Actually, We Really Do Need to Keep Talking About Radical Life Extension as the Primary Goal of Research and Industry
There is a faction within the research and development community who feel that we shouldn't talk about ambitious goals when it comes to human rejuvenation and adding many years to human life spans. They think that the best strategy is to focus on very incremental, modest goals in the treatment of aging. At the present time, that really means calorie restriction mimetic drugs and the like, approaches that are unlikely to be capable of outperforming the effects of good lifestyle choices. This seems like an extension of the old, bad days, in which researchers refused to talk about intervening in the aging process at all. It is optimizing for the ability to raise funds via grant and venture capital, while throwing away any hope of actually achieving meaningful goals. It is a willful relinquishment of the possible.
It is disappointing to see figures with a soapbox, such as Celine Halioua, part of Laura Deming's network, taking this easier road to what will likely be a wasted career, focused on technologies that will have little impact on human life span. That may seem a harsh judgement, but it has to be said. I'm singling out Halioua here only because she caught my attention on this topic today; there are plenty of other people I could point out who are set on a similar path, and with louder rhetoric. The coming decade is a crossroads, at which we collectively vote on whether the longevity industry will turn out to be largely supplement sellers, mTOR inhibitor developers, other metabolic manipulation of stress response mechanisms, and the like, all doing very little to affect longevity, or whether it will be senolytics to clear senescent cells and other SENS-like approaches to damage repair that will produce actual rejuvenation with the chance at adding decades to human life spans at the end of the day. This seems to me an important choice.
It is not hard to predict what will happen in a world in which the only discussions related to the treatment of aging focus on how to very modestly slow the aging process. It is not hard to see what the outcome will be in a world in which the rhetoric on aging is that it is brave and bold to produce technologies that can perform only a fraction as well as the practice of calorie restriction, which itself adds only a few years at most to human life span. The outcome will be that we will all die on much the same schedule as our parents and grandparents. The outcome will be that we will miss the opportunity to build and engage with biotechnologies capable of achieving far greater and more beneficial outcomes. At the large scale and over timeframes of decades, the industries of the world build the visions that are discussed most broadly, not the visions that go unspoken.
"I think the most controversial opinion I have from an aging standpoint, and something I'm pretty loud about, is that I think we have moved past the time where this 'immortality,' '1000 year old human,' even '150 year old human' narrative is helpful to the field," Celine Halioua told us. "The idea of an aging drug is completely non-controversial - it's basically a statin for every age related disease - it's a preventative mechanism for the worst diseases that we have. And that fits perfectly with standard pharma really, but it's not seen that way.
"We now have a lot of preclinical, research stage, things that have showed efficacy in non-human models, so we need to quickly develop some subset of them and show if they work or not. And this is really a time when you need to have strategic conservatism. There are set boundaries - you have to deal with regulatory agencies, the FDA, insurance payers, pharma, and you have to raise very sizable funding from people who are going to be turned away by these 1,000 year lifespan claims. And so I'm quite loud about that, because I think it's a trend I see in the aging field where people repeat these things over and over again, and I think it actually pulls back the field."
Halioua feels there's an argument to be made - and it's one with which she agrees - that the audacity of big statements were really critical in the 80s and 90s "when nobody was thinking about this field and nobody was paying attention. But I think we've moved past that time, so that's one of the big things that I want to talk about, and a key driver behind the article."
Taking about longevity and encouraging discussion promotes interest in the field and current research, of course, but as with all opinions, there are assenters and dissenters. "I think I definitely annoyed some people with the strategic conservatism thing. But debate is good - intelligent, data-based debate on these things is only a positive for the field. I'm 100% okay with being proven wrong on any and all of these points. My thesis on writing and putting stuff out there about aging is, if nothing else, it may incite somebody who has a better opinion or more informed opinion to then counter me, and then that gets published, so it really can't hurt."
Methuselah Foundation claims this goal:
"MAKING 90 THE NEW 50 BY 2030"
Do you think they will reach goal?
