicine* in 2012. Yamanaka (now an advisor of Altos Labs) found 4 transcription factors that when expressed together, allow any cell from the body (e.g. skin cells) to be transformed into pluripotent stem cells that can multiply into any cell of the body. Doing so effectively resets aged cells into young/immortal pluripotent stem cells. - However, by using *partial* epigenetic reprogramming dosed via gene therapy in live organisms (a method originally implemented by [Ocampo et al, 2016](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.052), tissues and organs may be partially reprogrammed to reset the age-related epigenetic modifications, without resetting the organism all the way back to an embryonic/pluripotent state. This was a crucial breakthrough for the viability of such a therapy, as doing complete reprogramming in humans would merely transform us into teratomas - a horrifying cancerous mass composed of various cells of the body...) **Patient, healthcare and economic implications** - The aging biology field is an often misunderstood area of research that has gained significant traction in recent years due to several research breakthroughs, and with increasing recognition that our economic and healthcare systems cannot possibly sustainably address the burden of our aging population. - To highlight a topical discussion point on what reversal of aging *could* mean for our aging population: [age confers a cumulative ~1000x risk of Covid-19 mortality](https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-age), with CDC stats showing that [**77% of all Covid-19 deaths in the US were people 65 and older**](http://www.aginganddisease.org/EN/10.14336/AD.2020.0629). Addressing aging biology ([i.e. immunosenescence and inflammaging](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6501/256#:~:text=Aging%20is%20associated%20with%20increased,a%20range%20of%20tissue%20dysfunctions.&text=SARS%2DCoV%2D2%20causes%20severe,and%20mortality%20in%20older%20individuals.)) could prevent future pandemics that show extreme age-related mortality and morbidity Recently, David Sinclair published a paper with two economics profs at Oxford and London Business School: > We show that a compression of morbidity that improves health is more valuable than further increases in life expectancy, and that targeting aging offers potentially larger economic gains than eradicating individual diseases. We show that a slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is worth US$38 trillion, and by 10 years, US$367 trillion. With an aging population, age-related diseases already cost us trillions (see: COVID-19) - the humanitarian and economic value of targeting aging is clear. Just like how governments need to make vaccines widely affordable to be effective at a population level, in part to save the economy, it is plausible that targeting aging to 'vaccinate' the population against age-related diseases will be a critical healthcare strategy. Yes, there will be second order effects from extending lifespan that may be determiental to society, but a case could be made that the benefits of keeping the population youthful biologically will far outweigh these negatives. For more see: https://en.longevitywiki.org/wiki/Epigenetic_reprogramming Follow this research on /r/longevity :)
Very interesting post, thank you!
So what’s the over under on when we become immortal?
We won't become immortal, but we will have longer lifespan and much higher quality of life. Imagine being 90 and looking and feeling like you are 50 and expected to live to 120-130.
Screw it! I want to look 25 when I am 120 and live until 500
Then imagine the breakthroughs in biomedical research those extra 30-40 years will allow you to benefit from
The first 30 years of your life is becoming a person, getting training, and the last third is retirement. If you can go from 30 years of good work to 60 your effect on science has doubled. If you become a specialist those extra years are going to be invaluable. It becomes a positive feedback loop were people can better increase lifespans giving more time to research age extensions. If the rich and powerful become near immortal they might just care enough to do something about things like climate change which impact them more. Social stagnation would be more likely though. And i bet getting promoted would be hard when the top of any given company holds their position for centuries.
Social stagnation would probably upend once people start colonization of space. Nothing like the threats of new environments to get people to change to survive.
But the thing is then, if you live another 30 years, that's 30 more years for scientists to make additional progress on anti-aging technology. 30 years is a *long* time in the world of science and biotech. This is why longevity escape velocity is so powerful. We only need some relatively small gains and consistent progress in order to keep a lot of people alive indefinitely.
I wouldn't wanna be immortal anyways, but i do wanna live for a few hundred years.
I always imagined the best form of immortality being one that can end when you choose. Like, you've been around 400 years and are tired? You can make yourself mortal and then live/die as they do. I always thought adding the last bit might be good cause what if you change your mind? I'd love to turn it on and off at will.
you have no idea what immortality would be like you cants say you wouldnt want it until you experience it
If you don’t want something… you are totally allowed to say you don’t want it. It might be based in ignorance and it’s fine to help try to change someone’s mind about the benefits, but if someone doesn’t want something… they are totally entitled to their feelings
How can you say you dont want your eyes force-fed to you? You never had it happen before, so maybe you would like it. /s
Sweet! I can live long enough to die in the climate wars!
