26 replies to this topic

[manofsan]

Here's an interesting article:

http://www.worldchan...02886.html#more

But this analysis seems to assume some sort of linear increase in lifespans, when the radical life-extension technologies have yet to really make their effects felt. Once these take off, then you'll see a runaway effect, just like with Moore's Law and stuff, imho.

Comments?

[bgwowk]

Moore' Law for medicine??? Not with the FDA and its foreign equivalents.

The bottom line is that the kind of exponential progress seen with information technology is politically impossible in medicine. Why? Because people are not willing to tolerate the medical equivalent of Microsoft Windows, even though that kind of free-wheeling bug-ridden path would leave more people better off sooner.

---BrianW

[Chip]

Yup. "There is no political solution..." from the Police album, Ghost in the Machine.

I think it is possible that expected longevity at some time increases faster than aging. It will require finding some way to preserve and produce the safest and best of science, not necessarily the status quo at the moment. Hmmm, how best to develop sciences?

[bgwowk]

Hmmm, how best to develop sciences?

Turn the FDA into an advisory rather than regulatory agency. Get the government out of the business of managing people's bodies. Let safety and efficacy be decided by a free market and institutions that naturally evolve in free markets (e.g. Underwriters Laboratories for electronic devices). Will it happen in our lifetime? Not a chance.

---BrianW

[manofsan]

Just like under-the-table backalley treatments resorted to by those with AIDS and other fatal diseases before conventional medicine made adequate progress, people afflicted with severe age-related symptoms will also resort to black-market and other illicit methods. If people can get illegal anabolic steroids just to look more muscular, there's even more incentive for people to get stuff that will keep them alive longer. People already order DHEA, IGF1, HGH over internet.

[advancedatheist]

Let safety and efficacy be decided by a free market and institutions that naturally evolve in free markets (e.g. Underwriters Laboratories for electronic devices). 

The same "free market" that gave us toxic food, tobacco products and a completely meretricious media environment (e.g., assigning hundreds of reporters to cover Michael Jackson's trial while trying to shove the Downing Street Memo down the Memory Hole)?

I shudder to think what such an institution will do to "life extension" without some rational democratic oversight.

[bgwowk]

The same "free market" that gave us toxic food, tobacco products and a completely meretricious media environment (e.g., assigning hundreds of reporters to cover Michael Jackson's trial while trying to shove the Downing Street Memo down the Memory Hole)?

All of which I'm free to ignore!

I shudder to think what such an institution will do to "life extension" without some rational democratic oversight.

Like the Bioethics Committee of the democratically elected Bush administration.

---BrianW

[John Schloendorn]

Turn the FDA into an advisory

Such a decision would kill people. Those who are blessed with the gift to be "free to ignore" the temptations that seek to exploit their evolutionary psychology (EP) or similar semi-voluntary dispositions seem to be, most unfortunately, only a small minority. I guess we have laws like the FDA because we want to protect those without this gift from themselves.
What can we do? Deny the less EP-resistant some of their votes, or sacrifice our own health under laws appropriate for them? I'm all for what's actually happening: Let a democratic government together with a free market find the balance somewhere in the middle. If that balance is far off from our desired optimum, then that is just another point that we're a fringe group. No surprises there. This compromise may not be good for us, but it is the only socially responsible way out. (Of course we should play our part in the finding of that compromise and lobby for our part of the scales where we can.)

[Chip]

For love of money, we'll find other scapegoats. Government corrupts? Money doesn't? Hmmm, the seductive power of those tokens, people foam at the mouth in their desire to justify their denial of science with symbols, symbols and more symbols. So easy to spin with all of these entities one can invoke, so easy to be totally in the dark, a member of the dark-side, where reason and understanding are shunned as impractical and only those who can survive unmitigated violence are considered worthy of emulating, a freedom that destroys freedoms.

People suffer from information overload. If there is too much information to find reality then might as well support that which is convenient, to avoid the threats of physical harm, to join in the wasting of our biosphere. Long-time indoctrination by the powers that be, under the guise of religion, politics or philosophy, have many deluded and deluding into joining in the spoils and mayhem of anarchy.

Just speaking as one who is attempting to find a science of sociology, I see that we will need a viable governing system on this planet if we are to survive the information explosion. The evidence is widespread and blatant for those who have not been cajoled into denying their own observations, that our present social experiment is failing in a big way.

Sometimes, one plus one equals two. Put the dots together. We need to look for and find something entirely different and feasible! There is only an uncertain envelope of time for us humans to find viable governance. If we do find it, then we become the singularity and our options may become unlimited. If we don't we risk losing it all with a lot of pain and suffering on the way out.

