The latest Longevity Meme newsletter is out today. In it, I summarize some of the more interesting developments in aging science over the past couple of weeks - new information on telomeres, mitchondria, and metabolism.

You will recall that two weeks ago, in the last newsletter, I mentioned the wealth of stem cell research results we have been seeing of late. Since then, it has been the turn of aging researchers to demonstrate new knowledge and important results - and that is much more exciting!

You can receive the newsletter via e-mail, or keep up with the lastest using RSS. Take a look!

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Market research organizations and business analysts are starting to write about the state and prospects of nanomedicine. One such report is summarized at Medical News Today:

Nanotechnology is the creation and utilization of materials, devices, and systems through the control of matter on the nanometer-length scale (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter. Nanobiotechnology, an integration of physical sciences, molecular engineering, biology, chemistry and biotechnology holds considerable promise of advances in pharmaceuticals and healthcare.

As I previously noted, improvements in diagnostic technology resulting from nanoscale manufacturing would seem to be the first up to bat. Thus, diagnostics and nanoscale materials science are the principle industry focus at this time.

Some of the earliest applications are in molecular diagnostics. Nanoparticles, particularly quantum dots, are playing important roles. In vitro diagnostics, does not have any of the safety concerns associated with the fate of nanoparticles introduced into the human body.

Numerous nanodevices and nanosystems for sequencing single molecules of DNA are feasible. Various nanodiagnostics that have been reviewed will improve the sensitivity and extend the present limits of molecular diagnostics.

An increasing use of nanobiotechnology by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries is anticipated. Nanotechnology will be applied at all stages of drug development - from formulations for optimal delivery to diagnostic applications in clinical trials.

Many of the assays based on nanobiotechnology will enable high- throughput screening. Some of nanostructures such as fullerenes are themselves drug candidates as they allow precise grafting of active chemical groups in three-dimensional orientations.

The really impressive nanomedicine will take much more time, research, and resources. I don't expect to be personally making use of fully functioning medical nanorobots for another two to three decades, for example.

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It had slipped my mind - perhaps due to the activities of certain oily political appointees - that the National Institutes of Health maintains an informative website on stem cell science. To date, it seems to have remained moderately untainted by politics. Parts of the FAQ page are dodgy, but I wouldn't expect an NIH website to acknowledge the damage done by federal policy on embryonic stem cell research...

In any case, the section that introduces stem cells is a good primer for those who are new to the underlying science, or want a better grasp of the terms of the debate.

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I was going to post some thoughts on the recently reported hard proof for mitochondrial theories of aging, but Randall Parker has already done an excellent job of that at FuturePundit. I quote a fair amount below, but you should read the whole thing:

Mice genetically engineered to have a defective mechanism for repairing only the DNA found in mitochondria age more rapidly and have less than half the life expectancy of normal mice.

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Mitochondria are organelles that exist inside all eukaryotic cells (most complex life forms including humans have eukaryotic cells) and function to break down sugars to produce energy. Mitochonida have their own DNA for a small subset of their proteins. The Swedish team introduced a mutation to break a repair mechanism for the DNA in mitochondria in order to study how important accumulation of damage to mitochondrial DNA is to the overall rate of aging. The results suggest that damage accumulation to mitochondrial DNA is as important as some scientists have argued for years.

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Why does the accumulation of mitochondrial DNA damage accelerate aging? One obvious possibility is that the DNA damage knocks out genes needed for energy production and hence cells begin to malfunction due to a lack of energy. But another quite plausible possibility is that the mutations knock out steps in sugar metabolism in a way that leads to the generation of lots of free radicals. In this model (suggested by Aubrey de Grey - more about him below) the cells that have defective mitochondria become toxic free radical generators for all the cells around them. In essence, a fairly small number of cells become mini-toxic waste sites. Someone call in the Environmental Protection Agency. This sort of thing should be forbidden by tough pollution law enforcement.

He goes on to discuss Aubrey de Grey's proposals to alter cells to make mitochondrial damage less unhealthy:

Aubrey has repeatedly argued for funding of experimental work to move genes into the nucleus of a mouse cell to then be used to clone and raise mice that have all their mitochondrial genes in their nuclei. The effect might be the opposite of the experiment reported above. Rather than shortening life the mice might live much longer. Such a result would lend further support for the argument that mitochondrial DNA gene therapy should be developed as a rejuvenation technique.

I imagine that this would a logical next step for researchers to look into. I also imagine that Aubrey de Grey is spending a lot of time on the phone right now...

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Aubrey de Grey's proposal for serious anti-aging research, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (or SENS), is positioned as an engineering project. Aubrey explains why in this manner:

SENS is a detailed plan for curing human aging. SENS is an engineering project, in the same way that medicine is a branch of engineering. The key to SENS is the appreciation that aging is best viewed as a set of progressive changes in body composition at the molecular and cellular level, caused as side-effects of essential metabolic processes. These changes are therefore best thought of as an accumulation of "damage", which becomes pathogenic above a certain threshold of abundance. The traditional gerontological approach to life extension, namely to try to slow down this accumulation of damage, is a misguided strategy, firstly because it requires us to improve biological processes that we do not adequately understand, and secondly because it can even in principle only retard aging rather than reverse it. An even more short-termist alternative is the geriatric approach, namely to try to stave off pathology in the face of accumulating damage; this is a losing battle because the continuing accumulation of damage makes pathology more and more inescapable. Instead, the engineering (SENS) strategy is not to interfere with metabolism per se, but to repair or obviate the accumulating damage and thereby indefinitely postpone the age at which it reaches pathogenic levels.

Human cells are a very complex machine, and thus we as humans are a complex collection of very complex machines. Advances in genetics, bioinformatics, and other fields of modern medicine are beginning to provide the knowledge and tools needed to examine, alter, repair, and extend our cellular machinery.

Consider the thought experiment of a stone age New Guinea tribe given the full output of a modern car factory, but no help from the outside world: no manuals, teachers, explanations, nor understanding. Human nature being what it is, members of the tribe will learn - slowly and through trial and error at first, but increasingly rapidly as time passes - how cars work, how to take best care of a car, and how to repair it, one component at a time. This is exactly the position that the human race as a whole is in with respect to our own bodies. There are more of us, but the task in front of us is vastly harder.

If you're a non-biologist who keeps track of aging research, like myself, you'll probably have a vague idea as to how things fit together inside a cell and in the various theories of aging. You probably also wish that you had paid more attention in class when you were learning about biology. The reality is quite complex; to get an idea as to how complex, you might try the discussions linked below:

• Robert Bradbury's Grand Unified Theory of Aging
• A Conversation on Aging Theories

Complex or not, finding a cure for aging is "just" an engineering problem, however. It is not mystical, nor is it impossible. It's just difficult. The time taken to produce results depends on our willingness to support and fund research.

Where does cancer fit into all of this? Cancer and aging share aspects of the same cellular mechanisms and biochemistry. Cancer is probably the result of malfunctions in the telomere mechanisms determining cell life spans, and the risk of cancer continually increases with age - perhaps due to the damage already caused by other components of the aging process. This area of biochemistry is under study by a number of groups, and scientists are learning more each year about the mechanisms and biochemistry involved.