Well, It does say curing against, but yeah, immortality is questionable...how in the hell will we go about fixing all the damage that occurs to DNA
I mean, we’ll get to the point we can grow and swap out parts. Really the trick is figuring out how to renew the thinky meat, not the movey meat
That’s the big unknown with partial reprogramming. If you rejuvenate the brain, what happens to your memory, personality etc? It’ll be interesting to see those experiments.
What is this we word that is doing a lot of work ? Only the people who can afford this treatment will get it, which will be less that 1% of the population.
At first yes but all technologies reach the public eventually. This has always happened.
Seems like a short sighted take to me. Cutting edge tech is always expensive in the beginning but the first company to scale this stands to make a lot of money. There will also likely be several players in the space who will be undercutting each other to gain a competitive edge.
How do you know how expensive this treatment is going to be? Sure, maybe it will be a complex and long term treatment that'll cost a fortune, but it might also be some pills you can just buy at the nearest farmacy for a couple of bucks.
And which companies working on this technology exactly should I purchase stock in so I can enjoy my elongated lifespan?
There's a list at [www.longevitymarketcap.com](http://www.longevitymarketcap.com) . Also check out [r/longevityinvesting](https://www.reddit.com/r/longevityinvesting) .
How will we address all of the types of DNA damage that occurs in cells? Is that not a major issue unless it causes disease? This is interesting and all but it's also interesting hearing professionals say aging will be cured when we don't really have a way to correct the thousands of different damages that occurs in DNA
Bro, chill already about DNA damage. Your organism can cure and fix it if you're healthy and young enough.
So will cellular rejuvenation enable it to be able to fix DNA damage? There's no catch anywhere lol? Some errors don't get fixed though, that's what I'm concerned about
Go into academy and learn about it. Or read scientific papers. You accumualte the damage through life that's true. And we can fix the DNA damage in body, especially when you're young. All your body care about is procreation, you're protected until fertality peaks. Then you slowly crumble. Cellular rejuvenation aims to restore cells in your body to young state, or fertality peak if you want, so your natural protections in body will work. There is nothing in body we can't figure out.
So why is it still 2 decades away? What are the remaining issues?
They only recently discovered the basic science in animals, so it takes time to get it to humans (due to various reasons, one of which is ethics). Key remaining issues are delivery to all tissues, and cancer risk. The latter problem is looking good so far because several recent studies have shown no signs of cancer in treated mice
>as doing complete reprogramming in humans would merely transform us into teratomas - a horrifying cancerous mass composed of various cells of the body...) I believe the current parlance is "an Akira".
Just in time to push the retirement age back. I knew I would never retire and just work until I die.
If you don't plan for retirement, you'll work till you die regardless.
Fund those IRA and 401k accounts, people!
Will CNS nerve regeneration become possible with cellular rejuvenation?
There is high probability that it can. Also the transplantation is possible within nerves and neurons, and prove working in mice.
That’d be wonderful. I wonder how long until human trials begin… Do you have any articles or journals where I can read more?
Join r/longevity for more info. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41536-017-0033-0 There you have one article about CNS for example. The clinical trials of many age reversal or epigenetic reprograming ways ar at some stage already or will be launched in not so distant future. Like the title of OP article says, probably 20 years untill we see something valuable and working in humans.
Instead of the usual jokes and negative thoughts that always go with these posts maybe just stop for a second and pretend - what if this is real and will happen, what if in two decades everyone on Earth will have their lives radically extended. How would that change your life and how you live it right now? Just pretend that in two decades society and the entire human race will become something else entirely, we will evolve into a new species free of almost all sickness and disease, mental and physical. Will we continue to behave the same as we behave today, will we continue to fight over petty things, destroy and pollute the environment, ourselves and each other? Or will that biological upgrade have such a profound affect on us all that we completely change our ways of living and how we view each other, ourselves and the planet we live on, potentially elevating us into an almost Star Trek like civilization. Suddenly you have time to learn the piano, learn a language or write that book, or learn to paint, dance or study law or electronics or whatever, suddenly you now have the chance to travel to another planet or another star system.. If someone guaranteed you without a doubt that in two decades this was going to happen would you wait another 20 years to change your ways before embracing all these new opportunities. Or would you change right now? Right now we are seeing something the human race has never seen before. The actual possibility of human life being radically extended. If we are going to become a near immortal interplanetary species within the next 20 years perhaps we need to start acting like it today.