[bgwowk]

John Schloendorn wrote:

Such a decision (making the FDA advisory rather than regulatory) would kill people.
I'm all for what's actually happening:

You obviously have no concept of how broken the present system is, and how many millions of people it is killing. $500 million to get one new drug approved. Preventing speech about health benefits of nutraceuticals or new uses for old drugs with threats of criminal prosecution. Incestuous relationships between big pharma and the FDA. It's a travesty.

It's all because most people prefer to see 1000 patients die for lack treatment rather than one patient die by choosing a bad treatment, or (horrors!) spend money on something that doesn't work. (Remember the FDA is the final arbiter of drug safety AND efficacy.) There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of examples of how this dynamic is killing people. But perhaps the best and most absurd example is how the FDA outlaws medical devices because they might not be effective on people who are already dead. No lie.

It's easy to say that loosening regulation would kill people. The problem is lack of consideration for the less visible host of people now dying because of regulation.

---BrianW

Post by Steven B. Harris, MD from http://yarchive.net/...mp_banning.html

  Actually, it is the FDA which controls what vaccine companies may
offer physicians, and what they may advertise.  And while physicians
are in theory permitted to use non-FCA-approved treatments, in practice
few physicians dare use any treatment which is both unusual and has any
possible negative consequences. Which means, in practice, anything very
original or new. And a lot of things which aren't new, but aren't used
in the US. Most powerful treatments for bad conditions carry their own
risks, just like surgery for appendicitis. The difference is that
treatments which are common (community standard) or which are
FDA-approved, or both, by their nature protect the doctor from loosing
a civil suit and/or his licence, if the outcome is bad.  Which it is
bound to be for any treatment, eventually, for SOMEBODY.  This is not a
matter of what the medical profession has allowed to be done to it--
we've had no choice in the matter.  It was decided by law, and those
laws are backed up with guns and jails.  The people who made the laws
weren't very smart about unintended consequences, and about what would
happen as a result of the fact that these laws meant that in due time
they no longer would have access to the latest and best medical
technology, sure as the rain falls and the sun rises.

  I've given a good example of this.  There is a thing called the
cardiopump, which is a big suction device with two handles, which
sticks to a patient's chest, and allows you to do CPR in a clever way:
not only do you get a normal downstroke, but now the suction allows you
to move blood on the upstroke as well, as you lift the chest.  And this
does your ventilation for free, too, like the old armlift method.
Instead of blood pressures of 60 or 70 that CPR generates-- pressures
which don't perfuse the brain well after 5 minutes, this thing
generates pretty normal pressures.

  So why don't we have it, while in Canada and Europe they do?  Because
the FDA here made them test it on out-of-hospital arrests, where the
difference it made was lost in the noise of people who'd been in arrest
too long for any technique difference to matter.  So it failed the
trial and the company went broke.  It has worked fine in French trials,
and I suspect will be standard of care all over the world, eventually.
Except for here in the US.  If you want to import one of these giant
toilet plungers for resuscitation use on a clinically dead person in
the US, the FDA will stop your shipment at the border.  This is to
protect dead people from wasting their money, or from having any
dangerous medical treatments used on them.  Good idea.

  This sort of problem is one of the failures of democratic decision
making, when it comes to science and medicine.  People don't want what
they've never seen.  Also, treatments that people want for only a very
short time, if at all, get lost in the wash. This is the Arkansas
Traveler problem: you can't fix the cabin leak when it's raining, and
when it's not raining, the cabin doesn't leak so what's the point?
When it comes to things like resuscitation, it's hard to see the need
coming. Resuscitation is a like a firearm: one rarely needs a weapon,
but during the few times in one's life when one does want it, one wants
it rather badly. And wants it NOW.

  People in sudden cardiac arrest have about 5-10 minutes during which
they need resuscitation devices and drugs rather badly.  During this
time they and their loved-ones aren't going to close down the Golden
Gate bridge because society isn't funding the medical research
necessary to save their lives, and the FDA isn't moving fast enough to
suit them. That kind of political pressure is left for a bunch of
unmarried men with a lot of disposable income, who are reasonably
healthy now, but doomed, for some reason, in a few years. Or in a
decade. This gives them time to write a lot of plays and get a lot of
movie stars involved.  By contrast, the families of people who need the
toilet plunger have about 5 minutes to call Liz Taylor and get her to
lobby for them.  And damn, it just doesn't happen.

