what would be ideal age to live to?

[jefhatfield]

having worked in a hospital for three years, most people do not have a good time in their 80s and 90s and what some medically call alive is not living

i think 70, give or take a few years seems ideal to me

35 is middle age, not 50, unless you are going to live to 100 years old and see everything from the first car and airplane to the first 1 ghz personal computer

it amazes me what a child born this year will see if they make it to 100 years of age...cures for all diseases, space travel, peace in the middle east, contact with aliens, cars that don't need gasoline, healthier people, time travel? apple regaining the market share and becoming bigger than microsoft? who knows?

[D0ct0rteeth]

its all relative

I know emotionally dead people at 25 and I know lively 80 year olds.

As long as you do things with your life that is all that matters. I make monthly goals and resolutions in my life and I pack more into a week than lets say my parents do in a year. As long as you are active and seek out new oportunities in your life than god bless ya.

Life is too short as it is.. i can't imagine sitting in a assisted living center eating applesause.. i'd rather die of a heart attack trying to jog a marathon.

I want to live forever. I have too much to do.

[Royal Pineapple]

personally i dont want to live past 65 years of life, but i will never grow older than 15
forever young

[rainman::|:|]

eleventy-one.


pnw

[MacMaster]

I want to live forever...Death does not sound that great to me...wait! I'm only 14 so that means I have about 66 years for someone to come up with some technology that will let you live forever...

[jefhatfield]

Originally posted by paulwhannel
eleventy-one.


pnw

110...right?

well, then you may have some issues with wrinkles, gray hair, and memory loss and the most solid food you can chew on will be cream of wheat

and the only thing viagra will do is make an eighty year old look sexy

[irmongoose]

Until I have nothing else to do.




irmongoose

[748s]

scientists and futurologists are saying we'll be either the last generation to die or the first to live forever.

[rainman::|:|]

First off, 111 secondly, the idea of long prolonged or "indefinite" life is rather scary, Vonnegut has good insight in his ideas about forced sterilization and suicide booths in a world horribly overcrowded... i'd rather bow out gracefully...


pnw

[resm]

at the current level of physical development that our body has reached, the maximum life span we can expect under the best of conditions is 120 yrs (give and take a few).
As more mental and then later spiritual we human beeings are becoming, as longer our physical body will last, since our body will be lesser depending on our physical strenght and more on our mental and spiritual capability.

To assume or dream about that this will be possible within a generation or two is rather silly and not very scientific.

To even try to throw sand into the eyes of people and make them believe that we soon will reach the stage of living forever is nothing else than showtime bull...t since NOTHING in this physical universe last's forever.

And thanks God for that.
If we look at what a mess our dear politicians (the so called leaders of society) have brought humanity into, we can only hope and pray that at least THEY will never last forever

Besides, this world is not overcrowded at all but rather our population is very inefficiently distributed.
Overcrowding is another showtime bull...t feed to us by our politicians who are to incompetent, lazy and most of the time to corrupt to establish a system that utilizes our resources properly so that there would be more than enough space and food for every living soul.

And THAT would realy help to increase our life span

[Sepulchre]

Originally posted by 748s
scientists and futurologists are saying we'll be either the last generation to die or the first to live forever.

Sounds like a nightmare either way

[dnte42]

I figure, once I can't do more than half the things that I want to (physically or mentally) it's getting about time. I definately don't want to live forever...it would just get old after a while. I wanna have an excuse to be old, senile, and grumpy for a few years and call it quits.

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by 748s
scientists and futurologists are saying we'll be either the last generation to die or the first to live forever.

with help from the aliens?

sorry, but thowing things in here like this without at least a little backup with links or facts doesn't help.

There is a protein, telemerase (not sure on the spelling) that has been proven to be directly involved with aging in pretty much all animals. Each cell starts out with a certain amount and when the cell divides, it splits the protein. Its needed to keep the cell alive and eventually when there isn't enough of the protein, the cell can't sustain itself. Research has been ongoing to help the cells replace this protein. And it has been done in lab animals, mice and insects.

What will that do? It will allow you to look like 30 when you die at 92 of clogged arteries. So you might be able to live a little longer, but until we actually figure out how to prevent strokes and other simillar diseases, you're not going to live forever.

Now, imagine going to a bar and meeting someone who looks like their 30 but actually grew up with your grandparents......and they're hitting on you

[matthew24]

As long as you know the differnce between OS X and Windows!

[King Cobra]

>First off, 111

You know, Paul, the world's oldest man lived to 111 and was a farmer, but passed away a few years ago. You might break his record.

Too bad I missed seeing Hailey's comet in '86. Well, I plan to live until I see it again in person in 2062. Then I can die happily.