Aubrey de Grey's principle objection to an absolute focus on regenerative medicine as the path to longer, healthier lives is that this will do nothing to stop the ever-increasing risk of cancer. Given that cancer is currently the second most common cause of death (and the only reason it isn't the most common is due to society-wide support for resources to be directed towards finding a cure, starting in the early 1970s), any life-extending strategy will fail if we do not develop a cure or preventative therapies for cancer.

This is exactly the same rationale for the fight to cure Alzheimer's - without a cure, this horrible condition will kill us long before we realize the benefits of a healthy life span extended through regenerative medicine.

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The more extreme protesters of embyronic stem cell research are at least honest in their motivations for restricting research that will save lives. Not so Eric Cohen, who in a piece at the National Review, uses a variety of extremely dishonest arguments, half-truths, outright lies, omissions, and obfuscations to defend government policies that are causing great harm to our future health, life span, and well being by restricting vital medical research.

Chris Mooney notes the obvious one (and has a few more things to say besides):

Another Complaint about this Eric Cohen National Review Online piece. As the title--"Inflated Promises, Distorted Facts"--makes clear, part of Cohen's argument is that research advocates have been hyping the medical potential of embryonic stem cells in the absence of hard proof of what they're capable of.

This is a highly convenient argument, given that limitations on stem cell research have prevented scientists from learning more about their potential. In other words, the idea seems to be a) you clamp down on research, and then b) you accuse the research of not going anywhere in order to justify not loosening the restrictions. What a crock.

This is a particularly common politicial trick - seen in "deregulation" for example. Get in there and mess things up so that you can justify more intervention later. That doesn't mean we should let them get away with it, of course.

Another problem is this notion of the number of stem cell lines and how it matters. Firstly, Cohen is flat out wrong - and probably deliberately so - in what he says about the number that are available.

Here's the key bit of info that Cohen conveniently omits: the NIH itself has said that under the "best case scenario," only 23 lines will ever be available under Bush's policy. Here (PDF) is where this information was first revealed; it has since been widely reported in the media (see here for the Washington Post's story).

Now, I'm sure Cohen knows about the 23 line limit; he seems well versed in the details of stem cell policy. But he simply leaves out this crucial fact, happily writing as if the number 19 will just continue to grow and grow and grow, when in fact we're quickly approaching a wall. And then Cohen has the gall to accuse stem cell research proponents of being "disingenuous." Pot kettle, anyone?

Secondly, as I've said before, focusing whether 10, 20, or 60 lines are available obscures the fact that hundreds or thousands of lines are required worldwide for serious research to proceed apace. While government restrictions keep the number of lines low, researchers are proceeding at a comparative slow pace. This state of affairs has a high cost in suffering, disease, and death attached to it - it is a willful blocking of attempts to save lives and find cures.

Lastly, we most certainly do have hard proof of embryonic stem cell capabilities, and their superiority over adult stem cells. It's not hard proof in humans, but in animal subjects - good enough for me to justify my support for large-scale research to establish human therapies. Take a look at this report, for example:

Embryonic stem cells transplanted within a 3D scaffold have been shown to regenerate damaged heart muscle in mice. The achievement, by Theo Kofidis and colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California, overcomes several problems that have hindered previous attempts to regenerate damaged heart muscle.

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The researchers had been working with bone marrow stem cells but found that they were not able to become heart muscle cells and regenerate the heart.

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When the researchers used embryonic stem cells, however, they were able to improve heart function.

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"In our most recent studies we showed that mouse and human embryonic stem cells improved heart function, had superior survival within the heart—weeks later we still saw improved heart function—and had definitely differentiated into heart muscle cells," says Kofidis. "We inserted a bioluminescent marker (what causes fireflies to luminesce) into our stem cells and were able to see that they engrafted in the living organ."

In summary, dishonesty - and especially that of the oily variety practiced by Eric Cohen in this stem cell article of his - bothers me greatly. I would direct Cohen to the Michael Kinsley piece of the other day, which ends:

A difficult issue is one in which you hold two or more conflicting values. Stem cells are not a difficult issue: either you think a microscopic embryo has the same human rights as you and I, or you don't. Do you believe that a woman who gets an abortion should be prosecuted for murder, just like a mother who hires a professional killer to off her teenage son? Are you picketing around fertility clinics, which kill hundreds of thousands of unborn children — if that's what you believe a 5-day-old embryo to be — just like abortion clinics do? If so, you are entitled to oppose stem-cell research. If not, please get out of the way.

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Phil Bowermaster is commenting on an article I also noticed the other day. It touches on transhumanism, if not terribly respectfully, improving the human condition, and the far reaches of healthy life extension. Phil notes:

But living forever could rob life of its meaning, said Bill McKibben, author of "Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age." In the book he argues that without death, humans have no opportunity to sacrifice for their children, no reason to pour out a life's work under the literal deadline of mortality.

...

Well, first off: there aren't that many transhumanists who see "living forever" as being in the cards. Aubrey de Grey talks about life extension that might buy us a few centuries. Eliezer Yudkowsky has a more expansive view, promoting a Theory of Fun that would help us to make the most of a life that extends to millions or even billions of years. The only transhumanist I can think of offhand who talks in terms of "living forever" is Frank J. Tipler in The Physics of Immortality. But to object to Tipler's model of living forever is to object to the religious idea of dying and going to heaven, since it amounts to the same thing. I wonder whether McKibben has the same objections to religious ideas about living forever as he does transhumanist ideas on the same subject?

First let me say that McKibben talks nonsense on this topic. Using his logic, we can surmise that we would all be better off living in a society in which people were executed at age 30. Ridiculous. Does he think that people were better off when disease claimed them at 40 instead of 80? Is suffering and death really such a wonderful thing? I am continually amazed at the lengths people go to in order to protect and rationalize the status quo, no matter how awful it is.

Secondly, on the differences between living forever and merely living for a lot, lot longer...I'm definitely of the opinion that it can't hurt to aim high (while remaining realistic about the underlying science that supports these goals). If you aim for immortality with a sound mind and good science, the worst that can happen is that you'll live a longer, healthier, more fulfilling life. Not all that terrible, right?

Looking at science and medicine, a number of serious futurists have postulated reasonable, physically possible paths through the future that lead to extreme longevity, as Phil points out. If the funding is obtained to make even Aubrey de Grey's comparatively modest proposals a reality, then we'll certainly have a nice long time to figure out what comes next - including how to avoid becoming a statistic along the way.

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Chris Mooney comments on short memories and shallow journalism in mainstream science reporting, as personified by a Washington Post discussion of bad stem cell legislation in this case.

I'm glad that the Post now favors freeing up more lines for research. But notice how the paper's editorial page conspicuously avoids discussing the central reason that the Bush policy failed: There were never nearly as many lines available for research as the president promised.

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Yes, that's right: All the essential problems with Bush's policy were apparent within a month of its announcement. The Post should have been courageous enough to say that this policy failure was inherent from the get-go.

Sadly, all this argument over 10, 20 or 60 stem cell lines obscures the fact that thousands of lines will likely be needed for research into regenerative and stem cell medicine to proceed effectively across the board - i.e. important work to cure heart disease, neurodegenerative conditions, diabetes, nerve, muscle and bone damage, and many other age-related conditions is on hold or proceeding very slowly until this is resolved. I have discussed this matter in a previous post here at Fight Aging!