@Alex, it would be great if they could produce a yearly update on this goal. I love Reason's yearly status report on the longevity field.
@Alex: I wish I knew what they meant by this exactly, but if it's a combination of viable organ cloning and viable senescent cell clearance, it theoretically could happen. That said, I don't have a lot of confidence this will happen within the next nine years, and if it does, it's probably not going to be because of Organovo (they're already shifting towards supporting small molecule drug testing). Oisin *might* be more central on their front, but we'll have to see.
I'm also concerned about the time it will take to bring these technologies to a reasonable scale (and price), since people need to be able to buy the therapies as well. All of this said, I'm pretty confident this stuff will happen at some point, I'm just not sure exactly when - there is apparently a lot going on with pushing for full vascularization of tissues for cloning, and senescent cell clearance is now past proof of concept, as we all know.
Lastly, I did read this today: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-mouse-embryo-complete-with-a-beating-heart-is-growing-entirely-in-petri-dish
I'm not reading into this too much, but that does look like a positive development.
@Sadi:
I think they mean making 2030's mortality rate of 90 y.o. people the same as today's 50 y.o. people's mortality rate. That's even bolder than AdG's prediction of making 90 the new 60 (as per the definition of Robust Human Rejuvenation) by 2035.
The consequence of the regulatory capture that has seized the medical industry is that technology outside of it will continue to rapidly develop, far surpassing the ability of pharmaceuticals to treat disease, by simple oblique discoveries and applications. It's very likely we'll see nanorobotics take off before senolytics ever hit the clinics. Attribute that to the militaries of the world. After all, we're told repeatedly that war is good for science (because governments-the agents, the politicians AND their handlers/donors-seek a monopoly).
Though I don't believe that there is a necessary connection between isolated 'heroic' efforts that are bellowed from the rooftops (without the brilliant inner circle and widespread public support) -and- remarkable breakthroughs that cascade into society-altering advancements, an understanding of all the different pieces that are available (money, researchers, equipment, technology, regulatory understanding, RELIABLE TARGET MARKET) is crucial. The notion that 'build it' and they will come is non-sensical --except in the more dire world circumstances (pandemic). That being said, some quite unorthodox 'awareness raising' and 'government bullying' and 'industry message saturation' programs have been undertaken, such as:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/07/the-strange-death-of-human-challenge-trials.html
(somewhat related as an 'approach' to mass testing)
@Antonio
At 90 , according to the Gompertz-Makeham law of mortality , is so high that there's simply no way to decrease is significantly by some functional rejuvenation . Without that the difficulty to keep a rotting, delapidated body, that falls apart at any shock , will grow exponentially. This is why we don't have many billionaires -centarians. No matter how much medical help you can get the main factor is your genetic luck and avoiding bad lifestyle choices. Therefore even 10 years of functional delay of mortality is a big thing. Making 90s the new 50s would be wonderful on still many levels. I wanted to say "incredible" which it is. It would make LEV just at grasp..
@Donald Rumsfeld - 88
Nanotechnology at this point is quite undeveloped. We have some fancy materials. Some nano-devices, called nanobots. The name, though, is quite misleadings since those devices are usually some rods or balls that can barely be controlled to move to a specific location and release the payload. Senolytics will be (generally) available in a few years , since already have a couple of human trials in the pipeline and the first generation are small molecules which are relatively inexpensive to obtain (dasatinib is in the midst of patent expiry, fisetin is available)
I see nothing as close for the nano devices.
As for war being good for science (and general technological progress) it comes with a price of many human be lives . At the big scheme of things anti-aging is not even needed. It would be so much easier just to let the old farts like me to die and be replaced by a younger generation. The problem is that our social roles expect delayed adulthood , longer studying and training, and be at professional prime after 39, very often after 45, if not 50. Of course, this is a minor problem for the species as whole. Is solved, we can plausibly do flights to the nearest stars within a human lifespan and colonize the galaxy, which will make us an interstellar species and immune to all know extinction events.
On the other hand, on personal level of I can last till 99 without being disabled (blind, senile, not sale to walk, etc) I could be happy enough..
