Could humans live longer?

I was just thinking about a magazine article I had read awhile ago. It reffered to this 12-year-old boy, somewhere in the US, I think, who had the "body" of an 80-year-old. His skin was wrinkled and clung close to his bones. He had already had at least 3 major heart attacks. I was wondering if this could be reverse-engineered. Could the hormone imbalance that caused that be underbalanced so you age at nearly 1/2 to 1/4 the normal speed? If a 20-year-old would drink/take this formula, they would stay looking and acting as young and strong as they had been for many years to come, and may live easily to 120-140 years old! The problem, however, is that the brain, of course, is not included in the aging, so you would probably still loose memory and stuff, but that has yet to be tested.

 

Egads, I hope not! The population is already out of control with all these crazy useless old fuckers living past 65!

 

Just wait until you are on your death bed at 70 and you will wish you had gone with it!

 

I have every intention of seeing to it that I am dead before 70. If I don't, I'm sure someone else will

 

I'm not interested in stupid comments like that. You have no respect for your elders! When your grandparents and parents die, will you just say "So long, suckers!", or will you grieve over their graves? Think of all they have done for you, raising you and all, just so you can think they are just crowding the Earth. If we need more space, we can built on the moon, or underwater! Or build cities up in the sky, or make more space stations. We are fully capable of having enough room and should appreciate how long our elders stay with us!

 

Well, people are living to be older. The reason that guy lived to be 12 and looked old was because it's a desease, I don't exactly know what it is called but you get it when you are first born. Any ways, it may be possable to create something that could make people live longer, but I don't think there is a cure to the disease that makes younger people age faster, if there was a cure, then we could create longer youth with it. I'm quite sure of it.

 

Um, actually... my grandparents have been noticeably absent from my life for over 20 years. Never really knew them. And my parents have fucked things up for me far more than enough to outweigh any good they've done. Other than the whole sperm donor thing, I don't feel I owe them anything more.

The fact is: I despise old people. They annoy the living fuck out of me. I earnestly believe that once a person gets to the point that they have nothing more to contribute to the world, they should get the hell off.

And I don't see moon or underwater colonization happening anytime soon, regardless of what you might have seen on Nickelodeon or the Cartoon Network.

 

It's all in indentifying the hormone. If we can identify the hormone that creates the imbalance, we can underbalance it, not so we don't grow at all, but so we grow much slower. Maybe blood tests will do it...

 

Death is a natural process. People die. It's part of life- and when a person dies, mourn, grieve, do whatever you need. But people need to accept that they'll die... basically there's no point in trying to live to be 120 or whatever. You'd be a shrivled ball of dust.

Good advice, me thinks. Plus, building cities in the sky is impossible. What would keep them up? Same goes for cities underwater- they would constantly need to be refilled with oxygen. Despite what you say, there really isn't enough room for everyone to live to be in their hundreds. This would upset the natural balance of things far more than it already has, the world would be filled with humans, and we'd probably wipe everything else off in our stupidity and greed.

 

Radical science theories and pulp-fiction drama plots aside, research shows that while the average human lifespan has in fact been increasing lately due to the improved standard of living, there appears to be some sort of biological "cap" to growth.

Theories abound: some say that we gradually wear out our body, some say our cells are programmed to stop dividing, some think the gradual weakening of the immune system renders old people vulnerable, some think free radicals accumulate more in the body as time passes; etc.

My personal arrogant, uninformed theory is that humans just aren't meant to live that long.

 

I don't think it's that simple. Well, I know it's not that simple, I just don't know how. That disease is called Progeria, btw. The only reason I know this is because of talk shows that have "the old children" on them.

I saw some documentery on this, so I have a lot of big words floating in my head with not a lot of knowledge to back it up. According to the documentary, what causes our cells to stop replicating are telomeres. The analogy that was drawn was that our DNA (?) was like a shoestring and the telomeres were the little nibs on the end keeping the whole thing from unraveling. Our bodies produce an enzyme (?) called telomerase which tells the telomere how many replications it should allow before it stops the cell from splitting.

Or something like that. Or maybe that was a show about cancer and how the telomere gets fucked up and the cells start dividing uncontrollably leading to a tumor.

Where's Ferret when you need him? He's probably off planning his empire after the TDZK reset when he should be here giving biology lessons.

 

Heh. That's 2 threads now with that line. Maybe that should be the TA motto: "Where's Ferret??"

 

Or maybe "Got Ferret?"

 

heh. I like it

 

Well, my Human Development finals are three days away so I'm sort of a temporary authority on the subject... sorta

 

Actually, scientists have no real idea why people die. No real explanation. The best thing I know is that after the flood, the Bible says that God said how old people will live before they die. Now, I know we can't beat that limit, but maybe we can make more people reach it...

 

Gadzook. Why does god always have to get brought into things? Maybe he'd just prefer to be left out of a discussion for once? Didja ever think maybe he's sittin' up there thinking, "Damn, people, leave me the hell alone for once! I did NOT say that, and could really give two shits how long you annoying fucks live!"

Just wondering

 

I'm more interested in quality of life than squeezing the max number of candles on your cake before you die. Would you rather live 65 years, hitting your peak at 25 and staying there for 40 years, or would you rather be old at 65 and live til 130 getting more decrepit each year?

 

Didja ever think maybe he's sittin' up there thinking, "Luchaire had better have cleared things up with my son and I before he dies, or he will think a third-degree burn is lukewarm!"

Just wondering

 

Yeah, thought about it. Then decided it was bunk and moved on. Decided to take responsibility for my own life and my decisions instead of pawning themself off on some dude nailed to a post 2000 years ago. Somehow, the idea of a god who would inflict an eternity of punishment for a few years of minor mistakes doesn't exactly jive with the "loving, merciful" god he is purported to be.