[HN Gopher] Anti-ageing 'supermodel granny' drug extends life in...
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Anti-ageing 'supermodel granny' drug extends life in mice by 25%
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 31 points
Date : 2024-07-18 12:56 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| DolphinAsa wrote:
| Ah yes, the never ending reign of the boomers would be great.
| just great.
|
| Though in seriousness, pretty amazing if this works in humans.
| Peptide therapy seems huge lately.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| An antibody is not a peptide [1]. This drug is an antibody that
| targets the protein interleukin-11.
|
| Peptides are very short amino acid sequences.
|
| 1.
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13601...
| grishka wrote:
| As an anti-aging intervention, this is useless because it still
| doesn't uncover the master organism development regulator, and it
| doesn't actually "fix" aging, it doesn't make the organism
| believe that it's younger. The aging process still happens and
| the organism still dies _of the passage of time_.
|
| It might be useful as a lead to that master regulator, though. Or
| it might be not.
| irdc wrote:
| I'd still take it (or, something that does the same but is
| proven safe and effective in humans) while waiting for
| something that matches your desiderata. I've seen what ageing
| can do to people,...
| wang_li wrote:
| All you need is something that extends your healthspan at
| slightly greater than the rate that new discoveries to extend
| your healthspan are made.
| grishka wrote:
| Yes, this is called longevity escape velocity, except this
| is not quite how aging works. The organism _wants_ to
| destroy itself. It 's part of the developmental program
| that starts with conception but eventually turns self-
| destructive. Trying to use the modern medical approach,
| where the body is assisted with what it wants to do anyway,
| is going to be an uphill battle.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| What do you mean "wants to destroy itself"? Why does it
| "turn self-destructive"?
|
| The best interpretation I can make is an allusion to how
| we're designed to be fundamentally unmaintainable (think
| Twitch's codebase), so living is synonymous with eventual
| ruin.
|
| Fun biofatalistic fact: some evidence alleges that genes
| regulate our IQ to keep it within a narrow range, keeping
| from going too low _or_ too high. :D
|
| So, maybe, by just disabling some regulator gene
| somewhere, we could all be von Neumanns! But the true fix
| for all this is to rewrite the genome in Rust.
| irdc wrote:
| It would be fun to speculate what IQ escape velocity
| looks like. Just _how_ _much_ can we boost those neurons?
| How many Whetstones can your wetware do?
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Yeah! That's how I'm forecasting the first "superhuman
| AGI". We don't need a dozen civilizations' training data,
| either; just enough cheeseburgers. And we have loads of
| those already. ;D
| irdc wrote:
| There's no proof of decline and death being "intentional"
| (as much as nature has intentions). At this point it's
| just as likely that our bodies just tend to naturally
| poison us with glycated connective tissue, transthyretin,
| various peptides and what have you.
| grishka wrote:
| The proof that it's intentional is that Yamanaka factors
| work. They reset any cell, no matter the age or the
| specialization, to a perfectly young stem cell. Another
| proof is that heterochronic parabiosis works.
| Transplanting an old organ into a young body rejuvenates
| the organ as well. High concentrations of exosomes taken
| from young blood also have a rejuvenating effect.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _proof that it 's intentional is that Yamanaka factors
| work_
|
| Not really. Multicellular life is messy. Neglect and bad
| intent, so far as nature can have intention, are
| difficult to distinguish.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _organism wants to destroy itself_
|
| Organisms don't _want_ anything. They 're a complex
| cascade of chemical processes.
|
| You're correct in that programmed death is a factor in
| aging. (It's most dramatic in octopuses: removing a
| physical gland causes them not to brood. Unfortunately,
| octopuses being aggressive cannibals, this also causes
| them to devour their young [1].) But if it were 100%
| programmed death, the problem would be easy: change the
| code. It's not solely programmed death, but a complex mix
| of programmed death, accumulated damage and the body not
| really bothering with the latter, maybe due to the
| existence of the former [2].
|
| > _Trying to use the modern medical approach, where the
| body is assisted with what it wants to do anyway_
|
| A _lot_ of medicine is forcing the immune system to stop
| going Rambo.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17787564/
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-022-01251-0
| grishka wrote:
| > But if it were 100% programmed death, the problem would
| be easy: change the code.
|
| The problem is _finding the code_ in the first place. To
| my programmer mind, biology feels like it must be
| comprised of layers of emergent behavior. We 're not very
| good at understanding these right now. It might well be
| that the code you're talking about is not in the DNA, but
| rather it emerges somewhere where we aren't looking.
|
| > A lot of medicine is forcing the immune system to stop
| going Rambo.
|
| Okay you win :P
| throwaway837te wrote:
| Maybe developers should spend more time in bio tech,
| rather than ad tech.
|
| Imagine if we spent 30% of our effort to improve
| humanity.
