As I'm sure you all noticed, Ending Aging is launched and heading for the shelves - get thee hence and get a copy if you haven't already. If you'd like to learn more about the research funded by the Methuselah Foundation, and a realistic basis for radical life extension, then this is the book for you.

Meanwhile, at the "but what can I do now?" end of the spectrum, CBS ran a piece on calorie restriction (CR) today - hauling out the obligatory dietician ignorant of the science behind CR to act as the "balance" in the article. Journalism 101: find someone, anyone, who has a contrary opinion to the main thrust of the article. That this is standard practice is a great argument for the ongoing decentralization of media; let the people who are knowledgeable talk about their fields, should they be so inclined.

Restricting calories in laboratory animals has been shown to affect cell behavior that may be involved in age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's, heart disease, and cancer, Senay points out. What's more, it's been shown to increase lifespan: Mice lived 30 percent longer than usual on calorie-restricted diets.

But dietician Elisa Zied, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, says Calorie Restriction is too severe, and the animal research can't easily be translated to humans' health.

Notes Zied, "We have no clinical data in humans to supports calorie restriction to have all these benefits. So, I think people really need to read between the lines, and I don't think, in our lifetime, we're ever going to really see that Calorie Restriction is the fountain of youth."

"No clinical data" is nonsense, of course - there's more than enough of it to be going on with. A fair number of research groups are running human studies, and have been publishing results for years. Check out the links on the Longevity Meme calorie restriction page for starters - like this one from 2004:

It's very clear that calorie restriction has a powerful, protective effect against diseases associated with aging.

Moving on, FuturePundit notices a good example of scientific optimism on timelines for regenerative medicine: I can't imagine that this particular instance takes regulatory barriers into account.

British scientist Simon Hoeurstrup and heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub claim that in 3 to 5 years they will be able to grow replacement heart valves from a patient's own bone marrow stem cells.

Lastly, with the SENS3 conference on healthy life extension research right around the corner, researcher Attila Chordash picks out his favored presentations to attend:

John Schloendorn is one out of the new wave of researchers and life scientists who can perfectly fit their scientific drive and skills with his serious life extension commitment. In fact, I dare to say that John would not be involved in life sciences if he did not have the chance to explore a healthy life extension technology.

...

Medical bioremediation is the proposal to utilize the catabolic diversity of environmental microbes to treat all conditions associated to catabolic insufficiency in aging humans. Here we report on our progress towards medical bioremediation. We have isolated several bacteria degrading 7-ketocholesterol and other oxysterols implicated in atherosclerosis. We also present a method to determine the early steps in the biochemical pathway of 7-ketocholesterol degradation, which may be used to screen different species for therapeutically interesting reactions. We have also recently begun work on other targets, such as lipofuscin components and advanced glycation end-products.

Bioremediation will be a growth field in the years ahead; the opportunities are self-evident. The ability to safely degrade compounds involved in age-related degeneration will be a very big deal indeed, is eminently plausible, and merits far greater funding than exists at present.

Technorati tags: life extension, science

Posted by Reason at September 4, 2007 10:10 PM | TrackBack (0)