How Biotech may help people live longer in the future

[nec209]

Nice video on some of the biotechnology and bioengineering and how that will improve medicine and treatment and allow people to live longer .

 

Biotech Revolution 1 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olNA4axfLCc&feature=related

 

Note Marat did you even watch part 2 of the video what they are going to do with that information?

 

Biotech Revolution 2 of 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vihla-2CJ4I&feature=related

Edited January 10, 2011 by nec209

[Marat]

What utter nonsense that video was! In fact, the ability now to predict the diseases people will suffer from by performing a genetic analysis of their fate merely increases human misery, since all it can do is drive people into despair by telling them they are doomed many years before they would normally have discovered this quality of life destroying information. The problem is that while medicine's ability to predict medical fates and diagnose problems before the patient is aware of the signficance of the symptoms has improved over recent years, there has been no corresponding improvement in medicine's ability to cure anything based on this information, so all we have done is make more bad news available sooner.

 

For example, for several decades we have had a genetic test for Huntington's Disease but no cure or improved treatment for it, so there seems little link between having genetic information about a disease and being able to cure it. Until genetic engineering gets underway as a practical method to treat and cure disease about a half century from now, all this information about genetic defects will only frighten people and drive them prematurely into despair, but it won't help people.

 

All the great advances in medicine so far have come from studying the human body at much more macroscopic levels than the genes, and this will probably continue to be true until well after most people reading this message are dead.

[alpha2cen]

In the point of genetic diseases treatment, gene repair is not easy, and some researcher's successes is not all safe, there are too many factors to control.

But some research would have been continued forward, for example, eye retina cell gen repair--- there is no other way to treat, congenital diabetes, etc.

And middle step genetic engineering is gene interference technique, which is control gene expression in the cell by using micro-rna, ...

But problem is not technical problem, but economical problem .

The used treatment requires too much money, because to make that drug or the treatment requires too much step to do and expensive instruments.

[nec209]

In the point of genetic diseases treatment, gene repair is not easy, and some researcher's successes is not all safe, there are too many factors to control.

But some research would have been continued forward, for example, eye retina cell gen repair--- there is no other way to treat, congenital diabetes, etc.

And middle step genetic engineering is gene interference technique, which is control gene expression in the cell by using micro-rna, ...

But problem is not technical problem, but economical problem .

The used treatment requires too much money, because to make that drug or the treatment requires too much step to do and expensive instruments.

 

Are you talking about gene therapy and in 10 to 15 years using gene therapy?

[alpha2cen]

Using it or not, the research might be done continuously. The therapy will not be done in the hospital but in the international human factory, because of money problem. The role of the hospital is a few on that kind of treatment.

The more the treatment is complex, the more doctor role would be small.

Edited January 11, 2011 by alpha2cen

[nec209]

Using it or not, the research might be done continuously. The therapy will not be done in the hospital but in the international human factory, because of money problem. The role of the hospital is a few on that kind of treatment.

The more the treatment is complex, the more doctor role would be small.

 

How can you say it will not be done in hospitals is the the holy grail finding way to turn gene on or off the god like power of playing with persons gene ?

[alpha2cen]

The treatment will be done in the hospital. It is too expensive in the hospital for few patient. But there are too many patient in the world. Generic disease is too many cases in the same disease, and the treatment is very specific. There are too many labor doing it in the hospital.

Edited January 11, 2011 by alpha2cen

[Mrs Zeta]

A lot of basic research on developing treatments for ageing is directed at studying genes and coming up with therapies based on genes. Bioengineering is not only about existing genetic diseases but also about interventions that can positively influence the ageing process itself. Many genetic discoveries have been applied on humans in this respect (for example the discovery of SIRT and sirtuins, have led people to use, say, resveratrol as an antiageing product). It may not be completely effective at present, but it is a start.

[Marat]

The real question has to be, when will it be available? Because of FDA approval rules for new drugs or procedures, it takes at least 15 years of testing and development before anything new enters the clinical setting where it is generally available. So far I know of nothing in aging research that is even close to serious testing, so I would guess nothing in that field will be available in time to help anyone now reading this forum.

[Mrs Zeta]

The real question has to be, when will it be available? Because of FDA approval rules for new drugs or procedures, it takes at least 15 years of testing and development before anything new enters the clinical setting where it is generally available. So far I know of nothing in aging research that is even close to serious testing, so I would guess nothing in that field will be available in time to help anyone now reading this forum.

 

 

Some scientists disagree. See

http://www.sens.org/sens-research/research-themes/oncosens

a page taken from the sens.org website. According to them, people who are destined to live to be many hundreds year old, are already alive today. These people will be able to use biotechnology advances initially, live many years and then take advantage of new technologies when these become available etc etc (the ageing escape velocity concept). I happen not to agree with this approach, but this is another matter.

