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Mathematically impossible to cure aging, say scientists

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#1 bosharpe

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Posted 31 October 2017 - 12:28 AM


https://phys.org/new...scientists.html

 

What do you guys think? :)


Edited by bosharpe, 31 October 2017 - 12:29 AM.

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#2 ceridwen

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Posted 31 October 2017 - 01:03 AM

Please let them be wrong!
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#3 RWhigham

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Posted 31 October 2017 - 01:38 AM

Re: https://phys.org/new...scientists.html

 

The existence of non-aging creatures (such as lobsters) disproves the conclusion. Reason discusses this paper here link


Edited by RWhigham, 31 October 2017 - 01:44 AM.

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#4 Nate-2004

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Posted 31 October 2017 - 05:01 PM

1. Math =/= biology.

2. They don't appear to even have an inkling of the most basic, modern understanding about the mechanisms of aging.

3. They presuppose that the only means of stopping aging is through reproduction and selection. Nonsensical. This is their starting premise.

4. They're oblivious and did very little research on aging. Like, all they had to do was google it or read De Gray's book.


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#5 Mind

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Posted 31 October 2017 - 06:31 PM

I would like to read the full paper when I have time, before commenting, however, based upon what was explained in popular media reports, these "professors" have no clue what they are talking about.

 

Props to bosharpe for starting this discussion!


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#6 albedo

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Posted 06 November 2017 - 06:20 PM

The paper is worth a reply by the savvy people really studying aging.

 

My gut feeling is about a possible strong dependence on the initial definitions and premises, you change them and you might chance the conclusion. How robust is the conclusion to changes in the initial definitions and premises? In any case the history of science and engineering is full of examples of impossibility turned upside down by engineering: you recollect the case of sustained human flight declared "impossible" by many even the most eminent scientists of the time such as Lord Kelvin ?

 

And then you have the case of the diversity of species vs aging, hydra etc ....

 

Attached File  Nature aging.PNG   530.21KB   0 downloads

http://uk.businessin...016-4?r=US&IR=T

Jones OR, Scheuerlein A, Salguero-gómez R, et al. Diversity of ageing across the tree of life. Nature. 2014;505(7482):169-73.

 

I would like to rephrase Ceridwen's post as "Please let SENS be right" :)


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#7 YOLF

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Posted 06 November 2017 - 08:37 PM

I would say that achieving immortality with reproduction is in fact improbable to the extent that it's probably ok to call it impossible, that part makes sense. The lobster has probably been ageless for millions of years already where we probably haven't been since being unicellular. Our evolutionary pressures just don't align with the need. However, we have gene therapy now, so our evolution is ultimately in our own hands. We just have to make it happen, and we're very much capable of buying ourselves alot of time with everything (including genetic data) that's available. 



#8 YOLF

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Posted 06 November 2017 - 08:39 PM

More importantly, why are they publishing such a study? What purpose does it serve to say something is impossible? This isn't backwards time travel we're talking about.



#9 Ovidus

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Posted 06 November 2017 - 10:58 PM

from the link:
""As you age, most of your cells are ratcheting down and losing function, and they stop growing, as well," said Nelson, lead author of the study. "But some of your cells are growing like crazy. What we show is that this forms a double bind - a catch-22. If you get rid of those poorly functioning, sluggish cells, then that allows cancer cells to proliferate, and if you get rid of, or slow down, those cancer cells, then that allows sluggish cells to accumulate. "

 

I believe they are trying to say that an evolutionary model that minimizes the accumulation of senescent cells results in spike in cancer rates. ------> please let me know if I am interpreting this correctly.

 

Now, does the above -assuming for a moment that this is an accurate conclusion by the authors of the study- also mean that the interventions we are discussing here, which are aimed at removing senescent cell populations, will increase the risk of cancer?


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#10 nickthird

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Posted 07 November 2017 - 12:09 AM

What a poor title for this article "It's mathematically impossible...", some people hear this and that's it but the math is not evidence, the question is what assumptions did you make while doing the math...

 

First of all what they are talking about is natural creatures, not creatures that have nanobots managing their cells.

 

"

People have looked at why aging happens, from the perspective of 'why hasn't natural selection stopped aging yet?' That's the question they ask, and implicitly in that is the idea that such a thing as non-aging is possible, so why haven't we evolved it?

"

What a dumb argument. You can say the same thing for bigger brains. Whenever humans have had more resources they could have developed bigger brains or more people (it actually takes more energy to make two people than one with a doubled brain size). But there is a reason for this. Having diversity is worth more. Similarly, aging have have had / has its benefits for society -- not the individual. It could very well be beneficial to limit the lifespan of people, so that no single person will hoard all the women and wealth etc. When people die it allows for resources to be reused to select for more fit people to replace the dead. If nobody dies, evolution may halt because there would not be resources for new babies.