| grishka wrote:
| If want to take a stab at me personally, I'm helping
| build the fediverse. Ads are cancer. I don't want to be
| anywhere near them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I should have said "simple" instead of "easy." It isn't
| easy. But if it's all in our genes, that's a finite
| search space. In reality, the search space is
| indeterminetedly bounded, possibly unbounded. It's hard
| not because it's elusive, but because it's complex.
| D-Coder wrote:
| > To my programmer mind, biology feels like it must be
| comprised of layers of emergent behavior.
|
| Think of it as a billion years of kludges.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| This runs counter to most physiology textbook
| introductions which tend toward making statements like,
| "The body's main goal is maintaining homeostasis," and
| from there framing the rest of the bodily processes as
| various feedback mechanisms which normally align to
| achieve homeostasis. Sometimes these processes are at
| odds with each other, and only their combined effect is
| homeostatic, but pedagogically the nuance of that is
| present from the start of education.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This runs counter to most physiology textbook_
|
| Which part?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm sorry, I meant to respond to the parent, but
| responded here instead.
|
| It was in reference to the >organism wants to destroy
| itself. My apologies
| D-Coder wrote:
| Fifteen to twenty extra years of lifespan is useless? With
| reduced odds of cancer?
|
| (20-25% longer life x 80 year current lifespan.)
| aiauthoritydev wrote:
| Steps to biological immortality would look exactly like these.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| The Nature article this is based upon was posted yesterday:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224
| abeppu wrote:
| > However, he said there were still problems, including the lack
| of evidence in patients and the cost of making such drugs and "it
| is unthinkable to treat every 50-year-old for the rest of their
| life".
|
| On the "lack of evidence in patients" ... does "testing" this in
| humans mean decades long trials? Given that the effects in their
| animal model was 25%, it seems like measuring if there was such
| an increase in humans (and beginning taking it in late middle
| age) it would be a generation before you had results.
|
| On the "unthinkable to treat every 50-year-old" comment, I think
| we as a society would need to change as a function of our changed
| lifespans -- making all the middle-aged people live to 100+ would
| exacerbate issues around social benefits, housing stock, etc. But
| if we all had longer, more productive lives (i.e. worked longer,
| added our skills and expertise to the economy for longer), could
| that more than offset the costs? If a drug raised your life
| expectancy by 20 years, and most people worked another 15, that's
| still pretty good.
| throwaway837te wrote:
| I think you are right. If you get 20 extra years with the
| quality of an average 50 year old, I think it's a good thing.
|
| Many countries are seeing the birth rate decline. If people
| could extend their life with 20 healthy and productive years it
| would change everything. Suddenly you could choose to change
| your career or make more long term financial choices.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Assuming the drug adds another 20 years of quality life, the
| impact on social program financing would be very good. As is,
| the average person spends, roughly ~56% of human life being
| net-productive (20 learning, 45 working, 15 retired). Add 20
| healthy years, and most folks will keep working, which would
| raise the share of productive years to ~65%. If the treatment
| is expensive, then only net-productive individuals would be
| able to afford it, meaning we would gain the benefit of
| contributors contributing for longer, without net-recipients
| receiving for longer.
|
| This would also allow folks another 20 years of planning/saving
| for retirement, which could greatly improve the quality of
| those years for the average retiree, but probably won't.
|
| The biggest social impact of this drug, I think, would be its
| affect of the wealth gap. Another 20 years of compounding
| market returns would buoy the net worth of the 30% who make up
| the "upper class". An ever-increasing number of people would be
| able to achieve financial "escape velocity" by building nest-
| eggs which can sustain them indefinitely via 3% withdrawals,
| allowing them to retire "early" (i.e. before the new "standard"
| retirement age of 80). Folks who speed-run their careers and
| retire in their 40s-50s could enjoy 50 or 60 years of
| retirement! Inheritances would rise dramatically, but come
| later in life. This would also result in a backlash, of course.
| Envy is the oldest and most powerful organizing "principle",
| and politicians will happily use this new prosperity to
| generate enmity for their own purposes, just as they always
| have.
|
| My main concern would be the dysgenic impact of such a thing.
| If it becomes generally available, it will no doubt encourage
| thinking folks delay having children even more, while also
| granting another decade of fertility to the "oops another baby"
| cohort. It seems clear that this would significantly accelerate
| our decline toward idiocracy.
| aiilns wrote:
| > If the treatment is expensive, then only net-productive
| individuals would be able to afford it, meaning we would gain
| the benefit of contributors contributing for longer, without
| net-recipients receiving for longer.
|
| Because rich people are "net-productive" and poor people are
| "net-recipients"?
|
| This is wrong on so many levels. And even today rich people
| live on average longer. Can't see the benefit myself.
| nonameloser wrote:
| having money is a sign of being productive, on the whole
| Gud wrote:
| Having money is a sign of being able to extract wealth
| from the current economic system. I know many productive
| people who never learnt that hard work doesn't equal good
| money.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| It's actually typically a sign of your parents having
| money, above all else.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987224
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