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I don't think I've yet mentioned the Facing Cryonics initiative over at the Immortality Institute. While the most recent attempts to legislate cryonics out of existance seem to have died down, it is good to be prepared for the next round. In particular, Alcor supporters expect some Arizona politicians to try to reintroduce anti-cryonics legislation at a later date in 2004 or 2005 - we would like it to be a whole lot easier to stop the process.

The Facing Cryonics initiative is one attempt to demonstrate that a multitude of real people from all walks of life support cryonics and the goals of cryonics providers like the Alcor Life Extension Foundation and the Cryonics Institute. You can help the cryonics community with just a few minutes of your time by uploading your photograph and entering a message of support.

To learn more about cryonics, cryonics providers, and the supportive community, you should start by reading the introduction to cryonics at the Longevity Meme.

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There has been a deluge of stem cell research news of late, both political and scientific. I think there's a real hope that we've reached the tipping point at which government restrictions in the US and other (allegedly) more enlightened countries will start to be swept away. It could all happen within the next six months, following the US presidential election and the California state ballot, if all goes well and if we make sure that our voices are heard. This would be a wonderful thing for the prospects of extending the healthy human life span through regenerative medicine.

Meanwhile, take a look at the latest stem cell news at the Longevity Meme. Times are changing and medical science is moving into a new age:

• Another Stem Cell Center Formed
• The Sad State of US Stem Cell Research
• More Celebrities Supporting Stem Cell Research
• Small Step Towards Lizard-like Regeneration
• California Stem Cell Initiative Progress
• First Embryonic Stem Cell Bank

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As Alejandro Dubrovsky pointed out, yesterday's post on distinctions was missing a few points.

The distinction is not useful. Appealing to the word "normal" makes as much sense as people appealing to the word "natural". The human machine doesn't function in a vacuum (not for more than about 10 minutes anyway), so its environment always determines its lifespan. If caloric restriction is the environment which gives you the maximum lifespan, then that is the best possible lifespan, not an extension to the best possible lifespan. If eating badly shortens your lifespan, then that is just a shortening of your maximum lifespan, just like trying to breathe underwater would be. If better motor oil gets you a longer lifespan than no motor oil, then its a relative life extension to not having had your motor oil. Its especially irritating to see this distinction coming from this quarter since this distinction is the main argumentative recourse of the majority of doctors who are against life extension (ie they are against life extension, and all for maximum lifespan, considering curing cancer, and wiping heart disease as a good thing, since they are "diseases", while anything greater than this as unnatural, or not normal. 100 years ago of course, heart disease and cancer would have been considered normal aging).

Using "normal" in the following context:

The ultimate purpose of healthy life extension is to greatly lengthen the best possible life span you could have - not just to help you be healthier for longer within your normal life span.

was a slip of the keyboard, I think. I should have said "current" or "existing."

One can argue that any discussion of life span - such as how to increase it - is worthless without the context surrounding that life span. Let's look at cars, for example. We can't talk about the useful lifetime of a car without qualifying how much (and what sort of) repairs and preventative maintenance will be performed. With regard to the human body, we currently don't have a good toolkit to hand - we can make a fair difference to life span with preventative medicine and interventions, but not a great difference. Current medical science simply can't enable people to live beyond 120 years, or much beyond 100 for most. While this is an improvement over the 40 years (or less) we'd have without modern medicine, working to change these limitations is something that we should all look into.

In any case, I began this short trail of thinking aloud at the keyboard in search of a good way of distinguishing - for the casual visitor to this topic - between a) increasing healthy life span without increasing maximum life span, and b) increasing both. There are any number of groups touting the former (especially in the anti-aging marketplace) in a way that sounds, to many people, as though they are touting the latter. All that light and noise obscures serious work and scientific research that is, in the long run, far more important.

You can be as healthy as modern science can make you, but without access to future medical technologies for healthy life extension, you'll be just as dead as the next guy 100 years from now.

Obviously, living healthily for longer is a good thing in and of itself even without a boost to maximum life span. It is also something that we have a great deal of control over - unlike our maximum life span. When I say "living healthily for longer" at the Longevity Meme, however, I am talking about working towards the technologies that can greatly increase maximum life span. This sort of distinction is something that I believe I have to make far more clear in my writing and websites.

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Dr. Mercola is a health and good diet advocate and businessman on the fringes of the anti-aging and healthy life extension communities. If you take a look at his latest newsletter (entitled "Popular Anti-Aging Techniques: Find Out Which Ones Work and Which Ones Don't"), you'll get a good idea as to his biases, opinions and the way in which he makes money from his business.

Dr. Mercola strikes me as one of the more responsible "better motor oil for human beings" businessmen out there. He is up front and well informed about calorie restriction, takes the high road on human growth hormone (don't use it), and is at least selling healthy diet information with scientific backing and no claims of a quick fix - even if it may or may not perform as well as claimed.

A good diet will mean you'll be healthier for longer - but it won't mean life extension unless you're practicing calorie restriction. Let me explain this comment, since this is a subtle distinction that is often lost. We all have some theoretical best possible life span, which we'll need to be in good shape to reach. A bad diet and lifestyle really means that you're reducing your actual life span by damaging yourself. A good diet and lifestyle simply avoids this reduction - but it doesn't lengthen your best possible life span.

The ultimate purpose of healthy life extension is to greatly lengthen the best possible life span you could have - not just to help you be healthier for longer within your normal life span. Currently, the only available technique proven to extend the best possible life span at all in animals (and with strong evidence pointing to the same modest results in humans) is calorie restriction.

Within this context, you might also want to read my comments on the meaning of anti-aging at the Longevity Meme. There is much the same difference between fixing age-related conditions and intervening in the aging process as there is between a good diet and calorie restriction. Remember: living a healthier normal life span versus extending the best possible life span.

Unfortunately, this distinction in rarely in evidence when people are trying to sell you things. So it's up to you to do the research and find out what is going on before you pay for products.

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There are a couple of items of interest from Stephen Gorden over at the Speculist today. Firstly, he comments on the recent work relating to the longevity enzyme Sir2:

Here's a quick recap: caloric restriction leads to longevity in virtually every animal species in which it's been tried. Why? There is continuing debate, but a lot of attention has been given to an enzyme, SIR2, that is increased with caloric restriction.

...

This is important. Just because something follows, it does not mean that it's the cause. We knew that SIR2 levels increased prior to measurable increases in longevity, but that did not mean that SIR2 was the reason. Now that we have a greater understanding of what SIR2 does, we may soon be able to evaluate SIR2's involvement in regulating lifespan.

As I note at the Longevity Meme, this research is an excellent example of the speed of modern science. It only took a year to understand the mechanism by which this enzyme operates, write the paper, and get it published. Pretty impressive.

The other item of interest from the Speculist is a note that Mark Modzelewski is stepping down as director of the Nanobusiness Alliance - which I am sure pleases many people. Modzelewski was point man for many of the attacks on molecular manufacturing research and Eric Drexler from mainstream nanotechnology business organizations. I wrote about this when it started to spill over into attacks on nanomedicine research, a sound technology that will be vital for future healthy life extension therapies.

I can't say that I'm sad to see Modzelewski go - and neither are the guys at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. Hopefully this means that we'll see more sensible attitudes towards nanotechnology and nanomedicine research in the future.

