May You Be Forever Young

Science Daily reports on a Buck Institute study that says nematodes doped up on lithium live a lot longer — 46% longer.

In the study, scientists discovered that longevity was increased in the worms when the lithium “turned down” the activity of a gene that modulates the basic structure of chromosomes.

And:

“Understanding the genetic impact of lithium may allow us to engineer a therapy that has the same lifespan extending benefits,” said Lithgow. “One of the larger questions is whether the lifespan extending benefits of the drug are directly related to the fact that lithium protects neurons.” The process of normal aging in humans is intrinsically linked to the onset of neurodegenerative disease.

Photo: Petromyzon

Life Extension has an article called Death by Medicine that cites fairly chilling statistics about the dangers of conventional medicine.

The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. (By contrast, the number of deaths attributable to heart disease in 2001 was 699,697, while the number of deaths attributable to cancer was 553,251.)

They’ve posted the whole article online.

If SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) is your thing, you’re going to want the up-coming book from Aubrey de Grey and Michael Rae called Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Biotechnologies That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime (Amazon). Here’s how Reason described it:

Aimed squarely at folk who want to know more about the science of repairing the molecular damage that causes aging, but find navigating the wild waterways of scientific publications too intimidating or time-consuming, this is a step by step, detailed explanation of how we could achieve radical life extension within our lifetimes, as best we understand from our present knowledge of our biochemistry.

If you’re used to the “eat this, take supplements and exercise” longevity bookshelf, Ending Aging is a big step up - very much more “research this science to develop this specific therapy based upon that sound basis established over the past two decades.” You’ll be seeing more of that in the years ahead, and this exactly where your attention should be focused if you care about your own longevity.

I put in my order.

The Times Online reports that Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin empire is about to go bio-tech, with a company that stores stem cells for later use.

The Virgin-branded company will be launched next Thursday and is expected to offer parents the chance to put the umbilical blood of their newborn children into cold storage. Scientists believe that future advances in medical technology will use stem cells to cure diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer.

The move into stem-cell storage is part of a strategy that Sir Richard is developing to invest in technologies of the future.

Looks to me like a move that will help with mainstream acceptance of some of these ideas.

Via Short Sharp Science via Digg.

Elite athletes and stem cells aren’t usually found in the same sentence, but apparently some soccer stars are banking stems cells from their newborns’ umbilical blood as a hedge against future damage.

Some leading English soccer players are storing stem cells from their newborn babies as a potential future treatment for their own career-threatening sports injuries, according to a report in the UK Sunday Times newspaper.

Players are freezing the cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of their babies as a possible future cure for cartilage and ligament problems. Stem cells can be used to regenerate damaged organs and tissue because they are the earliest form of cells.

Presumably they have the means and the potential need. Is this the beginning of a trend?

This AP story includes the sad tale of a woman who opts to die instead of paying thousands of dollars for a round of experiemental treatment that might marginally extend her life. It’s a fairly extensive look at the cost of providing health care to those who, on the whole, aren’t going to live much longer.

Is the chance for several more months of life, maybe a year or more with luck, precious enough to spend a small fortune? This dilemma is also challenging governments, employers and insurers, who all help finance America’s longer life spans and innovative technologies.

Extraordinary care for dying patients can make for inspiring medicine, but its extraordinary costs make it an increasingly debated choice to promote public health. Many economists, doctors, and ethicists say this care too often buys too little for too much, and that its expanding share of medical resources might better pay for screening and treating diseases in earlier stages.

In part, what’s interesting to me is that there will be parallel costs and decisions to be made with life extension technology as it develops an comes online, but before there are economies of scale. It’s just that the focus will be slightly different, and you may be dealing with someone who’s more or less healthy, not someone who’s very, very ill.

Via Digg.