Is Aging a Disease?
slate.com
slate.com
Please don't underestimate the effect of this achievement.
Aging is an ongoing system maintenance issue. He indicated that he prefers to simply call it a "health problem".
From the article: "Maybe the ancients weren’t wrong, and aging can be not only delayed but cured like a disease"
It seems that's exactly the mindset ADG was distancing himself from.
That's absolutely not what a disease is. Off the top of my head, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, Guillain-Barré, are some diseases that one gets, which only progressively worsens over time. A significant portion of diseases are never "gone".
On the long term as we get a better understanding of aging, it can be reclassified as a disease with a cure to be found, but right now it's a bit too early for that.
It doesn’t matter what we call it, we’re all too noob at programming biology to fix it (or know it’s not fixable e.g. halting problem), the healthcare industry is bottlenecked by expensive regulations, bureaucracy, and status documents, we’re too scared or dense to run the experiments, and even if we knew how to fix aging, we don’t have the infrastructure to deliver these fixes affordably at scale
100% incidence doesn’t make problems disappear
After that for the following 500 years, humans should get out there.
If you thought about it for two seconds, you’d realize once the cats out of the bag, everyone will eventually have it.
Meaning that almost immortal general population would be doom long term and thus has to be managed. Either by bans, which might be circumvented in more favorable jurisdictions (ie orbits or moon), or by setting the price too high.
You would think management via price is impossible? Look how one of the first gene therapy single-pill 'cure' for spinal muscular atrophy Zolgensma is priced - 2 mil USD. Small cute kids are dying in pretty horrible ways because of this price all over the world.
When saving babies lives is (also) about money, why aging wouldn't be?
No, they are dying because other companies have not found ways yet to duplicate that. In the end, it's all just information - recipes if you will. Nothing magic. When most drugs just become gene therapy, I'd suspect it will be a matter of days until they are copied and released for all - like movies high quality rips.
Only one thing is needed: a marketplace, so companies can compete on price for the customers who leave feedback to select the best providers.
This won't happen here, because of the FDA, regulations etc. But I don't see why a country with more appetite for risk (and thus money) will not become a hub for medical tourism, 1 flight away, with drugs and treatments cheap thanks to competition, and readily available thanks to the lack of regulations.
at the risk of seeming like the devil's advocate, i'd like to point out that the freedom to kill yourself is fairly rare, and still being fought for.
There might be an intersection in our future history where aging is no longer a problem, but the freedom to commit suicide is still being discussed.
At that point those folks you mention may have had a point.
It takes a few leaps, but I can imagine it.
> the freedom to commit suicide is still being discussed.
I think you mean "assisted suicide" or "assisted dying".
People are free to commit suicide whenever they want. I wish they weren't...I'd (selfishly) like to have a couple friends back.
I'm sorry about your friends.
People take risks right now because "they have nothing to lose" - they're going to die anyways. Once that stops being the case the amount of risk taking would go down.
Looking at history, though, it seems like most (all?) significant social progress comes about because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new.
We live in a world that isnt controlled by feudal powers owning a good portion of the population not because of wars, but because younger and less invested people forced those conflicts. The results of those conflicts are accepted because the people for whom the old way was normal die off. The new generations are able to make their own mistakes, get invested in the nest normal, and be replaced in turn.
Now I fear we will make anti-agathics before we develop a means to actually change without people dying.
I still hope. Someday we might live with death as a choice AND without oppression. Pretty sure I wont be around for it.
This is just wrong. My 80-year-old mother is far more progressive politically than many 20-35 year old men in this country. Remember the heavily armed Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville protesting the removal of Civil War statues? Those weren't elderly people.
Is that a "symptom" of the "disease" of aging though?
Today's model of society isn't adapted for this. Postponing the effects of aging but maintaining the same lifespan within reason is one thing, greatly extending the lifespan* is quite another and we're definitely not ready for this one more than we're ready to become 4m tall from one generation to the next.