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My Internet meanderings brought me to a website entitled "LONGEVITYPILL.COM" yesterday, and I rolled my eyes. The author, Bill Sardi, seems an earnest enough fellow - he supports calorie restriction, for example - but the thrust of the website is very much more of the same old school of pills and drugs.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that when radical life extension technology - medicine that can add decades to our healthy life spans - is developed, it won't be in the form of a pill.

Sure, there are plenty of people working on drugs that might have quite significant effects on life span and health - but the majority of this work is simply not going to result in products that make as big a difference as we'd all like. Barring bad luck or bad genes, people can make it to a healthy 80 or 100 years through calorie restriction and a good lifestyle. It seems unlikely that any drug I'm aware of in the pipeline at the moment will do much better than that.

In any case, most of these near future products would have to be injected to have the desired effect. The human digestive system is very good at breaking down complex compounds - especially those relating to human biochemistry - before they get anywhere near the bloodstream.

The more complex therapies of the future are the sort of things you undergo in a hospital setting. Stem cell transplants, gene therapies, organ regrowth, cancer scans - these are some the technologies that will - we hope - soon extend the healthy human life span. One day, with the aid of advanced nanotechnology, we will no doubt be able to stuff these procedures into a pill if we so desired - but that day is a long way off. Those people chasing longevity pills and exotic life-extending drugs in the here and now are just barking up the wrong tree and putting their dollars into the wrong field of research in my opinion.

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The latest Longevity Meme newsletter is out, containing some comments on the current round of stem cell research and stem cell politics. Are you signed up?

It looks like scientists are getting closer to being able to answer fundamental questions regarding the effectiveness of adult stem cells versus embryonic stem cells - and why some adult stem cell treatments work, while others fail. It's still all somewhat confused, however, and there is a fair amount of work still to be done.

There are many different types of adult stem cell. A fair summary of what is known today would be that some adult stem cell types are useful in some therapies, although scientists are not sure how they are producing beneficial effects. Embryonic stem cells have been demonstrated to be useful in all circumstances in which they can be controlled - but getting them to do what you want to do is proving to be a hurdle. In both cases, some tests have shown undesirable side effects resulting from some therapies. Other studies have demonstrated very impressive positive results - including people who would otherwise be dead returning to an active life.

Overall, it is important to remember that stem cell researchers don't have the important answers yet. Amazing progress has been made, but more unbiased research is needed to understand how to best use stem cells to treat many currently incurable age-related conditions: Alzheimer's, nerve damage, Parkinson's, diabetes, bone loss, cancer, and many more.

Since e-mail is becoming an ever more troublesome medium for the delivery of news, you can also read the latest newsletter and back issues via RSS.

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Slashdot noted some predictions and thoughts on nanomedicine and healthy life extension today (cribbing from a Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends post). I've mentioned nanomedicine a number of times before here - it is an important technology that will improve upon what we can do with regenerative medicine. If you're interested in learning more, then Robert Freitas' work is a good place to start reading.

What bothers me about the slashdot piece is that all the common, old, Malthusian objections show up in the comments; posters objecting to saving lives because of speculative overpopulation concerns, or that the social security system will break, or other extensively debunked issues. For example:

Aren't people forgetting the social problems? Its like what the mathmatician said in Jurrasic Park: "They were so busy trying to see if they could, they didn't stop and think if they should" (or something to that effect). So if we have a generation (or two) of people living longer, what happens to Social Security? Or housing? Or land prices? Or the environment? Or heck lots and lots of other very limited resources! Would I take one of these pills if it was offered to me for $1k? Damn straight I would, but there are so many issues that I shudder at the effects this will have ~100 years down the road.

The other most common objection people voice to healthy life extension - the Tithonus Error - is also voiced:

You'll be a 200-year-old, withered, repulsive, barely-coherent husk of a human being... but dammit, you'll be healthy!

Extended longevity means extended healthy life span, not more years of increasing infirmity. You would never be old for longer - you would be healthy and in the prime of your life for longer. Hopefully for as long as you choose, if medical research proceeds rapidly enough.

Thankfully at least a few of the commentators get it:

And then the ethical problems. If you save lives (and don't tell me that curing heart attacks, diabetes, and cancer won't save lives), is it ethical to not do so? Is it better to watch them die, knowing that you could have helped, but didn't just so that you could get your social security check?

To quote someone much smarter than I: If science is the source of problems, ignorance is not the solution.

Short of continuing to plug away at education, how do we ensure that most people understand that Malthusianism of all sorts is simply wrong? Resources are never fixed, and nor are the ways in which we use them. We humans continue to produce more resources, and make better use of existing resources, all the time through our advancing technology and knowledge of the world.

I do think we are making progress - after all, a number of sensible rebuttals to the negativity and Malthusianism do show up in the Slashdot postings - but it is always dispiriting to see so many people willing to force everyone to suffer and die because of fundamental misunderstandings about the way in which the world works.

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I thought that this article by Patti Davis, Nancy Regan's daughter, on the topic of embryonic stem cell research was worth pointing out. It is good to see that the sane view is getting more column inches these days:

There is a possible cure waiting in the wings for people with juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s, heart disease, cancer, as well as spinal-cord injuries. It’s called stem-cell research.

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On the night of May 8, my mother, Nancy Reagan, was given an award for caregiving at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser for stem-cell research. "We have lost so much time," she said when accepting her award. "I just can’t bear to lose any more." It was a star-studded event, but everyone there was clear about one thing: Disease doesn’t care about fame, or wealth or even youth. It just is.

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Approximately 128 million individuals could benefit from stem-cell applications, according to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. The number is probably higher, and as time goes by, it will grow higher still. Imagine the fear that would strike you if you were given a diagnosis that was, basically, a life sentence.

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My family has watched my father, once called "The Great Communicator," vanish into the shadows of Alzheimer's; we are only one of many families who know the cruelty of this disease. My mother has taken her sorrow, her loss, and stood up for the one cure that can prevent people in the future from knowing this agony. George W. Bush, though he may want to try, can never stand in the way of people who want to banish the diseases that are stealing so much.

The article ends on this note, and I agree with it wholeheartedly:

People's desire to live healthy, whole lives will prevail in the end. There is a cure out there. We all know it. We will reach past any mere political obstacles to grab onto it and make it a reality. A messy, horrible war that has spun out of control could very well determine the next election. So should the miracle of stem-cell research—a miracle the Bush White House thinks it can block. It's too late for my father. At the fund-raiser last week, my mother told the audience that "Ronnie's long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him." But those of us who have stood helplessly at bedsides or shuddered at our own diagnosis—those who have woken up to learn they would never walk again—have something to say about the very real promise of a miraculous cure: nothing can stop us from reaching for it.

This is the essence of medical research - the will that explains why it is done at all, whether for cancer, Alzheimer's, or to stop the aging process itself. This is why people devote lifetimes to medicine. It is our humanity and our ability to do good at work.

So much suffering and death in the world is caused by the ugly realities of the present day human condition: we can do better.

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You'll be glad to hear that I have finally made the time to understand the arcane ways of CafePress and put up an online store. Now you can show your support for the fight against aging by flaunting Longevity Meme clothing and wares!

Since Fight Aging! is a phrase both snappy and to the point, the first items out of the gate are as shown above. Now would be a good time to let me know of any clever ideas you have regarding slogans and products...

