Whatever may be said now about transhumanists, people who want to improve their biological performance, that are not limited by what is written in their genes about them, including about a possible aging program, this kind of people have been around since…civilization. Maybe even before. I don't know how it is in very different cultures, like in china, for example, but in our part of the worldThe Epic of Gilgamesh it is a testimony of this desire, of revolt against death. In an age where death could come in many ways, and fewer people than now would grow old, the fear of death came primarily from the fear of aging. Old age was a sure sentence... to death. Although they were talking about people who lived or were still living exceptionally long. InThe Epic of Gilgamesh there is talk of a solution, which Gilgamesh finds out, but fails to apply it. He had to not sleep for a large number of days. I don't know what the lack of sleep symbolizes, that all ancient stories have an interpretation that is difficult for us to understand, especially since they are related to older ones, possibly from other cultures. But if lack of sleep meant not interrupting certain biochemical processes, don't let them stop, I am inclined to believe that the intuition of the ancients was not wrong. And the Bible says that people will learn to live forever. They will learn, especially since they were programmed that way. Aging and death were divine punishments.
Modern biology proves them right. Bacteria do not age and are theoretically… immortal. Sure, can be destroyed by environmental factors, from simple sugar or alcohol to radiation that doesn't even tan us. But in good conditions they live indefinitely. They multiply, it's true. Because for them, life is not separated from reproduction. They replicate your genome and copy (almost) the whole genome always. I mean, I do everything I know around the clock, and when needed, learn new things too, which they then share with all their relatives and friends around. That is, to resist antibiotics, to metabolize all kinds of strange substances, etc.
But however long they lived happily on our planet which was their paradise, one day they started to evolve. Something happened. More complex organisms appeared, which had the genetic material enclosed in intracellular capsules, not floating through the cell, and the cell had several compartments, where specialized reactions took place, such as those of cellular energy production. Regardless of the mechanisms by which this happened (that there are several hypotheses, some symbioses may be involved, according to some) what was gained at first glance was energy efficiency. There was no room for all the reactions. Aging had now set in? Hard to say if in the form we know. Some time has passed, multicellular organisms appeared, this time with specialized cells, not just cellular compartments. But aging was still not certain. But another day, some time ago 650 for millions of years, an explosion of new species, some existing even now, appeared. And yes, some began to age, although it is very difficult for us to realize this.
To know if a species is aging, we have two criteria, formulated by Finch and Austad: increasing mortality over time and declining fertility, also with the passage of time. I discussed the weak side of these criteria in my bookMissing links in aging, among others. The mortality rate does not increase steadily with age in humans either. It is a maximum of mortality in adolescence, and a minimum rate between 25 and 35 year old. Sure, it depends on the environmental conditions. Another peak in mortality, especially in the past, it was the first year of life. On the other hand, we look upon reproduction as a crowning of life. Sure, if reproduction were not, it would not be told. That is, there would be no more life under the conditions of aging, but not only. However, organisms tend to sacrifice reproduction under stress. Caloric restriction, known to alter lifespan in many genetically diverse species, affects fertility. And most organisms (considering what love the deity had for cockroaches) they live most of their lives as larvae, not as reproductively capable adults, perhaps the fertility criterion should be viewed more cautiously. Although I can say on the evidence that even the fertility of old animals can be improved with certain life-extending treatments, at least if they are mice.
What would aging be? It would be interesting to know what people thought in ancient times, possibly those from distant cultures. There were also nonconformist new beliefs and experiments, but which proved failures for want of collateral knowledge. For example, the transplantation of glands from animals was once, in the first half of the 20th century, in vogue. Only the transplanted organs were degenerating, for very easy to guess reasons... now. It is interesting that somewhere close to us, what is Slovakia now, a Hungarian noble descended from the princes of Transylvania, advised by the witch, he believed that if he bathed in the blood of young women he would regain his youth. "The Experiment", whose authenticity we cannot swear to, would have led to many crimes whose real substrate (maybe also political) we don't know him. The results would not appear. But even if there is nothing true in the whole story (most likely), the hypothesis remains, probably popular, which turns out to be real. Blood from young animals actually has positive effects on old animals. That is, it slows down aging. The opposite is true? Apparently so. Experiments of this type are somewhat recent, but he had this idea 150 year old. However, it was a marginal one.
