Submitted by MeronDC t3_10l96j0 in Futurology
I am a medical student a few years away from graduating, and I realize that many medical specialties will deal with some type of anti-aging but I am curious about your opinions.
What would you choose to work with anti-aging and longevity procedures?
What's your opinion?
Depending on exactly how the process works, the ability to treat a lot of degenerative diseases fairly simply and presumably fewer beds required for long term care, the economics of life extension might work out as a net positive. Dying is expensive, so if you largely eliminate that cost it can change things and the current “cure aging in mice” research looks to be a fairly simple process that may scale quite well.
Dying is the best possible answer for nation states as the tax and inheritances pay more than the social programs and tax’s loopholes given out.
Nations do not want to spend on individuals when spending on companies who buy them out pay so much better.
I’d argue the opposite, with the birth rate slowing many western nations won’t be able to afford their citizens dying (or retiring) cause they need them to keep working so that the economy doesn’t collapse.
Immortality will mean any birth rate above zero will cause real issues economically and socially. Global or national, birth rates will need to be contained once this ball is rolling.
Yes makes sense but it’s often phds that design the hammers and mds that use them
Gerontology is about the elderly, but the whole area has only been about studying the aging process and managing problems. No wise guy or lady to my knowledge has stood up and said let's approach as an engineering problem and fix it.
That’s the immortality paradox. You have to know where we are to begin a systematic physiological evaluation of all disciplines needed to solve this problem.
Lol, as much as I’d love to see this evolve, it will be a 1%er fad for a century at least if not longer and they have the ego to live forever if they don’t kill themselves first. Common folk won’t be part of the plan after trials are complete.
Unpopular opinion but not psychiatry or mental health professions
Maybe neuroscience for cognitive decline
But I think a huge side effect of increasing life and health spans will be cancer
Essentially almost anyone who doesn't get cancer essentially died before they would have
A very unique take, could you clarify something please.
Why do you think that cancer means one's end of life, as we sometimes see kids get cancer.
My understanding is that it is just a bad mutation that makes the cell divide indefinitely.
So in no way does that imply that cancer means the end of life.
I'm not saying it would mean end of life
Two things
What allows increased life span things like telemore extensions, cellular repair also increase often cancer risks, essentially what often limits cellular repair, regeneration often limits cancer
We all have latent cancer but sometimes something us kills us first. Mice get cancer in such high rates in old age because essentially natural selection in the wild made it so most didn't live past a certain time, so cancer in old mouse age wasn't selected against, again with humans, extreme old age will mean certain cancers might show up at 130 that we wouldn't see without
Makes sense, thanks.
Cancer is often a death sentence. We measure survival rates in 5 years time. And if you are one of the lucky ones to handle enough poison to your body to push it into remission, the chance of a sudden and aggressive reoccurrence isnt 0 due to the amount of DNA damage from radiation and chemo. When I had a scare I learned about valter longo’s research into fasting and chemo, and that may be one way to improve survival rates by protecting the healthy cells but the treatments may cause a new cancer in the future. Younger patients are extremely resilient and have a better chance of keeping it at bay and handling higher doses of chemo. Also some pediatric cancers are curable because they irradiate the bone marrow and replace it with a donor essentially changing the child’s immune system. That being said cancer is not my specialty and maybe an oncologist can weigh in better than I can. Either way it’s one of my biggest fears and I pray we keep making headway with immunotherapies vs chemo and radiation
Edit: also some cancers are treated with only surgical intervention and this does have less chance of reoccurring in the future. My post may sound a bit more bleak than reality
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Crispr to address cancers and genetic disorders, potentially even eliminating those disorders from germ-line cells and eradicating genetic diseases forever.
Crispr to create anti-virus and anti-bacterial and anti-fungal technologies to again, eradicate communicable disease.
Nano-machines to directly combat infections and toxins in the blood and tissues.
Nano-machines to 'excavate' plaques and blockages in the veins/arteries.
Nano-machines to provide real time constant diagnostic data from every tissues and fluid in the body.