All profits from this store will be donated to the Methuselah Mouse Prize for anti-aging research, which amounts to between $3 and $5 per item. If you are not the materialistic type, you could just skip the purchase stage and donate directly to the prize fund - I know that I certainly can't think of a better use for money than working to ensuring a longer, healthier future for everyone.

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Dear Peggy

I've always looked forward to reading your columns in the Wall Street Journal. You have been a consistent source of information and inspiration. I was therefore extremely disappointed to read your most recent piece, ("Bada Bing? Bada Boom."), dated May 13.

While I agree with and share your fears about the dangers of terrorism on US soil, I found your views on the (completely unrelated) subject of human cloning to be both ill-informed and wrong-headed.

Specifically, you wrote:

Whenever I think of cloning, I think of Sam Ervin during the Watergate hearings. He quoted the Bible to Richard Nixon's malefactors: "God is not mocked." Indeed he is not. Once we can have cloning, we will have cloning. Once we can have cloning we'll be cloning replacement-part humans to make new hearts for aging baby boomers. We'll throw the rest away, or mine these beings for other organs and elixirs. Once we have cloning, we'll start growing cloned armies. Why shouldn't they fight for us? Once we have cloning, a lot of things will happen, including that we'll be opening the mouth of hell.

As scary as the "dirty nuke in Port Newark" scenario is, I find that I am nearly as chilled by the scientific illiteracy displayed in the above quote. It would appear that you have learned everything you know about the subject from watching the Star Wars movies.

Cloned armies, indeed.

There is an enormous difference between reproductive and therapeutic cloning. The latter need not require the production of an entire "replacement human;" it may be possible to grow "replacement organs" on their own, or to develop stem cell lines that can be used to treat a wide variety of illnesses and injuries. How precisely this will open up the "mouth of hell" is unclear.

Reproductive cloning raises serious moral and ethical issues, but "cloned armies" is not one of them. The ability to produce armies would require not cloning, but a technique popular in (uninformed) science fiction movies that might properly be called Rapidly Growing Large Numbers of Sentient Adults in Vats. That I know of, no one is currently working on developing that technology — not even in New Jersey.

Peggy, you are too serious a journalist and too valuable a voice to entertain such nonsense. If you would take some time to learn what cloning is really all about, I'm sure that you would have something significant to say about both the potential risks and the potential benefits of this technology.

In the mean time, I suggest you stick to subjects you're more familiar with.

Your Faithful Reader,

Phil Bowermaster

(Originally published on The Speculist.)

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The Proactionary Principle is an answer to abuse of the precautionary principle at the hands of anti-biotech, luddite groups, and opponents of advances such stem cell therapies, regenerative medicine, and extended healthy longevity. It came together as an idea during the Extropy Institute's Vital Progress Summit back in February, and is expressed by Max More as follows:

People’s freedom to innovate technologically is highly valuable, even critical, to humanity. This implies several imperatives when restrictive measures are proposed: Assess risks and opportunities according to available science, not popular perception. Account for both the costs of the restrictions themselves, and those of opportunities foregone. Favor measures that are proportionate to the probability and magnitude of impacts, and that have a high expectation value. Protect people’s freedom to experiment, innovate, and progress.

It is very clear - at least to those of who support advancing medicine and scientific work towards healthier, longer lives - that the precautionary principle is used as a weapon by special interest groups attempting to halt scientific research for their own ideological reasons. To quote Max More again:

The precautionary principle has been used as a means of deciding whether to allow an activity (typically involving corporate activity and technological innovation) that might have undesirable side-effects on human health or the environment. In practice, that principle is strongly biased against the technological progress so vital to the continued survival and well-being of humanity.

Understanding that we need to develop and deploy new technologies to feed billions more people over the coming decades, to counter natural threats from pathogens to environmental changes, and to alleviate human suffering from disease, damage, and the ravages of aging, those involved in the VP Summit recognized two things: The importance of critically analyzing the precautionary principle, and the formation of an alternative, more sophisticated principle that incorporates more extensive and accurate assessment of options while protecting our fundamental responsibility and liberty to experiment and innovate.

The precautionary principle, while well-intended by many of its proponents, inherently biases decision making institutions toward the status quo, and reflects a reactive, excessively pessimistic view of technological progress. By contrast, the Proactionary Principle urges all parties to actively take into account all the consequences of an activity—good as well as bad—while apportioning precautionary measures to the real threats we face, in the context of an appreciation of the crucial role played by technological innovation and humanity’s evolving ability to adapt to and remedy any undesirable side-effects.

Furthermore, the precautionary principle is inherently flawed. It serves us badly by:

• assuming worst-case scenarios

• distracting attention from established threats to health, especially natural risks

• assuming that the effects of regulation and restriction are all positive or neutral, never negative

• ignoring potential benefits of technology and inherently favoring nature over humanity

• illegitimately shifting the burden of proof and unfavorably positioning the proponent of the activity

• conflicting with more balanced, common-law approaches to risk and harm.

The Proactionary Principle is an important step forward: it is a concise, rational, to-the-point answer to the failures of the precautionary principle ... and it has a snappy name. It should go far. As people who recognize we are responsible for our own future - and supporting the bright future of medical science - we should make sure that the Proactionary Principle is heard by everyone!

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The Immortality Institute holds regular Sunday chat sessions with scientists, transhumanists, futurists and other luminaries. They're fairly irreverent, fun events, and I took part in the last one.

I think the most interesting question was this (after snipping the side conversations and less related posts on politics):

[ct] Reason, what one goal would you like to achieve within the next twelve months?
[Reason] only one?
[ct] Yes.
[Reason] arg
[Reason] that's tough - I have so many
[ct] One.
[Reason] cruel and unusual - give me a moment to think about that
[Reason] I think that the most important goal that can be accomplished is to get the Methuselah Mouse prize to the next level (of traffic, press, cash, attention)
[Reason] or rather, that wuold be most important goal that I *can* reasonably accomplish in the next 12 months
[Jonesey] agree reason
[Jonesey] MM is huge
[ct] Which of the four?
[Reason] not that I'd be doing it alone
[Reason] ct: the four all go together; can't accomplish any one of them alone
[ct] Prioritize the four, please.
[Reason] hmm. Well cash is the highest, since if we had cash and none of the other three, then the other three could be obtained by waving the cash around
[Jonesey] the funding necessary for MM is miniscule compared to what is being spend right now in iraq
[ct] Thank you.
[Reason] very true - you can cure a major disease these days for the cost of a stealth bomber
[Reason] ct: does this mean you'll be visiting the Methuselah Mouse Prize donation page right now? :)
[ct] It was a thought.
[Reason] in many ways, at this stage, the number of donors is as important as the amount
[Reason] it's bait for the wealthy philanthropists
[Reason] although the Three Hundred initiative is very important too - and I encourage you all to look at it with an eye to joining
[Reason] The Three Hundred web page

The Methuselah Mouse Prize is indeed an important effort to generate public support and accelerate serious research into reversing aging. [ct] went ahead and generously donated to the prize before the chat had ended, for which I didn't get the chance to thank her - so, thank you!

For those of you reading this now, I hope that you will take a few minutes to look at the work being done by the Methuselah Foundation and consider donating to this worthy cause. You can also learn more about research prizes and the way in which they spur development in science and medicine at the Longevity Meme - read the article and be impressed at just how much investment a donation can inspire.

