General / Off-Topic We have to end these stories

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Belgian Paralympian Marieke Vervoort has ended her own life through euthanasia at the age of 40.

- from BBC
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/s...Marieke-Vervoort-dies-euthanasia-aged-40.html

This unfortunate person had a degenerative disease, causing much suffering.

In an extensive interview with BBC Radio 5 Live's Eleanor Oldroyd in 2016 she said: "It can be that I feel very, very bad, I get an epileptic attack, I cry, I scream because of pain. I need a lot of painkillers, valium, morphine.

Ok, we don't have the specifics of this illness. But it's likely a genetic deterioration in the nervous system, causing the seizures, and the spinal symptoms.
This is simply intolerable. We should be curing these people, not euthanizing them.

There's a significant pair of advances that came out over the last week that pertain.

1) The DNA Repair advance
2) The Delivery System

Let's talk about the Delivery System first-
One of the biggest problems in fixing DNA of a genetic disease is how to get the change into all the cells in a fully grown organism. It's not a single change in one cell, it has to be as global as possible, and hit as many cells as possible. There is already a natural system that does this, one we are all familiar with: viruses.

A Virus is basically a 3 part thing.
There's a core of genetic material, a protein envelope that holds it and a connection port that can hook it to something on our cells. Susceptible cells have a receptor for the connector.
Once the virus attaches, it opens a hole in the cell membrane, injects its DNA into the cell, and breaks down. But the job is done, that viral DNA gets incorporated into ours, and we start making copies of the virus.

So if we take a virus, cut up the DNA and put in what we want, we will have an "infectious" curative agent. (Theoretically, we could loose that into the wild and vaccinate the whole herd, but I digress) But there are a lot of problems with this.
First, viruses don't infect the whole organism. So whole sections of the body wouldn't be cured.
Second, some people may be immune to that virus. So it simply won't get to target.
Third, once we use a virus on a person, we obviously can't likely use it ever again, because of the immunity problem. So it can only fix ONE set of problems ONCE.
And it's expensive to engineer a whole virus.
Adeno-Associated virus has already been used, in humans, for this.

What we need, is an "artificial virus" which does not provoke an immune response, and which will hit every cell. Something cheap. Reusable, for future troubles.
Needless to say, the hostile implications of that being used for warfare are daunting, and could well exterminate the species. You might think that that research is theoretical, or closely regulated, or far off. But it is upon us.

< This was LAST YEAR...
Source: https://youtu.be/frWklN81hz4?t=844

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3507026/

So it is time to consider the implications that we can directly tinker with our operating systems code, on living people, by delivering DNA changes into the cells. This is being competitively researched. The winner is going to become fabulously wealthy.

The second thing is the actual content and change of the DNA.
It used to be that cutting and pasting DNA caused severe damage by inducing double strand breaks. But those days may be over.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3507026/
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/new-prime-genome-editor-could-surpass-crispr

We have something MUCH better now, called Prime Edit. It only snips one side, so no mutative repair. It's extremely accurate. And it will go automatically to every copy of the targeted gene, like a Search and Replace function. It could fix "89%" of all our genetic woes, according to the popular press. But improvements are already being researched.

Combining these 2 technologies, we basically have the thing done. It's high time we started curing some people, instead of standing by impotently. That's going to come, maybe sooner than we expect.

Oh, and there's one more thing. Fixing old age.

One reason we get old is the accumulation of cells that become senescent, as a result of DNA damage. These zombie cells just sit there, not dying, because the programs to self destruct have failed. They make some bad chemicals, and speed up aging in other cells to boot. So we need to clear them out.

Senolytic drugs are agents that selectively induce apoptosis of senescent cells. These cells accumulate in many tissues with aging and at sites of pathology in multiple chronic diseases. In studies in animals, targeting senescent cells using genetic or pharmacological approaches delays, prevents, or alleviates multiple age-related phenotypes, chronic diseases, geriatric syndromes, and loss of physiological resilience. Among the chronic conditions successfully treated by depleting senescent cells in pre-clinical studies are frailty, cardiac dysfunction, vascular hyporeactivity and calcification, diabetes, liver steatosis, osteoporosis, vertebral disk degeneration, pulmonary fibrosis, and radiation-induced damage.

This is not yet approved in humans. But animal results are staggeringly good. The best combination so far has been Dasatinib and Quercetin. Dasatinib is poisonous, horribly overpriced, and hard to get. Quercetin is in onions. One of those comes from Big Pharma.

UT Health San Antonio researchers, collaborating with the Mayo Clinic and the Wake Forest School of Medicine, are the first to publish results on the treatment of a deadly age-related disease in human patients with drugs called senolytics.

