[Before I begin ranting, my disclaimer is to clarify that I am about to talk about longevity research as it pertains to the systemic processes of the body and not the decline of cognitive function. My opinion concerning cognition is that there is a disconnect between neural function and the ability of consciousness to hold its baring when that function is impaired, and that everything within reach should continue to be done to bridge that gap to prevent cognitive decline during aging. However it is also my biggest fear that bridging that gap will allow robotics to ascend to a new level which obliterates what it means to have a human mind... I'll shimmy across that bridge when it comes down to it. Lose a bit of physical functionality, fine - be slightly less active for the final decade of your life. Take on dementia in that decade... well to come to a point, it's the one thing in life I am determined to avoid.]
Aubrey de Grey is one of those particular fuckers who seems like he's in it with the right direction, and then he goes and says something like, "this is bona fide rejuvenation therapy for the sake of prolonging life-span." [but then he'll also go and say shit like, "I don't blame the journalists in question, you understand - they're just doing what they're paid to do. Ultimately, the reason why calling my goal 'immortality' sells papers is because it trivializes it - it confuses my work with something that we all know is impossible; the technological elimination of any risk of death."] Damn him and his perfectly directed Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence... which is probably the hottest title he could have given to his little proposal. He's essentially promoting modified gerontology to combat those biochemical mechanisms that accelerate the physical aging process, and to manipulate the nature of those mechanisms which are otherwise meant to be senescent. So here's what we're looking at. Geriatrics aims to stop biochemical damage from progressing into pathology, whereas it is gerontology's goal to stop metabolism from causing damage in the first place. were de Grey to base his SENS protocol off of gerontological approaches, he would immediately be dismissed as trying to override natural progression of biological processes. However, since he has disguised his proposal as more similar to the practice of geriatrics, he is facing controversy instead of socioeconomic heresy. The idea of SENS is to keep maintenance of damage that occurs as a byproduct of living/aging to prevent its exacerbation into pathology. Making only enough adjustment of systems to prevent transition of damage into pathology is where aging research should be directed. The objective to not inevitably die pathologically doesn't seem too unreasonable to me.
Sounds perfect, right? Don't stop life from happening, just keep the damage under control. I like the ideology because stopping damage entirely fights senescence on every level which, in turn, prevents the growth/development that occurs as a byproduct of living/aging. Ultimately, this screws with the natural progression of an organism's energy efficiency. I'm not a fan. Probably because I am more resistant to invasively altering energy fluctuation on a metabolic and molecular level. I'm partial to energy flux by non-invasive means, which allow only for changes in metabolism as can be controlled by organisms' behavior... on a quantum level [follow-up note to Buettner and blue zones]. Invasive techniques tend to have less catastrophic results if they don't venture beyond changes in the observable activity on a cytological level. Particularly in the name of intervening on the functionality of systems. Help them do their job correctly to improve the time we have and side-step pathological decline, don't make them do things they have never been known to do in order to extend life-span. Use RNAi to silence a genetic mutation in the mitochondria so that it more efficiently pumps electrons and doesn't leak quite so many extra protons and cause free radical formation... or combat the mutation by consuming fewer calories, eh? Increase expression of apolipoprotein E. But don't fucking stop the electron transport chain from producing a proton gradient... old people need to be able to keep themselves warm too. The goal of aging medicine should be to stave off diseases fostered by age, and let people die healthily exhausted from living, not from fighting death.
Here's the general problem. It's one thing to prolong health and quite another to prolong life-span. The idea of prolonging health is to allow people more time to do things with their existence (like redefine the pompously blind greed of government and societal consumption...ahem). Prolonging life-span increases the problem of overpopulation... why on Earth would you want to exacerbate that particular problem when it's already putting so much weight on the world that the sociological controversy isn't about whether we can, but whether we should give medical/financial support to AIDS/poverty stricken places whose governments are too dysfunctional to address the problem? Overpopulation, of course, is also controversial in terms of consumption. It just seems so insatiably and unforgivably greedy to me that people actually want to take away from the lives that their offspring might have by staying alive for so long that they're consuming resources that should be given to those who haven't already had 100 years to pursue what the world has to offer. What can you possibly have achieved in your natural lifetime to deserve the luxury of stealing from someone else's basic sustenance? [Besides curing AIDS, cancer and restructuring the American government?] But I'm getting off-topic...
So here's my wish. The romantic pragmatic approach: don't fucking delay or reverse aging, just guide it.
Eat fewer calories or take caloric restriction mimetics to decrease free radical production and stave off oxidative stress which is the staple of almost every age-related pathology.
Get enough sun to produce vitamin D but not so much as to cause DNA double strand breaks and cancer. Human skin is lighter in the North because when our ancestors migrated it was detrimental to have too much melanin blocking absorption of solar radiation to which we are exposed... and strong eumelanin with less intense exposure leads to deficits in vit. D synthesis. ["Why do we still have black people in the north?" Soo many reasons... including... thanks to human exacerbated climate change and particularly altered levels of ozone in the stratosphere we experience higher levels of exposure than thousands of years ago... it's also why there's a higher rate of skin cancer in "white folks"...]
Use stem cells to contribute to immune response to cytological damage so the white blood cells don't have to do quite so much work under otherwise catastrophic conditions... like multiple sclerosis.
Support decrepit and declining bone mineral density with nanotube structure to colonize and foster growth of new cartilage, just don't give people symptoms of asbestos...
Don't fuck with the cytokines. Development is development - aid its function, don't prevent it. [although if we must press forward with this commonsense idiocy of allowing people to live indefinitely, it wouldn't be so terrible if their offspring happened to be infertile...]
Buettner says he has identified four things people can do that can potentially increase a healthy life, and specifically, live healthier into your late years: create an environment that encourages physical activity, set up your kitchen in a way that you're not overeating, cultivate a sense of purpose... and surround yourself with the right people. This is the dude who defined "blue zones," those regions on earth where particular groups of people have mastered healthy longevity. Not immortality. Not reversing the biochemistry of aging. Living.
that's my wrap.
No comments:
Post a Comment