Off top: study that works well in mice but might not translate to humans : https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2021/07/antiaging-gene-therapies-extend-lifespan-of-mice-by-41.html
Antiaging gene therapies to overexpress TERT and Follistatin were used in a mouse model. The mice saw a 41 and 32% increase in median life span
@Jer
Good luck "bullying" the government through peaceful lobbying... Are you a 20-something Summer intern at the Pentagon or are you actually that naive? If the elites allow you rejuvenation technologies, it will only be because it benefits them, not because they care about your longevity or pleas of fairness. If the "pandemic" as you put it has taught you anything, it's that the civilian populace of the world will assent to any command, no matter how unreasonable or silly.
@Cuberat
Nanobots not existing yet still provides less of an impediment to the provision of medical treatment than the FDA and other analogous agencies. As of yet, there exist very few of the medical tourism outfits that Reason hypothesized a few years ago would start popping up, and the ones that do exist are 1. being ripped apart by commercial-controlled media, and 2. will shortly be shut down by their respective governments under pressure from the global cabal.
Unless you can convince Iran, Cuba, North Korea or some other country not connected to a Rothschild Fed central bank to open their doors to medical tourists, and medical scientists to immigrate to such harsh countries, your dreams of longevity are best invested in technological gadgets. There's a reason that futurists predict the singularity by 2045 and not 7045: they're not under immense psychological pressure to conform to systems of learned helplessness and attention-seeking pessimism that researchers in the healthcare industry have been inculcated in for decades.
We're close now to understanding the true electromagnetic nature of consciousness, which will allow us to escape the fleshy substrates that we've been confined to for the previous millennia. Essentially, what I'm proposing is that humans becoming disembodied consciousnesses or consciousness singular is closer than convincing the elites of the world to make everyone equal (healthwise). In order for your Star Trek utopia of galactic colonization to ever be achieved, we would need to change human nature anyway. So why keep our bodies? Why make spaceships for apes when we could become Brahman ala Mitchell Heisman's Suicide Note by uploading our consciousnesses into a single solar supercomputer? That's what far off alien species have done, because they're smart. No sufficiently advanced alien civilization will choose to remain biological for some sentimental bullshit reason. That's why biological immortality is actually something of a stupid idea. Any qualia we could experience as apes, any longevity, must palebin comparison to that of what a Computer God could experience. The closest we could get is methamphetamine, and that pleasure is fleeting and comes with many side effects.
@Cuberat: I'm starting to wonder if we're going to need a round or two of replacement organs before we can benefit from a truly functional LEV situation, on account of the timing of the needed treatments being rolled out. I'm not saying that replacing organs as needed is the ideal way to achieve indefinite lifespan (if that can even be done purely by itself) but it does look like that might be one of our earlier options. Do you have reason to believe otherwise?
@Yummy: I hope you're not talking about mind uploading, since that clones you, not preserves you. I don't consider that useful to my goal of survival. Did you have some other method in mind? I'm pretty sure that artificial neurons/synapses (for gradual consciousness transfer) are still in their infancy and that would be needed for a functional biological to synthetic consciousness transfer; you have to mimic how the brain operates to get the job done, in that neurons/synapses already utilize one or another brain cell over time.
@Cuberat: "is so high that there's simply no way to decrease is significantly by some functional rejuvenation"
Non sequitur.
@Yummy Atrazine
I am talking about near future. Eventually , with sufficiently advanced nano technology we could Reddit effectively change / maintain any cell be and tissue , and by extension the whole body. However, this doesn't seem achievable on the horizon of next 4 decades. We can predict future only if we have a trend to extend, or at least a well understood process which we can model. For near term we have senolytics which are quite promising, then we have experimental approaches to clean the arterial plaque . Those are more remote but still in the pipeline. And we also have cell vesicles transplants which are in the highly experimental and proof of concept phase. Let's say they are in the pipeline too. Ion the best case scenario it takes 10 years (at least ) to go from laboratory to available human treatments. Therefore, if there's no news of another treatment now , I highly doubt it would be available by 2030.