- this year.
I should very much like to try the therapy on patients, but using cancer chemotherapy for old age is not something I could explain easily.

https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2018/06/oisin-biotechnologies-cso-john-lewis-at-undoing-aging/

Well these guys are looking at how we could use the DNA delivery system to target the senescent cells, and introduce a suicide gene to take them out. That is WAY better than using small molecule drugs as in the study above, and likely to get much better age reversal, and be NON-toxic.

We're currently evaluating a variety of constructs to see which one is the best to bring into humans, and - obviously it has been talked about at this conference - the creation of biomarkers that are viable endpoints for clinical trials, and also viable in animal models to look at efficacy. We're keen to talk to anybody who has a great biomarker. We have cohorts of mice in which we are looking at the life span and health span of these mice. We are thinking about the transition to the clinical stage where we're getting GMP manufacture going and doing our GLP toxicity analysis.

The biggest shift in human history could be the radical reduction of the ageing effect.
And it could be here, safely, in less than 10 years. And it's going to be combined with some other things. Like Follistatin gene promoters, so we can all maintain muscle mass, or PGC-1a so we can ALL have endurance like a marathon runner.
The need for this has always been great, but with the coming economic collapse and the vital role being played by the cost of chronic health care, changes the dynamics. If nations get behind the tech, they can totally wipe out much of the health care costs in one go. Imagine- no more heart operations or transplants, reduced cancers, no more hip replacements, no more dialysis.

We could live to see it.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I did not know this athlete but when I saw the news on the internet yesterday, I was sad.

RIP Marieke Vervoort

 

[ethelred]

Here's some graphics on the same issues:-

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Currently 2 humans die every second on the planet. Tick-tock. One second, two deaths. I remember that it frightened me to realize that. Even more frightening though, is that in the exact same second four new humans are born. That is the reason why the population size is currently growing.

If we stopped dying, the population growth rate would double. Currently the population grows by 2 humans every second (4 born minus 2 dying), but without deaths that number would be 4 extra humans per second. If we assumed that the birth rate was constant, then that would add 126 million people every year or 3.8 billion people more until 2050 (30 years from now), and we would be 16.5 billion in 2100. The assumption is wrong though, since more people will mean more children being born, so the numbers would be considerably higher, but that's just hypothetical numbers anyhow. Why?

I know some claim that the Earth is able to sustain life for way over 16.5 billion, but they are plain wrong. They do not know what they are babelling about, even though they try to sound convincing. Therefore the moral of the story is that we must all die some day to make room for new humans, just like humans have died through Earth's history to make room for us. It's not fair, and it's sort of horrible, but it's the way it is.

Enjoy life while it lasts and don't waste your time. Btw. Do not listen to people telling you that what you're doing is a waste of time, unless you think they're right. Whatever rocks your boat is right for you.

If death scares you, try to come to terms with it. It takes time, and it's kind of scary, but it can be done. Be careful though. Reminding people that we're all 100.0% mortal can be quite a party killer

 

[Morbad]

I know some claim that the Earth is able to sustain life for way over 16.5 billion, but they are plain wrong. They do not know what they are babelling about, even though they try to sound convincing.

I don't think you know what you're babbling about.

Therefore the moral of the story is that we must all die some day to make room for new humans, just like humans have died through Earth's history to make room for us.

The humans I already have suit me just fine. No need for new ones.

And no one died to make room for me. They died because they eventually failed to survive.

It's not fair, and it's sort of horrible, but it's the way it is.

The way it is, but perhaps not the way it will always have to be.

Do not listen to people telling you that what you're doing is a waste of time, unless you think they're right. Whatever rocks your boat is right for you.

Being able to enjoy my life, for as long as I choose to, sounds right for me.

If death scares you, try to come to terms with it. It takes time, and it's kind of scary, but it can be done.

Acknowledging the current inevitability of death doesn't make it any less frightening, nor existence any less appealing.

 

[Chris Simon]

- from BBC
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/s...Marieke-Vervoort-dies-euthanasia-aged-40.html

This unfortunate person had a degenerative disease, causing much suffering.



Ok, we don't have the specifics of this illness. But it's likely a genetic deterioration in the nervous system, causing the seizures, and the spinal symptoms.
This is simply intolerable. We should be curing these people, not euthanizing them.

There's a significant pair of advances that came out over the last week that pertain.

1) The DNA Repair advance
2) The Delivery System

Let's talk about the Delivery System first-
One of the biggest problems in fixing DNA of a genetic disease is how to get the change into all the cells in a fully grown organism. It's not a single change in one cell, it has to be as global as possible, and hit as many cells as possible. There is already a natural system that does this, one we are all familiar with: viruses.

