Tag: transhumanism

Life Extension

In a series of experiments on earthworms, scientists have identified PHA-4, which plays a critical role in prolonging life without tapping into insulin-regulating neural pathways that also control the aging process.

I bet they are partying over at SENS.
2007-08-13: The baby boomers don’t want to die, like all prior generations. but unlike them, they have the financial means to massively fund anti-aging research like SENS. This is only the very beginning.
2008-01-09: I wonder whether CR is compatible with evolutionary fitness.
2008-05-26: Intrinsic Pluripotency

We show that extrinsic stimuli are dispensable for the derivation, propagation and pluripotency of ES cells. The discovery has major implications for large scale production of specialized cells, such as brain, heart muscle and insulin producing cells, for future therapeutic use.

2011-03-08: Telomere shortening

Prematurely aged (shortened) telomeres appears to be a common feature of iPS cells created by current pluripotency protocols. However, the spontaneous appearance of lines that express sufficient telomerase activity to extend telomere length may allow the reversal of developmental aging in human cells for use in regenerative medicine.

Injecting pluripotent cells into your blood stream can reverse aging effects.
2013-09-18: Google used to say, cheekily, that making search faster times billions of users saves lives, so doing anti aging seems like the logical next step. I also like this because it couldn’t be further from all the web 2.0 incrementalist nonsense most startups limit themselves to.
2014-06-13: Stem cell pills

I started taking Stem Cell 100 back in 2011. It is $60 for a 1 month supply. There is now Stem Cell 100+ [$75 for a 1 month supply]. They added more ingredients and the testimonials are that it acts faster and is more powerful and more people have noticeable positive changes.

2015-06-18: Aging as a disease

Let’s face it – any other syndrome that caused the sorts of effects that age does on our bodies would be considered a plague. But we’re used to it, and it happens to everyone, and it happens slowly. Does it have to be that way? The history of medicine is a refusal to play the cards that we’ve been dealt, and there’s no reason to stop now.

2015-08-04: Young blood

the age of an organism, or an organ like the brain, is not written in stone. It is malleable. You can move it in 1 direction or the other. It’s almost mythological that something in young organisms can maintain youthfulness, and it’s probably true.

2015-08-09: Youthful telomeres

children of centenarians, who have a good chance of becoming centenarians themselves, maintained their telomeres at a “youthful” level corresponding to 60 years of age — even when they became 80 or older. Centenarian offspring also maintained lower levels of markers for chronic inflammation.

2015-12-28: Aging and excercise

Almost any amount and type of physical activity may slow aging deep within our cells. And middle age may be a critical time to get the process rolling, at least by one common measure of cell aging.

2016-10-07: Rapamycin

Nearly 10 years of research showing that Rapamycin makes mice live up to 60% longer, scientists are trying it out as an anti-aging drug in dogs and humans. Researchers gave rapamycin to 16 dogs and imaged their hearts. “It started to function better. It started to look like a more youthful heart”. Those dogs took rapamycin for only 10 weeks.

2017-03-27: NMN

The scientists identified that the metabolite NAD+, which is naturally present in every cell of our body, has a key role as a regulator in protein-to-protein interactions that control DNA repair. Treating mice with a NAD+ precursor, or “booster,” called NMN improved their cells’ ability to repair DNA damage caused by radiation exposure or old age. “The cells of the old mice were indistinguishable from the young mice, after just 1 week of treatment”. Human trials of NMN therapy will begin within 6 months. “This is the closest we are to a safe and effective anti-aging drug that’s perhaps only 3 to 5 years away from being on the market if the trials go well”

2017-06-07: SENS progress

There is much to be optimistic about and the ideas proposed by SENS over 10 years ago and widely criticized are now being eagerly explored by researchers as it becomes ever more apparent that the aging processes are amenable to intervention. What was mocked just over 10 years ago is now becoming an accepted approach to treating age-related diseases as the result continue to mount up in support of a repair based approach to aging. However we still lack complete knowledge on several age-related damages to progress to clinical trials in humans.

