Taking a young person's plasma and infusing it into an older person to ward off aging -- a therapy that's fascinated some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley -- has no proven clinical benefit, the Food and Drug Administration said.
The agency issued a safety alert on Tuesday about the infusion of plasma from young donors for the prevention of conditions such as aging or memory loss, or for the treatment of such conditions as dementia, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease or postātraumatic stress disorder.
"There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat or prevent these conditions, and there are risks associated with the use of any plasma product," the FDA said in a statement from Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and Peter Marks, head of the agency's biologics center.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:01PM (15 children)
It's easy to spin this, but at the end of the day, it's just dark age early adopter anti-aging, if it works at all. We would rather grow a new organ from someone's cells than harvest them from poor folks because that would give better results (no rejection drugs needed). Researchers will eventually figure out how to make synthetic blood plasma that is as good as the "young blood", if they haven't already. But neither new organs nor blood plasma infusions are going to get you to age 200.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:20PM (5 children)
You mean... pay those damn'd leftie researchers millions to do mumbo-jumbo sciency stuff; then - shudders - get the Nobel price and fame? On my money? What's next? You'll want to tax me to fund the research in that global warming hoax?
It's much cheaper to drain the blood from those dirt poor lazy scum; even more, it comes with the confirmation of the power I have over their life!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by black6host on Wednesday February 20 2019, @05:18PM
Given that I'm currently playing Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, I couldn't agree more! :)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:52AM (3 children)
Which has what to do with living longer?
You know, if it was important to you, you could always fund these things with your own money. This is always the game with public funding of science. It's a great way to transfer funds from tax payers to political connected researchers. But not so great for actually doing research.
Sure, it's fun to mock the ignorant lugs, but for the money actually thrown at research, we should be getting more.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 21 2019, @07:24AM (2 children)
Nothing at all. But if you, at your age, still believe in a 'rational economic agent's, then you have some aging to do ahead of you. This assuming that you use the time of your life to learn something.
Offtopic, just letting yea know I ain't gonna bite it.
Expectations vs actuals... isn't it the essence of all this fun in a human life?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 21 2019, @02:07PM (1 child)
What I believe is that you just made a large non sequitur argument. Rational agent theories are irrelevant to the topic. Nor do I believe that we have to be more stupid than we are just because somewhere in the world there are stupid people who made stupid choices.
That just means it's not important to you. Funny how things become oh so important when other peoples money can be spent on it instead.
I'll need a lot of funding before I'll buy that argument (or rather before you sell that argument).
I get that you just want to babble like so many other people on SN. But it would be nice, if when you criticized someone, even a straw man, you didn't become even dumber than the target you criticized. At least, they have a reason with some bit of intellectual basis (the "pay those damn'd leftie" pseudorant), even if it was a terrible reason.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 21 2019, @08:37PM
That argument is not for sale. I may make an exception for your case and let you use it occasionally, for a small recurring membership fee.
Over and out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hartree on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:35PM (1 child)
Don't expect reasoned debate on this, Takyon. (As if we ever can expect that. ;) )
On one side we have an anonymous coward saying it worked great for his granddad with no objective evidence. On the other, we have someone conjuring up visions of Deathwalker from Babylon 5 and the rich preying on the poor.
It'd be more honest if they said on one side" It must work because I'm frightened of aging, infirmity and death. And on the other: I'm frightened that those I dislike will cheat their way out of the horrible death I daydream about them receiving.
It's very interesting research and has shown a good bit of promise in lab animals and trials are ongoing. But assuming that it will either fail completely or work excellently in humans is an act of faith at this point, not science.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 20 2019, @09:27PM
What exactly is to debate on this FA?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 20 2019, @05:55PM (5 children)
I was thinking more of the movie "The Island".
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:55AM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 21 2019, @06:35PM (3 children)
The movie deals with that obvious question. They discovered that unless the clones are sentient . . . blah blah . . . etc
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 22 2019, @04:06AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday February 22 2019, @03:17PM (1 child)
The movies about the dystopian future will be more entertaining than the real dystopia when it arrives.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 23 2019, @12:57AM
And the real dystopia won't have those contrived situations either.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:02PM
Actually, as I recall there was a study done a few years ago that showed that blood transfusions from very young (possibly fetal?) mice did have a profound effect on reducing a large number of age-related problems in older mice.
Granted, such results don't necessarily translate to humans, but I would be kind of surprised if they didn't - we're not talking about some specific chemical cocktail that targets a particular .
As for not getting you to 200 - that seems quite likely . But even if all it did was make your golden years substantially less unpleasant, that would be a benefit worth paying a great deal for (the reduction in other medical bills alone might make it worth it). And quite likely it would extend your lifespan at least a bit, if only by lowering your risk of death from the conditions it improves. And with the rate at which anti-aging and age-reversing technologies are progressing, that could be enough to keep you alive until the next life-extending technology reaches fruition. Buy enough incremental life extensions that way, and you might manage to survive until someone comes up with a method to grant you effective immortality.
As for synthetic plasma doing the same job - it's quite possible we'll get there eventually, but plasma is a complicated chemical soup. I also don't believe it's been established that there's any real benefit to plasma transfusions - it could well be that it's the healthier living cells in whole blood that deliver most of the benefit. Even if it is the plasma, and it can eventually be synthesized, that's of no help to those who are aging today.