Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 31 2017, @09:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-old-is-not-for-sissies dept.

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 !!


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday October 31 2017, @06:37PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 31 2017, @06:37PM (#590138) Journal

    Mathematics depends on the assumptions that you start with, it doesn't directly address the physical world. That it can be used to address the physical world does not mean that if the math is solid, the conclusions are certain, because the mapping between math and reality is always imperfect.

    Now it they'd claimed that entropy made it impossible, I'd say they might have a valid argument, and would want to know what kind of limits on the success of eliminating or reversing aging there were. Energetic processes can often be designed that will temporarily reverse entropy in a limited area at the cost of increasing it elsewhere, and living creatures are not closed systems.

    If a biologist had made that claim, I'd be more dubious, because biology is less of a hard science, but I'd be willing to listen to their presuppositions and reasoning. Certainly some creatures slow down aging to an extreme extent, but they might be able to put limits on that or to say why it couldn't be reversed...at which point people could start looking for ways around it.

    The headline was wrong. The statement is by a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. Not by a mathematician. I haven't read the original paper, but from the article it looks as if the statement is a plausible argument, but not a mathematically sound one. There's a real difference. I think he's talking out of his area of competence, certainly when it comes to "mathematical proof".

    Mathematicians? This is out of that area of competence. Even physics is really out of that area of competence, though there one can use some plausible initial assumptions that those who *are* experts in the field have developed. But biology??? The theoretical basis of biology has not been converted into a plausible complete set of equations, so there's no real basis to start from.

    What math *can* do is say "Given this set of initial presumptions (which must be complete enough that there are no significant external effects) and using the following rules of inference we can come to the following conclusion.", but the initial conditions cannot currently be met. Not for something like aging. There's enough trouble even when there's an effort to calculate insect flight. (I understand that was arguably solved within the last couple of years.)

    The argument that one may need to choose between dying of old age or cancer is plausible, but to claim a mathematical proof is ridiculous. We can't completely characterize either phenomena. And there are several alternative ways to characterize what we do know.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Interesting=1, Informative=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5