[resm]

Originally posted by dukestreet
with help from the aliens?

why should they be interested in make us live longer ?
They most propably would shake their heads about our stupidity and then get the hell out of here as fast as they could

[topicolo]

Originally posted by dukestreet

There is a protein, telemerase (not sure on the spelling) that has been proven to be directly involved with aging in pretty much all animals. Each cell starts out with a certain amount and when the cell divides, it splits the protein. Its needed to keep the cell alive and eventually when there isn't enough of the protein, the cell can't sustain itself. Research has been ongoing to help the cells replace this protein. And it has been done in lab animals, mice and insects.

Actually, you've gotten that all mixed up. Telomerase doesn't split up after cell division at all. What really happens is this:
Cells have chromosomes, these cromosomes are composed of a strand of DNA wrapped around little balls of protein, forming something called a histone. These histones wrap themselves into a coil called a supercoil and theys form the chromosome.
So what are at the ends of the strands of DNA?
Teleomeres (not telomerase. that's the protein). -->Telomeres are sequences of nonsensical DNA which are used to cap the ends of the useful DNA so none of it gets lost during DNA replication. Normally, after a cell replicates its DNA some of the telomeres gets lost (about 100 base pairs). In some cells, a protein called telomerase replaces the lost telomeres. Most somatic cells don't have much telomerase so after a while, the telomerase gets worn off and DNA damage occurs when cells divide. That's when the cell commits suicide (or commits apoptosis if you want the nerdy term). If you give a cell lots of telomerase, the telomeres get replenished, and the cell SHOULDN'T die, but there are still ways that it could suffer enough damage to die eventually.

I hope I cleared up that misconception for you guys.

[tcolling]

yesterday

[topicolo]

uh oh. looks like someone needs some prozac...

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by topicolo

I hope I cleared up that misconception for you guys.

thanks topicolo! I was trying to remember what I had read in an article that had been posted in on CNN a year or so ago.

What they were also discussing was that most researchers invloved in life extention work were treating aging as a disease -- interesting approach. I believe we'll see some benefit in our life time, but being able to indefinitely extend our lifespan doesn't seem possible any time soon. Like you said, there are plenty of other ways for cells to die.

D

[topicolo]

I think they need to find a cure for cancer before this becomes viable. 1/4 of all people will get cancer in their lifetime, all from cellular mutations caused by smoking, ingesting carcinogens, viruses (yes! it happens. You are more likely to get cancer if you've had mono), the sun, random background radiation, nature playing tricks on you, etc.

And this is without an enhanced lifespan! Can you imagine 80% of all "enhanced" people dying of stuff like heart disease and cancer? ugh. I've seen pictures of people rotting away due to cancer, and I sure as hell don't want to go through it myself.

BTW, if you want to support cancer research check out my thread here

[DarkNovaMatter]

Hmmm, personally I will go with nanotech- http://itri.loyola.edu/ConvergingTechnologies/

It just seems like a better way and also would be nice to see the technological evolution of mankind, course I could always see the nuke that started WW3 , but it would be interesting.



P.S.- Take a look at the PDF -watch out a 4.5 meg PDF- 407 pages, overall very interesting career to get into..)

[bousozoku]

It's got to be 21. You've had your fun and lived your life to the fullest and there's no way that you can live down all those things you did while you were having fun. This way, you don't have to face people after you've stopped having fun.

[mischief]

Oddly enough I have the feeling that Cancer is the key to immortality.

What is the only other kind of Cell that behaves as Cancer does when it divides?

Stem cells.

What if Cancer was begun in the Stem cells that exist in most every tissue?


Nobody has (to my knowledge) witnessed a cell going cancerous. Perhaps they have stimulated a few in a dish with chemicals at high concentrations but such tests are meaningless if not on living, connected tissue.

I wonder if the concentration of Stem Cells in a tissue correlate with it's likelihood of going malignant?

If Cancer is just a misfire of Stem cells than we have 2 issues:


What can be used to buffer stem cells (chemically) so that they are more stable?

What can be used to trigger Stem cells such that they replenish old tissue rather than just going nuts occasionally?



The answer to these and many more questions can be found where Nanotech and Tissue engineering from stem cells collide methinks.

[topicolo]

Whoa, that's just messed up.

Cancer cells arise because of damage to the cell's DNA. They are undiffferentiated and resemble scar tissue more than other cells, especially stem cells. Like stem cells, they can divide indefinately, but unlike them, cancer cells do so because the genes that tell the cell to stop are damaged. A cancer cell divides so quickly that most of the time, it doesn't even fully duplicate it's organelles for distribution to each daughter cell. Stem cells don't do that.

Stem cells ARE NOT found in every tissue, as you say. They are found only in select places, such as your bone marrow, your umbilical cord, or the cells of an early embryo. If cancer happened to an embryo, the embryo would just die very early and be flushed from the mother's womb.

The factors that affect the probability of a tissue going malignant are, like I've stated before, based on your exposure to carcinogens such as radiation, certain compounds, etc. Stem cells have NOTHING special to do with cancer cells. They can become carcinogenic, but the probability of that happening is as high as any other cell.

Learn about stem cells here
It's on the NIH (National Institute for Health) website. Read about it, and you won't be making crazy statements like that again