*with the multitude of options - the young and old phases are proportional to today's but longer, the young phase is just as long as today and you get to "enjoy" a longer old phase, or the opposite.
Wealth doesn't keep people in power; only power does. And power extends from the barrel of a gun. The only reason people with money stay in power is because there's a bunch of people who want to keep him there, and the populace under them either accept this, or aren't willing to take whatever risks are necessary to change this. History is full of revolutions where some ruler with lots of connections and wealth was deposed, violently if necessary. Just look at what happened to rich people during the French Revolution.
Is that the kind of gun you buy?
Saying power gives you power is a circular argument. Wealth is like a wildcard, it can be turned into anything. And it's greatly amplified by experience as a guide to turning it into power, and allies by your side.
With wealth you buy the tools needed to stay in power: guns, lobbying, policy making, political campaigning, influencing public opinion or education, etc. No wealth and allies, no tools. Look at corporations making the game without firing one shot.
The entirety of human history showed that wealth has always been able to buy power better than anything else. And a few examples of rebellions or revolutions where people successfully overthrew the rich just show poor management on the side of the rich. Plenty more have died with guns in hand. Guns given to them by someone wealthy.
Later edit: I have edited the comment a bit for clarity, I noticed the reply later.
Wealth only buys you power if people are willing to accept your money, and are also refraining from simply using force to take your money from you.
>Look at corporations making the game without firing one gun.
That's because they have an entire government, with guns, enforcing the rules of the game they're playing. If the government suddenly decides to confiscate all their wealth, there's absolutely nothing they can do about it. This has happened multiple times in history (such as the Cuban Revolution).
>And a few examples of rebellions or revolutions where people have overthrown the rich just show poor management on the side of the rich.
No, it shows that at some point, having money doesn't overrule people willing to use violence against you. Most of the time, this is avoided because people tend to prefer to avoid violence, and because there's enough people willing to defend the status quo (where that money is valued), but sometimes that breaks down, and then no amount of money will save you.
It's very simple: a handful of wealthy people can never be a match for an army of people with guns. The only reason wealthy people have any kind of power is because there's an army behind them backing their claim to power.
So the guns are just a tool after all. The army isn't leading the rich because it's the rich who built the army. It's the rich who create the wealth and the guns.
> It's very simple: a handful of wealthy people can never be a match for an army of people with guns
It's simplistic. The only example you came up with just showed an error in judgement on the part of the rich due to lack of experience (some things were unfathomable for them), not a failure of wealth to give you that power. Both wealth and guns can "explode" in your face if mishandled.
Insisting the French revolution is the only true evidence that wealth is worthless in gaining power is like insisting the thousands of accidental gun deaths are the only true evidence that people with guns will just accidentally kill each other.
As you can see from today's situation those people with wealth learned from the past. They know where to push and where to pull in order to successfully keep power. They have refined the tools they buy with that wealth. And the civilized world has been managing to keep going this way without using a gun (well, not on home field anyway) for the longest time in history. A library will do a far better job at making my case than I can do in a comment. I strongly encourage it.
What motivation do people with guns have to support people with money? Only the agreement that that money is worth something, and also that that person's claim to the money is something they all agree on.
>As you can see from today's situation those people with wealth learned from the past. They know where to push and where to pull in order to successfully keep power. ... And the civilized world has been managing to keep going this way without using a gun
Have you forgotten WWII? That happened under a century ago, and one thing that happened in the 30s was the Nazis rounded up all the Jews, stuck them in death camps, and seized their money.
Money only gives you power as long as you get enough other people to agree to this. The true power lies with the people who have guns and are willing to use violence.
But let's compare the numbers of moms like that to the number of racist uncles. From whom do you think those angry neo-nazis learned their rhetoric?
People always seem to have some weird idea that progress will come if we can just get rid of the old people through aging and attrition, but this just isn't the case. New generations can bring progress or setbacks, and it's happened historically over and over.