An important hypothesis, who made a great historical career, is that of free radicals. It all started with radioactivity, the great discovery of the beginning of the 20th century, which showed that not everything was known in physics, as it was believed. This newly discovered physical phenomenon was to have many therapeutic effects. Pierre Curie was very excited, and experimented on himself. It's what actually finished him. When a cart carrying cabbage hit him, he was already extremely weak physically and mentally. His precarious condition condemned him. Radioactivity has established itself in the treatment of cancer. Perhaps it would have been better if this had not happened.
But another discovery, this time from biology, helped to give rise to this hypothesis. Evelyn Fox Keller speaks inSecrets of life, secrets of death about biologists' pursuit of prestige, who wanted to make their field something as exact and important as physics. Then the discovery of the double-stranded structure of DNA (called the "molecule of life"), had the impact they wanted. Watson and Crick are credited with this discovery, although the fact that they looked at an X-ray diffraction image, obtained by Rosalind Franklin (actually by a student of hers), was decisive for the understanding of the structure, after Pauli had failed miserably. Nature helped that the prestige of this discovery was unsullied by the presence of a woman. Franklin died of ovarian cancer before the Nobel Prize was awarded.
Was DNA the molecule of life?? Not by far. DNA viruses, like RNA ones, they are as innocent as can be. Without cells to synthesize them they do absolutely nothing. Now we could say that the prion, an abnormal protein, which does not differ from the normal one except in the way it folds, it could be called the molecule of life.
The search for aging genes, as for many rare diseases now 100 years or even less, it's another mine where the solution to aging is sought. It starts from the idea that there is an aging program. Millions are spent searching for those genes that would cause organisms to decay and die after they become useless, that is, after they reproduce. To the logical question, if it weren't better for organisms to reproduce much longer, no answer. Sure, reproduction is a design compromise, which may affect other functions. Although in most species there is reproductive decline associated with aging (it's a criterion of aging), in general, it is the degradation of the body that also affects reproduction. It turns out that the reason for looking for those genes is something else entirely, not aging: Same reason biology is now more genetics, and many researchers are involved in this field, of genetics that is. Sure, genes influence development, metabolic processes, and surely they can influence aging as well. The alteration of some genes influences the rate of aging. But it's hard to believe that aging genes exist anywhere other than in grant applications. Gerontologist Valeri Chuprin drew my attention to this fact. Research is done for grants, not for real results.
But what could aging be but something to do with ionizing radiation and DNA? Sure, having high energy, ionizing radiation destroys DNA structures. They produce mutations that is, it's true. Free radicals, responsible for aging, they are very short-lived and extremely reactive species. Ozone and perhydrol are among them. They are produced by living organisms, especially those that have cellular respiration. Free radicals are produced in the mitochondria. Just that, contrary to what was believed before, although mitochondria are affected by aging, as well as systems that confer protection against free radicals, mutations are not the big problem with aging. They don't grow nearly as much. Not to mention the fact that some substances with a strong pro-oxidant effect increase the lifespan of worms... But let's think about bacteria. They don't age, and are very sensitive to ionizing radiation. Sure, they can die from free radicals. They also have antioxidant systems. We also benefit from some of them, i.e. some vitamins. Even though many data have been collected that contradict this hypothesis, antioxidants are still selling very well. Antioxidant treatments do not extend maximum lifespan, although they have effects on average duration. Ionizing radiation destroys cells. It can also be seen through exposure to the sun. But they are not the only ones.
