I was watching this on TED and had some questions on where things currently stand. It was done in 2006, so that is half of the decade that de Grey claimed he’d need to reach the first stage of combating aging (i.e. the technology that would enable people to live to be 150). Does anyone know the current status of research? What’s the status on doubling the age of mice, for instance?
If this is total BS I’d also appreciate the facts on the subject…it all sounded plausible to me, not that this is saying much since my field of expertise, such as it is, is definitely not in anything vaguely biology related.
But I remember reading a while back that life extension, for the foreseeable future, will probably focus on increasing the average lifespan, without increasing the maximum lifespan.
Increasing the average lifespan is a much less daunting task than increasing the maximum lifespan - the former can be accomplished with improved nutrition, healthier lifestyle choices, and more widespread access to medical treatments that already exist, particularly preventative medicine.
The latter would appear to require a more fundamental re-wiring of our biology.
Ah…well, was hoping for a bit more on this, but appreciate the comments SmithCommaJohn. I guess either the subject isn’t interesting or the current status is not well known…or, as you say, they have switched gears and aren’t being as aggressive in research.
Basically there are lots of really interesting treatments that increase longevity in some laboratory model organism, but in later tests they don’t do much for mammals and thus nobody tests them in humans. It’s really easy to extend the life span of a cell or worm or fly (I do it every day!). But those organisms are used because they have a conveniently rapid life cycle and short life span. In terms of longevity, there’s nowhere to go but up, and there are plenty of evironmental, genetic or pharmaceutical treatments which can improve longevity. Those same treatments don’t cause dramatic life span increases in mice. At best the treatments seem to improve health at the end of life without really increasing the maximum life span. Most serious researchers these days are talking about ways to increase the “health span” of humans. If the research pans out, you might be a really spry and healthy 70 year old, but still die around 80.
For one specific example, there’s a class of genes called sirtuins that are involved in the regulation of life span in invertebrate systems*. You can experimentally manipulate sirtuin activity genetically by inserting over-active forms of the gene into your experimental organism, or through treatment with certain types of drugs*. If you do this, you can extend the life span of some organisms – the aforementioned yeast, fruit flies, and nematodes. But increased sirtuin activation in mice doesn’t really affect longevity, though it does help make mice healthier by some measures. For example sirtuin activating drugs help prevent the insulin resistance that leads to type 2 diabetes – at least in mice*. Those drugs are currently in clinical trials to see if they might help treat diabetes and other disease in humans. Some of the clinical trials have already failed due to lack of a positive effect or too many side effects; other trials are ongoing.
*Well, maybe not. Major parts of this neat little story are extremely controversial, and various camps of scientists are constantly trying to prove each other wrong – and some of them have a lot of money and reputation at stake. (Messy as it is, that’s how science works). Of course, this is also partly why you don’t hear more about such treatments for humans, since those initial results of magic longevity treatments might have been hype and wishful thinking inflated by hefty investments from pharmaceutical industry.
My understanding is they know how to expand lifespan by about 50% in mice and worms via things like caloric restriction, and are now working on drugs that would have the same effect.
I really don’t know, I haven’t followed Kurzweil or De Grey in about 4 years so I have no idea what has been done in that period.
Go to the website kurweilai.net and type ‘aging’ into the search function, a bunch of articles will come up.
Which is a totally cool and amazing result, but it’s definitely in the category of treatments which improve health without increasing life span. Specifically in this case the researchers genetically manipulated of brain cells which reversed the cognitive decline of old age. It would be analogous to a human treatment which restored, say, short term memory in 70 year old.
However this was accomplished through genetic engineering techniques which are impossible to do for humans. To do this for a mouse you typically engineer embryonic stem cells, implant them into another embryo, and then weed out the failures over several generations. It’s a long and error prone process, and even when it works there are sometimes nasty genetic abnormalities.