A list of items and interests I've skipped over in the past week for your entertainment today. We'll kick off with a new addition to my links, Ouroboros, which seems like a promising start:

In conjunction with exciting news about the use of passive immunization (administration of antibodies, rather than raising them inside the patient by administering an antigen) against amyloid, also announced at the 10th International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Madrid, this news indicates that the next decade will see a revolution in the way that Alzheimer’s disease is treated clinically. Rather than merely forestalling the symptoms of cognitive decline, the new generation of drugs will attack the root cause of the disease. Furthermore, anti-amyloid therapies have the potential to be used preventively, rather than after symptoms have already manifested.

I've also been meaning to link to this vision of the future from Kevin Perrott:

She had to admit, she was very happy with her progress thus far. Looking at some of the others of her age group who had entered the program at the same time, she was an ideal responder. Whether through lucky genetics or perhaps just because her body had not accumulated the same amount of damage as others, she was at least 6 months ahead of the average and would likely continue to progress further than the normal endpoint. Her doctor thought that she might be able to reverse her biological age to perhaps her early 40's or late 30's. She felt very lucky that the reparative therapies were working so well for her.

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The above is a scenario held in the not too distant future perhaps as few a two or three decades, where new technologies such a stem cell and genetic therapies are able to repair the damage that accumulates with age, restoring function to the body and increasing healthy longevity. Of course there is nothing even remotely resembling the therapies which Alice is taking available today. Diet, exercise and good lifestyle choices are still the gold standard when it comes to living a healthy and long life. Still, these therapies are being developed and it is only a matter of time so it is a very good idea to do what we can now to help increase our chances of being around when they do become available.

In response to recent mainstream articles on the growth in healthy longevity over the years, the Cato Institute blog authors make a point that should also be knee-jerk reflex for me while writing on these topics.

The introduction of the institutions of economic freedom in the Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States, and then the rest of the world beginning around 1700 caused what historian Steven Davies calls a "wealth explosion." A great part of the unprecedented wealth creation went into sanitation and more abundant food and later into the research necessary to produce vaccines and antibiotics. Those institutions include secure private property, the rule of law, open markets, and economic freedom generally — or what Adam Smith called "peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice."

Capitalism has made the West rich and thus healthier and longer-lived. It could do the same for Africa, Asia, and the Arab world.

Randall Parker also commented on longevity, chronic disease and the benefits of modern medicine over at FuturePundit:

Even if one does not die while infected the infectious diseases take their toll and accelerate aging in a number of ways. First off, the pathogens directly do damage to the body. Second, the immune system's response does damage. In the process of attacking pathogens the immune response causes collateral damage to human tissue. Chemical compounds released by immune cells do damage to our own cells. Third, infection reduces our ability to stay nourished due to decreased appetite, diarrhea, decreased ability to do activities that bring in food, and other mechanisms. Therefore a reduction in infectious disease exposure has reduced the rate at which our bodies accumulate damage.

Conventional wisdom has it that people live longer today because when they do get sick medical treatments can keep them alive. But Dr. Fogel's study of US Civil War veteran medical records shows that back then people got serious illnesses at much younger ages, decades sooner. They lived with these illnesses for much of their lives.

I recommend you familiarize yourself with the reliability theory of longevity and aging - it is a simple yet powerful way to frame present day aging research and our understanding of cellular damage, disease, aging, longevity and modern efforts to engineer longer, healthier lives.

As it so happens, Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova, who applied reliability theory to aging, will be lecturing at the Buck Institute for Age Research this week. You can find links to the powerpoint lecture materials posted to Gavrilov's blog.

Back to FuturePundit, some thoughts on the recent ampakine research that I also found interesting:

I am surprised this was so easy to do. Some aspects of brain aging will require gene therapy, cell therapy, and other techniques to reverse. But this study's results strongly suggest that conventional drugs will play an important role in preventing and reversing brain aging.

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The economic impact of drugs that reduce and reverse brain aging will be huge. People in their 50s, 60s, and 70s will be far more economically productive when brain aging can be reduced and even reversed. The question isn't whether this can be done but when it will be done.

Finally, Michael Anissimov notes that the Singularity Institute is doing very well for itself. Like the Methuselah Foundation and the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, the Insitute is a significant result of the energy of the transhumanist movement and culture of the turn of the century. As I've said before, we can learn a great deal from the manner in which the folk at the Singularity Institute have engineered their success of the past year or so. Lots of hard work, but cleverly applied hard work.

Now we just need a few longevity-focused organizations to achieve that very same level of break-out momentum and level of funding - being a first things first sort of person, I'm rooting for progress in healthy life extension before any other other transhumanist goals. The Methuselah Foundation is well on the way, but the more the merrier.

Technorati tags: activism, advocacy, aging, gerontology, life extension, medical research, science, transhumanism

Posted by Reason at August 1, 2006 10:44 PM | TrackBack (0)