Life Extension: where it's at and where it's going

[Cognisant]

I'm not going to talk about drugs, vitamins, diets, nanotechnology, mysticism or any other kooky approach to life extension because I don't think they're realistic.

Genetic engineering is a realistic approach, in maybe a hundred years from now.

What I consider to be the most currently realistic approach is life extension through regular engineering, consider your body like a car, its parts wear out with time and use however unlike a car your body has various self-repair mechanisms. Unfortunately these self-repair mechanisms also wear out, in your early twenties your liver/kidneys are operating at something like 300% capacity (100% being the threshold of adequate functionality) but over time more and more damage occurs that cannot be fixed (like an accumulation of cysts and scar tissue). Eventually their operational functionality falls below 100% and because they can't do their job properly the other organs are adversely affected, it's like the suspension on your car wearing out, a little wear is normal but as the suspension becomes inadequate for its role other components begin to take damage from bumps in the road. This is what an engineer would call a cascading failure condition and what a doctor would call "dying of old age", but do we really have to die just from getting old, I mean it's not the passing of years that kills you its the inability of your bodily functions to maintain a homeostatic condition.

What if we could replace the heart with a pump, indeed why not a dozen pumps so if a couple pumps fail there's still ten pumps left to pick up the slack, and what if we had this redundancy for all the body's essential-for-life organs?

I'm not done but I'm too tired to continue right now.

Spoiler: Reference Materials

The Immortalists

His historic career as an aviator made Charles Lindbergh one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, the subject of best-selling biographies and a hit movie, as well as the inspiration for a dance step—the Lindy Hop—that he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished...

books.google.com.au

Spoiler: Heart/Lung Bypass Machine

Spoiler: Lung Perfusion

Spoiler: Blood Dialysis

Spoiler: Total Parenteral Nutrition

Spoiler: Brain-Computer Interface

Spoiler: Eye-Tracking Interface

 

[Bertrand Russell's Barber]

I can think of having undifferentiated cells from your body being cultured in lab settings to create organs which can replace failing ones.

Problem then is that invasive surgery can be a nest for all sorts of infections to take place.

Have you looked into the viability of having regular blood transfusions as a means of life extension? I haven't but I suppose that could lead somewhere potentially.

I can think of this being a wonderful startup venture

Of course, convincing VCs is another matter altogether.

 

[lightfire]

Isn't that what life support is?

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

what about the general degradation of your DNA via mutation? It seems you would have to keep replacing every single cell in your body and keep a "clean", unmutated copy of your original DNA somewhere

but I guess that's for a more ambitious plan of remaining alive indefinitely. I can definitely see life extension by replacing single organs. Having spare kidneys and livers would be damn sweet.

btw I've read about the history of this concept of replacing hearts with artificial pumps, and various attempts at this in humans. It's a damn tragic and gruesome story.

 

[Cognisant]

I can think of having undifferentiated cells from your body being cultured in lab settings to create organs which can replace failing ones.

That is a hot topic at the moment, although it seems kinda silly to me, I mean we're not yet at the point where we can keep organs alive ex vivo for more than a few days so how do they plan to grow these cloned organs if they don't have the tech to keep them alive?

I suppose you could grow them in a pigs and there's active research on genetically engineering pigs that are more suitable organ doners, surgically implanting grafts and collagen lattices isn't completely but getting the pig's body to accept the foreign tissue seems like it's just the same problem from a different perspective.

Problem then is that invasive surgery can be a nest for all sorts of infections to take place.

This is a serious problem, even a microprocessor manufacturing facility isn't perfectly clean and the measures necessary to make anywhere truly sterile have their own dangers, it may be necessary to create some kind of artificial lymphatic system or at least keep a compatible lymph node with the brain at all times.

Have you looked into the viability of having regular blood transfusions as a means of life extension? I haven't but I suppose that could lead somewhere potentially.

That's like changing the oil in an old engine, it'll run better than it did with the old oil but it's still an old engine and no amount of lubrication is going to chang that and in the human body our "oil" has a limited lifespan so you would need a constant supply of young blood to achieve a minor and very temporary increase in vitality.

I'm not dissing it, if I had my brain on an artificial life support system I'd certainly want the blood supply regularly replenished with the best blood I could get.

I can think of this being a wonderful startup venture

Of course, convincing VCs is another matter altogether.