As for mood uploading and transhumanism, it might take longer than trumpeted. Kurzweil based how predictions on computation doubling every six months. The Moore's law has run out of steam and while we have incremental improvements they are not close to the exponential trend by any reasonable stretch of imagination. We might hit soon physical limits and our wetware brains might turn out to be close to the optimal and uploading to another substrate might not bring any efficiency(there might be easier to make backups and snapshots of your mind, thought).
Anyway, such a future would be so dramatically different from today that I won't even be able to comprehend it.
As for a date the singularity will be reached, Kartic Gadaa has a quite plausible prediction of 2065, for his definition , of course.
Here at fight aging, we are interested in a more limited change. A world mostly as we know it but without the spectre of ageing.
@Antonio
Sorry my bad. Didn't proofread well. I wanted to say it "without"
Should read:
"is so high that there's simply no way to decrease *it* significantly *without some form of" functional rejuvenation"
@Sadi K
We will need replacement organs , unless we master the regeneration. Probably even then. Unless we all move to the matrix, there will be some organs failing and freak accidents. There will some conditions where replacing an organ would be the easiest solution
@Sadi
I used the wore upload to vaguely describe something akin to the later, albeit not necessarily with the gradual replacement of parts, as the case for the "neural correlates" TOM has so far failed to be made convincingly, so far having been accepted as widely as it has for the simple reason that its the dullest and most atheistic explanation. It's also not clear that losing "your" or "my" consciousness would be a bad thing or that it would result in experiential-phenomonological oblivion. Indeed, killing every conscious being in the universe and leaving nothing but the Computer God may allow "us" to experience through Its perspective, sort of like reincarnation.
@Cuberat
The end of Moore's law was the BEGINNING of exponential advancement.
Someone just has to tell the engineers who keep trying to miniaturize classical, Boolean computers. Circumspection pervades every facet of modern life. We today have hundreds of millions of university students as opposed the tens of thousands two centuries ago, but none of them are willing to think outside of the box or invent things. How many classically trained pianists compose new pieces in the classical style, as opposed to simply learning and perfecting old pieces? The smart people of the past were scary-smart, capable of learning anything and conceptualizing ideas that most people can't understand after reading entire sets of textbooks, whereas the smart people of today are socially inept doofuses with autism, who obsess over infinitesimal details and collect useless data. It's probably a testosterone deficiency problem. Low test predisposes one to seek approval and not step out of line, and while most autistic labcoat-types today have little qualm being obnoxious, they still fear social rejection, fund withdrawal, license revocation etc., which keeps them from aiming too high.
The big problem isn't small disagreements over tech vs. drugs, it's mediocrity, and especially the acceptance of mediocrity. Our thought leaders don't aim high, they aim low and still manage to fuck that up by providing nothing useful. They aim low and nosedive into the dirt, but no one holds them accountable because we're satisfied with "elected" "representatives."
@Atrazine ... you wrote:
"It's also not clear that losing "your" or "my" consciousness would be a bad thing..."
The last time I went in for a procedure under anasthesia, I noticed two things: firstly, I had no ability to comprehend my lack of consciousness except in retrospect after it ended. Secondly, according to the staff on hand, for a short time before it ended, I was able to talk to people as if I was "there", but clearly I was not (from my perspective). I think I can safely state that to the extent I was not conscious, "I" did not exist, and had I not regained consciousness, "I" would never have existed again. Therefore, a state of unconsciousness, living or dead, doesn't seem to be useful to any definition of life extension.
In that this seems to decidedly be a bad thing, I hope my insights here can clear up your uncertainty over the issue.
@Sadi K.
You're a genius! How has Roger Penrose never thought of that? Duh!
Except why would You form memories while unconscious, and further retain those memories, under such a presupposition? You, by definition, with all of your subjective experiences, are subtractive, not additive. Your brain acts as a pinch point separating your conscious experience from others'. Meaning you would have no reason to remember a conscious experience under general anesthesia (for any reason, under any theory). Why would you EVER think that's a genuine argument?
