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Aging is a natural part of life, but that hasn't stopped people from embarking on efforts to stop the process. Unfortunately, perhaps, those attempts are futile, according to University of Arizona researchers who have proved that it's mathematically impossible to halt aging in multicellular organisms like humans. "Aging is mathematically inevitable - like, seriously inevitable. There's logically, theoretically, mathematically no way out," said Joanna Masel, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and at the UA.
Masel and UA postdoctoral researcher Paul Nelson outline their findings on math and aging in a new study titled "Intercellular Competition and Inevitability of Multicellular Aging," published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Current understanding of the evolution of aging leaves open the possibility that aging could be stopped if only science could figure out a way to make selection between organisms perfect. One way to do that might be to use competition between cells to eliminate poorly functioning "sluggish" cells linked to aging, while keeping other cells intact. However, the solution isn't that simple, Masel and Nelson say.
Two things happen to the body on a cellular level as it ages, Nelson explains. One is that cells slow down and start to lose function, like when your hair cells, for example, stop making pigment. The other thing that happens is that some cells crank up their growth rate, which can cause cancer cells to form. As we get older, we all tend, at some point, to develop cancer cells in the body, even if they're not causing symptoms, the researchers say. Masel and Nelson found that even if natural selection were perfect, aging would still occur, since cancer cells tend to cheat when cells compete.
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-mathematically-impossible-aging-scientists.html
[Abstract]: Intercellular competition and the inevitability of multicellular aging
So, either you die of old age or you die of cancer. Choose wisely !!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RedBear on Tuesday October 31 2017, @12:02PM (8 children)
Technology will solve this problem. We will use nanotech to target cancerous cells (in fact we are already beginning to do this) and also to continuously infuse perfect lab-grown pluripotent stem cells into areas with poorly performing aging cells. At the macro-organism level we'd never notice any of this happening. We just won't visibly age. That hair follicle that's about to stop producing pigment? Bzzt! Gone, zapped by some nanobots and replaced by a new follicle. That skin collagen cell that's losing ideal elasticity? Gone, replaced with a brand new cell. That cell with UV damaged DNA? Replaced. Oddball proteins created by old cells will be tracked down and removed from the system before they start causing inflammation. Arterial plaques will be forcibly disassembled by nanites and safely escorted out of the body. And so on.
Nature would never allow this, and it will bring natural evolution to a sudden and almost complete halt within our species. But then the door opens to begin artificially evolving ourselves, changing our genome with conscious purpose, erasing miscellaneous bits that just seem to cause trouble and lead to regressions. So, with technology, evolution would continue, even rapidly accelerate beyond what nature could ever accomplish. Purists will object but others won't care. We're already a heartbeat away from the wealthy elite actively engineering their own offspring. I wouldn't even be shocked to learn that some doctor somewhere has already used something like CRISPR to remove regressive disease genes from a human IVF embryo prior to implantation. Just because it's illegal doesn't mean nobody's doing it.
When you meet a problem with no mathematically practical solution, you drive around it while flipping it the bird.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bobs on Tuesday October 31 2017, @01:47PM
Redbear, above, is right: the mathematical model is too simplistic with the assumptions.
For example, "since cancer cells tend to cheat".
I guarantee you that humans don't just tend to cheat, but will certainly and repeatedly cheat when it comes to death.
Model may be right that a single, simple static solution won't work but it is easy to imagine a dynamic solution that will. For example:
We don't know how to do it all yet, but to say it is impossible and can never work is absolutely wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @02:54PM
Arterial plaques will be forcibly disassembled by nanites and safely escorted out of the body.
What is this? A Trump Rally? Plaque Lives Matter! Fuck da na-nites!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 31 2017, @03:41PM (4 children)
Modern medicine (of the last ~80 years) has already done that, in those parts of the world where it is practiced.
If you believe in the singularity, then manufacture of custom bodies and transfer of consciousness from one to the next (not to mention copying of consciousness into multiple instances) is "just around the corner," certainly within the next 80 years.
Ageing becomes irrelevant when you can transfer from an aging body into a younger one.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:56PM (1 child)
I don't think its so much modern medicine as abundant and cheap energy... well-off people were living just as long back centuries ago.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:09AM
Energy definitely helps, but centuries ago if you got leprosy, or gonorrhea, or syphilis, or an un-specified infection from a deep wound, it didn't really matter how well off you were, you usually died. Same for premature births, so many birth defects that are moderated by modern methods, and all the other things that can fix up people long enough for them to reproduce when 50 years ago they would have just died before passing on their genes. (And, let's not turn this into a vaccine discussion, but...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:29AM (1 child)
Mind uploading/transfer is a red herring. Anti-aging will be accomplished by fixing accumulated damage and rewinding the clock if there is "biological planned obsolescence. That's the option that is both achievable in the near term and will be acceptable to most people.
Come back in a hundred years, healthy as can be, then we can have the mind uploading discussion (good for "backups" in case of bodily catastrophe, and may be a good way to accomplish "manned" interstellar travel).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:20PM
The latest round of Hollywierd interstellar movies is still stuck on the "cold sleep" concept - granted that's closer than mind transfer, but so much less efficient...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:26PM
yes, and AI will be The Decider, at that.