Hey people pay for all kinds of kooky shit, by comparison a serious attempt at life extension should be an easy sell.

Isn't that what life support is?

Yup, rather than chasing miracle cures I think there should be more research into making the life support technologies we have more suitable for long term life support, given its highly reliable nature (your neurons need to stay alive most of your life to ensure you don't lose memories/understanding faster than you make them) I think the brain could, under carefully maintained conditions, outlive the body by a very long time.

what about the general degradation of your DNA via mutation? It seems you would have to keep replacing every single cell in your body and keep a "clean", unmutated copy of your original DNA somewhere

but I guess that's for a more ambitious plan of remaining alive indefinitely. I can definitely see life extension by replacing single organs. Having spare kidneys and livers would be damn sweet.

Well if you have a brain in a jar regularly supplied with fresh stem cells to offset natural desegregation those stem cells need not have the same DNA, the only need to be sufficiently compatible with the existing brain to integrate themselves into it, this could be way to make changes to the brain over time to make it more resilient and self sufficient.

btw I've read about the history of this concept of replacing hearts with artificial pumps, and various attempts at this in humans. It's a damn tragic and gruesome story.

The history of medicine as a whole is a damn tragic and gruesome story, heck the entire history of humanity is a damn tragic and gruesome story.

 

[Cognisant]

My preference is to have my brain removed from my body entirely and be completely supported by artificial means, even have the brain itself incrementally replaced with neuroprosthetics until there's nothing biological left, being made of meat freaks me out. Seriously go look in the mirror for a while, really study yourself, look in your mouth, look under your eyelids, move the flesh around a bit, that spongy mass of flesh and blood is you, it's so fragile and if you damage it there's no replacing it, you just have to wait and hope that it heals.

Unfortunately the more realistic method would be to keep my body intact (maybe remove some lower extremities just for the sake of convenience) remove as many life supporting organs as I have the tech to replace (maybe put them in decorative jars like I'm an Egyptian mummy lol) then I've still got hands and arms and ears and eyes and all that other shit to make up for a lack of a decent BCI.

Once a decent brain-computer interface is available I can lose all that nonsense and just be a head, even take the flesh off my skull so I don't have to worry about an itchy nose.


Life support could come from artificial organs or until they're developed I could make do with lobotomized bio-compatible pigs (lol piggybacking) it's a distasteful mental image but nobody can fault pigs for lacking vitality.

 

[CatGoddess]

what about the general degradation of your DNA via mutation? It seems you would have to keep replacing every single cell in your body and keep a "clean", unmutated copy of your original DNA somewhere

Fresh DNA is fairly robust; the replication only starts going seriously awry as the telomeres on the ends of chromosomes (look it up - they're kind of like the aglets on shoelaces) wear down. They're looking into methods to increase the enzyme telomerase (which decreases in concentration as people age), which can reverse the shortening of telomeres.

@Cognisant I'd like to get my neural circuitry slowly replaced until I can become a self-learning/improving AI. Of course, it would be infinitely preferable if I can somehow make those final steps of transcending the need for a body/living in a self-controlled simulation myself, so that I can hide my consciousness down in a bunker on another planet where nobody else can tamper with my brain.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

Lol, catgoddess that was a bit condescending. Telomeres are pretty common knowledge dear. At least here.

 

[Cognisant]

 

[sushi]

AI and genetics are going to blend together eventually.

 

[rlnb]

If I could, I would remove everything except my brain, hands (for holding objects and typing ), legs(for motion) , mouth(for speech) , eyes and ears. The rest of my body/functions are pretty useless to me anyway and just a burden.

 

[ZenRaiden]

You guys do realize that technology is as fragile too. I mean the body is fragile, but the more complex tech you get the greater chance it gives out.

I mean look at heart pumps. They cant even make decent heart pump to support you for few years.

 

[Cognisant]

The human heart sets a high bar for both performance and durability and unlike a mechanical pump it's self lubricating and self repairing, truly an amazing machine, I dare say it may be a hundred years before we can make a synthetic heart that is an equivalent let alone superior to a natural human heart.

But as every engineer knows everything is a trade off, the old adage in car manufacturing was "low cost, safe design, high performance, pick two" implying that whichever two you pick you'll have to sacrifice the third, of course manufacturing technology has improved a lot in recent decades. Anyway my point is that we may not be able to make a pump that's as small and powerful and reliable as the human heart but if we sacrifice one of those conditions we can more easily achieve the other two.