But open individualism is just the theory of mind advanced by Buddha, Schopenhauer, Einstein... they were pretty much idiots compared to Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins.
All in all, the comments are a mixed bag. I expected more optimism.
Hi there! Just a 2 cents.
''The outcome will be that we will all die on much the same schedule as our parents and grandparents.''
That is what I have been saying since, forever. But people forever skeptical (even I am skeptical, it's important to be (doubting), but there is doubting and then there is Doubting (Lots. More);
we have try something because this doubting will kill us/end us in the long run. By lack of time.
People still don't believe that LEV is possible, that it's just wishful thinking, outlandish scifi baloney and/or hopeless idiocy.
''Who are you kidding.........no one (but yourself)''.
''You're like an autistic child in his/her bubble fairy tale (mind) with 'living forever';keep dreaming''.
''Get back down to/on Earth, Down To Earth, and wake up/smell-your decaying body - we all die''.
''Like Great Grand Ma, like Grand Ma, like Ma, and like Me. and You and everyone else''.
That is roughly the prevalent sentiment 'out there' for the majority of people; they are ok with treating diseases....but don't ask anything else/much.
Simply put, AGING IS TABOO (and Death is taboo, we see death displayed all the time but death is feared (for reason) and is shunned to face beside the 'basic' 'I die...you die...we die...I can conjugate the verb 'to die (for))'')), and thus because humans are so stubborn and 'just not convinced', it is hard to convince anyone, of pretty much anything regarding aging.
Health improvement? No prob.
Fixing leaky faucets? No prob.
Treating implacable diseases? No prob.
Talking about healthy living/exercising? No prob.
Defeating aging, curing aging, curing....death??...? Big prob. (Have you forgotten...we die...)
And then you will get a flood of ethical reasons why. +Boredom of too-longevity (my fav one).
Death puts a happy face on some people, like Really....I mean...you can cry about it...or 'laught' of it...when someone dies..it's sad (funerall...) and the lost life of that person..forever..
but people wish to make it/spin it in good light (to remember the good times)...nothing wrong with that.
It's the Other thing...it's WHILE we are ALIVE (still)...like now.
And that is where the knot is....people have this very black or white definition.
YOU LIVE.
YOU DIE.
(PERIOD.)
Could there not be a grey in between that....
''Whatttt? You want to be UNDEAD...like the undead people...they are dead...(but) alive. 'undead' ''.
No we are not trying to make people zombies(again 're-alive' or 're-dead-alive' however you want to see it/spint it). It's like that word Rejuvenation, Re-youth-ening, become young again;
or Resuscitation (which is back from the dead, into the living).
While we are (still) Alive...should we not Strive to - Stay It - So.
But no, many people do not strive for that and strive to (as others pointed) living mediocrity/complacency of ''you lived...a while...then you die...for, ever''.
I kid you not...the other day...I was walking and on the street (I wore the mask)..a man passed me by in bicycle and said:
''Are you afraid to die?''
I could not respond (did not want to neither) but it took me by surprise, he was cycling full speed and still managed to accost me and ask me this question in a furtive ''f*ck you...and your covid mask''...
If I were to stop him I would tell him: ''Yes...I am afraid to die...now why 1/or I would be afraid...right..there is nothinggg nothing to be afraid of....you just die/accept it....
Except...there is.''
''There is reason (enough) to be afraid to die, and I nearly died of some disease; but I am here to tell you about it because I am afraid to die..and I'm alive because of it''.
''Fear kept me alive (it could have killed me but I kept in check and did not let it take over me)''.
He would probably have tried to ripp-off my mask and tell me : ''Scaredy cat....scared to get covid...scared to die....weak''.
I would have answered yes (and in my mind I would be saying silentely...''but I will be the one alive later when sh*t hits the fan when you either get covid (of age) or ...die of age''...
