Medical Discovery??
 

Ok I was watching tele the other day, and I noticed a story on the news about how scientist had claimed they had figured out a way to reverse the aging process for mice. Of course it had something to do with their DNA and the hormone that keeps replicating for it to be rejuvenated. I was rather impressed by it, I was kind of curious if anyone else heard or read about it and the possible implications this could mean.
A friend of mine thinks that once they figured out mice that they could do humans, and I told him that no, human DNA is much more complicated than that of a mouse. I'm guessing it will take them many more years if they ever do to figure out how to get it to work with humans. Immortality or what? I wouldn't mind living two centuries, but not too sure I would want to be around much longer than that even if I could stay young and have my physical and mental facilities in good condition.

That's a very interesting topic, its pretty amazing that scientists are already uncovering giant secrets like aging and youth.

Personally if I could live as long as I wanted I would alter my age span a bit and live for a while and after I got bored I would just start the aging process again. Still I think people would really abuse the whole "Live for as long as you want" system. XD

Immortality, is basically what it boils down to, and not a fantasy but a possible reality!! It's mind blowing when you really stop and think about it. As many problems that really need to be addressed on our planet alone, the space program really needs attention as space exploration is what eventually the human race will need to do in order to survive. Star Trek, is a perfect example. If we had other planets to live on perhaps had an unlimited amount of resources(which may never happen) the whole living forever thing would be cool, but overpopulation would soon be an issue, but then who's to say who lives forever and who does not, it just doesn't seem fair to play God, but at the same time for the sake of science and exploration, this kind of going beyond our scope is needed in order for us to progress.

that sounds.... weird!! but would be nice.. i don't want wrinkles.

another one is an man was cured of HIV with lukemia treatment. the whole bonemarrow thing curred his HIV... so maybe theres now hope for carriers.

No, none of us want wrinkles, we all want to be beautiful forever...lol! To be able to carry on with protecting our families and watching them grow, to be able to run out and dance in the snow. To be able to laugh and cry with our friends, to be able to find happiness without an end...

I heard about the man who was cured of HIV, I kind of suspected something odd when Magic Johnson no longer was HIV positive. Makes me wonder if the pharmasutical companies hide cures just because there is more money in treatment than there are in cures.

They were doing test like that years ago when I used to work in a testing lab. I thought it was interesting. It's interesting what they can do with science now a days. I hope that they never be are allowed to do it with human DNA though. To me things like that should just be left to nature.

I'm not sure if you are talking about telomeres or something else. Telomeres control how many times a strand of DNA relicates. A theory of cancer is that one of the cell's genes doesn't tell the telomeres to shorten. This would keep the cell going. With the proper application, it could mean immortality. Cell damage is part of nature. To take out the option of mutation can kill off a species. Variation is important to increase the chances of survival. Genetics was always my favorite subject in Biology.

Well that is really interesting, but I don't think that it would ever be a possibility for humans to be able to live forever. Even if lots of us wish for it. And as you had stated before, there is overpopulation to take into consideration. We already have a huge population as it is. Also we all can't live forever, there will come a time whether we want it or not where we will all perish from this planet.

I read that article actually!! I found it very interesting, unfortunately, bone marrow transplants are expensive and dangerous. :(

But it does bring hope! Hope and new possibilities.
:)

On the whole, long living mice and backtracking the aging process...I want to die young and pretty (or at least with my facilities in tact, leave with some dignity, you know?). But, on the other hand, I don't think anyone should have that power...To live forever young. It's too dangerous, and only the rich could afford it, and it would further seperate the rich from the poor, the rich getting richer because they are "always young" even when they are old and wizened, and just keep learning and growing, making themselves better and better...
It's kindof like genetically altering fetuses to make them "smarter, better, faster, stronger" and more attractive. Just because we have the power doesn't mean we should do it.

There are a lot of implications to this, science fiction is becoming reality as we speak. Be it for good or evil, innovation in technology and science is a given. I will say more later I have to get ready, be back later.

@Tunnelrun ~ Immortality could be a good thing if used properly but that is the whole issue, anytime man is put into the equation good/evil will always be present.

I am not so sure I would be willing to extend my life. Even if we do not take into account what will most likely be an expensive asking price, the retirement age is about within the region of about 60-65 years old. Retiring at this age can still provide difficulties in being able to save enough money for a comfortable retirement. The amount of time you would be needing to work with an extended life would increase relative to how much your life extended. This does not sound like such a win to me. o.o;

@Kole_Locke-
Then maybe we should have females in charge of it? ;)

The planet can't sustain people living any longer than they already are unless people start having A LOT fewer kids and people in other areas die sooner...there has to be a balance and the balance is already off. I think the discovery will only screw us all over in the long run. Besides, it's more for vanity than for much else at this point.

