can't really speak to the science here (or anywhere, for that matter), but i'm moved by how intuitively sensible it is that we might live longer without our genitals.
Posted by AlecEiffel at October 24, 2003 01:53 PMyeah, I've gotta say... I feel like my genitals are gonna get me killed more often than not.
I've always been a big proponent of the "with immortality comes sterility" law. I really think we're heading towards the scientific plausibility of increasing our healthy lifespan by centuries. If we do that though, anyone who gets it has to have never had kids and be willing to be irreversibly sterilized. Exceptions could be made for people who make extraordinary contributions to humanity, like Colin.
Of course, then who's to say which people get that? I guess colin gets to say. Instead, perhaps when you get sterilized, you get to freeze some of your sex cells but get a death sentence on your offspring's fourtieth birthday.
I hate to say it, but that is some of the dumbest science pseudo-reporting I've ever heard. But at least it's based on good research.
We actually talked in journal club today about the Science article on which this blurb is based. It's a great paper. It tells us a lot about the biology of soil-dwelling worms of the genus Caenorhabditis. What it does _not_ do, despite the allusions in the Ananova piece, is tell us how to make humans live for 500 years.
By all means, let's go ahead and knock out our insulin function. Who doesn't love FULL BLOWN DIABETES. C. elegans has the advantages of not dying from things like oh, say, total lack of glycogen storage, heart failure and renal failure (which, BTW, can lead to multi-organ system failure, which is what killed Johnny Cash.) They don't die of these things because, in addition to not having most of the requisite organs, just don't live long enough for them to develop. That's why mice, which lack much of the tumor suppression function we have, don't often die of spontaneous cancer.
And as for IGF-1, who needs soft tissue? Of course, with low enough IGF-1, growth hormone will go through the roof, which will only serve to exacerbate the poor glucose retention due to the insulin k/o.
It's blurbslike this that confuse people as to what medical science can and cannot do, makes our moronic president ban stem cell line research (which doesn't kill fetuses, BTW), and frighten people away from potentially economy and ecology saving techlologies like genetically modified foods and irradiated meat.
So I'll keep my junk, thank you very much.
Even if I'm not doing much with it these days.
Posted by: e lo at October 24, 2003 10:24 PMtee hee. you said "journal club."
Posted by: Shock G at October 24, 2003 11:32 PM