I felt sorry, I almost told him :''But you don't wear a helmet...you got nothing to say on me...about wearing a mask.....if you crash without your bike helmet, you die''.
I understood something, 99% of people out there just don't give a sht....and actually can't wait to 'pack up' and leave (earth) (not for another planet...but for ever (dead)).
Most people that come on fightaging.org....have a chance of reaching 120...just BELIEVING in longevity CHANGES the mind..does not mean you will reach that obviously, but placebo effect is strong on mind/body; if you believe you are healthy (you may not be) but you improve your chances and if you Do believe you will reach 120, you also give your chance to reach the 100, much more than if you are saying...''Can't wait to close the lights''.
There are far more people that die young because of this thinking than the old woman who says: ''Why Can't I Die...I keep living on....?...I am 119 years old...it seems I don't die...''.
Just a 2 cents.
PS: Repair damages therapies could work out very well, if they are targeted towards nucleus/DNA, but alone they won't be enough they need to stop the dwindling nuclear chromosome disarray and ONLY, and only if, they alter the epigenome can life/longevity really happen and defeat aging. Because aging Is Defeatable it is driven by the DNA....
the sad part though...is that we ahve been talking about DNA since 1960s..and I was reading about DNA methylation papers from 1980s...and before....basically, jacksquate happened besides 'data collecting' (thankfully SENS and other therapies aim to change that..but I hold my pessimism on that..not that it can'T happen..it's that it's Not happening because 'they don't make it happen'; they just continue doing research for research; rather than concrete action (therapy creation) (for xyz reasons, money, skepticism, ethics, health bodies, etc etc etc progress at glacial pace - you can read 1970s papers...that talked of sht...today...we still same square 1; all those things...are known...but doing jack about them except 'accepting defeat and 'treat' diseases and 'healthy aging' therapies; thus, settling for very very low expectations...will set us for/to very very low -in the ground/6 feet in it, later when we do end, in 100% assurance)).
People need to understand that AGING -IS- DEFEATABLE...and no it is not some joke. Death from aging can be stopped and it's not 'lolling/lulling' one's self. On the other hand, death from other problems (like accidents or homicides), we can't control that...if a man on the street yells at you ''Are you afraid to die'' and is intent of you dying (for some reason),...you may then die for real because we can't stop accidents/crazy people/random events from happening.
So lock up (kind of like staying-in for covid, that was the upshoot of it, avoiding the dangers outside/having to play the russian roulette with your life because we want freedom to leave the house...but just not die in the process and come home (in one piece; and not in 1 custom body bag).
When do you think we will reach the LEV? What do you think about turn.bio?
Hi Alex! Thank you for asking. Just a 2 cents.
I would say in the next 50 years (being conservative) but it could be Drastically faster (as in 15-30 years..optimistically); 50 years is about right, progress happens (faster than in last 50 years indeed)...but it's mostly an illusion/mirage/make belief - progress is glacial (in pace) - Actually.
''We're getting *mmortal - Very SoonTM''. 'Very Soon' Translation : 500 years....you'll be gone.
Are there 'miracles' that happenedi nt he last 50 years, absolutely, I am not discounting this, we do discover new miracles (we went to the moon and learned to fly..)...it's the other part...Marketing/Mass Marketing and 'putting it' out there...as 'available/Tangible' and to be used/consumed by the population at large (the poorest ones...not (just) the richest ones).
Tons of stuff has been marketed (from what have you antiaging supplement to Calorie Restriction Mimetic - it's there...it exists and it became...but is that the future and..the little fact,
we still die).