Rather than having one small heart inside the body we could have a dozen large pumps outside the body with one-way valves such that if any one pump fails the other eleven pumps will keep the blood flowing. Indeed there's no reason why each pump couldn't be capable of doing 100% of the pumping so even if eleven pumps failed simultaneously (an astonishingly unlikely event) the last working pump could still do the job all by itself.

This is why BCI (Brain Computer Interface) technologies like Elon's Neuralink are so important, almost all of the life support technologies already exist the final piece of the puzzle is enabling someone to keep their brain in one location while their mind is free to live a relatively full life via a remote controlled robotic body.

 

[Black Rose]

The immune system causes old age. The brain is not immune to this. If you want to live past old age you need an artificial immune system. That way the brain survives. And you have less need of replacing body parts. Blood comes from bone marrow and would be the place to start.

 

[ZenRaiden]

The human heart sets a high bar for both performance and durability and unlike a mechanical pump it's self lubricating and self repairing, truly an amazing machine, I dare say it may be a hundred years before we can make a synthetic heart that is an equivalent let alone superior to a natural human heart.

But as every engineer knows everything is a trade off, the old adage in car manufacturing was "low cost, safe design, high performance, pick two" implying that whichever two you pick you'll have to sacrifice the third, of course manufacturing technology has improved a lot in recent decades. Anyway my point is that we may not be able to make a pump that's as small and powerful and reliable as the human heart but if we sacrifice one of those conditions we can more easily achieve the other two.

Rather than having one small heart inside the body we could have a dozen large pumps outside the body with one-way valves such that if any one pump fails the other eleven pumps will keep the blood flowing. Indeed there's no reason why each pump couldn't be capable of doing 100% of the pumping so even if eleven pumps failed simultaneously (an astonishingly unlikely event) the last working pump could still do the job all by itself.

This is why BCI (Brain Computer Interface) technologies like Elon's Neuralink are so important, almost all of the life support technologies already exist the final piece of the puzzle is enabling someone to keep their brain in one location while their mind is free to live a relatively full life via a remote controlled robotic body.

With enough time passing and growing technology knowledge things will be possible, but I think a lot of people are sort of always buying into a lot of hype. Remember its easy to talk about stuff, but actually doing something takes time and resources and lot of effort of lot of people. Neural link is just a new thing who knows what progress can be done in this area. In respect lets see what other technologies have been developed. I mean the jet engine is still the same designe since 1945 in principal. The combution engine has been tweaked, but its still the same principal. In the 50s there was a huge hype about atomic powered airplanes. Soviets even had desgined some of the planes. Not sure if they ever took off, most likely not, because as far as I know its not feasable. The fad of nuclear powered vehicles went away as fast as it came racing in. There were many fads and most of those fads only survived in sci fi.

Few decades ago cancer cure was one pill away nowdays chemo and other things are still much the same deal with minor adjustments. Yeah there is lot of talk about possible pill treatements, but they have been around for far too long for people to believe in that.

Pumps are easy to make, but you need a whole circulating system, but if you have many pumps they have to work just right. Whats going to regulate them a software on a computer? I mean didnt they make a plane not so long ago that had to be grounded, because software made it lot dangerous than a regular plane? Yet people talk about these planes being piloted by computers in near future? I mean easy to imagine and easy to say, but just adding sligh level of complexity adds number of problems exponentially. Your blood needs proper temperature and its produced by the body and has to have the right consistence. Where are you going to place these pumps without making the body clumsy and akward looking.

 

[Cognisant]

You still don't understand the brain doesn't move, making a full life support system is possible but making it mobile isn't very practical.

Think of it like the Mars rover, we haven't gone to Mars but we have robots there and we control them from Earth. The brain on life support can stay in one room in a building (or a bunker deep underground) and via a brain-to-computer interface (like neuralink) it can control a robot elsewhere in the world through the global telecommunications network.

The life support machinery can be huge and heavy and complicated with many redundancies and backup power supplies, that's fine it's not going anywhere. Unlike organs in the body these machines don't need to be small or light indeed they don't even need to be very reliable, as I said you can have multiple machines supporting the same process and if some fail you just replace them.