The treatment that increases average and maximum lifespan is caloric restriction. Depending on the species, means a diet with all the nutrients, but with less energy (calories). Her history is also a controversial one. The author of the experiments, Clive McCay (1898-1967, so modest in longevity) he came from the field of animal husbandry. Made in the 30s, have been somewhat neglected by other researchers. But the ideas were older. I found references in Nietzsche to a long-lived citizen who claimed that what we would now call a restrictive diet was his secret. I find Nietzsche's criticisms interesting.
Caloric restriction would be part of what is called hormesis, i.e. moderate stress. And ideas related to hormesis are older. But there was a "serious" reason for their marginalization: their mechanism would resemble something very contested: homeopathy! I don't think so, but whatever you do may resemble a superstition from who knows what culture. If homeopathy is superstition, you have nothing to fear that it can compromise you. According to current theories, homeopathy is pseudo-science. But... in the 70s of the 19th century, when it was thought that it was no longer even worth studying physics, that you have nothing left to discover (as Mario Livio says inBrilliant blunders) maybe taking pictures of bones would have seemed like a superstition. If only I found out that homeopathy really works, I wonder what phenomenon is there. If you are rational, you don't want to prove that you are not in the party of the irrational, but on the contrary, you try not to be prejudiced and fix what you don't know.
Other great hopes of treating aging would be telomerase and stem cells. I know that early in my career I was very excited about stem cells. But experienced men have told me of many fashions which they had seen in science, of which nothing remained. What is actually being sought is to solve the problem through a very marketable solution. In fact, only the solution is marketable, it doesn't really matter how much it solves. Sure, there's something about telomerosis and stem cells, which I have explained at length in my articles and inMissing links in aging.
What I have noticed at numerous congresses is that it is rare, very rarely, someone with a critical spirit appears who says the right thing about fashionable ideas. But when he comes up with the solution, the sky is falling. It's very hard to come up with valid criticism, to analyze the facts, and it's even harder to bring another paradigm. I tried to do this, to look beyond all models and all prejudices, but mostly to look at life in machine language. According to my hypothesis (also published inMissing links…), aging is a byproduct of evolution, a kind of crisis adaptation. There is no such thing as an aging schedule, but a program (or more) crisis response. We like to think that man is at the pinnacle of creation and that evolution is moving towards perfection. Not, evolution makes trade-offs upon trade-offs, rags on rags. And it hardly loses sophisticated characters. It is hard for an outsider to believe that man has fewer genes than some invertebrates. We find the intelligence of vertebrates extraordinary, especially mammals and birds, but intelligence is only a character by which these organisms can respond to crises (or I can run away from them).
Crises in natural history have been followed by an evolutionary explosion. The Precambrian Revolution, which I talked about above, it's an example. The rule has been maintained recently. Climate crises are documented during humanization, alternation between periods of famine and relative abundance ("The Civilization of Hunger/Another Approach to Humanization"). Humanization has also had an impact on aging? And. Man suffers from diseases that do not exist or are rare in the most closely related primates. Someone had observed that no animal becomes so decrepit in old age.
Aging would be a kind of tail of the evolutionary lizard. The lizard leaves its tail in the claws of the attacker. Anyway, she grows another. om hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, they are symptoms of the starvation response. Everyone wonders why Americans are so fat. Many are the descendants of those on the ships of death, i.e. poor survivors of the Irish famine, from the 19th century. Some never came down, others didn't even get to climb. Probably the great-grandfathers of today's long-lived people with perfect analyzes would not even have had time to climb. Speaking of looking for obesity genes, when now 50 for years those people's parents looked normal. And type II diabetes was a much rarer disease.
A detail about longevity genes is that the only blood type associated with longevity is type B. It is valid for all populations. I was interested because I thought it was a linkage effect with other genes, related to a particular migration. But one study shows that people with type B are more likely to die in hospital from other causes. If a group is associated with greater blood fluidity, a defective coagulation following an accident... There would be a lot to say on this topic, but the conclusion, according to this hypothesis (and numerous dates) it's that, if you are from a long-lived family, you should consider that what kills others quickly may not kill you or kill you more slowly, but something might kill you that doesn't kill others.
