By aging I mean senescence, the gradual increasing succeptability to disease, accident, etc.
George C Williams came up with the pleiotropic theory of the aging. ( pleiotropic with genes means. “more than 1 effect”
That is even in a population that never ages any gene that benefits the younger over the old will thrive. The reason is even without aging, if aging didn’t exist, many more people are dead at older ages due to disease, predation, accident, starvation, etc.
In “Why we get sick” the authors ask you to Imagine a gene that alters calcium metabolism, increasing the healing rate of bone but slowly builds up deposits in your arteries, this gene will thrive, massively so.
genes that increase reproductive success at younger ages thrive even when they cause disease or weakness in older life, this is true without the prior existance of aging.
Humans will always age and sicken because thats the cost of being built reproduction.
Its time to give up the ancient search for a magical source of eternal youth, Ponce de Leon had more hope finding the fountain of youth in the wilds of Florida than we do creating it biologically.
I had seen a program on the Science Channel I believe about a geneticist who is supposedly on the verge of finding a genome through it’s constituent parts to increase life spans of people. PBS in my best recollection also featured this scientist.
As to the veracity of his claims, I would be hard pressed to give any decision either way. Apparently, it was plausible enough for those two media channels to interview him. The predicted time for life was 150 to 160 years old. He may have stumbled onto the sequences in the human DNA which might delay body processes that most people now suffer with.
If the natural aging process were halted permanently, one would still be at higher risk of death at old age under the condition that certain damaging affects on the body had lasting cumulative effects. Otherwise, such damaging effects would be repaired by the bodies own restorative systems, and the kind of damage that would be fatal in a single blow (i.e. deadly diseases, severe injuries, poisons, starvation, drowning, etc.) would be equally likely to occur at any point in the life span (i.e. it wouldn’t favor old age).
This is false, in a world without aging, without cumulative damage, the old die more often from infection, predation, accident and starvation, etc. Simply from being exposed to them FOR LONGER.
If you live near tigers and don’t age, you’re more likely to be eaten the older you get simply from being exposed to the risk FOR longer.
You two are missing my point. The geneticist finds genes correlated with aging and hypothesis we can do without them, likely ignoring the fact the genes almost certainly are of a huge benefit in youth.
Let me reapeat in a world without senescene, the old still end up dying more than the young, thus any gene which creates a benefit to youth at the cost of your older self, will thrive.
For example, hemochromatosis kills some middle aged men as iron deposits destroy the liver or the increased iron may fuel a pathogenic bacteria, these costs are outweighed by historical benefits (modern maybe) like preventing anemia in youth, or it may be it benefits women who must replace lost iron after menstruation. You can’t just cut genes associated with disease or senescene because they have multiple effects.
diseases in significant numbers among homozygotes usually confers heterozygote advantages somehow, you can’t conquer that. You wipe out homozygote diseases you wipe out heterozygote resistance to diseases.
Like sickle cell anemia and malaria resistance. The disease only exists as a byproduct of population malaria resistance. You can’t fix thst without changing the heterozygote advantage.
more importantly its very likely that many genes that confer health/fitness in youth are the causes of aging (senescence) so that there is no cure, from cell to organ, we’re organized to reproduce, to fall apart
Isn’t this just the gambler’s fallacy? If I flip a coin ten times and it turns up heads each time, that doesn’t mean the chances of turning up tails on the next toss have increased. The older members of the species are not “due” to die.
That may be another matter, but if we’re considering the removal or repression of the gene for senescence, and that does indeed pose a risk to youth, it sounds to me like the conclusion we should draw is that those youth are at higher risk for death, not that the older you get, the more you run the risk of dying. In fact, it seems like the older you get, the more you’re in the clear from youth-based susceptibility to death.
I completely agree that aging is inevitable. But whether or not we can restart the aging process or increase our lifespan is a different story. Is Aubrey DeGrey the person you guys were thinking about? He puts forth a number of things that could increase and possibly reverse the damages of aging. The way I see it, if we were healthy once, why can’t we do it again? I think it’s possible even though it looks relatively hard to do. All mass/energy can transform. Saying that our body is impossible to repair is arrogant because of the mere fact that it has existed before. We just need to figure out how, not if we can do it.
Reflecting on my previous post, I can’t find an advantage to living longer. Even if it is possible to live doubly long, how will it affect what has long been the status quo on what has been benchmarked through what was set up in many aspects of our lives.
Since Social Security benefits will most likely fail in the near future, depending on that entitlement for life support may prove to be fruitless. Then again, the ‘new’ 60 could turn into an ‘elongated’ 30. Which could provide for a longer time paying into the SS.