There have been certain therapies/disease therapies...but ..we still can't even defeat aging (because doing the wrong thing/or rather not 'aiming/targeting right'....we know what causes cancer yet sht is done about it..besides making another Trial-55 'tramazuzab clopidogrel' new pharma cancer killer med....it does not work once more. These people are forced to do chemo/radiation (just like my mother had to do...and died of it...the cancer killed her...but it's the rest that accelerated it, namely chemo/radiation causing massive Oversenescence in the process to destroy her tumors; and not just my mom, by ex gf (whom died of cancer too, young, at 24 years old), lung cancer and never smoke; had chemo/radiation, did jacksht but only made the cancer more Metastatic more invasive; because it learns and it becomes more aggressive (and it ends up 'using ROS' to its advantage by shielding enough from it and letting the surrounding healthly cells die of ROS excess; she too died of it, when a woman of 24 dies of cancer and another woman of 56 dies of cancer too; you can start to see patterns and see that it's not because your young that you are (fully) immune to anything; but yes being younger does protect you more since your body is less aged and thus less damage/inflammation/senescence...).
Turn.bio mRNA tech (like covid mRNA vaccines) could be really the next stepping stone in gene/mRNA tinkering, it's good because they are targeting the correct place - the nucleus:
''We are focused on reprogramming the epigenome - a network of chemical compounds and proteins that control cell functions by influencing which genes are active - to restore capabilities that are often lost with age.''
I can'T wait to see what comes of it, they could actually be the answer - to defeating aging (since aging is epigenomic in itself). We'll cross our fingers, I just don't want to Overexpect with false hopes (since epireprogramming old mice made them younger/vigorous but they still died) and mRNA vaccines have had serious side effects (lethal) - also...so there could be some (quite serious) side effects when tinkering in the epigenome...but this is Better...thant the other thing...
which is dying altogether...like regular...of aging). I think old people will be able to benefit first, but I have feeling that old people may be forced to sacrifice themselves (more)...not that I WAnt that...I mean....an old person, their time, is running out...thus, they Should - try- the therapy...because they will die (soon/enough)...So Why Not...try and see if this could reverse aging process...what have you got to lose (time?)- at that late age when you know it ends soon?
Got no more time...time out/time running out. Young people being 'guinea pigs'...is understandable why they don't want to ....they are young and it'S too early to - be the guinea pig ...they might die immediately (in their young age), that is quite unfair...while an old person..lived their whole life...already...Well this is an ethical matter, no one decides wether to be or not the guinea pig it's still a personal life/death choice - old or young.
Just a 2c.
@Atrazine ... you wrote:
"Except why would You form memories while unconscious, and further retain those memories, under such a presupposition? "
As far as I know, I don't. I perceive nothing, I recall nothing. Why exactly are you bringing this up?
"You, by definition, with all of your subjective experiences, are subtractive, not additive..." and ""Your brain acts as a pinch point separating your conscious experience from others'."
What is your basis upon which you claim this is true? As far as I know, this is not true.
The masses living twice as long, in good health, is not a scenario our overlords want.
Peddling expensive "magic pills" which can counteract some of the effects of metabolic damage (caused in large part by all of the hyper-processed foods already peddled to us) without really meaningfully extending life - much better business.
You should wear your cynic hat a little more often to understand the motivations at play when big money comes into the picture.
The science of extreme human longevity was discovered millennia ago. It consists of what could best be categorised as a discipline within the science of biophysics, whereby a certain metaphysical counter force is applied to the human organism, hence, causing a number of interesting immediate and long term biological effects.
The tradition maintains, that any extraordinary biological effect, likewise, demands an extraordinary biological cause. To outsiders, the causal mechanics will appear distinctly strange, or extreme, but it is precisely the nature of this biological extremity, that is responsible for the corresponding biological effect.
Due to its difficulty in understanding, combined with the current obstacles of application, it is no longer as popular as in former times.
As the biological cause and effect corresponds to that observed in another unique terrestrial creature, which exhibits similar short and long term effected properties demonstrably superior to anything contemporary man can realistically imagine, whilst at the same time, remaining naturally independent of the usual infrastructure chains (e.g., source materials, refining factories, production laboratories, supply lines, etc), it was for these two primary reasons, that this particular science was generally regarded as superior to the laboratory approach.
Although interesting to a few, pragmatism usually dictates, that contemporary science will better serve the majority of humanity.
It is somewhat ironic, that in nature's wisdom, the secret of life remains hidden within the layers of death itself, . . . the one place where man fears to explore.