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 post‐traumatic 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: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:38PM (24 children)
Taking a poor young person’s plasma and infusing it into a rich older person to ward off aging
. . . but will be done anyway just in case there might be some kind of benefits other than reducing the population of poor people.
If taking their blood doesn't help, try taking their young healthy organs instead -- unless AT&T has already gotten them as per the terms of the service agreement they signed.
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(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".
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(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
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(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.
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(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.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by EvilSS on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:57PM (4 children)
You do realize they are not killing people for this, right?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:13PM (3 children)
Another way how it could reduce the population of poor people would be if they paid enough that those people didn't stay poor after selling some of their blood.
But then, I doubt that happens either.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday February 20 2019, @09:34PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday February 20 2019, @10:58PM
I got $15-22 per bag of plasma in the late 90s. Madison Tennessee USA. I went in twice a week with no observed ill effect. The age limit then was minimum 18.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:57AM
But you aren't getting poor off of it either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:44PM (2 children)
I hope these people will go the next step: Exchange body.
Just transfer all your belonging to the young person and then go into that box.
*wink wink*
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @08:23PM
First Human Head Transplant Could Happen in Two Years [soylentnews.org]
Claims That Head Transplant Has Been Successfully Done on a Monkey [soylentnews.org]
Researchers are Keeping Pig Brains Alive Outside the Body [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday February 21 2019, @06:21PM
In fiction [wikipedia.org], which I happen to be re-reading at the moment, and this wasn't the first I'm sure.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:40PM (18 children)
My eighty-year-old grandfather had this done (in Germany) and was very pleased with the results.
Note the weasel-wording in TFS: "no proven critical benefit" [yet]. Because the long, expensive FDA-approved trials are still in progress. Which trials were initiated because previous trials showed results. Results good enough to merit more expensive trials.
Fuck the FDA.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:54PM
My buddy's cousin's father says it works great.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:06PM (2 children)
I remember there used to be quacks in Germany injecting cells harvested from lambs into rich people, so that the "young cells" of the lamb would fix the "old cells" in their body. Here's a German Wikipedia link: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frischzellentherapie [wikipedia.org]
Lunacy. But a fool and their money are soon parted.
(Score: 5, Informative) by aristarchus on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:23PM (1 child)
Ah! But what about "Goat Gland Science" [wikipedia.org]? Nothing like transplanting some goat testicles into your own to make you live forever! Of course, may develop a chin beard, devilish pupils, and an urge to eat almost anything.
The word for all this is Symapthetic Magic [wikipedia.org], like putting a knife under the mattress of childbirth, to, you know, "cut" the pain.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday February 20 2019, @10:45PM
Thanks! Now I know how to describe Homeopathy in one phrase.
Because "like cures like". Don't ask me how, it just does, OK?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:09PM (11 children)
On what basis would this even work? Blood is pretty simple, the body completely replaces it multiple times a year, which means that any potential benefit from this would be extremely short lived.
Apart from cases like carbon monoxide poisoning, there's not any reason to think that replacing blood is going to have any sort of measurable impact.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Sulla on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:19PM (5 children)
Cells in the body have go though 50-70 billion cell divisions a day, and red blood cells survive around four months. So for a person who is 80 their cells have had a much longer time to get corrupted, where as the young person has cells that are less likely to be corrupted. I don't know if the red blood cells made by an 80 year old are less efficient, but if they are there might be possible gain? Please correct me on this.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)
And the cells that divide the most are the sperm line .... 1500 per second. Few million per day. And yet, somehow the new baby created with all these divisions ends up "perfect" again? I sense the theory of accumulated damage is kind of crap. It's more about evolution of our species than the division crap. You can see that in nature with short lived animals that get tumours at young age. For humans, it's rather rare to have cancer before about age 50-60.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43308729 [bbc.com]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1942631 [nih.gov]
Efficiency comes down to whether you use it or not. In RBC, as you can probably see from the link (even in Japanese), RBC went slightly down but only in men. But all other parameters related to it remained the same. I would not be surprised if RBC for people that do exercise, also doesn't go down. You use it, or you lose it... that's the saying?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:21PM
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/10/older-fathers-associated-with-increased-birth-risks.html [stanford.edu]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:09PM (2 children)
Blood cells don't come from blood cells, they are made in bone marrow: "The cells develop in the bone marrow and circulate for about 100–120 days in the body" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_blood_cell [wikipedia.org] So transfusing blood gets you red blood cells made from younger bone marrow that will die and need to be replaced again shortly. To do it right, get a skeleton transplant. (Or as the industry may prefer, get your "Frequent transfusioner" discount card and go back 4 times a year for the price of 3!)
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday February 20 2019, @08:12PM (1 child)
Again, correct me where I am wrong.
Did a quick browsing of wiki on bone marrow transplants.
If I am understanding correctly, the purpose of the bone marrow transplants is to replace bad/improper Hematopoietic stem cells with donor cells that are presumed to be better. This causes new blood production to be based off of better cells. So, if it were not so dangerous, would bone marrow transplants where the donors are younger, provide better functioning blood cells? If cell division does not lead to breakdown in quality of blood cells over time, there should be no improvement, but if there is a fall in quality over time it could be a way to kick-start the system (if the procedure can be made less dangerous).
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:33AM
No.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:45PM
Oxygen levels would rise most likely. For old people and those on blood thinners to control pressure there issues with oxygen delivery that makes them sleepy and if they're low enough, too fat and/or old enough they can even see dementia and alzheimer-like symptoms. This is usually where CPAP masks and even oxygen tanks come into play.
