RE: Eternal life? I don''t see it happening
Posted: 1/17/2001 4:44:34 PMBy: Comfortably Anonymous
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Topic: Nanotechnology, Quantum Physics, Etc.
Maybe it is theoretically possible to create that army of nanobots, drugs, ... to live a couple of years more. Say, until we all live to be 100 years, at average. But I just think the costs are going to be sky high. Already, you can see that a large part of the cost of health care is providing drugs and treatments for the elderly. It is not uncommon for somebody who's 80 years old and still in reasonably good shape to be using a coctail of 10 different drugs, each day, easily costing two hundred dollars per week, or more.
And, maybe you're thinking "ah, well, the price of drugs will go down as technology advances", and you would be right of course. Generic drugs for common diseases will become cheaper. But as people grow older, they will develop more and more rare diseases and disorders, and some may even be unique. Developing a new drug today takes years, and costs millions, sometimes billions. What do you think is going to happen when you're 98 years old, and develop a completely unique disease that will take 1 year to develop a drug for, and that's going to cost $10 million ? (which is really quick and cheap considering today's standards). People will say "I'm sorry," and will hold your hand until you mutter your last words.
And, maybe you're thinking "ah, well, the price of drugs will go down as technology advances", and you would be right of course. Generic drugs for common diseases will become cheaper. But as people grow older, they will develop more and more rare diseases and disorders, and some may even be unique. Developing a new drug today takes years, and costs millions, sometimes billions. What do you think is going to happen when you're 98 years old, and develop a completely unique disease that will take 1 year to develop a drug for, and that's going to cost $10 million ? (which is really quick and cheap considering today's standards). People will say "I'm sorry," and will hold your hand until you mutter your last words.
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By: Comfortably Anonymous
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Topic: Nanotechnology, Quantum Physics, Etc.
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RE: Eternal life? I don''t see it happening
Posted: 1/17/2001 4:44:34 PMBy: Comfortably Anonymous
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Topic: Nanotechnology, Quantum Physics, Etc.
The thing is - there are currently two different known effects that cause aging. Both are relatively easy to to treat - WITH the right technology and knowledge.
These two broad classes of aging are:
(1) Deterioration-related aging. Apart from a very few, special cells, the majority of cells in our body have a limited number of replications that they can undergo before becoming non-viable. When a cell divides, BOTH of it's children then have one less available division.
Now, as we go through life, cells die for a very wide variety of reasons (natural), and need to be replaced. As we get older, however, we have less and less viable replication tissue, and this gets harder and harder.
In addition, some tissues (like the brain and heart) do NOT replace themselves very much (if at all), and are susceptible to more rapid degradation.
This IS treatable, however. K. Eric Drexler, for instance, proposed a system of nanobots, one inside each cell of our body, maintaining and repairing that cell so that it survived far past it's normal lifetime. In addition, progress is already being made into understanding what gives a cell it's limited lifespan, and I can't imaging that when the answer is found it won't be combatted.
(2) The second kind of aging occurs because of a very peculiar quirk of evolution.
See, evolution has tended to make people better able to reproduce - but after about 40 or 50 people DON'T reproduce. Hence, a gene that improves viability in early life, but causes rapid degradation at age 40 (say) will be selected FOR, not against. In other words, genes that are not deleterious until later life (like, for instance, the genes that presumably cause Alzheimers, Huntingtons disease, etc), won't be weeded out.
I can see no reason why this we won't eventually be able to combat this as well. Remember that the idea of retroactively fitting a body with a gene, or repairing a gene, is just starting to take hold, and that we will most likely be able to do this in 50 years or so (this will probably be performed by infecting people with a "virus" that spreads a single copy to each important cell and inserts a particular gene into a particular place into the genome).
Even if certain genes that cause aging are required in earlier life, there is no problem, as people could then be treated to remove the gene AT 40 or 50.
I'm not saying that any of this is trivial, or doable today, but I really don't think that there's any insurmountable problems in there.
In addition, your argument about $200/week treatments could well be wrong. At the MOMENT we need regular treatment of drugs, but in the future we may well require a single treatment of a nanobot that manufactures the drugs FOR us, continually, from within our bodies, at the target area.
These two broad classes of aging are:
(1) Deterioration-related aging. Apart from a very few, special cells, the majority of cells in our body have a limited number of replications that they can undergo before becoming non-viable. When a cell divides, BOTH of it's children then have one less available division.
Now, as we go through life, cells die for a very wide variety of reasons (natural), and need to be replaced. As we get older, however, we have less and less viable replication tissue, and this gets harder and harder.
In addition, some tissues (like the brain and heart) do NOT replace themselves very much (if at all), and are susceptible to more rapid degradation.
This IS treatable, however. K. Eric Drexler, for instance, proposed a system of nanobots, one inside each cell of our body, maintaining and repairing that cell so that it survived far past it's normal lifetime. In addition, progress is already being made into understanding what gives a cell it's limited lifespan, and I can't imaging that when the answer is found it won't be combatted.
(2) The second kind of aging occurs because of a very peculiar quirk of evolution.
See, evolution has tended to make people better able to reproduce - but after about 40 or 50 people DON'T reproduce. Hence, a gene that improves viability in early life, but causes rapid degradation at age 40 (say) will be selected FOR, not against. In other words, genes that are not deleterious until later life (like, for instance, the genes that presumably cause Alzheimers, Huntingtons disease, etc), won't be weeded out.
I can see no reason why this we won't eventually be able to combat this as well. Remember that the idea of retroactively fitting a body with a gene, or repairing a gene, is just starting to take hold, and that we will most likely be able to do this in 50 years or so (this will probably be performed by infecting people with a "virus" that spreads a single copy to each important cell and inserts a particular gene into a particular place into the genome).
Even if certain genes that cause aging are required in earlier life, there is no problem, as people could then be treated to remove the gene AT 40 or 50.
I'm not saying that any of this is trivial, or doable today, but I really don't think that there's any insurmountable problems in there.
In addition, your argument about $200/week treatments could well be wrong. At the MOMENT we need regular treatment of drugs, but in the future we may well require a single treatment of a nanobot that manufactures the drugs FOR us, continually, from within our bodies, at the target area.
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