Bio-mimetics alongside material sciences and micro/nano-machines will allow us to replace organs with synthetic ones, if not using cell research to simply grow new 'real' organs.
We're already making synthetic neurons, which implies we can advance the brain in ways we probably can't even comprehend right now. Repairing damage, backups, growing to new capabilities and connectivity to systems...
Also education... we are SO MASSIVELY missing the ability of children to learn at an incredible rate. https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/10lixha/a_young_baby_reading/ This baby is NOT an outlier. I honestly believe that the new connections are so rapid and numerous in a child's brain that they could be learning mathematics from even this age. Our systems are just so defunct and slow that not only are we missing the mark, children literally get BORED when learning, which at a younger age learning ANYTHING is an incredible excitement, literally their entire purpose.
There's a couple of comments about psych/neuro for people being able to 'handle' being immortal but... if someone simply decides they don't want to exist anymore they should be allowed to do as they please, in peace and dignity. Sure those fields are going to continue to exist, but the implication that it is 'wrong' to not want to live forever is just laughable.
Probably psychology, I do not think our minds are ready to last centuries, much less forever.
Psychology isnt actually a medical speciality. Psychiatry/neurology is more applicable here.
Appreciate the correction!
No problemo señor. Its actually kinda tough to decipher if neuro or psych would be more helpful in the context of immortality.
I must be new and stupid but what exactly is the technology that we are talking about when we assume people en masse might be able to live “centuries“. From what I’m aware of it won’t go past 130 in most cases and will not get widespread for a few decades at least. I haven’t heard of any tech that would allow actual centuries.
Well, I'm not the OP, but I assume they're referring to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity_escape_velocity
People have been living longer and longer for decades, researchers of aging believe the first 200 year old has been born. Think about the medical progress made in 100 years, if the projections continue we will be living LONG long enough that technology in other places are likely to change fundamental aspects of living often
Stem cell research. Being able to grow replacement organs from stem cells and implant them as needed.
I know people working on it at Caltech but they went the biotech route rather than medicine.
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Any speciality that can get its hands on, if it is private private care immortality
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David sinclair studies soecifically that. I think you should be going more for laboratóries
Probably best to steer clear of members of the WE F. Sinclair is one of them.
Why would that be? I an a post graduat student and I which I could work there someday. What should I be afraid of?
“WE F” is responsible for the plan of humanity’s Great Rese t. If you haven’t heard about it by now I’m surprised.
Heard, but always seemed like a Quack....
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There's a great TED talk by a guy who talks about this in extensive detail. Not sure what his specialty is, but I remember him saying that the first person who will live to be 1000 years old has probably already been born. Can't remember his name, but he's tall and skinny and has a long beard.
EDIT: Quick Google search... his name is Aubrey de Grey
https://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_a_roadmap_to_end_aging?language=en
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Depends
anti aging for the skin(looks ) : plastic surgery /dermatology
anti aging as in extending life after certain serious conditions: chronic diseases specialist or oncology
anti aging as a field in itself to literally stop aging or rather make sure ur body is at the same age (as in replication of the exact amount of cells u lose per second (not even one more or less) . Having extended telomeres at the end of the genomes . : genetics .
u should really look into genetics and crispr and epigenitics and eugenitics
Probably something to do with brains. Mentally, i dont know if the brain itself could take being immortal.
Neuroscience. Consciousness may be exportable / transferrable, but the body will need constant maintenance and become just too damn expensive.
Edit: typo
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My perspective is that any anti-aging technologies will arise and be tested in fields regarding fertility and survival (aka cancer), which are very neo-drug receptive. Gerontology will be too late.
Cancer susceptibility and aging are one and the same due to gene mutation and epigenetic changes. But we have hardly touched this field because of a present dearth in data.
That’s my perspective but I’m biased.
That and current medical ethics is very much against human enhancement. And is stuck in disease treatment not going beyond what's normal or average rather than what is optimal.