On there other end of the spectrum young endurance athletes deliberately sleep in high altitude chambers to condition their bodies to oxygen deprivation and then switch to high-oxygen high-pressure chambers shortly before a competition to mimic the effects of the now banned Erythropoietin. Another less safe approach was to deposit and store blood packs that were then "condensed" as much as 2:1 blood cells and then replace as much of your blood with the packs at the day of the competition.
Not sure how much any of this is allowed or not in the competitions. And I have no idea about the medical implication long term or the risks for complications. But it's almost certainly has beneficial short-term gains.
Disclosure: I'm neither a doctor nor do I play one on TV...
compiling...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Hartree on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:50PM
"Blood is pretty simple"
No. There's little "simple" about blood.
Aside from the many types of cells contained in it, there are scads of proteins in it ranging from antibodies to signaling molecules as well as the structural ones that give it its consistency. Even with our best instrumentation and lab techniques (which are light years beyond what we had we had in the 90s) teasing out just which parts are doing this is tough. It's little better than either trying blood fractions and seeing if they help (with all the time needed to see if it has any effect before you can get evidence yeah or nay) or guessing and trying a particular component of millions of them with the same time lag and number of animal subjects and hoping you'll get lucky.
It's fairly well established that this works in animals at least to some extent. That said, a mouse is not a person and trials are ongoing.
If we can figure out what signaling systems are involved we can then use things like combinatorial chemistry to see what might bind to them (but there are boatloads of bottlenecks there, starting with the hope that something in our screening libraries will do so). It's a hard problem.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:27PM
On the basis if Venture Vampire Capitalists, the Paypal Mafia, Thanophobics; why are there no names named in the Fine Summory? Peter? Where's Peter? We would want to know if one of Trump's very smart Tech advisors were caught up in pseudo-science like this, wouldn't we?
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday February 20 2019, @11:16PM (1 child)
The not-entirely-unsupported theory is that there is a blood-borne chemical signaling mechanism that controls the activity of your body's self repair mechanism. In the very young, this mechanism is extremely active making kids extremely resilient to injury. As a function of age this signal diminishes, and the self repair mechanism falls behind. This leaves the cellular equivalent of broken windows and abandoned buildings lying around (senescent tissue) that causes systemic problems (inflammation) and is a key mechanism of aging.
The root experiment behind this was a mouse trial where they interconnected the circulatory system of an old mouse and a young mouse and after a period of time the old mouse's health improved significantly over control. The cause for it is not known.
The only other comparable anti-aging treatment is extreme caloric restriction, i.e. prolonged fasting. If this triggers the same mechanism or is a different effect is not known.
To me the next logical step in this research would be to determine if the effect is reproducible in mice with plasma or whole blood and fractionate the blood components by molecular weight to help narrow down which, if any, blood component carries the youth factor. Blood isn't simple at all so it could take years to narrow it down to a specific molecule.
Anti-aging/age-reversal research is exciting right now. Last month a small (n30) trial was published that showed non-trivial declines in senscent cell population and effects from the drug combo of dasatinib (chemotherapy drug) and quercetin (OTC Supplement). Hat tip to Aubrey De Gray for kicking this beehive back in the 00s. It probably wouldn't have happened without him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:35AM
Not entirely unsupported theory= unsupported theory. See "Sympathetic Magic", referenced above.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:18PM (1 child)
People tend also to be pleased with the results of Placebos.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:43PM
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/05/making-old-hearts-younger/ [harvard.edu]
Denial is not a river in Egypt, and this thing has more supporting evidence than global warming.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:52PM (1 child)
LITER MEAL
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:37AM
Finally, the Palantir is out of the bag! And the Mimetic Memes doth gyle and gimbal in the René Girard. Thanks, takyon!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:26PM (1 child)
Most of us were young dumbasses early in our lives. WTF would we want to catch Millenialism now?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Hartree on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:53PM
I can't comment on you, but most of us who were young dumbasses grew up to be older, but little less dumbasses. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @05:09PM (1 child)
But it's getting harder to find virgin blood nowadays.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @05:12PM
Does incel blood count?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @05:22PM (3 children)
Typical behavior of today's SV ellites.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:34PM (2 children)
Soylent Voles?
Silly Vowels?
Silicone Volupts?
Sudatenland Volunteers?
Sedentary Vim users?
Solitary Venturers?
Soiled Vents?
Satisfied Vortices?
I have no idea!
Yours, member of the Atlantan Association Against the Abuse of Acronyms (AAAAA)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:20PM
My favorite... Silicone Vergara's
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:59PM
I thought it was pretty obvious from the context that it's Shitting Vampire, duh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @08:28PM
It's LEACHES, moron.
(Score: 1) by doke on Wednesday February 20 2019, @09:07PM (3 children)
I first heard of this idea in Melthusela's Children, a 1958 novel by Robert Heinlein. It was based on a 1941 serial. I've never read serial version. The novel predicted the use of blood transfusions to prolong life. However, it didn't predict (or avoided) the use of young people's blood, and the potential ethical issues. In it, the humans left on earth used cloned blood for life extension, not donated from younger people. Later Larry Niven had several stories involving organ transplants. Those got diastopian, with almost any crime being declared capitol, so the state could harvest the criminal's organs to preserve old, rich people.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday February 20 2019, @11:18PM (1 child)
This was one of the things that led to the citizen's revolt on Mount Lookitthat. Eventually you send the wrong person to the organ banks and they won't take it lying down anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @11:42PM
Yeah, they end up coming back with organs from that Abby Normal woman all the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:40AM
Are you sure it was not the WarBoy's blood bag in "MadMax: Furry Road"?
(Score: 2) by srobert on Thursday February 21 2019, @04:03AM
This contradicts research performed by Dr. Acula.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:15PM
noone gives a shit what you have to say you big pharma and big agra whores.