Re: Aging, cancer, and why radiation might be a good thing

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Apr 14 2001 - 11:10:47 MDT


On Sat, Apr 14, 2001 at 09:39:04AM -0700, John Marlow wrote:
> Yeah but did someone else provide the funding to the Us for these
> particular studies? Seems remotely plausible, assuming b.g. radiation
> used to be higher; could be some sort of evolutionary adaptation.
> sounds all wrong, though.

I seem to recall from a few years ago that animal experiments have
documented this effect; it seems legit.

A simple explanation would be that radiation and other stressors is
especially dangerous to dividing cells; precancer cells are more likely
to be hurt, and hence radiation might provide a very slight advantage
for healthy cells with working DNA repair. Background radiation has
probably little to do with it, since the decrease from natural decay is
on a very slow scale while levels of DNA repair can relatively easily
mutate both up and down, causing fairly quick adaptation.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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