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Chris Mooney points to a long piece that analyses public opinion on stem cell research. The article concludes:

The controversy over human embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning remains unresolved, and the issue may mark a new era of divisive and deadlocked "biopolitics." What the review of the polls makes clear is that public attention was captured by this emerging conflict during the summer of 2001, but has waned since, as media coverage has subsided, and many other competing issues have come to dominate the political and media agenda. Despite Americans' elevated attention to the issue in 2001, however, it appears that the public remains in the dark about the science and the policy driving the controversy.

The public possesses strong reservations about research that destroys embryos, preferring if the research must move forward, that scientists make use of either extra embryos left over from in vitro clinics, or adult cells. Additionally, evidence indicates that question wording in surveys can have strong effects on the public's stated response to these volatile issues.

On the matter of cloning, the public is strongly opposed to reproductive cloning, but resolve softens when it comes to medical applications, while a substantial proportion of Americans remain unsure about the matter. Still, only about a third of Americans support compromise legislation that would allow therapeutic cloning to remain legal.

I'm not sure I agree with this last conclusion here. People have a greater tendency to support therapeutic cloning when they understand it is vital to developing regenerative medicine - and cures for many currently incurable diseases. I'll certainly be distressed if minority support for research is the case, given the winner-takes-all nature of modern "democratic" politics.

The rest of it is more or less what we knew already, but the process is of getting to the answer is interesting and worth reading. The article winds up with the following point:

In all, the analysis points to an important role for the media in shaping future public judgments of stem cell research and human cloning. Evidence of strong question wording effects, combined with the findings relative to low levels of public knowledge, suggest that the public may be highly susceptible to influence by changes in media attention and media characterization of the issue.

Media influences people when they are unfamiliar with the basics of the matter under discussion. Not exactly rocket science, but something that we should all remember: journalists (of all sorts, from bloggers to more formal old school reporters) distort, spin, offer opinions as fact, and help or hinder specific issues as a matter of course.

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Betterhumans - the public face of transhumanism, an online news magazine that often touches on healthy life extension - have launched their new site design. Very nice it is too. The old one was starting to get a bit cramped, but the designers have done a good job this time around in striking a balance between more information, larger text size and enough spacing. It is also good to note that the Methuselah Mouse Prize counter and link is higher and more prominent on the page.

Go take a look at the new Betterhumans!

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Chris Phoenix has noted that attacks from mainstream nanotechnology business folk on molecular manufacturing (or "dry" nanotechnology) and Eric Drexler's work are starting to spill over into nanomedicine:

Just this week, a nano blog that used to be trustworthy and even-handed has gone down the same path. In response to Robert Freitas' recent publication of Nanomedicine Volume IIA: Biocompatibility, Cientifica posted an article containing such phrases as, "swarm of nanobots - more idle speculation," and "books of this ilk," and most dishonorably, "a hobby pursuit."

A book with six thousand references is not a hobby pursuit. I wonder why they are trying so hard to persuade people that it's not worth reading. What is their motivation?

I've been saying "they," but in fact, Paul Holister recently left Cientifica. It appears that Tim Harper is now free to vigorously -- and irresponsibly -- oppose the more advanced kinds of nanotechnology. I'm not usually so openly critical. But false claims that "Martian nanobots ... are equally feasible" should not go unchallenged. This is shabby journalism, and it damages the serious and ongoing discussion of the potential effects of advanced nanotechnology.

You may or may not be aware of the rather ugly, funding-fueled debate over the future of nanotechnology that has been taking place in recent months. Glenn Reynolds has been covering it well: for reasons connected to politics and money, portions of the nanotechnology industry have been attacking serious, well-respected work being done on much more advanced nano and molecular technologies.

I was happy sit on the sidelines of this particular dust up until they started in on nanomedicine. Now it seems I should join the fray. Nanomedicine ("wet" nanotechnology) is an important future technology for healthy life extension, taking up the slack where regenerative medicine will not be able to do the job. Just as for dry nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing, many smart people have spent a great deal of time working to lay the scientific foundation for this technology - while our understanding of materials science and biochemistry catches up to the point of being able to build it.

(You might be interested in reading a paper called "Accurately Describing a Technology That Does Not Yet Exist", which explains how the laws of physics and the scientific method can be used to, well, accurately describe a technology that doesn't yet exist).

What we don't need are a bunch of politically and financially motivated yahoos riding in without an ounce of scientific credibility to say that nanomedicine can't be done. You think it can't be done? Fine - get into the labs, write the treatises, do the necessary years of work, and try to prove your hypothesis. That's the way science is done in this town.

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I thought you might find this article interesting. It follows up on the first First Malaysian Conference on Anti-Ageing Medicine:

KUALA LUMPUR: The Government will introduce anti-ageing medicine in hospitals if it is proven to be effective in treating or reversing ageing-related diseases. Health Ministry Family Health Development director Datuk Dr Narimah Awin said such medicine presented a new perspective and a paradigm shift in the population's healthcare.

"The Government will incorporate it (in the healthcare system) if there is evidence that anti-ageing medicine is good for the Malaysian population," she said at the First Malaysian Conference on Anti-Ageing Medicine yesterday. "Ageing and disease affects us as we grow older. Some of the challenges that accompany the ageing population must be seen as opportunities. There are several opportunities to enhance the quality of life of older people, and one such opportunity is offered by anti-ageing medicine. We need to consider anti-ageing medicine in the light of the Malaysian social and health scenario," said Dr Narimah, who is also secretary to the Health Ministry's National Council for Anti-Ageing.

Anti-ageing medicine, a RM200bil industry in the United States, is the practice of early detection, prevention and treatment or reversal of ageing-related dysfunctions.

...

While ageing is an inevitable natural process, she added, ill health, discomfort, disabilities in old age should not be seen as inevitable. “You can’t help growing older, but you don’t have to get old,” Dr Narimah said.

For the most part, that sounds like a refreshingly responsible attitude. Clearly define what you are talking about when you say "anti-aging," and prove that particular therapies work before using them. We'll see how it pans out in practice - hopefully better than the bulk of the anti-aging marketplace in the US.

I should finish up by noting that aging is only inevitable if we continue to do nothing about it - i.e. if funding for scientific anti-aging research to address the aging process itself continues to be scarce. Medical progress requires public support and money to move forward; we should be providing more of both for serious efforts to understand and intervene in the aging process.

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Judging by the volume of news over the past few weeks, we've entered the period in which a wave of early adult stem cell research is starting to produce results. As is usual in a young field of medicine, it looks fairly confusing and there's a lot of contradictory information out there - especially from the anti-abortion groups who are hyping adult stem cell research (as an alternative to embryonic stem cell research) for ideological reasons.

Let's start with the bad news: a Swedish group claims that adult stem cells are indeed limited in their regenerative powers:

There is little, if any, evidence that adult stem cells can build other cells in an adult organism than those formed in the organs they themselves come from. At any rate, blood stem cells do not convert to heart muscle cells in a damaged heart, which was previously hoped. This has been shown by a research team from the Stem Cell Center at Lund University in Sweden in an article in Nature Medicine.

