Riggen wrote:A *host* of further support technologies will be required to truly achieve an unaging human.
Some of these technologies are being developed now as well. Replacement of complete organs, custom grown using an organism's native cells, is certainly one of the technologies within reach in the next two decades.
In the end, the information space that the human body represents is finite. Given time, we WILL understand every practical aspect of human biology. At which point, the researchers will be politely downsized, and medical technicians invited into their place.
Pardon my skepticism, but my mom is a geneticist (she was on the team that devoloped AZT -- three of her colleagues won the Nobel Prize for medicine for that one,) and I get the inside poop my own self. (Because of my disease, she forwards me all the latest from the biotech and pharmaceutical industries' trade journals.)
Tell ya what. The biotech industry comes up with something that will let me drink liquor again, and I'll skip the extra 900 years.
Bangzoom
94 Ranger of Karana
Veteran Crew, through and through
_______________________________________________________________________________
SicTimMitchell wrote:
Tell ya what. The biotech industry comes up with something that will let me drink liquor again, and I'll skip the extra 900 years.
Its called a "liver transplant".
Correction Mr. President, I DID build this, and please give Lurker a hug, we wouldn't want to damage his self-esteem.
BTW, having a geneticist for a mom can be depressing.
For example, I know that if my HCV is cured, I'm very likely to die of heart failure even though my heart is currently in excellent shape and I actually have low blood pressure. (Oh, and as a side effect of my disease, my platelet count is so low that a stroke is unlikely.)
On the bright side, I'm a former asbestos worker who smokes, but my odds of dying of cancer are still very small. It just doesn't run in either family.
Bangzoom
94 Ranger of Karana
Veteran Crew, through and through
_______________________________________________________________________________
I have a relative and a friend who both died being next on the liver transplant list.
I mean, I'm not pissed at you for saying that, but I realistically have no hope of surviving once I'm to the point of getting on the list. Four million Americans have HCV. They wait until necrotic cirrhosis sets in to even put us on the list.
Bangzoom
94 Ranger of Karana
Veteran Crew, through and through
_______________________________________________________________________________
Oh, one more thing. Less than a million Americans are HIV positive. So I'm pretty certain there'll be a cure, or at least the kind of therapy that is letting HIV patients live so long now. (Protease inhibitors for HCV are about 5 years away.)
Beaucoups bucks await.
Bangzoom
94 Ranger of Karana
Veteran Crew, through and through
_______________________________________________________________________________