2017-11-03: Dietary supplements

Targeting multiple aging pathways has the potential to significantly reduce blood pressure and stress, while significantly increasing HDL Cholesterol levels and lung capacity. Targeting multiple critical aging pathways with a single dietary supplement is a novel alternative strategy to promote overall health.

2018-05-10: Pets as platforms

“We have already done a bunch of trials in mice and we are doing some in dogs, and then we’ll move on to humans”. The US pet industry is a $72B-a-year market.

The prolongation of human lifespan is “the biggest thing that is going to happen in the 21st century. It’s going to make what Elon Musk is doing look fairly pedestrian.”

Rejuvenate Bio has met with investors and won a grant from the US Special Operations Command to look into “enhancement” of military dogs while Harvard is seeking a broad patent on genetic means of aging control in species including the “cow, pig, horse, cat, dog, rat, etc.”

The team hit on the idea of treating pets because proving that it’s possible to increase longevity in humans would take too long. “You don’t want to go to the FDA and say we extend life by 20 years. They’d say, ‘Great, come back in 20 years with the data’”.

2018-08-14: investable SENS

Aubrey De Grey discusses how all of the aspects of fighting the damage of aging have reached an investable stage. 10 years ago only stem cells were investable. Now companies have been formed to attempt to counter all of the types of aging damage.

2018-09-12: Rejuvenate Bio

George Church talks about reversing human aging and claims they made mice live 2x as long. Organ longevity has also been done successfully with entire mice. If the body still did not get rid of the substandard cells then work at Oisin Biotechnology and others would enable bad cells to be cleared. Oisin is extending the life of mice and has proven safety and improvement in monkeys. They will start human clinical trials in 2019. Rejuvenate Bio has 60 aging reversal gene therapies. They have mentioned but not yet published eye popping results in mice. They are testing aging reversal in dogs in 2018-2019. Human treatments could be available on a general basis by 2025.

2018-10-31: Antiaging funding levels

There is increasing of pharmaceutical company engagement via disease-focused proof of concept trials. Curing all cancers would add 3.5 years to average human lifespan. If anti-aging could delay the start of aging disease from 50 or 60 by 20 or 30 years then this could be 10x better than curing cancer. $50b per year is spent on curing cancer. If medical research was allocated based upon potential impact then anti-aging should be at a funding level of $500 billion per year.

2019-01-31: NMN

His anti aging regimen is to activate pathways to improve the body’s defenses against aging. He is testing NMN on human subjects. He describes NMN is fuel for sirtuins. NMN is related to NR. NR increases the levels of NAD. Sirtuins need NAD to work. We lose NAD as we age. We have half of the NAD by the time we are 50. He takes a gram of NMN (Nicotinamide MonoNucleotide) and takes half a gram resveratrol in the morning with yogurt. He is personally taking 1 gram of Metformin once a day at night.

2019-12-12: Caloric Restriction

the evidence as it stands weakly supports the conclusion that CR modestly extends human life. We expect that an individual engaging in 20-30% CR versus a normative, non-obesogenic diet without malnutrition might enjoy a 10%-20% increase in longevity. A 10%-15% CR relative to a normative diet may increase lifespan by perhaps 5-10%.

2019-12-31: State of antiaging

Progress towards the implementation of rejuvenation therapies is accelerating dramatically, ever faster with each passing year. While far from everyone is convinced that near term progress in addressing human aging is plausible, it is undeniable that we are far further ahead than even a few years ago. Even the public at large is beginning to catch on. While more foresightful individuals of past generations could do little more than predict a future of rejuvenation and extended healthy lives, we are in a position to make it happen.

2020-03-26: Age reversal in human cells

The treated cells appeared to be ~3 years younger on average than untreated cells from elderly people, with peaks of 3 years (in skin cells) and 7 years (in cells that line blood vessels).

2020-12-03: Epigenetic clocks

Sinclair’s focus in on analog information loss, the epigenetic noise that accumulates in the methylation patterns running along our DNA and disturbing its expression. This degradation is a biological clock of aging, and today’s results “tell us the clock doesn’t just represent time—it is time. If you wind the hands of the clock back, time also goes backward.”