Speaking of Neo-Nazis, how about the actual Nazis? Were they a bunch of old farts? No, at the time, they were all young people, led by people who weren't old at all (possibly middle-aged). They weren't preceded by generations of people who were even worse than themselves, in fact it was the opposite.
Finally, just look at the current US elections: the most progressive candidate, who others in his party think is too "radical" and "extreme", is one of the oldest.
I'm not (meaning to be) saying old people are conservative. I'm saying people, as a whole, don't change their views. The only way for new views to gain purchase in society is for the people with different views to die off of old age.
Most often those new views ARE more progressive, but not always.
But my core point is that if those in power don't die, they aren't going to change their views, and their power will only concentrate. "in power" doesn't just mean rulers, it also means numbers. Those racist uncles, those people deeply offended by same-sex marriages, etc. Unless the young are automatically more progressive (as you've just argued is not the case), then they won't go away, and won't be marginalized, and they'll keep holding their views.
Exceptions will exist, but numerically, it's an issue.
Also, you seem to believe that people never change their views. I don't think that's really true either; people do evolve over time. My views are very different than what they were when I was a teenager (and not more conservative either). Older people do adapt to changing society. Look at, for instance, the acceptance of various social changes in the US, such as gay marriage. These things did not come slowly; they were breathtakingly fast. There'd be some initial pioneers pushing it for a while, but not getting very far. But eventually, like a dam breaking after a crack, suddenly the whole society would adopt it. Go back in time 20 years and ask some random people if they think gay marriage would be legal nationwide by now and they'd think you're crazy. This didn't happen just because of some old people dying off; it happened because the entire society got comfortable with the idea, though it took many of them a while to accept it.
Finally, eliminating aging doesn't mean eliminating death or childbirth. People will still have children, and people will still die (from accidents, murder, diseases, etc.). Also, the biology of the brain that affects old peoples' thinking will presumably be altered by anti-aging treatments, making them think more like younger adults.
We would both use this as an example - you think it is because people changed their views, I think it is because a big group of people bitterly opposed to this died off, opening the door to change.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree. FWIW, I hope you're correct. I'd love to see society avoid repeating mistakes, learning from alternative viewpoints and expanding what they consider. Sadly, the one concrete case I can have of changing viewpoints is my own: In my twenties I felt as you do. In the decades since I've seen people embrace willful ignorance and proudly stand by hypocrisy so long as they didn't have to accept anything that was outside of their "normal". I retain the hope, but I've lost the expectation.
Here's to the hope that my conclusions are wrong.
A group of people bitterly opposing this did not all die off in the space of a mere decade or less. That's the problem with your reasoning.
The same thing happened in the 60s with civil rights legislation.
Here's an article that graphically shows what I'm talking about: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-pace-of-social-chang...
People would be much better off by focusing on their quality of life rather than their lifespan. One is a very actionable thing, the other one is a pure gamble (and ""curing"" it is 100% sci-fi for now). Or as Seneca would put it "But tell me, pray, do you consider it fairer that you should obey Nature, or that Nature should obey you? And what difference does it make how soon you depart from a place which you must depart from sooner or later? We should strive, not to live long, but to live rightly; for to achieve long life you have need of Fate only, but for right living you need the soul."
If the people working on aging treatments are right (and I imagine they probably are if you set a long time horizon), we'll eventually be able to live for hundreds of years without any of the effects of aging. Eliminating aging and most disease would improve the average quality of life far more than probably anything else we could possibly do within the same time span.
Of course dramatically extending lifespans will have a huge impact on the world, but we'll almost certainly have other shock absorbers by then to minimize the externalities. (The same things we'd be doing to deal with overpopulation from birth rates, etc.)