The reason the world is overpopulated today is because people are living longer than they ever used to before. People used to die before 60 and it wasn't uncommon for people to have a few of their children pass away before they grew up. Now, people live into their 80s and longer and child deaths are lower than they ever have been. What I'm saying is that, say every day the population went down 10% in deaths and went up 12% in births. Now, it's more like 5% in deaths and 10% in births. If we cut the death percentage down to 2% a day and 12% in births, there is an absolute population explosion. If we keep doing this, we will all starve since there isn't enough natural resources for another population explosion. As it stands, the world can't really support the current population.

Regardless, life is WAY too long as it stands. I can't imagine wanting to live longer.

This too, I completely agree :)

Yeah, the planet absolutely cannot sustain humans with longer lives, the implications are pretty horrific to be honest and I wouldn't want to consider how things would end up before society collapsed completely and someone did us all a big favour by hitting a nuclear button somewhere..

So, we're not even aloud to die anymore!?

seriously, I saw something about that too. But in my experience those blown up discoveries usually don't mean much. It's the ones we never here of that makes a diffrence. Unless we accually did hear about it, but just wasn't interested enough to remember it? Then of course we will here it (again?) when they win the Nobel-prize. Or they just don't win it and remain unknown to public...

No seriously, I'm not in on their project I'm telling. I wouldn't wanna live longer than one normally does.

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Agreed, overpopulation is probably already one of earths biggest problems. and the cause for many of the others. We certainly don't need people to live longer than this.

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yeah definetly, that's a good idea. Especially since we already, statistically live longer than men. If we give life-expension to women only and we will... errm.. live longer and there will be much more women than men. This thing mean that we can finally secure our superiourity against men and take over the planet!:eager:
(though we might wanna spare some of them for breeding, or we could solve that problem with frozen sperm. I'm not sure. I will have to look into that a bit further)
:insane: :mrgreen:

It will be very interesting for sure, I only hope that the good it can do to help people will improve life overall for everyone.

@JellySundae ~ Hopefully the collapse of society will never happen, that is a truly dreadful thought. Why is attaining happiness and living a peaceful life seem like such a utopia?

@Aspinou ~ Well we can only wait, see, and hope for the best. Over population will always be combated by man's altering of mother nature(natural disasaters).

Some times I wished I was an elf and could live among the trees in a musical magical paradise... yea and then I woke up, what shit was I smoking...LOL
But seriously, if you had your soul mate that was perfect for you and lived in a utopia(which doesn't exist) then living longer would be so great. Human sufferring unfortunately is part of the human experience-- I guess the trials we all face is part of what makes us who we are in the end.

I truly hope people can find the good out of the world, and experience true happiness before moving on.(or whatever you believe in)

Although hasn't there been research into using genetic material purely from eggs to breed? If so, you won't even need males for that. Which would essentially create a life of bliss. As all problems are caused by 'men'. ;)

Not sure if that is true, although for lizards, females can reproduce without males, but an epidemic could wipe out an entire population due to no genetic variety.

From what I recall it still required genetic input from two people (both female). It was an attempt to use genetic material from one female to fertilize the egg of another. Other members on Mene such as God would know much more than it than I. I am currently on my notebook as my PC is broken, so hopefully you will forgive me for not finding a source now. I quite dislike searching on this small screen. Next time I am able to use my flat mate's PC I will try and find one, assuming someone else has not already done so.

That's interesting, I will have to research that myself. I wonder if two males could do the same-- probably not. LOL But it is an interesting topic you add in to our conversation.

It's amazing how far we've come, really. If you think of all the differences between now and say, the 50's, it's just beautiful. That's what keeps me from hating society, as most seem to these days. I can't think of the word I want to use, so I'll probably come back and edit in a couple hours when the lightbulb randomly comes on and I'm like "!!!", but we have a lot of promise as humans.

It's funny how it takes a tragedy to happen to break down all the barriers and get people to come together to make way for change for the better.

I don't really think that scientists should mess with they delicate process of nature. Let nature do what it needs to do. And if people could live forever think of who would be affected. Doctors would be out of a job. And medicine has come so far, and it would be all for nothing. And yes, people would abuse this power. They would do horrible things. But there is an upside as well. Experiments that would normally take 5 different scientists life time could be done sooner, and by the same original scientist.

I really don't think I would want to live forever, or even much longer than the normal age these days. Even if you stop the aging process itself, the parts of the body can't endure forever. Before long they'd be cyborgs more than people with all the replacement parts needed to keep up with the lifespan @[email protected]

Plus overpopulation would definitely be an issue. It's crowded enough as it is, already more than enough people on the planet using up the resources... with even more people, we're going to kill the planet even faster, then we'll all die no matter what the genetics are programmed to do :(