[Chip]

http://www.newstarget.com/007608.html
http://www.karlloren...surance/p45.htm
http://www.doctorndt...result.asp?id=1
http://healthfully.o...alcrap/id7.html
http://www.oralchela...oottah/aids.htm
http://www.worldnews...ealth_index.htm

Just a cursory search under "medical corruption" brought up the above. I wont try to force any kind of weird hypothesis on the reader here with volumes of cut and pasted uncited speculation. I like science. I think it attempts to inform and learn rather than force an extreme opinion.

Doctors and corporations are corrupt. Journals are corrupt. Television and ad campaigns are corrupt. Does not sound like too much regulation is the problem. Of course so-called government agencies are not free of corruption. Blaming one while exonerating the others is not intelligent. It will give you no working strategy. Look to find something else that is a common base false assumption that they all adhere to and there you will find the keys to unlock the doors on the focusing of humanity on science that matters.

Common television is owned by huge industrial-military concerns. Their main understanding is that making money off of weapons and war is acceptable, making money by taking advantage of others. That is why the drug companies and doctor lobby organizations advertise there. Being a doctor is a thin line. You are either in it to help people or to make money. Tell me, can you consider the idea that money doesn't work? Money gives power to those who are most ruthless, who buy information to both negate and obfuscate solutions to common problems, who buy propaganda. Immersed in it as deep as some though, it is only reasonable to see one cherry pick the evidence to deify opportunism.

[manofsan]

I would again use anabolic steroids or even experimental AIDS treatments as an example. When legally approved substances were not meeting the demand, desperate people resorted to their own illicit treatments. Obviously suffering and death occurred as a result, but nevertheless people kept doing it anyway. The same thing will happen with life-extension treatments -- it won't be pretty, but that won't stop it from happening.

[bgwowk]

If the secret to immortality were to be found in some common natural substance, then it would happen the way manofsan says. But that's not going to be the case. Conquering aging will take very advanced tools. You need R&D with the intensity and freedom of the electronics and software industry to treat this problem quickly at fundamental levels. That's not going to happen with the type of regulation that currently exists. Heck, the FDA doesn't even recognize aging as a treatable pathology! How many years is that going to take to change? As many years as it took the government to stop threatening jail for selling aspirin and folate to prevent heart disease, and actually start recommending those agents for that purpose?

I confidently predict that nearly everyone reading this message right now will meet their demise before the end of this century, myself certainly included.

---BrianW

P.S. By the way, Chip, if unregulated business is so corrupt and ostensibly ineffectual, just why are we typing these messages on PC's that are twice as fast for half the price year after year after year.....

[John Schloendorn]

Brian, I completely agree with your assessment that

most people prefer to see 1000 patients die for lack treatment rather than one patient die by choosing a bad treatment

It's just that we can't simply abolish democracy in order to change that (neither morally, nor practically). For now, rather than to reassure each other in our futile complaints, we should appreciate the strategic situation out there and steer the optimal course. We're both quite close to doing that (you more than I am) and that's good.

[bgwowk]

I agree completely, John. I'm simply trying to convince voters to vote for something different. If not a fundamental restructuring of pharmaceutical regulation, there should at least be more common sense reforms to prevent the most egregious misregulation. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 was a small step in the right direction, even though the FDA had to be dragged through the courts for almost ten years to finally comply with it.

I re-assert that there will never be a Moore's Law for life extension therapy. We will see amazing breakthroughs in basic science in coming decades. But most of us are nevertheless destined to end up in a doctor's office with an aging-related pathology and be told that there is little that can be done about it. The politics we've discussed will ensure a big lag betwen basic science and clinical medicine for the foreseeable future.

But even as we are dying, we will go home to the most incredible mind-blowing virtual reality-immersive computer games.

---BrianW

[Chip]

"That's not going to happen with the type of regulation that currently exists."

Agreed, but that does not mean doing away with regulation altogether.

Irony analogy time: Okay, cells, you are on your own. Osmotic pressure, trace elements, proteins, vitamins, drugs, enzymes, hormones and exercise to keep ya all in tune are no longer to be tolerated. Ah, I'm throwing my lot in with the cancer cells. They don't need no stinkin' regulations. They are the supreme life, freely competing with no regulation. We all have to die some day anyways so, let the cancer reign, free competition, free murder, free slavery. Ah, the body politic should take heed of the superlative cancer cell.

"By the way, Chip, if unregulated business is so corrupt and ostensibly ineffectual, just why are we typing these messages on PC's that are twice as fast for half the price year after year after year....."

Are you suggesting that I am suggesting that only business is corrupt and totally? I am disgusted at this straw-man allusion. Still part of that is a good question, just why am I typing these messages to some one who appears to be dogmatic to the bizarre absurd extreme?