 

This is actually one of the two main mistakes in the paper (I just skimmed over it). They assumed that organisms are selected for their lifespan which they are probably not. The second mistake was that they did not include cancer fighting cells in the mathematical model at all. The model is just a competition between functional cells, senescent cells, and cancerous cells where the organism is selected for longest lifespan.

 


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#11 RWhigham

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Posted 10 November 2017 - 02:34 AM

Josh Mitteldorf discusses the paper here

"Mathematical models of aging are my specialty, but I’m not foolish enough to believe in the models.  I’m skilled and experienced at modeling so that I can adjust the assumptions to make a model do anything I want it to do.  I’ve seen time and again how tiny parameter changes can lead to opposite conclusions."


Edited by RWhigham, 10 November 2017 - 02:36 AM.

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#12 albedo

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Posted 10 November 2017 - 09:39 AM

Josh Mitteldorf discusses the paper here

"Mathematical models of aging are my specialty, but I’m not foolish enough to believe in the models.  I’m skilled and experienced at modeling so that I can adjust the assumptions to make a model do anything I want it to do.  I’ve seen time and again how tiny parameter changes can lead to opposite conclusions."

 

Thank you for sharing Josh Mitteldorf's post! I loved it and in line with gut feelings about the paper I expressed in my post. He is authoritative in aging research and I hope his and others comments I called "savvy" will flow into a published rebuttal of the paper and media pick up. However, for the latter I am even less sure than for the former: bad news sell better that good news and how comforting is to say: "why bothering with aging? it is a mathematics certitude!"



#13 caliban

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Posted 10 November 2017 - 03:11 PM

the article 

 

 

Attached File  PNAS-2017-Nelson-1618854114.pdf   743.76KB   7 downloads

 

distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).

 

 

 

 



#14 Rocket

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Posted 10 November 2017 - 03:36 PM

To play devils advocate, everything living experiences aging. Even the lobster that someone above brought up as an example of a non-aging lifeform. The lobster ages. It is born, grows to adulthood, ages and dies. Lobsters apparently don't too much in terms of frailty like humans, cats, and dogs do. But they do age and die. It's impossible for humans to ever live forever in any meaningful way. For one thing, what happens when you run out memory storage capacity in the brain? Then what..??

 

Immortality as a human being is not possible. Sure we'll eventually come up with remedies to address the dysfunction of various tissues that occurs with aging and we'll probably live to 200 or 300 years, but immortality, never. Life as a human as it currently is, is far too short. Youth is wasted on the naïve and the ignorant. The body falls to pieces long before the mind and the spirit and that just sucks.


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#15 albedo

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Posted 10 November 2017 - 05:45 PM

While agreeing with Rocket I very much dislike mixing fighting aging, which is mainly a scientific and medical topic with the discussion, mostly philosophical in nature, of immortality. It can potentially be damaging to the cause and to me too journalistic. Terms such as "amortality", "ageless" etc .. have been also proposed.



#16 Darryl

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Posted 11 November 2017 - 05:26 PM

Lots of misleading in this in this thread, starting with the title. The paper essentially establishes that thanks to intercellular competition, mechanisms preventing age-related decay are in constant competition with mechanisms preventing cancer, and hence effectively immortal multicellular creatures will never evolve. It basically offers a mathematical proof behind Judith Campesi's insight from ~15 years ago that cellular senescence evolved as a cancer prevention mechanism.

 

None of this suggests that anti-aging therapies can't be successful. Only that immortal multicellular creatures can't evolve. Those that appear to have negligible senescence don't have zero senescence.


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#17 albedo

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Posted 12 November 2017 - 02:05 PM

Lots of misleading in this in this thread, starting with the title. The paper essentially establishes that thanks to intercellular competition, mechanisms preventing age-related decay are in constant competition with mechanisms preventing cancer, and hence effectively immortal multicellular creatures will never evolve. It basically offers a mathematical proof behind Judith Campesi's insight from ~15 years ago that cellular senescence evolved as a cancer prevention mechanism.

 

None of this suggests that anti-aging therapies can't be successful. Only that immortal multicellular creatures can't evolve. Those that appear to have negligible senescence don't have zero senescence.

 

Absolutely and thank you to bring here some clarification in this thread. To defend the OP's title unfortunately this is how some bad journalism conveys the paper and impact on people perception can be very damaging!

 

I do not want to deviate from the subject but regarding Judith Campisi's insight you rightly point out there is also some genetic, and balancing, pleiotropic effect mediated by inflammation, e.g. see:

 

"...The senescence response is widely recognized as a potent tumor suppressive mechanism. However, recent evidence strengthens the idea that it also drives both degenerative and hyper-plastic pathologies, most likely by promoting chronic inflammation. Thus, the senescence response may be the result of antagonistically pleiotropic gene action..."

