Category Archives: Science And Society

Business, Culinary, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Change

5 Comments

But no hope:

I think that if “wilderness advocates” quoted in the story valued empty ocean more than an oyster farm, they should have paid him to stop, instead of getting the government to make him stop. But hey, that’s just me. The new way to get what you want is to have the state take it for you. It’s different from theft because there are uniforms and everything involved.

Tar and feathers.

Culinary, Health, Science And Society

Coffee

14 Comments

The case for drinking as much as you like.

I’ve been thinking about starting to drink it for health reasons, but “as much as I like” is currently none at all — I’ve just never developed a taste for it, and I’ve never envied people who seem (or claim to be) unable to function in the morning without it. I don’t want to get dependent on it in that way. From the article, the most obvious benefit is to reduce triglycerides, but mine are already very low from my paleo diet.

It wouldn’t be hard for me to take it up, because I make a pot for Patricia every morning. I’d just have to make more.

So I still don’t know what to do about it.

Health, Philosophy, Science And Society

The Secret Of Immortality

4 Comments

From a jellyfish?

[Update a few minutes later]

I posted this without reading it all, because it’s a long. But I found this telling:

Even some of Kubota’s peers are cautious when speaking about potential medical applications in Turritopsis research. “It is difficult to foresee how much and how fast . . . Turritopsis dohrnii can be useful to fight diseases,” Stefano Piraino, a colleague of Ferdinando Boero’s, told me in an e-mail. “Increasing human longevity has no meaning, it is ecological nonsense. What we may expect and work on is to improve the quality of life in our final stages.”

My emphasis. This is a religious belief, not a scientific one.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: life extension through gene therapy:

Mice treated at the age of one lived longer by 24% on average, and those treated at the age of two, by 13%. The therapy, furthermore, produced an appreciable improvement in the animals’ health, delaying the onset of age-­‐related diseases — like osteoporosis and insulin resistance — and achieving improved readings on aging indicators like neuromuscular coordination.

The gene therapy consisted of treating the animals with a DNA-­modified virus, the viral genes having been replaced by those of the telomerase enzyme, with a key role in aging. Telomerase repairs the extreme ends or tips of chromosomes, known as telomeres, and in doing so slows the cell’s and therefore the body’s biological clock. When the animal is infected, the virus acts as a vehicle depositing the telomerase gene in the cells.

This study “shows that it is possible to develop a telomerase-­based anti-­aging gene therapy without increasing the incidence of cancer,” the authors affirm. “Aged organisms accumulate damage in their DNA due to telomere shortening, [this study] finds that a gene therapy based on telomerase production can repair or delay this kind of damage,” they add.

It’s from May, but I don’t recall seeing it.

[Update a while later]

Must be early-onset Alzheimers. I posted about it at the time.