We Die Too Soon

 

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I'm seventy-seven years old, and I am far from convinced that my peers and I have any great accumulated store of wisdom. Indeed, I have the opposite opinion that, starting around forty years of age, our thoughts harden as much as our arteries.

Although my particular story is anecdotal, so are all the presumptions and assumptions that seem to guide the present discussion on the purported benefits of longevity. This Journal is presumably titled "The Scientist" for good reason: among other things, this seems to imply that discussions should be limited to definable and/or measurable topics.

I challenge most of the earlier writers to write down an understandable definition of "wisdom" and then to demonstrate that the elders of the tribe (prior to senility) have an excess of "wisdom" over their younger relatives.

JoB

These blog-like comments, most of which are just(and reasonably so) opinions or hypotheses, rather than facts, are the reason I refuse to look at "Wickipedia" for any references. As far as I can tell, nothing needs to be peer-reviewed or justified in order to be included.

By the way, when looking at blogs, "I will defend to the death your right to write, but I refuse to believe any of it without proof".

Oh, and my opinion on the article: Nature isn't really interested in prolonging life of an organism beyond the age when it's finished spreading its genes around. We will need to do some major biologic meddling to extend our lifespans. Despite the increase in elderly humans around the world, I haven't seen one that has lived beyond 125 or so (depending on whose records you believe).

In a world with too many people already, most of whom are unable to eat enough or live the most basic subsistance existence, I am apalled at discussions of increasing human longevity. Futurists talk of all the great health improvements and long-lived first-worlders without ever considering the resources that will be required to support the ever-increasing numbers of people in the developed world while the rest of the population struggles to support them.

Only the Baby Boomer generation -- who we can thank for bringing all of this research forward in the first place -- could be so self-absorbed and terrified of death that they want to pour money into this kind of myopic concept.

Here's a crazy idea: Why not do the best you can in the time you've got to improve the lots of everyone, not just those who can afford longevity treatments?

I, with all due respect, found the article ￂﾓ We die too soonￂﾔ has brought a meaningless and probably absurd idea. Just a glimpse of the history of science and human evolution, you can easily find that ALL works contributing to our fundamental understanding of nature and universe were made by people at their youth. Those include young Darwin and Einstein. I dare you would ever find an exception. In fact, when people become aged, they might get the thought that they are wise but they are actually not. It could be no good. My opinion is that they might get wise in social activities, but likely at the expense of their loss of creativity and openness.

Whatￂﾒs more, you know how much your are troubled when you have to spend time writing, talking to, and meeting with those prominent (and probably aged) scientists in order get they know your face for the sake of the diminishing funding opportunities.

Dr. Goodall...

The human life span, (short by your standards), is sufficient for most people to make seminal contributions to science and society. And in some fields (music and mathematics), age is actually a deterrent. Mathematics is especially relevant.

Given the rapid increase in data generation abilities of modern science, your "Methuselahs" will be severely handicapped if not for smart young mathematicians.

What you should be worrying about is how to get smarter people to work on problems together.

Remember the saying....
White hair is a sign of age, not of wisdom.

I am sorry, and with all due respect, I feel you suffer from your own particular brand of brain washing that exceeds that we must do what nature (evolution) or god or karma has dictated. These sentiments could not be further from the truth...

This is continued -- due to size, did not wish to be impolite and post the equivalent of a book here without permission -- on my own blog Think More Critically available here:

http://think-a-lot.blogspot.com/

When science has nearly accepted evolution and is not interested in any other theories on the emergence of life from non-life, its proponents, the scientists must rely upon this force and forget the rest. Death is inevitable for the propagation of new DNA or RNA based life forms No matter what we do can relieve us from the pains of old age and the peaceful death.
For the believers of prophetic religions it is eternal heaven or hell. For the philosophical believers of eastern religions, it is life, samsAra, and karma. We do not want dictators, unreasonable presidents, murders, and deadly viruses or bacteria following the paths of evolution to longer lives. Perhaps there is no escape from mutating viruses or bacteria as they have equal rights to survive in the struggle, but many of us will get tired of our lives because of the continues discrimination shown to us by our so-called superiors.
Can any scientist believe that as you are here now, you were here before, and will be here again to defend the current views on science after being brain washed by high sounding research projects?
I would prefer life as long as I am healthy, productive for the society, and act as a good human being for the world. Would welcome death any time it happens rather than becoming a burden on the future generation.

Dr. Markandeswar Panda, Ph.D.(BU);Ph.D.(UCSC)
Department of Chemistry at UTSA and
Department of Biochemistry UTHSCSA
San Antonio, TX

Anti-senile arguments are quite attractive in that they postpone but can't prevent death. Forget about ageing, can anyone hardly stop the metastases of cancerous cells and eliminate 'remission' from the medical dictionary. I think instead of pinning our only hope on medical breakthroughs, quality palliative-care must be undertaken with an invisible undercurrent. As for wisdom , is there any research study that categorically proves that it is a senile sanctuary? More than the need for the wise (who can come from any age), the focus must rest on alleviating conditions like hypochondria that plague the mind so much that even a placebo can't placate the situation.

To Gregory,

Last time I checked birds ARE warm blooded after all, as were their ancestors the dinosaurs. I'd say your premise needs work if this component is heavily depended upon.

FutureQ

It is my opinion that, as people age, they do not get wiser because they have lived longer, but because death comes nearer.

They _do_ get more experienced, but not wiser.

Thus an 80-year-old is wiser compared to a 40-year-old, not because he has lived 40 more years, but because he knows he is going to kick the bucket pretty soon.

Boys will be boys no matter how long they live.

