Ageing is a warm gun

The title is my attempt to joke by piggybacking on one of the best song of Beatles “Happiness is a warm gun,” which in turn has used the well known old phrase “Happiness is a warm puppy,” coined in 1960s by Sparky, the author of comic strip Peanuts. The gun is warm because it has just killed somebody. The aging does the same every second, but we still do not quite know what causes it or, better to say, there is no one prevailing view.

Factors that are proposed to influence biological aging are many, but they all fall into two main categories, programmed and damage-related.

The good news is that despite the diverse disagreements, each of the directions of the research has visible indications of a progress and gives us a hope.

Recently, two more approaches have delivered definite practical success.

A group of Brazilian and US researchers showed that steroid danazol can stimulate production of enzyme telomerase, which is naturally found in the human organism and which is the closest of all known substances to a “cellular elixir of youth.”

“One of the processes associated with aging is progressive shortening of telomeres, DNA-protecting structures at the ends of chromosomes, like the plastic tips on shoelaces,” said Rodrigo Calado, one of the researches. “Each time a cell divides, its telomeres get shorter. Eventually, the cell can’t replicate anymore and dies or becomes senescent. However, telomerase can keep the length of telomeres intact, even after cell division.”

The treatment was tested over two years with 27 patients suffering from aplastic anaemia, caused by telomerase gene mutations.

“In a healthy adult, telomere length varies from 7,000 to 9,000 base pairs on average. A normal person’s telomeres lose 50 to 60 base pairs per year, but a patient with telomerase deficiency can lose between 100 and 300 base pairs per year,” Calado said. “In the patients who received danazol, telomere length increased by 386 base pairs on average over two years.”

From the presented numbers, one can say that, technically, those patients became somewhat younger.

Another approach was taken by a startup Ambrosia that is starting clinical trials that will pump into older people the blood from younger donors. It sounds like an ancient myths, doesn’t it? They use not the whole blood though, but only plasma transfusions. The participants don’t have to be sick or elderly to join; all they need is to be 35 and above and have $8,000. The fee based participation and absence of a control group caused some critics to compare it with other alleged wonder cures of the past that had ended without good (and sometimes with bad) results to the clients and with enriching the clinic owners.

Despite that, Inc reports that Peter Thiel, a well-known venture capitalist, is going to give it a try. Well, he is also a Trump supporter. So, we will see.

If these two and other similar approaches do not work, we still can fall back on fighting aging by enhancing human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. The movement is called a transhumanism and it recently acquired a new leader. Zoltan Istvan, an American writer, futurist, philosopher, and transhumanist, is now in a race for the office of U.S. President.

Istvan’s Three Laws of Transhumanism are:

1. A transhumanist must safeguard one’s own existence above all else.

2. A transhumanist must strive to achieve omnipotence as expediently as possible — so long as one’s actions do not conflict with the First Law.

3. A transhumanist must safeguard value in the universe — so long as one’s actions do not conflict with the First and Second Laws.

In the interview of July 26, 2016, Zoltan said that he is “likely to get 5th overall in the US Elections, according to reports and media.”

I am trying to imagine Zoltan becoming American President and using the military budget to finance scientific research for the benefit of humanity. And these are really big money – $596 billion. It is more than the next seven countries combined. Sure, this scenario is not realistic, but I like to think about it.

I admit, I am bias towards technologies, because that is what I know and that how I make my living, but I am not a transuhmanist either, not an orthodox one at least. I have somewhat expressed my beliefs already in the articles “Future is today” and “Einstein, please”. I think that human longevity will be extended through genetic engineering and human body enhancement. But I do not take the extreme position of transhuman rationalization. I hope that we will be able to preserve the realm of spiritual irrational and remain somewhat unpredictable. Because these qualities are at the foundation of our creativity. And without creativity, there is no human.

Two elderly women are in a car. One is driving.
She went through a red light. The friend didn’t say anything.
But then she went through another one. The friend said,
“Do you realize you just went through two red lights?”
“Oh,” she said, “am I driving?”