During the end of the 1990s and early 2000s scientists nourished great hopes that adult stem cells would be able to develop into all sorts of cells. If so, it would not be necessary to use the ethically more problematic embryonic stem cells. However, newer studies have shown that while adult stem cells are very good at producing different types of cells in their own respective organs, they have little or no ability to form cells in other organs.

"Both we and two American research teams have used various methods to replicate a study from three years ago that appeared in Nature. It was about transplanting blood stem cells to create new heart muscle cells to repair a heart after a heart attack. But all of our results univocally indicate that this is not possible," says Jens Nygren. He is a doctoral student and part of research team headed by Professor Sten Eirik Jacobsen at the Stem Cell Center.

This raises questions - given that recent human trials have shown that adult stem cells have an impressive regenerative effect when combined with bypass surgery for heart disease.

Perin, in collaboration with Hans F.R. Dohmann at Hospital Procardiaco in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has already tested the treatment on 14 patients in Brazil. That study, published last year in Circulation, showed that the procedure is safe and significantly improves heart function.

"We saw significant improvements in exercise capacity," says Perin. "This is measured in terms of peak oxygen capacity, which went from 17 percent to 24 percent in treated patients."

So how does this therapy work? Do stem cells release chemical signals causing existing tissue to regenerate? Do they fuse with muscle cells? Both? Neither? These are questions that remain unanswered - more research is needed.

Meanwhile, other scientists are demonstrating all sorts of impressive regenerative techniques in petri dishes and laboratory mice, performed on the way to fully understanding stem cell biochemistry. One might almost call this the barnstorming era of stem cell science. For example, while serious work is being done in the UK on regenerating teeth from stem cells, a research team in the US has found that dental pulp-derived stem cells can protect and promote the survival of some types of brain cells.

In people with Parkinson's disease, a shortage of the neurotransmitter dopamine causes symptoms such as muscle rigidity, tremors, difficulty walking and problems with balance and coordination. Previous studies in animals and humans have focused on other sources of stem cells, however, most of those cells die when grafted into the brain.

The major advantage to using dental pulp-derived stem cells is that they are more robust than other stem cells. The dental pulp cells also express glial cell-line neurotrophic factors, which work to support dying nerve cells and replace dead cells. And the cells could be extracted from patients to be treated, avoiding immune complications from foreign donors.

While some scientists are figuring out how to craft therapies from stem cells, others are working on improving basic methods and knowledge - just as important, given our still limited knowledge regarding stem cell biochemistry, differentiation and other matters more arcane. It was recently shown that, for at least some uses, adult stem cells derived from fat are as effective as adult stem cells derived from bone marrow:

For the first time, stem cells purified from fat have been used to heal an injury in a living animal. Michael Longaker of Stanford University in California and his team showed in mouse experiments that so-called adipose-derived adult stromal (ADAS) cells purified from a rodent's belly fat could be coaxed to heal a skull fracture too large to mend by itself.

If the same technique works in humans, these cells could be coaxed to mend broken bones and correct other defects in tens of thousands of surgical procedures each year in which bone grafts and prosthetics are now necessary.

This is indeed a big improvement - fat is far more easily extracted than bone marrow. We might see the start of "therapeutic liposuction!"

Other US researchers are making progress in understanding stem cell biochemistry, step by step.

The discovery of a molecule that stops stem cells from replicating could enhance the ability of stem cells to fight cancer and other diseases. By defining the molecular switch that hinders stem cell replication, researcher Tao Cheng and colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania may have overcome a major hurdle to growing stem cells in the laboratory.

Stem cells can even be a delivery method for some cancer therapies. Killing cancer cells isn't hard - there are many methodologies available that will accomplish this - but ensuring that the only cells killed are cancer cells is hard. This is why delivery mechanisms are so important in the search for cancer therapies.

A mechanism has been discovered that allows some stem cells to track brain tumors, a finding that could be used to deliver targeted cancer treatments. Researchers at Cedars-Sinai's Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute in Los Angeles, California say that neural stem cells—immature cells that can differentiate into any central nervous system cell—could be used to deliver cancer-killing genes to deadly brain tumors.

"We have previously demonstrated the uncanny ability of neural stem cells to seek out and destroy satellites of tumor cells in the brain," says John S. Yu, a senior author of the study. "Now we know at least one component of tumor cells that is attracting neural stem cells toward them. With this knowledge, we hope to expedite the translation of this powerful and novel strategy for the clinical benefit of patients with brain tumors."

It is understanding the mechanisms - the chemical pathways, the biochemistry - of stem cells that will lead to further advances and medical application. Knowledge is the fastest pathway to results. The stem cell therapies we see in trials now are merely the first of the first, the best we can do with our present level of knowledge. It's impressive - very impressive when it comes improving the condition of heart failure patients - but still crude compared to what we will eventually be able to accomplish.

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I came across this letter to the Illinois Leader today, similar to many I've seen before on the topic of anti-research legislation. I thought I'd share:

Pro-life flat Earth thinkers lack compassion

The more people know about SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer) or therapeutic cloning, the more likely they are to support it. But anti-abortionists ["STANEK: It's a mad, mad, mad, mad embryonic kill bill," May 4] want you to think a blastocyst or a few pluripotent cells, invisible to the naked eye, are a human being. Even an unfertilized egg with one's own DNA qualifies and probably individual sperm as well.

I think they want to bestow civil rights on cells so it will be easier to overturn Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, while the stall regarding stem cell research stymies progress, I am slowly becoming Christopher Reeve with my Parkinson's Disease, albeit alone and without his financial resources. Does my life count for anything? Apparently not. It's just my tough luck.

When I had ovarian cancer at age 43, I was not bitter or angry--after all, everything was done that could be done. But not so with this emergence of anti-science flat earth thinkers which include the President and his minions.

This is a real crime against humanity by the ignorant, non-compassionate people in power.

Rayilyn Brown
Murrieta, California

People with incurable, fatal diseases are justifiably angry at what is being done to them by the current US administration and anti-research pressure groups elsewhere. We have lost five years of progress in regenerative medicine and stem cell based cures already - and the cost of these delays in human life and suffering is staggering.

Those of us lucky enough not to be suffering from heart disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, cancer, or other degenerative diseases - those of us lucky enough to have health and remaining life measured in decades rather than months or years - should take a long hard look at why we are not participating more fully in the battles over research. After all, we all suffer from a fatal condition called aging. It will kill us all if medical research is blocked. The only difference between us and people like the author of the letter above is time, a few extra years before we are in her shoes. If compassion and altruism are not enough to motivate us, then self-interest must be - or we are all doomed to suffer, grow sick, crippled, and die.

We can do better.

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I believe I forget to mention here that some of my thoughts on the anti-aging industry and the use (and misuse) of the term "anti-aging" are starting to make it into more formal pieces of writing. I put up a hot topic page that attempts to explain anti-aging at the Longevity Meme just recently, for example.

Like it or not, "anti-aging" now has a number of quite different common meanings and connotations. Each is championed by a particular group or loose coalition of interests, but advocates for these groups have a way of diving into the fray without defining their terms. This makes reading about anti-aging very confusing for the newcomer.

• For the scientific community, anti-aging refers exclusively to slowing, preventing, or reversing the aging process. There is, as of 2004, no medical technology that allows this to be done - although the jury is still out on calorie restriction in humans. Nor is there any currently available method (short of waiting for people to die) to accurately measure the effects of an alleged anti-aging therapy.