 

Campisi J. Aging, cellular senescence, and cancer. Annu Rev Physiol. 2013;75:685-705.

https://www.ncbi.nlm...les/PMC4166529/
 


Edited by albedo, 12 November 2017 - 02:06 PM.


#18 Never_Ending

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Posted 21 November 2017 - 10:28 PM

The original article does not prove anything new nor anything profound.

 

A possible reason for the way it was titled, is that the study initially showed some trend in cellular function and competition between cells. Then for the purpose of catching people's attention, they make it sound like a disproof of ways to stop aging and also force on the term mathematics (as if scientists don't use that level of math on a frequent basis, usually without mentioning).

 

 



#19 albedo

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Posted 29 December 2017 - 03:28 PM

As I mentioned, I liked the rebuttal by Josh Mitteldorf in his blog, in particular the "time" part:

 

"...The bottom line is that Masel and Nelson demonstrate a process that theoretically must kill us in the end, but their proof is silent about how long “in the end” might be, and they offer no evidence that the process they describe has to do with aging as humans (or other animals or plants) experience it.  Whatever “in the end” might mean, it must certainly be longer than 80,000 years, because that is the age of the Pando Grove which, last time I checked, qualifies as a multicelled life form...."

 

However, and I also mentioned this, I look forward to a published rebuttal. Assuming the math is right, the paper clearly mentions the 3 crucial exposed assumptions on which all the argument is built upon:

  • somatic degradation is nonzero
  • independence of multicellular vitality from developmental programming
  • negative covariance between vigor and cooperation

The authors indicate that their conclusion can be re-examined by criticizing these assumptions and I think this is what should be done by people seriously studying aging. They notably also refer to the fundamental work of Vaupel & Baudisch on "negative senescence" which Josh Mitteldorf quotes in his blog:

 

"...The apparent conflict between our model, which concludes that aging is an inescapable feature of multicellularity, and those that suggest that aging can be avoided (e.g., refs. 45, 46) can be resolved by examining three critical assumptions used in our model: a tendency toward degradation of cellular traits, independence of multicellular vitality from developmental programming, and lack of positive covariance between degradation events affecting cellular cooperation and those affecting vigor..."

 

This would be a direction to work scientifically but my gut feeling is it might take long as, what I think Aubrey de Grey calls the "aging-trance", might not offer much incentive for a sound critic and the result is so comfortable for some to make peace with aging! The issue is not only scientific but vital for humanitarian reasons as such a "proof" might only delay funding the serious anti-aging research.


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#20 albedo

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Posted 10 January 2018 - 03:52 PM

...
  • somatic degradation is nonzero
  • independence of multicellular vitality from developmental programming
  • negative covariance between vigor and cooperation
...

Continuing reading on this paper, in particular on Josh Mitteldorf's blog, I just came to wonder if the authors are somehow assuming what they are supposed to “prove”? They assume that somatic degradation is non zero and then they prove that somatic degradation is non zero? I must have it wrong as it looks too simple and I must have it wrong when making somatic degradation equivalent to multicellular aging....any clue?

 

 


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#21 albedo

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Posted 11 February 2018 - 06:02 AM

There is a published rebuttal by Josh Mitteldorf and Greg Fahy in PNAS here.



#22 Daniel Cooper

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Posted 22 February 2018 - 08:27 PM

Information theory says that if I have enough coding redundancy and error detection in some environment with a given probability of error I can copy and re-transmit something longer than the current age of the universe.  That's not the same thing as saying that it can be done infinitely, but I think it's close enough for most of us.

 

 

 



#23 albedo

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Posted 10 March 2018 - 05:38 PM

There is a published rebuttal by Josh Mitteldorf and Greg Fahy in PNAS here.

 

And the rebuttal to the rebuttal: http://www.pnas.org/content/115/4/E559
 



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#24 sensei

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Posted 20 August 2018 - 04:02 AM

It's impossible for humans to ever live forever in any meaningful way.

 
Unproven assertion:

Meaningful is undefined -- or defined 7+ Billion ways
 

For one thing, what happens when you run out memory storage capacity in the brain? Then what..??


What is the capacity of memory storage?

We barely remember much of 50 years ago, yet we are perfectly functional. The Brain automatically retains the MOST IMPORTANT MEMORIES as needed.

Why would not remembering things from 100 or 1000 years ago MATTER? -- this is a personal and societal issue.

 
 

 
Immortality as a human being is not possible. Sure we'll eventually come up with remedies to address the dysfunction of various tissues that occurs with aging and we'll probably live to 200 or 300 years, but immortality, never.
Life as a human as it currently is, is far too short. Youth is wasted on the naïve and the ignorant. The body falls to pieces long before the mind and the spirit and that just sucks.


Again -- unproven assertion. Transcription errors and inefficient waste management are the basic causes of "aging".

Henrietta Lacks Immortal Cells have proven that human cells can live indefinitely -- and can be mighty hard to kill, the issue is one of managing the madness of the immortality.
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