X-Message-Number: 2838 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: CRYONICS Re: Profit Motive + Anti-Ageing Discoveries Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 00:23:47 -0700 (PDT) Hi guys! Money is desirable but money cannot alone buy everything desired. In a way the problem Ben Best speaks of resembles that we might have in controlling a robot: we need to keep a watch on it all the time so as to be sure that it really does what we want, and not what it (wrongly) thinks we want. In this sense, even if we use hired help, professional or not, some real cryonicist will be needed to keep a watch over that hired help. REGARDING chemicals which increase CELL lifespans: Unfortunately, its not at all clear that Hayflick's ideas really pertain to our own aging --- except as possibly setting a limit which no one has yet reached because of other breakdowns which happen first. (I know Hayflick would disagree!). My main reason for saying this is that work on serial transplantation of skin (say) across generations of rats seems to take the skin along for a far longer time than cell lifespan experiments would suggest. Lifespan in culture is a much simpler thing than lifespan in a living animal; and it is the latter which we really want. It's not an accident that these experiments were only done on cell cultures, since the effects of a drug will be much better controlled in that simple case. When Kevin asks for results on whole animals he goes to the heart (or nucleus?) of the matter. What we might REALLY try to do with cells is to find the genetic controls on aging... by which I mean the aging of the whole animal. We live longer than chimpanzees, for instance, and the genetic difference between us and chimps cannot be very large. Long long life, Thomas Donaldson () [ Thomas, thanks for your comments. (I was hoping that someone knowledgeable would comment on the "Anti-Ageing Discoveries.") FYI: It was "" who asked about whole animal models, so I can't take credit for that. - KQB ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2838