[Marat]

The discussion you reference of a fundamental cure for cancer opening the way to developing an intervention to stop or slow the aging process also says, "This is a very ambitious but potentially far more comprehensive and long-term approach to combating cancer than anything currently available or in development." If this preliminary step to finding a way to stop or slow the aging process significantly is itself not even in development, then I would guess that it will not be clinically available -- even if it turns out to be a successful avenue to pursue -- anytime in the next 50 to 100 years.

[nec209]

Sorry but what does aging and living longer have to do with cancer?

[insane_alien]

gives it more time to manifest.

 

cancer wasn't such a big problem 200 years ago largely because you'd likely be dead before it became a problem from some other factor.

 

other factors like, regular disease, malnutrition, war/violence etc. etc.

 

now when we regularly live into our 80's and 90's if cancer does appear, you're going to be around long enough for it to become a problem.

[Paradox of Vigor]

The only way we could live longer is if we had some system on us at all times giving the nutrients we need EXACTLY when we need it. Since that is probably not very possible, especially not for every human, you'd have to take a different approach. We would have to force evolution through tricking the body into thinking that it needs to live longer, in order to survive. It doesn't make much sense but it's the only way.

[SMF]

The only way to force evolution would be to start another nasty eugenics movement and only allow children whose parents live the longest to breed. This would probably show some results in several thousand years. SM

Edited January 30, 2011 by SMF

[Mrs Zeta]

Sorry but what does aging and living longer have to do with cancer?

 

Roughly speaking, the mechanisms that can possibly control aging are opposite to those that cause cancer. For example, loss of telomeres is associated with aging. Artificially lengthening the telomere can make the organism live longer but can also increase the risk of cancer. Cancer cells have long telomeres (or telomeres that don't shorten with time). Or apoptosis: reducing the rate of apoptosis can save functional cells and improve function in aging, however, it can also retain cancerous cells (that would otherwise have been eliminated).

 

The only way to force evolution would be to start another nasty eugenics movement and only allow children whose parents live the longest to breed. This would probably show some results in several thousand years. SM

 

Also a relevant reply to Paradox of Vigor:

 

I believe that the natural progress of evolution will inevitably result in extreme lifespans. This will start to happen within the next 50 years. This assertion is based on the concept that nature needs to achieve increased intelligence in a short time. For my detailed comments see http://www.elpistheory.info/page14.htm

[Marat]

The sad fact is that lifespans are now starting to level off, and in some population groups, such as poor white males in North America, they are even beginning to decline now for the first time since records started to be kept. So far from extending lifespans, I believe we are now in an era when in developed countries the gains made in previous generations from improved nutrition, hygiene, infection control (sulfa drugs, antibiotics) will start to be eroded by our inability to address new problems like the diabetes epidemic, the skyrocketing increase in renal failure, the increasing rates of some types of cancer, etc.

 

I don't think that optimally tailored nutrition is going to add very much to the human lifespan, as one poster suggested. Someone who at the beginning of life becomes a type 1 diabetic and suffers decades of vastly disrupted matching of nutrition to requirements only loses about 15 years from a normal lifespan, so how much lifespan could be gained from a perfect nutritional calibration?

 

Cancer rates in the 19th and early 20th centuries may have been similar to those of today, but the symptoms of cancer, such as extreme cachexia, were often misdiagnosed as those of tuberculosis.

 

About all bioengineering is able to do today is extend patients' lives for a short while at the price of giving them such a hideous lifestyle they would rather be dead. Look at how well Barney Clark thrived with his artificial heart, or how well hemodialysis patients do, or how useless and cumbersome insulin pumps are, or the half century of tinkering that has already gone on to produce an artificial, implantable pancreas, yet without any workable model yet being available, or Dr. Humes' bioartificial kidney project, which he has been fiddling with for the last 20 years without yet being able to bring anything into clinical practice.

[SMF]

Mrs Zeta, I think you should be more careful when referring to evolutionary processes. Nature doesn’t “need intelligence,” and in your article you say “Nature will follow whatever paths are necessary in order to increase hierarchical sophistication” and other similar statements that are, perhaps unintentionally, teleological, incorrect, and misleading to readers who are not familiar with evolutionary processes.

 

 

Your thesis of “technology-assisted human intelligence” that leads to an extended lifespan is fun and has been explored (with less biomedical factual support) in science fiction. However, a species can eliminate itself by overpopulation, environmental degradation, and resource depletion, and we humans appear to be working very hard to accomplish this very thing. Even, without extinction, these factors could easily disturb technological society enough to stop the hypothetical progress you suggest. SM

 

 

[Marat]

Ideally, the extension of the human lifespan could be combined with birth control efforts so that it would not intensify overpopulation problems. But the key benefit from an expanded human life expectancy would be that people could continue their growth trajectory of accumulated knowledge and experience for a longer period, thus producing greater progress in all areas of human culture. The basic problem we have now is that the ratio between the period of time each new generation has to waste in acquiring fundamental skills and basic knowledge (20 to 30 years, depending on how advanced the knowledge acquired is) and the period of time available to make productive development of that basic knowledge (40 to 50 years) is not optimal. If we could not only live longer but also live healthier, and especially, if we could live longer with healthier brains, then we could really achieve significant cultural advances.