[John Schloendorn]

there will never be a Moore's Law for life extension therapy... But most of us are nevertheless destined to end up in a doctor's office with an aging-related pathology and be told that there is little that can be done about it

This cannot be emphasized often enough to young ImmInst members. In pop science mags, biotech inventions sound so quick and easy, while the immense time and effort of making such things happen becomes apparent only as you get more involved. We have to be extremely hard-working, clever and lucky (sorted by importance ) if we want to survive this personally, and even then I'm not sure.

[bgwowk]

Chip wrote:

Agreed, but that does not mean doing away with regulation altogether.

I thought it was clear from my context that I was talking about legal regulation (regulation based on threats of jail). Mercifully, most personal choices are not regulated in this manner. The absence of government regulation doesn't mean the absence of regulation in a generic sense.

Consider computers again. These are devices that put enough energy into a small enough space to easily start fires and burn houses down with abandon were it not for order and standards in the industry. Yet how are such standards enforced without government? In part, by an organization called Underwriters Laboratories (UL) funded by insurance companies to reduce claims caused by faulty consumer electronics devices. Also in part because of free and open communications between manufacturers, consumers, and even hobbyists such as "overclockers" who push their PC's processing speed past manufactorers recommended limits with exotic home-built cooling systems (the IT analog of life extensionists who consume lots of supplements and drugs).

My point, Chip, is that there is no reason health care could not operate more like the electronics industry, and with rates of progress more like the electronics industry. Regulation (in the general sense of feedback and control mechanisms) doesn't only exist by virtue of threats of jail. If the FDA became more advisory than regulatory, safety would be similar to what exists now because most insurers and physicians would still only deal with FDA-approved drugs for liability reasons. But the cutting edge of new therapies would be free to advance faster, and drag the whole of medicine more quickly along with it.

Forget libertarianism. Even pragmatists should be able to see that the present system is a farce from the standpoint of achieving "escape velocity" and saving the most lives. The present system is setup to cover behinds, not save lives.

---BrianW

P.S. Here's an even better analogy: Just imagine how much safer the Internet would become if the FDA stepped in to regulate safety and efficacy of anti-virus software! [lol] [lol] [lol] [lol]

[jaydfox]

P.S. Here's an even better analogy: Just imagine how much safer the Internet would become if the FDA stepped in to regulate safety and efficacy of anti-virus software!

Oh, that's evil. I shudder just contemplating such a world. [pirate]

[Mark Hamalainen]

The same "free market" that gave us toxic food, tobacco products and a completely meretricious media environment (e.g., assigning hundreds of reporters to cover Michael Jackson's trial while trying to shove the Downing Street Memo down the Memory Hole)?

Free market? where??? Shit I must have blinked....

Still part of that is a good question, just why am I typing these messages to some one who appears to be dogmatic to the bizarre absurd extreme?

Who's being "bizarre absurd extreme" here? [tung]

Regulators such as the FDA are far more corruptable than any corporation. A corporation on a free, unregulated, market has little potential for corrpution even if it desires it. Try to name a sustainable instance of corporate corruption that has not been facilitated by a corrupt state.

[Chip]

Yes, Brian. I agree generally. If regulation were more a part of the process rather than attempted to be legislated in a top down manner it has and could offer more success.

Yes again, Brian, forget Liberterianism.

"Try to name a sustainable instance of corporate corruption that has not been facilitated by a corrupt state. "

Right osiris. Appears they go hand in hand. Still, I don't see exonerating one sector in preference to blaming or exonerating another as offering any solution.

When information is developed for private profit, the commons suffers. This is a great taboo for some, though. Money is sacrosanct, can't be considered as inherently dysfunctional by many. When entertainment and/or news is broadcast with the bottom line being monetary profit, then it is highly likely that anything that challenges the functionality of using script as a measure of wealth or success will not be reported or, worse, is denied and spun to avoid any questioning of such a profit motive.

I believe we can see information developed with magnitudes greater success to increase expected longevity if we learn to measure success as improvement of human conditions rather than the amount of tokens one can amass. To not question the status quo is to hold onto the extreme, the bizarre, the absurd despite the evidence. Hmmm, yes, epistemological relativism appears to be facilitated by giving power to people with business degrees rather than concern for human welfare. I see it in my employer. He is filthy rich. Has no compulsion or desire to learn anything about science. He accepts creationism, denounces anything that challenges the idea that current US administration is corrupt. Power without responsibility is facilitated, endorsed, fostered by our current anarchy. One way or another, sooner or later, this will change.

[arrogantatheist]

The FDA should be an advisory body, and people fearful for their life could only use approved fda treatments if they wanted.