“Harvard Medical School scientists have successfully restored vision in mice by turning back the clock on aged eye cells in the retina to recapture youthful gene function. The achievement represents the first successful attempt to reverse glaucoma-induced vision loss, rather than merely stem its progression

2020-12-04: Most brain aging decline can be fixed overnight

Common signs of neuronal aging disappeared literally overnight: neurons’ electrical activity became more sprightly and responsive to stimulation, and cells showed more robust connectivity with cells around them while also showing an ability to form stable connections with one another usually only seen in younger mice.

2022-12-02: Why do birds live so long?

Avian longevity may be linked to special adaptations in the biology of birds—including proteins to operate their highly efficient metabolisms and their remarkable ways of processing oxygen—that prevent tissue damage commonly associated with old age. In many animals, high body temperature, metabolic rates, and blood glucose levels indicate a shorter lifespan because these systems damage DNA in the mitochondria. But compared to other animals, birds are very good at protecting their mitochondrial DNA from the cellular damage associated with aging, which could contribute to their extensive lifespans. Studying birds could enhance our understanding of aging in humans, too, leading to advances in human health. “We want to know how nature has constructed things that resist aging better than we do. Otherwise, we’re left to our own ingenuity.”

2023-01-29: Epigenetic clocks have become more accurate and more universal

“A pan-tissue clock was paradoxical because methylation is supposed to control cell identity,” and remains fixed through adulthood. When Horvath and his colleagues established that epigenetic clocks counted time at the same pace across all tissues, whether that was quickly dividing blood cells or notoriously slow and highly differentiated brain neurons, the race was on to understand the fabric of time that the clocks are measuring. The universal clock, the key finding of Horvath’s 2022 paper, takes the pan-tissue clock one step further. It chimed the final stroke that unequivocally showed a predictable pattern to aging not only within the body of a single organism, but across mammals. These are clocks that hopefully are comprised of cytosines that truly have a causative role in the aging process. Of particular interest are “enhancer” regions of the genome, which exaggerate the role of certain genes by activating them to exorbitant levels.

Humans 2.0

A science is emerging that combines a new understanding of how humans work to usher in a new generation of machines that mimic or aid human physical and mental capabilities. Some 150M of us are over the age of 80, while 200M of us suffer from severe cognitive, emotional, sensory, or physical disabilities. Giving all or even most of this population a quality of life beyond mere survival is both the scientific challenge of the epoch and the basis for a coming revolution over what it means to be human. To unleash this next stage in human development, our bodies will change, our minds will change, and our identities will change. The age of Human 2.0 is here.

in typical media lab fashion, a bit over the top. but remarkable nonetheless. a couple years ago they would have been laughed off the stage

Math Savant

Daniel Tammet is a high-functioning autistic savant. He can calculate huge sums in his head in seconds and instantaneously recognize prime numbers, but he finds emotions difficult to understand and has trouble telling left from right. 1 of fewer than 50 such people living worldwide, Daniel is unique in his ability to articulate his savant experience. He describes his visual experience of numbers as complex synaesthetic shapes with color, texture and motion. 37 is lumpy like porridge, while 89 reminds him of falling snow. Sequences of digits form visual landscapes in his mind.

A glimpse of our posthuman future.

Richard A. Clarke, Transhumanist

Since he retired in 2003, Clarke has been writing books. After he wrote Against All Enemies, his memoirs, he went into writing futurist thrillers, such as The Scorpion’s Gate (2005) and Breakpoint (2007). In a recent interview on the Diane Rehm Show, Clarke spills the beans, talking about how he thinks humanity will take control over its own evolution, the transhumanist movement, and his fiction. As a security specialist, Clarke is also concerned about large-scale threats to the security of the US, such as cyberattacks.

i wonder when we will see the first policy impact.

Humane Antigrowth

The anonymous parents of a severely disabled girl (she has the mental capacity of a 3-month-old) have revealed that they surgically modified their daughter, giving her hormone treatments and removing some of her internal organs to keep her small and childlike and thus easier to move around and “involve in family activities.”

transhumanism is coming. as expected, the usual ethics bleating.