And once/if the technology is universally available, free, and safe, the majority of people will almost certainly opt in to it within a generation or sooner. You can be a conscientious objector if you like, but that doesn't mean you have a right to try to prevent a near-uncountable number of total hours of human flourishing. Comparing eliminating aging to retaining pollution is a much more naive take than what the parent posted, I think. I would consider it the opposite: hindering funding and progress towards treatment of aging is like blocking initiatives to fight climate change and fossil fuel proliferation, except possibly with even more dire consequences for humans in the long term than what climate change might pose.
We could stop world hunger and cure most diseases in developing countries right now if we didn't spend our money on useless things, but we don't. You're far too optimistic.
> Eliminating aging and most disease would improve the average quality of life far more than probably anything else we could possibly do within the same time span.
Not working 60% of you awake time from 20 to 65 would probably have a bigger impact on your quality of life than working 60% of your awake time from 20 to 165. Heck, universal healthcare in the US would have a bigger impact on Americans' quality of life than living 100 years more, and it would be faaaar easier to get.
>We could stop world hunger and cure most diseases in developing countries right now if we didn't spend our money on useless things, but we don't. You're far too optimistic.
In theory there's enough money to solve almost every problem (homelessness, hunger, carbon emissions), but it's about the effective and efficient use of resources. That's why they haven't been solved. There's probably also a bit of a Mythical Man Month effect (more money/people/effort thrown into the same thing may have highly diminishing returns, in addition to all the higher potential for theft and corruption).
It's difficult to imagine universal anti-aging and near-biological immortality without universal healthcare, elimination of poverty and hunger, and no requirement for people to work much (the last one could turn out false, though working at 165 doesn't sound so awful if you have the mind and body of a 30-year-old and if you can still live comfortably if you aren't working). You need a basic good level of health if you want to prevent deterioration and death; it would be a total lie to proclaim you've cured death when there are people who are starving. I would agree those are basic prerequisites for a non-aging civilization.
I think it's all part of the same thing - each part is being worked on by the people with the most expertise to combat the respective problems, and they all have a common goal of improving the quality and quantity of life for all of humanity, now and indefinitely into the future. And hopefully it'll eventually apply to all conscious life we become aware of or create.
Yes, in terms of what would have the biggest impact in the next decade, universal healthcare for Americans would rank far higher than tripling the longevity budget. But it's a tricky calculation when you're dealing with very long time scales. If one were to hypothetically cut all longevity funding in order to implement universal healthcare, then over the next 100 years it would be a more than worthwhile investment, but over the next few thousand? Maybe not.
We should be fighting for all of those things. The question is to try to analyze as objectively as possible how to best allocate resources to achieve the most good for the most people over all time scales.
No, it is not.
What would you call Progeria?
What about cancer? Transition of a cell into a particularly nasty disease state. (That term, by the way, is one the biologists throw around quite a bit to describe broken or damaged cells that no longer function as intended.)
What if senescence can be slowed or stopped? What then?
Diseases need not be communicable.
> Progeria is an extremely rare autosomal dominant genetic disorder in which symptoms ___resembling___ aspects of aging are manifested at a very early age.
> What about cancer?
Cancer is cancer, aging is aging.
Cells are machines and they function in predictable biomechanical and biochemical manners. Aging related disease state encompasses some population of the space of deleterious state change.
In the micro, aging is a disease just like any other. It is the layperson understanding of the word "disease" that does not fit.
The difference is that the word "disease" is something that at least theoretically can be cured. Aging does not have that implication. It follows then that if you say "Aging is a Disease", you're effectively saying that immortality is theoretically achievable. That's what makes the claim so uncomfortable.
Nowhere does the definition of disease imply that. There are many diseases today that are patently incurable.
Aging, like cancer, is multifaceted. There are many low hanging fruit that we can begin to tackle now.
> you're effectively saying that immortality is theoretically achievable.
I'm not saying anything about immortality. But I don't see how a 100, 120 year average lifespan with expanded quality of life isn't achievable.
See also: our inability to synthesise some vitamins, our (more or less) unmovable ears, and how we can no longer asexually reproduce.