[arrogantatheist]

But the cutting edge of new therapies would be free to advance faster, and drag the whole of medicine more quickly along with it.

Totally agree.. for the liability I think any adult should be able to order any perscription drug they want. Doctors would turn into advisors, that most people would follow. But hte 'overclockers' could go it alone if they so chose. That is liberty.

Also patients should be able to sign away their right to hold the doctor liable. So the doctor could give their true opinion on things, without fear of litigation.

[Mind]

I am in agreement with Brian and arrogantatheist on this one. Most of what the FDA does slows progress down. Like most government agencies it is slow, dumb, and ineffective. I would prefer more private testing laboratories. At least in addition to the FDA, but more as an alternative.

[Chip]

Actually, at the moment, I believe the bulk of the testing is done by private laboratories that are owned and operated by the corporations that seek to market their own drugs.

I went for a drive yesterday into California's Central valley, in an area where there is perhaps the highest concentration of feedlots. Today, I went for a walk in a neighborhood of fairly well to do people in Saratoga, California. I see and saw waste and more waste involved with virtually every human activity, inefficient option wasting squandering of resources.

In another thread on this forum I find LifeMirage suggesting a doctor has lied and somebody else coming back and saying they've only met two trustworthy doctors in their lifetime. A major cause of death in the US is misprescription.

If you want to avoid looking at what you can see with your own senses, that corruption and missapplication of energy and information is happening in a grand way by many in every field of human endeavor, then you will see no way for life enhancing technologies to supplant death dealing as the main funded research in this world. If you can peruse the data you can see that big business owns the government, is what we have been only duped into calling government. Huge far-reaching secretive financial manipulation conspiracies by all sorts of malicious scoundrels of little perspective is our government. The media that people depend on in a large way is propaganda virtually 24/7. Television and radio is virtually owned by the concerns who would own you. Money for some at the sake of others is the game being played. It is inherently beguiling. As a social experiment becomes ever more incapable of handling the information explosion, the criminally insane become the deciders of mass fate. These things self-destruct and other social experiments are launched.

I say life enhancement technology can be made to develop faster and with greater and quicker widespread availability if we can figure out how to get real. There is a competition. You can call it life against death, syntropy verses entropy. What ever, we have a common enemy. I suspect humanity will learn how to embrace freeing competition against that foe. What is called free competition by many today is not free but waylaid by circumstance, it allows and fosters reward for unfairly controlling and manipulating markets, people, and our commonly shared biosphere. Might sound spacey but really now, the boundaries that describe our biosphere, its ramifications and pertinence to our longevity, our life, are far more real and important than any nation or corporation.

Terminology is often key. How about those words "regulation" and "government?" I think they may be inversely related. As one goes up, the other goes down. Too much government doesn't work. Too much regulation doesn't work. If you minimize goverment you get lots of regulation, laws passed that pretend to be government that are actually regulating the public for the good of a select few corporations. That is what we have today. If we had real government I think it would be very informative and distributive and I think we can see the potential for the internet to serve as the backbone for such. It would suggest and foster and increase the intelligence of working relationships and people. More understanding means less need for regulation. In fact, an observable trait of a working government might be least regulation which might mean bottom-up decision processes that are continually reasessed and that information made available to the individual on a continual and changing basis. Inductive peer power could grow fast. Peer pressure then becomes more important than regulation. Peers are those of your own status. It is there that forceful decisions, strong dominating the weak, are less the deciding factor for policy decisions. If there is intelligence it is found through peer to peer relationships.

There must be a balance if life is not just a flash in the pan. Appears impossible to have no regulations. With no regulations, we will quickly destroy ourselves. We're not playing a game with no rules. We see science. There are laws we best respect.

I think the FDA is a tree in an imaginary forest. I suggest we look closely at our forest before we start hanging our hopes on the branches of a supposed tree or cutting it down. It might not even be a real tree. Attack the symbols. Na. Develop a working social linguistics.

[Chip]

ABC Executives Pull Interviews with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On Senator Frist, Drug Company Connections and Mercury in Vaccines.

Wow. Here's the article by RFK Jr. that led to the interviews: http://www.salon.com...osal/index.html You might have to watch a short ad to get it.

They work together to screw us and our families, many government agencies, national and UN, and the corporations and the media. Placing the blame on one governmental agency does not address the problem.

[JonesGuy]

But most of us are nevertheless destined to end up in a doctor's office with an aging-related pathology and be told that there is little that can be done about it. 

However, I believe that almost all of us are working (and hoping) that this is not true for each of us personally. I'm expecting (and contributing) that my aging will proceed at a rate slower than cures for my ailments.