• In the medical and more reputable business community, anti-aging means early detection, prevention, and reversal of age-related diseases. This is quite different from tackling the aging process itself, and a wide array of strategies and therapies are currently available. Calorie restriction, for example, is a demonstrated way to lower risk for a wide range of age-related degenerative conditions.

• The wider business community - including a great many fraudulent and frivolous ventures - views "anti-aging" as a valuable brand and a demonstrated way to increase sales. At the worse end of the scale, this leads to snake oil salesmen, "anti-aging" cremes that may or may not make your skin look younger, and infomercials that tout the "anti-aging" benefits of exercise machines. Broadly, and very charitably, we can look at these varied definitions of anti-aging as meaning "to look and feel younger in some way" - which has no bearing on how long you live or how healthy you actually are.

The confusion of most interest is between the first two definitions. Many interventions lengthen life span for individuals by preventing or curing specific age-related diseases that would otherwise prove fatal. For example, ask yourself whether preventing heart disease or diabetes is anti-aging medicine. This would have no effect on the aging process, but it would help many people to live longer, healthier lives. Is this anti-aging? Scientists say no, some medical and business groups say yes.

Many of the problems stemming from the anti-aging marketplace are due to confusion over definitions and what certain products accomplish or are intended to accomplish. Some of this confusion is very deliberate ("anti-aging" exercise devices? Skin creme? Repackaged vitamins? Herbal health spas?) This greatly angers scientists, as actions taken in the marketplace divert public understanding and support away from serious attempts to lengthen the healthy human life span.

Most of what is currently sold under "anti-aging" banners and brands will have negligable effects on life span. The best of it is vitamins, pills, supplements and exercise - the motor oil of the human body. Sure, the more reputable stuff is good for you and can help you to lead a healthier life, but you just can't get that much more out of an engine when all you are doing is improving the motor oil. By focusing so much attention and money on these topics, the anti-aging marketplace is ensuring that support is diverted from what must be done in order to extend the healthy human life span by decades and more.

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I received a short and interesting education in what the most popular spam filters are up to last night while attempting to send out the latest Longevity Meme newsletter. You'll note that near the end, it contains the following text:

The article that was here had to be cut out in order for this e-mail newsletter to pass the most common spam filters - an unfortunate consequence of the prevalence of certain products in spam e-mail. You can read the original at the link above.

The post that I had to redact from the newsletter reads as follows:

Responsible Comments On HGH (Monday April 19 2004)

As I remarked in a Fight Aging! post a few days ago, it's hard to find unbiased information about human growth hormone (HGH). Salesmen from the "anti-aging" marketplace and people with agendas have crowded out the few qualified, responsible voices. That said, I'm happy to see a sane, balanced article on HGH by Judith Reichman at MSNBC. It gives a good overview of the science, the uncertainties, hazards, and possible benefits. Her conclusion is the same as mine: "Until we get more scientific information, I do not recommend that HGH be used for women who are healthy, but just getting older (and heavier). If you want to spend that kind of money, invest in better researched paths to better looks and longevity."

This is a good illustration of one part of the problem caused by all the eager beavers out there in the "anti-aging" marketplace attempting to profit from the intersection of spam, dubious science, and the human desire for real solutions to the problem of aging - legitimate discussion of human growth hormone and anti-aging medicine is now not going to get past the spam filters.

We can extend this technical problem out to become a useful analogy: we humans all run a form of spam filter in our day to day lives, filtering out junk as we figure out what is good and what is not. The light and noise from the less reputable end of the anti-aging marketplace - cremes, dubious science, fraudulent claims, and so forth - is causing many people to consign any thought of legitimate anti-aging research to the spam bucket. This is a bad thing.

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Some thought-provoking sentiments on aging, politics, social policy and human nature were offered earlier in the week in a Christian Science Monitor article. (As an aside, one of the best things about Google News is that it finds good articles in places that you'd never normally think of trying). I think that the point of the article is well expressed in the first paragraph:

As a baby boomer, Ken Dychtwald knows the value his generation places on staying youthful, energetic, and active as long as possible. At the same time, as a gerontologist and bestselling author on retirement and aging, he sees a looming paradox.

"Boomers want to get old at 90 but get old-age entitlements at 65," he says.

Human nature is an essentially selfish thing. Give people free reign and they'll take what they can get. Long term planning doesn't come naturally to any of us - we have to think about it.

"We have created the wrong model of maturity in this country," Dychtwald told an audience at the American Society on Aging conference in San Francisco last week. "Instead of saying 'More, more,' we need to get involved."

At each stage of life, he explains, "people have things to take and things to give." Although the average age of retirement was 62 in the 1990s, he adds, "At 62, you are not exempt from giving."

What Americans need, Dychtwald insists, is a "new map of aging" to reflect the heartening new reality that people are not old at 65. Explaining that people make plans and assumptions about their careers and their later years based on the current timetable of retirement at 65, he argues that old age needs to be redefined as occurring much later.

I'm encouraged that at least some people are thinking this way. If unimpeded, medical science - and the healthy human life span - will advance in leaps and bounds in the decades ahead. The current sprawling systems of enforced retirement and pyramid scheme social security payments must be abandoned or changed radically.

A culture of entitlement is damaging for everyone, at every age: we are all, ultimately, responsible for our own lives, health, wealth and happiness. If ever-larger capable, healthy, active portions of the populace continue to engineer our society to obtain resources for themselves at the expense of others, the system will collapse.

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The life and deeds of Dr. Roy Walford, leading light of the modern calorie restriction movement will be celebrated at a wake this Sunday 2nd May, 2004.

Lisa would like to invite us all to her father's wake. Here's the invitation:

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Please join Roy's friends and family in a wake to honor this dearly beloved Renaissance man...

Dr. Roy Walford
1924 - 2004

Scientist, Artist, Teacher, Writer, Adventurer, Father, Friend

True to Roy's dramatic nature, we will feature the Best of RLW in a video collage; his music video, an abbreviated version of the documentary film in production on Biosphere 2, and more.

For your convenience, we have reserved parking spaces at the beach. We can park your car or you will receive a pass provided by an attendant at the parking lot on the north-west corner of Brooks and Pacific. The entrance is through the alley just north of Brooks.

SUNDAY, MAY 2, 2:00 - 9:00

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If you would like to come, please send a request to the following email address (and don't email me; don't hit the 'reply' button):

roycelebration@calorierestriction.org

We will send out an email invitation to you on Saturday evening with the address, directions, and other pertinent information. Note, there are also memorials being planned in New York, and at the Biosphere in Arizona. More information on those will be sent when the details are finalized.

Best of health to us all,

Brian M. Delaney
President, The Calorie Restriction Society

For those of us unable to attend, a website has been put up so that people can write tributes and comments - like this one:

thank you Roy I am a NOBODY who read THE 120 YEAR DIET and was inspired by it. I have read it and re-read it so many times that ROY is fixed in my mind as a lifelong companion. His words were a guide to my life. His passing leaves the world seeming emptier.

As Aubrey de Grey says: "Aging really is barbaric. It shouldn't be allowed. I don't need an ethical argument. I don't need any argument. It's visceral. To let people die is bad." How many more hundreds of thousands of lives will slip away on the path to a cure for aging? The answer to that question is up to us.

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