In this issue of The Scientist are a clutch of articles on metabolic theory as preached by Geoffrey West et al. West et al. [2004, 2002] suggest that Kleiber's Law might be pertinent to the aging process. Kleiber's Law models the energy requirements of biological masses of organic molecules necessary for the survival of that mass. West et al. don't say how, but it is apparent from their treatment of metabolism and Klebier's Law that their treatment will tell us absolutely nothing about aging. West et al. limit the ambit of metabolism to basal considerations involving vascularity, and include thermogenesis as part of metabolism such that the value for metabolic efficiency (ME) is 100%. Kleiber's Law has no term in it for vascularity, fluid dynamic delivery of nutrients (fractal or otherwise), or thermogenesis. Kleiber's Law has merely three terms in it, one of which is missing in all presentations proffered by West et al. The terms are metabolic rate, body mass, and ME. For West et al. ME = 1, and so, for all practical purposes Kleiber's Law reduces to R = Mass to the 3/4 power, and not to the power (4ME-1)/4ME where ME can vary from 0 to 100%.

Without this term, a ratio of the rate of anabolic energy capture and expenditure by mass M, to the rate of availability of energy to be captured and expended, the implications is that human beings are no less and no more efficient than bacteria at capturing and using energy, and that heat energy is every bit on a par with reduction reactions necessary for anabolism. And so we see the ultimate statement of West et al. putting the remaining nails into the coffin lid of any attempt to understand aging, a statement to the effect that a rat and a pigeon of equal mass HAVE THE SAME METABOLIC RATE despite vastly varying life spans.

Kleiber's Law does have great import for understanding aging, but one must escape the restrictions of the incomplete and misleading version offered by West et al. in order to plumb the relevance of the law to the metabolic underpinnings of aging. Examining the term ME we see that it is nothing more than a statement of the efficiency of redox coupling between the organism of mass M and energy sources. When the numbers are run for the equation for values of M from e-15 grams to e+15 grams, and for values of ME from 0 to 100%, and graphs are made showing an assortment of values for M (each in a separate curve) with the X axis as ME and the Y axis as metabolic rate, a fascinating bit of data presents itself that is directly pertinent to aging and the evolution of life on earth.

Entering the table with the notion that life span is directly proportional to metabolic rate, and applying known life spans to the numbers, we see that a 10 gram mouse that lives for three years at 17% ME, lives 1/10th the life span of a 10 gram bird with an ME of 46%. Why is the bird more efficient? Because it is not warm blooded, less energy is lost to heat. It's motor activity and encephalization are far less than that for the mouse which is always on the move, day and night, looking for food. A 100 gram rat of 20% ME lives 1/10th the life span of a 100 gram bird with an ME of 34%.

If we assume then for purposes of analysis that the number 1 for metabolic rate equals 10 years, then we see a 100 Kg. human being with an ME of 31% has a life span potential of 92 years, and, at 32%, the life span potential increases to 124 years. The exponential effects of ME affect metabolic rate pronouncedly, and the definition of the term for ME, because it clearly suggests electrochemistry what with the redox coupling aspects, justifies the deductive prediction that discharge of a battery into the body to trigger reduction reactions there, increases the ME of the human as if he/she had a second, but removable stomach.

What is more fascinating still is that when the numbers are massaged for very, very tiny things like mitochondria, bacteria, and single celled organisms, the metabolic underpinnings of all of life and evolution seem to order themselves in a very coherent and suggestive manner, with evolution driven first and foremost by equilibration of the effects of fluctuations of ME driven primarily by energy scarcity, a diminution of the denominator of ME. Moving to larger organisms one sees clearly the relation between food sources and reproductive strategy, a recapitulation of cellular division in an attempt to increase metabolic rate as it drops for small things that increase in either ME or mass. The proliferation of cancer cells and stem cells is also modeled by the numbers, which suggest how the two differ, and how to trigger apoptosis in the former.

Relevant here as to a way to stop the degeneration of aging is that the equation is not only pertinent to field metabolic rate of the multicellular organism and the basal metabolic rates of its cells, but it is also pertinent to the somatic structures of the multicellular organism. The equation then tells us how to build muscle and restore organ using electrochemistry to increase the efficiency of the somatic structure in a simulation of neurotrophism.

Because Kleiber's Law is relevant over such a wide range of values for mass, and because it accounts in metabolic terms for cellular division, quorum sensing, and the parturition of multi-cellular organisms, it is also relevant to social theory. The structure of social organisms, from ant hills to whale pods to human society, the equation suggests, in order to be on sound biological and evolutionary grounds, stresses the importance of the equilibration of wealth and energy to the basal elements of that society. For human society the basal element is the couple, not the individual, and the mathematics for mass less than one gram is relevant. The details are to extensive to even hint at here.

What is presented here is merely a taste of a vision of the world that is not open to the naive treatment given Kleiber's Law given by West et al. The world Jack Woodall says might be some day, is every bit possible if only electrochemistry is harnessed to extend the fit and healthy lives of centenarians who, theoretically at least, could live as long as 200 years. If anyone would like to read more about this, please contact me at gokelly@charter.net for one or more of the following items:
1. A paper entitled "The Terrestrial Evolution of Metabolism and Life - By the Numbers," with a table and two graphs.
2. A paper entitled "A Mathematical Model of the Electrochemistry of Metabolism - And Its Pertinence to Longevity".
3. A paper entitled "Quarter Power Scaling and Economics"

None of this is available anywhere else in the world. It's all original work. I am unaffiliated and don't give a damn about academic biology where the problem of aging and what to do about it remains insoluble and incomprehensible.

Gregory C. O'Kelly

"Such increasing longevity would require us to develop a progressively deeper understanding of apoptosis, cancer, and diseases such as Alzheimer, and how to conquer them or, at the very least, significantly delay their onset."

I hope we are training the kids to figure this out for us!