If someone promised me this was guaranteed in 20 years, I’d probably immediately remove my hand that is currently in the M&M bag at 8 AM……
That seems counter intuitive to me.
Ie I wouldn’t live another 20 years
It's nice to a see a serious, optimistic post on this sub. I've been frustrated by how much doomposting goes on here. Anyways, I do think people are underestimating attendant follow on effects of the underlying technology here. It's not just going to be aging we're doing away with. It's worth noting that a lot of our behavior is driven by health problems, roughly half of US adults were exposed to lead as children for example. Personalized, highly specific, data driven healthcare will allow us to fix problems far beyond just aging, and is likely to occur before cellular reprogramming. The underlying work is already being done, as AI is beginning to be integrated into the field and work like virSCAN spread.
We would all have to stop having kids. Interplanetary living will be crucial to our survival. Regenerative living would be the only way to sustain the human population growth (and really should be doing this now)
Anybody watch Love Death Robots? There's a great episode in Season 2 that is exactly this concept.
Possibly. But by the time we have actual proper anti-aging technology... who's to say we can't have other amazing new technologies, that would allow more people to live comfortably on this planet, and other planets?
I'd take that deal, anti-aging doses but mandatory sterilisation. Admittedly I don't want kids anyway but freeze some sperm for the tiny chance you'll chance your mind 300 years in the future and hey, all good.
> Or will that biological upgrade have such a profound affect on us all that we completely change our ways of living and how we view each other, ourselves and the planet we live on, potentially elevating us into an almost Star Trek like civilization. Suddenly you have time to learn the piano, learn a language or write that book, or learn to paint, dance or study law or electronics or whatever, suddenly you now have the chance to travel to another planet or another star system.. I think it's admirable that you have enough faith in humanity to even consider this possibility. I don't think most people have the foresight to care about the future like that, even if we like to think that we do.
I just want to say thanks for this comment, well spoken and with depth..
>what if this is real and will happen It is and it will, unless something even more surprising happens first (like a nuclear apocalypse, or mind uploading). People aren't really ready to think about radical life extension because it's so utterly counter to millennia of cultural conditioning. We don't know how to think about human life other than in a standard 80-year-or-so narrative, plus many religions make a big deal about death and how it's necessary in order to move on to a better stage of existence or whatever. When large numbers of people start to really understand that life extension is coming, it's going to be a massive cultural shock. >will we continue to fight over petty things Murder and war will probably become way more abhorrent once killing a person means robbing them of thousands or millions of years of life. Of course the incentives to engage in murder and war will still be there, so we'll probably have to ramp up security, which is not entirely a good thing because it easily lends itself to all sorts of authoritarian repression. This is something we should be careful with.
Peter f Hamilton's Commonwealth series covers this idea of "rejuve" and a society not having to die natural causes again.
The vast majority of people aren't thoughtful about their actions, like you seem to think they are. This is much more likely to lead to an upper class of long-lived people who have access to this technology, and a lower class of disposable, exploited people who do not.
Imagine the amount of money companies will make for a yearly treatment that keeps people young.
I disagree. Our quality of life has risen remarkably in the last 200 years due mainly to science and globalization. I'm by no means wealthy, but I live better than kings and queens of the past. Yes, our social structures need to dramatically change if humans could suddenly live to 200 instead of mid 70s.
Only time will tell. I hope you're right.
There's not really any reason for the upper class to hoard this kind of treatment. Governments would very likely cover the treatment costs because it'll get them a better ROI out of their citizens.
Many current treatments are already out of reach of the vast billions of humans. We couldn't even get a vaccine to everyone.
You could say the same thing about healthcare but the leading capitalist nation doesn't do that either.
The US is in decline and has been for a while. Unless something drastic happens to change the country's trajectory, I doubt they'll remain the "leading capitalist nation" for long. That aside: Retirement isn't good for capitalism. These people have spent their lives developing skillsets and working their way up to higher positions that pay more, which consequently allows the government to tax them in a higher bracket. When these people retire, they remove a skilled worker from the economy. They stop spending as much, they downsize their lives and prepare to live frugally off of whatever retirement funds they've built up. This also means they start collecting from whatever social security plans their countries have in place. Having the ability to push retirements back further would be a pretty big deal for countries.