 

But in the present state of medical science, the price we pay for extending human life is that we just add unproductive years of suffering. What good does it do if we live to 100, given that almost all people who reach that age are toothless, blind, and deaf? What good does it do if most people can now live to 80 if most of them are effectively brain-dead at 70 from frontal lobe dementia, athero-sclerosis of the arteries feeding the brain, mini-strokes, or Alzheimer's Disease?

 

It seems quite ironic that people are now talking about the prospect of extending the human lifespan significantly when we can't even ensure that such lifespan as we now have is productive and enjoyable, and when the data are showing that gains in lifespan are either levelling off or even declining in developed countries.

 

Just ask yourself, would you rather be an unemployed 20-year-old drug addict or a wealthy 95-year-old Nobel Prize winner? If you would pick the former or find the choice a close call, then you see how worthless even the extended lifespans we can now achieve are.

[SMF]

Marat, having dealt with the nasty and extended death of my parents and beginning to look at my own future, I pretty much agree with you. You can see the attraction of the technological fundamentalists who think that technology will cure all, especially because there is a fair amount of support for some of their positions, but most folks just don't seem to be looking at the big picture. SM

[Mrs Zeta]

Mrs Zeta, I think you should be more careful when referring to evolutionary processes. Nature doesn’t “need intelligence,” and in your article you say “Nature will follow whatever paths are necessary in order to increase hierarchical sophistication” and other similar statements that are, perhaps unintentionally, teleological, incorrect, and misleading to readers who are not familiar with evolutionary processes.

 

 

Your thesis of “technology-assisted human intelligence” that leads to an extended lifespan is fun and has been explored (with less biomedical factual support) in science fiction. However, a species can eliminate itself by overpopulation, environmental degradation, and resource depletion, and we humans appear to be working very hard to accomplish this very thing. Even, without extinction, these factors could easily disturb technological society enough to stop the hypothetical progress you suggest. SM

 

Here I am referring to what I see in nature. Whatever the evolutionary theories say, what I see is that nature progresses from simple forms to more complex ones. Intelligence is just a higher level of complexity. I can't understand how people can claim the contrary, maybe I am missing a relevant point?!

 

The problems with overpopulation, pollution etc. have been discussed ad nauseam by others. I don't believe that humanity as a whole will suffer significantly from the problems you mention. Perhaps we could discuss this on another relevant forum.

[michel123456]

(...) However, a species can eliminate itself by overpopulation, environmental degradation, and resource depletion, (...)

 

Do you have a recorded example, out of Human Beings?

[Mr Skeptic]

Whatever the evolutionary theories say, what I see is that nature progresses from simple forms to more complex ones.

 

Evolutionary theories also say that bugs on windy islands might lose their wings if the wind kills more of them than flight allows them to reproduce, or that fish that live in caves will lose their eyes if the biological costs of eyes and damage/infection of the eyes outweighs the benefit they might get from perhaps being able to see if only there were light. Guess what we see? Some bugs on windy islands lose their wings, some fish living in caves lose their sight. While I agree that evolution might tend toward complexity this is by no means necessarily true and certainly not in every case.

[SMF]

The reason that evolution appears to progress toward complexity is that it started from a very simple beginning and there is no other direction to go. Evolution is not directional in any larger perspective, it is opportunistic. Ecological niches that are immediately available get filled if a species can make the transition. The intelligence niche was available and was opportunistically filled, but if the bottleneck that squeezed human ancestors into something like our present form had failed, and there is some evidence that this was a close call, we wouldn't be here. That intelligence is a trait that can be sustained is yet to be proved. Maybe the SETI project will tell us someday. SM

[Mrs Zeta]

Evolutionary theories also say that bugs on windy islands might lose their wings if the wind kills more of them than flight allows them to reproduce, or that fish that live in caves will lose their eyes if the biological costs of eyes and damage/infection of the eyes outweighs the benefit they might get from perhaps being able to see if only there were light. Guess what we see? Some bugs on windy islands lose their wings, some fish living in caves lose their sight.

 

Within their niche, these creatures are more adapted (i.e more 'complex', better able to function in that niche), compared to those that live outside that niche. I refer to complexity in function, which is not necessarily complexity in mere structure.

 

While I agree that evolution might tend toward complexity this is by no means necessarily true and certainly not in every case.

 

As a clinician, I am referring to humans. We started off as a collection of a few cells, and ended up having the most complex organ in the universe. I have little interest in flies or worms.