It could treat and prevent aging? And. There is no law that says no. Chemical reactions are reversible. Irreversibility comes from the fact that the reactants disappear. In aging animals, and still ugly, how we do it, there is a precariousness of reactions anyway. But you can stimulate some that are affected. It is possible. And with little money, I would add. At least this is how the average and maximum life span can be increased in mice. With any 20-25% to the witness. And fertility…
How people perceive aging now? Most, especially those in the medical field, I don't think anything can be done. Aging is not considered a disease, although it is the disease with mortality 100%. Medical colleagues, but not only, I keep telling myself to stop aging, to deal with an illness, I would have more success with that. There are many groups on social networks, it's true not very populated, of people who want their faces not to age, of transhumanists and similar species. But in fact most of them have a cause and reason for socializing. They would feel very sad if this cause disappeared. They view anything that doesn't fit their prejudices with great suspicion. As in any field, when you have the way or the product it's just the first step. Getting to produce is the hardest. In this case, an original approach is still needed. I hope to find her.
What is the truth about companies with billions in funding? Judith Campisi, a researcher in the field, draws attention not to give them that money, that they have nothing. That's what I say too, but it is true for most who claim research money and complain that they don't get results because they don't have money. Sure, without money it is very difficult, but without ideas and understanding it is impossible.
In closing, I would like to talk a little about prejudices about aging. The relativity of aging. Aging differs from what it was a century ago? Yes and no. As I spoke, some degenerative diseases, more or less associated with aging, they were rare. But they existed, many are attested from Antiquity. People lived (much) less on average. Why? The untreatable infections and especially the extremely difficult working and living conditions. Actually, The Industrial Revolution, i.e. the engineers and workers who are not good at biology, they were the best gerontologists. Although in the pre-industrial era people lived longer and were taller. The industrial revolution came in short order (historical) with inhuman working conditions. But in time, everything has become more accessible, more comfortable. After World War II, with the new economic and technological progress, an increase in life expectancy is observed in many countries. On the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain this increase in life expectancy peaks at some point. What was known beyond was known as the Cardiovascular Revolution. Cardiovascular disease drugs have increased life expectancy by approx 20 year old. Actually in the Leninist dictatorships (the correct name for socialist countries), caring for man was only on paper. In reality, living and working conditions were very hard. People were destroyed, exhausted from work and lack of rest, unhealthy life, humiliation. A doctor colleague told me about the incredible occupational diseases suffered by those who had worked in the Ceausist factories. A known thing then was the fact that salvation no longer came to patients from above 60 year old. I remember when I was very little and my baby was crying because the doctor told her to die, that she was too old. He had fish 70 year old, MEAN. Something like this happened after the Revolution. Cardiovascular disease was treated as a normal side effect of aging.
The way aging was viewed was directly related to the intellectual level of a society. The ancient Greeks had a very similar view of aging to ours. You were old from 60 year old, when the military service ended. Many famous works of antiquity were created by people from beyond 70, 80, even 90 year old. But in 19th century France, old age was something that had to be hidden, the elderly being just a burden on society, and anyway old age was starting at 50 year old. We are aging better in every way now than in the past? Not. Apart from the diabetes epidemic, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, fertility is greatly affected. In the 19th century, it was normal for women to give birth up to 48 year old, few were above this age, but they existed. Although poor and overworked women were losing fertility at a younger age.
But how much is being talked about now about real living conditions when talking about life expectancy, especially healthy? Although there are studies that show that the stress given by poverty, humiliation, lack of emotional support, are more dangerous than a high-fat diet, for example! But ideas like that are not marketable. We can't blame politicians for their short lifespans.