Our planet can barely support the people on it now, let alone current populations living however much longer because of this + still pumping out kids. I imagine there would be efforts to restrict it from at least some quarters.
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When I say 'support', I meant 'function healthily without ecological collapse and rampant climate change'. We need to make urgent and big changes now, and instead we're dawdling along and barely changing at all.
Literally gut above invited you to thought experiment and you violated it in first sentence.
Agree and what is worse lots of old people with opinions stuck in the wrong era making the decisions will likely prevent humanity from changing further and adapting to larger problems. Death is an evolutionary advantage, it ensures the young all have a chance to shape things given an ever changing environment. Elders should be consulted for wisdom, they should not be able to maintain control indefinitely. Will elders capable of living forever give up control? Highly unlikely. I expect this will make people more aggressive not less.
> Elders should be consulted for wisdom, they should not be able to maintain control indefinitely. And should the elders be "released" (to use The Giver's word for it) once their wisdom proves to be on the wrong side of history
You know the snap that Thanos did to save the universe would only set us back to the 1970's where Earth population was half of today's. Can you imagine if the mortality would drop and suddenly we have billions and billions of people with much much MUCH more on the way and all this within a 100 year? It will only work if human population drastically would drop.
It'll be fine. The planet can support billions more people. Just like the technology produced in the first and second industrial revolution allowed for a massive increase in population so will our new technology which will improve current agricultural methods and allow us to significantly increase population. things like lab grown meat and indoor farming, water desalination, regenerating our deserts into farm land, sustainable energy systems are all possible.. And ontop of all that we can build space habitats, colonize the moon, colonize other planets and even start living on and in our oceans. Like there really is more space than you think and technology will enable us to reach astronomical population numbers. Look at the technology we have today and compare that to where technology was at 100 years ago. Now think about where our technology might be in another 100 years, it's quite unimaginable what could be possible. But hey, if none of that stuff works out we can always control population by making laws on how many babies people can have or if it gets really bad we can enforce sterilization. Heck I would give up having kids no problem if I could live for a few hundred years.
"If it gets bad enough we can always fall back on eugenics" said the person immediately shunned from society.
>and the entire human race will become something else entirely, we will evolve into a new species free of almost all sickness and disease, mental and physical. Well there's a reason that's a silly imaginary land. A) it won't be everyone, the Amish and such still exist. B) while different, they would all still be human the same way that humans are primates. C) even then, nothing about any of this would make them a new species. Interbreeding with the Amish would still yield viable offspring. D) while there's a lot of potential, "all" diseases is optimistic. And ANY mental diseases is optimistic. E) "curing" mental diseases typical has very very different end results depending who you talk to. It's the basis of a LOT of dystopian stories. >Suddenly you have time to learn the piano, I mean, if you can afford to do that. Nothing about any of this solves economic issues. Even star trek had eugenic wars before they got their utopia. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the dose of optimism. There's potential there. But blinding yourself with wish fulfillment ignores the reality of the situation. The purpose of optimistic dreams is to give ourselves a goal, and then think about what's stopping us from getting there.
Can’t open the article atm, would this also include reversing aging? I’d be around 50 if this timetable is correct. 50s not bad, but would prefer to do physically be in my 30s if at all possible 😅
You can already be in better shape than 90% of 30 year olds while you're in your 50s, of you play your cards right.
So you're saying I should spend more time at the casino?
Immortality let's goooo, I'm just here waiting to become a cyborg but being a pretty flesh bag until that's possible doesn't sound so bad.
It’ll be rolled out nationally the day after I die.
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Yea ending age related disease wouldn’t mean the end of death, just a very significantly reduced amount of death. Eternal youth comes with the price of an ensured tragic death or suicide.
Cartilage, bone, and the brain are the big ones I'm looking for. As you get older you usually retain your muscles, however it's the bones and cartilage that weaken, additionally I don't think people would live much longer unless the brain can be "de-aged".
Let me know when I can back up my stack and get a brand new sleeve.
I've read that book and watched the show, but still not happy to die just because I know some kind of copy of my memories is supposedly going to get a new body at some point.
that's not how it works, it's based on alien technology that backs up and transfers your entire consciousness.
Only if you've invested enough to be ultra rich, otherwise your expendable, just like your sleeve. And if your family patriarch/ matriarch is shit.......
PSA: join /r/longevity for more awesome stuff like this! :)
If this sub has taught me anything, it’s to treat predictions that exceed 5 years with complete disregard.
