OT Alt.obituaries threatened - Who wants to live forever?

[Matthew Kruk]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2132193/Who-wants-live-forever-Genetic-breakthrough-pave-way-drugs-slow--halt--ageing-process.html

Who wants to live forever? Genetic breakthrough could pave way for drugs that
slow - or halt - the ageing process
First step towards anti-ageing drugs
'Father Time' genes control how we age
Genes affected by factors such as diet
Controlling them could be key to slowing - or halting - ageing process
By Rob Waugh
PUBLISHED: 22:22 GMT, 19 April 2012 | UPDATED: 22:22 GMT, 19 April 2012

A genetic 'switch' that determines how quickly we age has been discovered by
scientists - and the breakthrough could lead to drugs that halt or slow ageing.

Scientists found four 'Father Time' genes that determine how quickly we age -
and which are controlled during our lifetime by factors such as diet.
The ageing genes are switched on or off by environmental and lifestyle factors
such as diet, and may be programmed from an early age.

Knowing how the genes are altered could pave the way to new generations of
anti-ageing drugs, researchers believe.

Scientists already knew that 'epigenetic' changes - chemical alterations to DNA
made by external factors in the environment - are important to ageing.

The new research goes some way towards solving the riddle of how and when these
effects occur.

Dr Jordana Bell, one of the study authors from King's College London, said: 'We
found that epigenetic changes associate with age-related traits that have
previously been used to define biological age.

'We identified many age-related epigenetic changes, but four seemed to impact
the rate of healthy ageing and potential longevity and we can use these findings
as potential markers of ageing.

'These results can help understand the biological mechanisms underlying healthy
ageing and age-related disease, and future work will explore how environmental
effects can affect these epigenetic changes.'

The scientists, whose work is reported in the online journal Public Library of
Science Genetics, first looked for epigenetic changes in the DNA of 172 twins
aged 32 to 80.

Twins are often used in such studies because identical pairs share exactly the
same genes, making it possible to tease apart genetic and environmental effects.

If one identical twin displays very different characteristics from the other it
means the cause cannot be genetic.

Analysing the changes in relation to chronological age, the researchers
identified 490 age-related epigenetic changes.

Matching these to specific age-related traits highlighted four genes displaying
changes linked to cholesterol levels, lung function and maternal lifespan.

Further research showed that many of the epigenetic DNA alterations were also
present in a group of 44 younger twins aged 22 to 61.

This suggests that while many age-related genetic changes caused by
environmental factors occur throughout a person's life, some might be triggered
early on.

Professor Tim Spector, director of the Department of Twin Research at King's
College, said: 'This study is the first glimpse of the potential that large twin
studies have to find the key genes involved in ageing, how they can be modified
by lifestyle and start to develop anti-ageing therapies.

'The future will be very exciting for age research.'

Gene experts at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire,
played a key role in the study.

Sanger scientist Dr Panos Deloukas pointed out that the research was still at an
early stage.

'Our study interrogated only a fraction of sites in the genome (genetic code)
that carry such epigenetic changes; these initial findings support the need for
a more comprehensive scan of epigenetic variation,' he said.

[Tommy Joe]

On Apr 28, 3:29 am, "Matthew Kruk" <nob...@home.com> wrote:



> Who wants to live forever? Genetic breakthrough could pave way for drugs that
> slow - or halt - the ageing process
> First step towards anti-ageing drugs
> 'Father Time' genes control how we age

Death will never die and obits will always be around. It
doesn't matter how long a person lives before they die - it's not much
different than a jail sentence. Really. Let's say that starting
today everyone sentenced to prison must do double the time given by
the judge. As more and more are sent to prison with longer and longer
terms, still there comes a time for release, and the release to entry
ratio will probably not differ much. So even if people start dying at
150 years instead of 80, there's still going to be a bunch of them
dying on the same day - the same congested farewell party - so the
obit writers and readers have nothing to fear. In fact, the eventual
dead - the "future corpses" of our world - on the simple basis of
living longer will also probably get sick more often and make the
whole death-pool scene more interesting (for those who visit this
group for that purpose). So what if people live longer? Eventually
they will die. And when they do, we will be there - the writers, the
readers, the mourners, and the gigglers. Death lives on!

TJ

[R H Draney]

Tommy Joe filted:

>
>So what if people live longer? Eventually
>they will die. And when they do, we will be there - the writers, the
>readers, the mourners, and the gigglers. Death lives on!

If we may assume that there are people now living who will never die, perhaps
the "is Abe Vigoda dead yet?" web page could be replaced with a static one....

Which raises another question in my mind: who exactly is responsible for
updating that page whenever Abe's status *does* change?...r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[Tommy Joe]

On Apr 28, 9:03 pm, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net> wrote:


> If we may assume that there are people now living who will never die, perhaps
> the "is Abe Vigoda dead yet?" web page could be replaced with a static one....
>
> Which raises another question in my mind: who exactly is responsible for
> updating that page whenever Abe's status *does* change?...r

I never heard of that page although I've heard of Abe Vigoda,
who fits into that category of somewhat famous person who could die
tomorrow and not get much press about it. That's what death pools are
for, I guess - to give semi famous people like Vigoda a reason for
staying alive - if not for Vigoda himself, then for those who know his
name.

Imagine everyone knowing from the first day they're able to
assimilate the information that they have a gene that either allows
them to live forever or one that means they're going to die one day
(without predicting the date) - don't you think that would cause
conflict? Let's say half the population have genes that will allow
them to live forever, the other half has genes that reveal they are
normal and will die one day. I think there would be people in the
"gonna die one day" group who would be very jealous and bitter over
those in the "gonna live forever" group. But it could also go the
other way around. As they get older and bored with life, perhaps
there will be some in the gonna live forever group who will begin to
detest those in the gonna die one day group - maybe even to the point
of forming gonna live foever posses that go out and kidnap people from
the gonna die one day group and torture them endlessly as a means of
acting out their frustrations.

Everyone dying at once from a meteor crashing into earth, or a series
of well positioned nuclear bombs, that would be the most equal way for
everyone to die. No finger pointing, just a "we're in this thing
together" attitude all the way up to the end,

TJ