Being with children, grand children etc. for a longer period is an advantage from my perspective. Having more time to pay on mortgages will make the loan companies richer, but a bit easier on the consumer. Living longer could cause unforseen advantages and problems.
Personally, I’m content with life spans on the table now. The ravages of time are becoming more apparent to me as the years pass by.
You can’t find an advantage to living longer? How about so you can simply exist? That should be a good enough reason (Unless your a religious man.) to live longer. I want the to be able to see the universe. I want to explore planets. I want to upgrade myself through technological advances. I want to learn and obtain as much knowledge as possible. I want to experience everything that existence has to offer. These will all be advantages that will come with anti-aging technology.
The mere fact that I will stop existing when the lights go out is enough to keep me motivated to help in anyway possible find ways to prevent the damages of aging. With me dead, everything is pointless.
Do you think gamblers fallacy applies to leaving a tiger cage open again and again? I’m sorry, but the risk of predation does increase the longer your around predators.
Tigers aren’t coins, bacteria aren’t coins. Thats a absurd and incorrect way to apply gamblers fallacy. A coin can’t evolve molecular mimicry against you, a coin can’t co-infect you with other coins. Its not evolved to fucking eat you either.
Being around a tiger isn’t a coin flip, theres no 50/50 heads/tails scenerio envolved. You understand that basic fact right? That coins and tigers are fundamentally different?
This is rare to nonexistant in the natural world. The longer you live the more exposure to predators, accident, homicide, disease, starvation or poison. Toxins are “old, new and everywhere”
In a world without senescence the mortality curve would still be a lot higher for someone 200 than 100, a lot more people are dead by 200. in ANY population.
I’m not sure why this is hard to understand. If I never aged at all and went for a daily walk, by the time I was 300 the likelyhood i’d be gored by a deer would be pretty high. Compared to my chance of getting gored in the first 25 years.
Anyway theres no benefit to old age for many species as its correlated with less offspring for the reasons I mentioned here. Beetles bred for many generations to reproduce early in the life cycle happen to die young but have MANY offspring. Fruit flies which are bred to reproduce late in life cycle, have few offspring but live old.
It looks like the beetles selected for genes to increase reproductive success but that caused aging and earlier deaths, because it was still beneficial, big time. They selected for genes that cause/hasten senescence (aging) but the genes had more beneficial effects in youth.
pepsinogen1 is a good example, many people have 2 much of it and it causes ulcers and increased death from ulcers in old age, but it seems very likely that it may prevent potentially deadly gastrointestinal infections, or lower the infection rate of them.
Or the immune system the older you get the higher the chance of it damaging you in a severe way, by mistake or as a byproduct of a real battle.
Predation is a silly thing to use to determine that living longer is stupid. If we live longer, we will have more experience if we survive encounters with animals, be it that we are more cautious or something else. If predation happens to us, it can happen to the predators too.
There is a probability you could get gored by a deer now, but if your always in a city, what are the chances of that? The chances do not increase with age and in fact should be the opposite. There are other variables to take into account. Such as the rate that we are producing technology is accelerating, where we are located, how equipped are our predators compared to us, etc.
Now disease is what I’m more worried about. Although I think we will be able to combat it, it will prove to be a tough challenge.
It has nothing to do with “stupid” i’m talking about why we do age. Secondly in the natural state predation from wolves, tigers, leopards, jaguars, bears and crocodiles was a huge threat.
I’m not talking modern environments, but like you say PATHOGENS still make it true, even in modern environments genes which benefit the young at cost to themselves in old age will still thrive.
I don’t live in the city, I live near deer, so my example was apt, Were I to live in a city, TB would be my example. Some plague that only become epidemic because people mass together. Or coinfect
Now I do agree with you on most of what you have presented in this thread, but I don’t think predation is that big of a factor on someone trying to survive. Disease will prove challenging, but I think it can be overcame. Like I said before, all mass/energy transform. It’s not if we can do it, it’s how.
Another thing, though, is astronomical events. I think this could become an issue in the future (At least while we are still on the ground of earth.).
Predation is a reason for current senescene i’m not talking about further evolution other than to illustrate that other selective forces still exist that would allow the evolution of genes that benefit the young while being a problem when old.
Like high testosterone, it increases fitness in youth but you’re more likely to get prostate cancer in old age.
Anyway in vast parts of the world animal predation is still real. 3000 people in sub sahara Africa die per year by crocodiles, 1500 tibetans mauled by very large bears.
Even in North America calling fatal attacks rare might be… a little exaggeration. Bears peel humans like bananas over here too.
underneath which is a graph showing how mortality rates are higher for the older without aging. Check it out. its a great explanation for the concepts i’m attempting to highlight.