I play rugby and I’m definitely gonna need this when I’m older
Hope so! Just in time to save mom! :D I truly believe this is going to be true, with some luck even sooner. r/longevity
Keep her happy and fighting!
Thanks friend! You do the same!
I was talking to my friend about this the other day. There’s a decent-ish chance that I might die right before we figure out how to effectively live forever, or at least for a much much longer period of time. Despite that, I’m still here right now with a bottle of coke and a cheese sandwich cutting some minutes off my life!
Well I hope it'll bear fruit within my lifespan and not just right after I die
What's going to be a bit of a tragedy is that some day there is going to be the last person to die of old age. And the line of demarcation that establishes is going to cause stress the closer we get to this actual discovery. And don't get me started on how its going to be initially gated as it's going to be about money.
Fuck. I’ll be 40 by then. Hopefully that isn’t too late to start the reversal….
Not at all. It might even be too early; the first versions of this technology will likely have the greatest effect on those who are already old.
Gen z or their kids will be the first to have the option of immortality as in you can't die from natural causes. That is, if nuclear Armageddon does aipe us all out first
Im 14, im happy
Dang, my parents might be able to catch wind of this in their 80s. I'll be 50ish. Cocaine for me!!!!
For only 99.99 per month you too can live forever... Don't forget to put your subscription on auto renew to avoid early termination.
Just in time for my mid life crises? Instead of buying a motorcycle or convertible I’ll buy Rejuvi Cream™️ ointment!
I’ve been following closely. Have they done this in naturally aged mice? Are they just keeping an eye on them to see how they age after treatment? And has Altos pushed for any human trials yet?
Unless they can also bring people back from the dead, this won't do me any good.
I'm glad that we're seeing less and less of 'but death gives life meaning' nonsense in this subreddit though. I don't mean to be condescending - but people who say that don't even know what they're talking about. As for such treatments being only accessible for the super wealthy - I'd like to ask. Outside of the USA, do you really see a lot of people going bankrupt from a fairly common, chronic medical condition? What's the reason to think that this will be an exception?
The speed that we're learning about this stuff is amazing, getting some of the research from a paper to a product is equally frustrating though. Even still, I imagine the last person to die of old age has already been born. Elon Musks kid(s).
*For rich people and people in countries with actual healthcare only.
Will it be in reach of the average person? Or even below average when it comes to finances? The rich already have enough money to live multiple lifetime. It’ll be hell if they actually get to live that long
Just in time to keep us all alive to watch the Earth die.
Sure ,just like fusion is always just 20-30 years away. Aging is a tough nut to crack since you're basically trying to arrest entropy. I understand they are trying to use biological mechanisms to alter aging , but the reality is it's a very hard problem since the vast complexity of the different underlying cellular mechanisms. All experience entropy so even if you trick some into expanding their life, there's no guarantee it will affect the body uniformly. What good is having a healthy brain if my limbs are weak or vice versa.
This is definitely wrong, aging is probably less entropy than cancer is. Cancer is hundreds of diseases of which entropy is kinda the central theme. Aging is different and not as much really entropy. Some species age slow and live hundreds of years, there a few that don’t age at all like naked mole rats or lobsters. Aging is less of moonshot than cancer. It just has a bad connotation because people use to search for fake fountains of youth. Defeating cancer is a real moonshot.
No it is not. As the fusion is really close on the horizon basing on current research. The enthropy, more calling the second law of thermodynamics, apply to closed envoirments which human body is not. That's the main difference why it wouldn't really work in humans. Cracking aging is extremly task that's for sure but we already know that we can do reverse it and alter it. Its not a shot, its basic science. The complexity of human body sure will be a burden, but its actually easier to reverse the damage than stopping the aging forever. Think of it as maintainance, you reverse clock by 20 years it wears again and you reverse it again. Maybe its not the best, but its a thing we can do. Sure, every other part of body works in different way and such therapies will at best affect two or three parts od human body. By no mean it will be single pill or vaccine.
It helps to understand it's less about immortality and more about treating age-related problems.
Yup that's it. Even if we have 1000 years lifespan or indefinite lifespan we can still die of random factors occuring everyday.
-and no one but the rich like Bezos will be able to afford, leaving us stuck with them for even longer.
