Category Archives: Health

Business, Health, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Reversing Aging

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A long but interesting interview with George Church:

Certainly if you could fix all nine hallmarks at once that would do well. Reversal of aging has been demonstrated in simple animals. Some people will dismiss those as too simple — because they have such a short life already, it’s not surprising you can make them live longer. But I think it’s quite clear that aging is programmed in some sense. It’s not like you’ve been programmed to die at some age, but the laziness of evolution has resulted in your program to not avoid dying.

Over evolutionary time, to use analogy, it was not cost effective to invest a lot of your precious food to live longer because you’re going to get eaten by a wolf anyway. Now we have plenty of excess food, and rather than becoming obese let’s spend that on living longer, by spending extra ATP on repair and rejuvenation. That’s something 20-year-olds do fine, but after 60 you stop investing quite as well.

Yes. There has been no evolutionary pressure for us to live longer, but it’s absurd to think it would violate any laws of physics (and ultimately, even biology comes down to physics) that prevent us from living indefinitely long lives. And how soon could it happen?

The simple answer is, I don’t know. Probably we’ll see the first dog trials in the next year or two. If that works, human trials are another two years away, and eight years before they’re done. Once you get a few going and succeeding it’s a positive feedback loop.

That’s pretty exciting, but still: faster, please.

But I did come across this:

If you find that in the western world we’re eating a lot of marbled cow that didn’t exist in the ancient days, all you have to do is get rid of the marbled cow and you’re all set.

Except I’m not aware of any scientific evidence that marbled cow is a problem. I wonder how up on nutrition he is?

Business, Economics, Health, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Trump And John Roberts

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Trump has done what Roberts would not: Start to bring ObamaCare into Constitional compliance.

I continue to believe that there was something very disturbing about Roberts’ last-minute change of position, possible including blackmail. Recent revelations about other instances of the Obama administration spying on its political adversaries do nothing to reduce that belief.

[Update a while later]

ObamaCare was built with intrinsic flaws that Trump is now exploiting. It’s what happens from the hubris of thinking that such landmark social policy doesn’t need bipartisan support.

[Late-night update]

Sorry, everyone, but Trump didn’t instigate the ObamaCare acapolypse.

Nope. It was baked into the cake.

Administrative, Business, Economics, General, Health

Hurricane Update

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We’re now into our second full day without power. Fortunately, we’re flying back to CA tomorrow. Things are slowly getting back to normal in Palm Beach County, but there is still a curfew from dusk to dawn (it just ended for last night). Our ice has essentially melted, and we’re down to the last of our pre-storm food, but Publix are open, and hopefully they’ll start to re supply. We have several fallen limbs to cut up, but Home Depot is out of chain saws, and doesn’t know when they’ll be getting more (the storm moving up north is likely disrupting supply chains).

On the cat front, it seems to be a lymphoma, but an aggressive one. The bad news is that the tumors aren’t shrinking with the steroid treatment, but the good news is that they aren’t growing, either, and she seems to be stable and happy. We don’t get in until after the hospital closes tomorrow, but should be able to pick her up on Thursday and bring her home, for however long she ends up living.

[Thursday-morning update]

We got in about five last eveing, had dinner and went to bed. Feeling much better now, and it’s nice to be back in CA, despite the idiocy of the voters here. Had the first good night’s sleep in days, to cool temperatures and the sound of our new garden fountain outside our window. Going in this morning to bring Rerun home, and try to get things back, as much as possible around here, to normal.