From: Samael (Samael@dial.pipex.com)
Date: Wed Dec 09 1998 - 08:50:21 MST
-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: 09 December 1998 15:40
Subject: Re: Life expectancy increasing rapidly
>"Samael" <Samael@dial.pipex.com> writes:
>
>> I think that most current medical technologies are merely increasing our
>> lifespansd towards our natural limits. I look forward to the future
>> treatment that increases those limits dramatically (or removes them
>> entirely).
>
>Yes, this is true. The maximum lifespan (around 110-120 years) seems
>to have been unchanged so far. That is why I'm so interested in recent
>advances in tweaking drosophilia and C. elegans genes to increase the
>lifespan, not to mention the further discoveries about how telomerase
>is regulated. These results seem to have real potential for increasing
>the maximum lifespan.
Yup. This weeks New Scientist had a special on C. elegans and the mapping
of its genome (nearly finished). Seems there's a couple of genes which
double its life span, with no particular indicator as to how they do it.
Hopefully they'll turn up something interesting for us.
Oh, and I suspect that the 'maximum lifespan' for people is actually
variable between 70 and 120, most settling around the 90 mark. People seem
to just fall apart at around that age, with general detirioratin rather than
specific parts wearing out. This is what is so hard to fix. Hopefully
they'll take less than 60 years to fix that one. (I'm 26 by the way).
Samael
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