It might be possible to live thirty years longer. I wonder to what degree treating diabetes with metformin will also extend life? I also think that people confuse cause and effect between aging and many of the “diseases of aging.”
I think there’s potential for much more than that. I don’t buy the notion that the body can’t be repaired indefinitely. It violates no laws of physics.
[Afternoon update]
The mystery of the Missing Link has been solved once again!
How they ruined my barbecue (he means grilling).
Two of them gearing up for use after success in mice.
Well, that seems like a bit of good news.
Ladies, there may be good reasons to do a Brazilian clear-cutting (won’t anyone think of habitat-destruction of the lice?) but “hygiene” isn’t one of them.
[Friday-morning update]
Thoughts from a (female) gynocologist.
…isn’t just ripping its customers off, it’s endangering their health.
I rarely shop there. The prices are outrageous, and the benefits vastly overstated. “Organic” is largely a scam. I never pay a premium for it.
…continues to preach junk science:
The American Heart Association recommends a heart-healthy dietary pattern emphasizing fruits, vegetables, whole grains and other nutritious foods and specifically that at least half of grain consumption should be whole grains. Whole grains provide many nutrients, such as fiber, B vitamins, and minerals, which are removed during the refining process.
No protein, no fat. This is the kind of diet that helped kill my father from his second heart attack decades ago, at age 55.
Treating people with them to prevent heart disease is a waste of time (and money). Not news to me, but it’s nice to see more people catching on. I’m still trying to get my brother to get off them.
A new blood test that is 100% accurate in picking it up years before symptoms appear.
That seems like really good news.
…rebel against junk-science dietary recommendations from the National Health Service, improve health.
It would sure be nice if government dietary advice was actually based on science.
In light of the news earlier this week of the discovery of a resistant strain of E. coli, this looks like good news from Harvard:
Erythromycin, which was discovered in a soil sample from the Philippines in 1949, has been on the market as a drug by 1953. “For 60 years chemists have been very, very creative, finding clever ways to ‘decorate’ this molecule, making changes around its periphery to produce antibiotics that are safer, more effective, and overcome the resistance bacteria have developed,” says Dr. Myers, Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in Harvard’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. “That process is semisynthesis, modifying the naturally occurring substance.”
In contrast, the process described in the Nature study involves using “eight industrial chemicals, or substances derived from them,” according to Dr. Myers, and manipulating them in various combinations and then testing the products against panels of disease causing bacteria. This allows us to make new “new compounds in fewer steps than was previously possible.”
For a host of reasons, from the difficulty of developing antibiotics to the relatively low return on investment they offer, by 2013 the number of international pharmaceutical companies developing antibiotics had dwindled to four. And in each 5-year period from 1983 through 2007, the number of new antibiotics approved for use in the U.S. decreased, from 16 at the beginning of that period to only five by its end.
One thing that has complicated antibiotic development is a perceived reluctance by federal agencies to fund the research. In fact, Dr. Myers says, his new antibiotic development system would have been impossible without support from a Harvard alum and his wife who are interested in science and Harvard’s Blavatnik Accelerator Fund, which provided support for the initial creation of Myers’s company Macrolide Pharmaceuticals.
“I was making a presentation to a group of visiting alumns interested in science and one, Alastair Mactaggart, asked me about funding. I told him I had no funding because at that time we didn’t, and he followed me back to my office and said, ‘this is ridiculous: we have to do something about this’.”
Gee, it’s almost as though the government is completely incompetent at its core functions while busying itself with things that are none of its business.