Psychiatry because the ability to cope with massive changes over and over again would be very hard on the mind. When we are young we absorb knowledge and can adapt easy, it gets harder as we get older because we form neural pathways. It is a bit harder as you get older, imagine how hard it might be after 300 years of life and having to go through 6 or 7 societal shifts that require you to change how you interact with people based on what is considered socially acceptable.
People need to die. We cannot have immortal humans wandering around. No, people have to die. Everything must die so that new things can live.
You first.
Rest of us normal people will decide after that.
No. We don't have to die, we just do right now.
I'd love to hear an explanation though. Are you concerned about our economic systems supporting immortality? Are you concerned about resources and the math behind potentially infinite people in a finite space?
Your comment of "Everything must die so that new things can live" just isn't scientifically based. New things live around undying redwood trees all the time. While one redwood lives there's no restriction on another seed starting life.
Eventually all things die. That is the natural order. And my concerns are many. Look who’s running the show into the ground right now, old men for the most part. Imagine having policies set by a 300-year-old who never bothered to change their mind about anything for centuries.
I’m not going to go on with all the hundreds of problems with humanity becoming immortal and instead say that it’s likely just a pipe dream anyway.
If I have option to no longer be beholden to this 'natural order' I'm going to take it. There is no overarching and controlling morality. Your ideals do not dictate what is possible.
That said your mention of current societal limits are valid, the ruling party having immortality right now, with our current systems, would be really bad. Hopefully in the next century we resolve those issues.
You're more optimistic than I am about solving our issues that are likely to kill off most of us in the next century. So do you think that all 8 billion and counting of us should be immortal? How about the children of those immortal adults? We're going to literally run out of room in less than a century if that's the case. Unless you believe we're going to somehow colonise mars or the moon.
Immortality invalidates the concerns for how long it takes to get places in the universe.
No it doesn't. Immortality does not mean you don't have to eat and drink and rest. We don't have the resources to care for billions of immortal humans. We will still freeze and starve to death in the harshness of space even though our cells are replacing themselves as quickly as they die.
If this plan does come to fruition, we already know that the richest and most powerful people will use the technology and regular people will not be able to afford access to it. It will become the most extreme form of inequality. A small number of the population will dominant not only finances but time itself. Their offspring will of course also be afforded immortality and there will be ruling dynasties for eternity of the same family unless they are killed.
It's a horrible, horrible plan and I truly pray that we kill ourselves off or reduce in population to the point where this will never become reality.
How is this meme so popular? Why do people turn off their brains and forget about how all technologies start expensive and then get cheaper over time?
Right, because medical related procedures and specialized medication is super cheap and affordable.
They’re not cheap, but we cover the payment with group spending like taxes or insurance because we agree that it’s right for people to have access to them. Sure the system for doing that is pretty fucked up in America right now, but that’s only in comparison to other advanced nations we could easily emulate. From a historical perspective, the access that even the poorest citizens have to lifesaving medicine is crazy good.
There’s absolutely not a chance in hell, at all, even a little bit, that the majority of citizens would permit rich people to hoard literal immortality. It would be completely politically impossible to prevent ordinary people from seizing the reins and distributing the immortality treatment, even if it were really expensive. And I don’t think it will be inherently all that expensive. It will probably be a genetic mod, which has all sorts of theoretical low expense delivery options.
As for all the problems with overpopulation and feeding people etc, immortality affords us the time and opportunity to solve those problems. If you could have the opportunity to either get yourself out of a tight situation through some challenge, or just choose to die, the choice is obvious. Your “solution” to feeding billions of people in the future is to let billions of people die now. That’s not a solution. That’s just a total abdication of any sense of agency or self-preservation or love of humanity.
Term limits = state sponsored suicide so they don’t come back
Lol yeah, like the oldest and richest and most powerful humans will definitely legislate that for themselves.
DrImNotFukingSelling t1_j5vn3ot wrote
Gerontology would be my guess as they will have the most relevant data and expertise in aging and the consequences that must be considered and what a reversing of those would equate to.
Honestly with socialized medical in western nations expanding, they can’t afford to let that many live that long unless big pharma starts curing diseases instead or prolonging life on their meds.