> At 25 pretty much all your cells have died and been replaced many times, and if over evolutionary times we had lived to be 500 years on average, we'd have mechanisms to keep up healthy that long.
You're missing the point that some cells, essential to our survival, are never replaced, and when they decay, we die. One example is brain cells -- they're never replaced, and when they're done, so are we. This means that, unless we can get around apoptosis (programmed cell death), then we won't ever move beyond a certain age. We aren't close to understanding apoptosis.
> What is "good enough" for our genes isn't always good for us as people.
Ah, someone who thinks he can outwit nature. When we try to outwit nature, we end up outwitting ourselves.
> Most of what can be called "modern progress" is about protecting us from what would happen to us if nature was left to itself.
You mean, like antibiotics? The antibiotics that we have foolishly mismanaged to the extent that they simply don't work any more?
Contrary to your thesis, we need to figure out how to get along with nature, not pretend we can dominate nature. We've tried to run the show, and nature has responded by showing us how naive we are.
And this idea isn't some airy-fairy New Age philosophy, it's the result of careful scientific work. We're just getting started in figuring out how to get along with nature, and everything we've tried to date has backfired:
Medical and nutritional advances -> overpopulation
Antibiotics and other medical breakthroughs -> the gradual evolution of antibiotic-immune microbes.
Longevity extension -> overcrowding, a plague of chronic diseases in the elderly, deep philosophical questions about meaningless long lives.
> Curing the diseases of aging is just the continuation of that
Curing the "diseases of aging" is not your topic. Your topic is the disease of age. That's not the same thing at all.
> You're missing the point that some cells, essential to our survival, are never replaced, and when they decay, we die. One example is brain cells -- they're never replaced, and when they're done, so are we. This means that, unless we can get around apoptosis (programmed cell death), then we won't ever move beyond a certain age. We aren't close to understanding apoptosis.
These cells can be replaced via stem cell therapy, and the more we look into things, the more we find that certain types of cells that we thought weren't replaced actually are.
> Ah, someone who thinks he can outwit nature. When we try to outwit nature, we end up outwitting ourselves.
That sounds really good, but I believe it's BS. You are anthropomorphizing nature. And every day you are "outwitting it" I'm sure. I bet you are quite happy for yourself and your loved ones not to be living like humans were living 20,000 years ago. And who's to say that technological and scientific progress isn't part of nature anyway? Why is curing diseases "against" nature? Not that nature is an entity in the first place.. All there is are the laws of physics.
> Curing the "diseases of aging" is not your topic. Your topic is the disease of age. That's not the same thing at all.
"age" is not an abstract thing that kills you. There are specific diseases of aging - which are diseases that old people get that young people do not get - that are curable, and that includes all the things that make us frail but aren't usually categorized as diseases (loss of muscle mass, change in texture of skin, etc).
Are you saying that Alzheimer's disease and heart disease and going blind and getting fat and arthritis and losing your muscles and sex drive are good things? If so, you are welcome to refuse these therapies when they are developed, but I will gladly take them, just like I'm sure you are taking advantage of all the other modern ways of making human life easier and more enjoyable.
You seem to be under what Aubrey de Grey calls the "pro-death trance"; happy that we cured smallpox and you wish we could cure AIDS and whatever, but you don't think we can cure the diseases of aging, so you find excuses for why they are actually good.
>> You're missing the point that some cells, essential to our survival, are never replaced, and when they decay, we die.
> These cells can be replaced via stem cell therapy ...
Brain cells replaced by stem cell therapy? Have you given this any thought? A brain cell replaced by stem-cell therapy is empty -- it's not a replacement for the cells that contain the memory of your fifth birthday party, or that contain your knowledge of Calculus.
There's a reason brain cells aren't replaced -- it's the same reason you can't swap a running hard drive for a replacement that has no data written to it.
> "age" is not an abstract thing that kills you.
No, not abstract -- apoptosis is not abstract, it is a fact of life. And we have a very poor understanding of it.
> Are you saying that Alzheimer's disease and heart disease and going blinde and getting fat and losing your muscles and sex drive are good things?
Only you said that, and the remainder of your post relies on an argument only you have made.
> but you don't think we can cure the diseases of aging, so you find excuses for why they are actually good.
1. Stop making arguments for other people.
2. Learn the science. You have suggested stem cell therapy to replace brain cells, but without asking yourself what brain cells do, how they function. You would do well to learn that first.
> Brain cells replaced by stem cell therapy? Have you given this any thought? A brain cell replaced by stem-cell therapy is empty -- it's not a replacement for the cells that contain the memory of your fifth birthday party, or that contain your knowledge of Calculus.
Maybe if you replaced all cells at once or something stupid like that, but that's not what is being suggested here.
> No, not abstract -- apoptosis is not abstract, it is a fact of life. And we have a very poor understanding of it.
You have a poor understanding of it. First of all, a lot of the diseases of aging come about because apoptosis stops working and these malfunctioning zombie cells hang around and gum things up and produce erroneous signals/proteins. Rejuvenating the apoptosis process is part of the SENS platform. Cells that commit apoptosis are replaced all through your life.. It's when that process stops working well that things go wrong; they don't go wrong because of that process.
In other words, apoptosis doesn't make us old, it keeps us young. It's when it stops working well - along with other things - that we get frail and sick.
I asked you questions, and you didn't answer them.
> 2. Learn the science. You have suggested stem cell therapy to replace brain cells, but without asking yourself what brain cells do, how they function. You would do well to learn that first.
Have you read Aubrey de Grey's book? It goes quite deep into the biology of his proposals (and he cites the papers that go even deeper). If you haven't, you don't even know what is being proposed so how can you know if it makes sense or not?
You're missing the point that some cells, essential to our survival, are never replaced, and when they decay, we die. One example is brain cells -- they're never replaced, and when they're done, so are we. This means that, unless we can get around apoptosis (programmed cell death), then we won't ever move beyond a certain age. We aren't close to understanding apoptosis.
> What is "good enough" for our genes isn't always good for us as people.
Ah, someone who thinks he can outwit nature. When we try to outwit nature, we end up outwitting ourselves.
> Most of what can be called "modern progress" is about protecting us from what would happen to us if nature was left to itself.
You mean, like antibiotics? The antibiotics that we have foolishly mismanaged to the extent that they simply don't work any more?
Contrary to your thesis, we need to figure out how to get along with nature, not pretend we can dominate nature. We've tried to run the show, and nature has responded by showing us how naive we are.
And this idea isn't some airy-fairy New Age philosophy, it's the result of careful scientific work. We're just getting started in figuring out how to get along with nature, and everything we've tried to date has backfired:
Medical and nutritional advances -> overpopulation
Antibiotics and other medical breakthroughs -> the gradual evolution of antibiotic-immune microbes.
Longevity extension -> overcrowding, a plague of chronic diseases in the elderly, deep philosophical questions about meaningless long lives.
> Curing the diseases of aging is just the continuation of that
Curing the "diseases of aging" is not your topic. Your topic is the disease of age. That's not the same thing at all.