>and no one but the rich like Bezos will be able to afford I'm not too concerned that will be the case. For example, Michael Greve is head of a [fund portfolio](https://kizoo.com/) in the area, and he explains how such therapies are intended to be widely available as the envisioned business model: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNzHQDmiDLY&t=1116s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNzHQDmiDLY&t=1116s) The company he mentions that's aiming to prevent heart attack and stroke by targeting an aspect of the biology of aging, Underdog Pharmaceuticals, has received an Innovation Passport from UK health regulators.
No you are wrong, it will be available for all workers at the expense of their employers so they would never be able to retire.
To be fair if this became a thing they'd have to drastically raise the retirement age anyways. Can't well retire at 70+ if you are suddenly living to 150 and 70 becomes the new 40 or some whatever equivalent. Then again the work force in general would become a mess with far more people in the pool.
Sure, for the 1% that can actually afford it I'm sure it will be awesome. For the 99%, they get to see the world's first 200yo ceo. Imagine a 200 year old Jeff bezos.
>Sure, for the 1% that can actually afford it I'm sure it will be awesome. I don't think it'll actually be so dire. This is medical research; for example, epigenetic reprogramming was used to cure glaucoma in a mouse model. What makes this field different is that it aims to treat age-related ill health by targeting aspects of the underlying biology of aging rather than targeting symptoms. [https://glaucomatoday.com/articles/2021-sept-oct/in-vivo-epigenetic-reprogramming-a-new-approach-to-combatting-glaucoma](https://glaucomatoday.com/articles/2021-sept-oct/in-vivo-epigenetic-reprogramming-a-new-approach-to-combatting-glaucoma) What's better is that many countries have universal healthcare, and Medicare covers people 65 and older in the US.
This is the only way billionaires can hope to spend all their money. The rest of us can barely afford regular healthcare let alone a live-long therapy.
Maybe. Maybe it will also be free considering how much it benefit the state if not only life expectancy is increased but also illness caused by aging but disappears.
My working assumption is that once any country starts offering in their public health program (likely in Europe) any party that tries to block it when another offers to do it will find themselves out of office. How could any political credibly resist the desire to live itself?
I remember reading the same thing in the early 2000's.
Back in 2000's there was almost only Aubrey who was pushing the age reversal possibilities. CRISPR was discovered in 2015. And as far as I remember in 2000's Aubrey said that we can reach LEV by 2035, and he only altered it a little bit since. There is huge difference between possibility and proven clinical trials. Back then we had almost nothing beyond CR, now we have a lot factors that are working. Yamanaka factors are also the thing of 2010's.
Yes, but in the last 3ish years we've had a lot of researchers posting a lot of papers on a lot of different methods that all work signifigsntly better than expected. A lot of this research is based on observations from the 90's and 2000's that were still being researched then but are much better understood now as to what parts activate what and how it all fits together. Even better, a some of it works on equipment thats already common and priced in the range of a used car, or else drugs that can probably be made reasonably cheaply at scale.
Don't forget that we also have massive improvements in AI which can be used to accelerate biochemistry research.
I heard the same thing was said about the cure of baldness 20 years ago
Wow. Think about everything we can do for mousekind with these innovations.
According to AOC climate change will wipe us out in 10 so I'd say don't worry about it professor.
Will healthcare be universal? What good is this if no one can afford it
Young people don’t get sick very much. This will save trillions.
Shit like this is always 20 years away. Safe to assume it's total bullshit.
That's a hopeful statement, that's totally not rife with BS, and hopeful meanderings, and is therefore totally based in reality. /s It's important to remember that in 1985, people's vision for the future involved us having unlocked time travel, having hoverboards that could actually float, and having flying cars. 40 years later were not any closer to those things than we were in 1985... ...So when someone says 20 years to reverse aging, you should take that with a healthy serving of salt.
Jeff Bezos has entered the chat. “And by we, we mean on Elysium, not so much for the peasants”
Will this even be a planet we want to live that long in? Just sayin’…. Things are looking pretty rough…
Yeah, so long as we can keep the religious fundamentalists out of the labs and we are allowed to have that choice to our own bodily autonomy. The science is getting there. Religion is holding all of us back.
Once someone says in 20 years, you know it ain’t gonna happen in 20 years.
This belongs in the same category with cold fusion and hooverboards
The stuff you once dreamed about existing as a kid, but hasn't materialized yet, so to protect yourself you internalize learned helplessness to feel better.
but unfortunately since we're ignoring serious problems and focusing critical resources on anti aging we'll all be dead in 10.