A Virus is basically a 3 part thing.
There's a core of genetic material, a protein envelope that holds it and a connection port that can hook it to something on our cells. Susceptible cells have a receptor for the connector.
Once the virus attaches, it opens a hole in the cell membrane, injects its DNA into the cell, and breaks down. But the job is done, that viral DNA gets incorporated into ours, and we start making copies of the virus.

So if we take a virus, cut up the DNA and put in what we want, we will have an "infectious" curative agent. (Theoretically, we could loose that into the wild and vaccinate the whole herd, but I digress) But there are a lot of problems with this.
First, viruses don't infect the whole organism. So whole sections of the body wouldn't be cured.
Second, some people may be immune to that virus. So it simply won't get to target.
Third, once we use a virus on a person, we obviously can't likely use it ever again, because of the immunity problem. So it can only fix ONE set of problems ONCE.
And it's expensive to engineer a whole virus.
Adeno-Associated virus has already been used, in humans, for this.

What we need, is an "artificial virus" which does not provoke an immune response, and which will hit every cell. Something cheap. Reusable, for future troubles.
Needless to say, the hostile implications of that being used for warfare are daunting, and could well exterminate the species. You might think that that research is theoretical, or closely regulated, or far off. But it is upon us.

< This was LAST YEAR...
Source: https://youtu.be/frWklN81hz4?t=844

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3507026/

So it is time to consider the implications that we can directly tinker with our operating systems code, on living people, by delivering DNA changes into the cells. This is being competitively researched. The winner is going to become fabulously wealthy.

The second thing is the actual content and change of the DNA.
It used to be that cutting and pasting DNA caused severe damage by inducing double strand breaks. But those days may be over.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3507026/
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/new-prime-genome-editor-could-surpass-crispr

We have something MUCH better now, called Prime Edit. It only snips one side, so no mutative repair. It's extremely accurate. And it will go automatically to every copy of the targeted gene, like a Search and Replace function. It could fix "89%" of all our genetic woes, according to the popular press. But improvements are already being researched.

Combining these 2 technologies, we basically have the thing done. It's high time we started curing some people, instead of standing by impotently. That's going to come, maybe sooner than we expect.

Oh, and there's one more thing. Fixing old age.

One reason we get old is the accumulation of cells that become senescent, as a result of DNA damage. These zombie cells just sit there, not dying, because the programs to self destruct have failed. They make some bad chemicals, and speed up aging in other cells to boot. So we need to clear them out.



This is not yet approved in humans. But animal results are staggeringly good. The best combination so far has been Dasatinib and Quercetin. Dasatinib is poisonous, horribly overpriced, and hard to get. Quercetin is in onions. One of those comes from Big Pharma.

- this year.
I should very much like to try the therapy on patients, but using cancer chemotherapy for old age is not something I could explain easily.

https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2018/06/oisin-biotechnologies-cso-john-lewis-at-undoing-aging/

Well these guys are looking at how we could use the DNA delivery system to target the senescent cells, and introduce a suicide gene to take them out. That is WAY better than using small molecule drugs as in the study above, and likely to get much better age reversal, and be NON-toxic.



The biggest shift in human history could be the radical reduction of the ageing effect.
And it could be here, safely, in less than 10 years. And it's going to be combined with some other things. Like Follistatin gene promoters, so we can all maintain muscle mass, or PGC-1a so we can ALL have endurance like a marathon runner.
The need for this has always been great, but with the coming economic collapse and the vital role being played by the cost of chronic health care, changes the dynamics. If nations get behind the tech, they can totally wipe out much of the health care costs in one go. Imagine- no more heart operations or transplants, reduced cancers, no more hip replacements, no more dialysis.

We could live to see it.

Okay, couple points here. (however controversial and unpopular)
While I agree with you that medical advanced are amazing and we should definitely try to create a world without suffering etc...

1) If anything is a real threat for this planet, it's human overpopulation. Which is already unmanageable. If we are going to introduce virtual immortality or in the least hundreds of years long life spans, some serious eugenics and breeding regulation MUST take place. We are decades from achieving this, yet we are centuries of maybe millennia from colonizing other planets. This ball of rock is all we have for near future and it's already squeaking in agony under our weight.

2) Euthanasia (somehow I got the feeling you're against it, although maybe I just misunderstood you - it was quite a wall of text)
To be able to take your own life (preferably painlessly and without bothering other people, like firefighters who have to scrape you off the pavement) should be a worldwide acknowledged human right. Especially in regard to my pt. 1). Although I find the fact that in some countries you can get an electric chair for attempted suicide quite funny, we have to work on this. You were brought to this world without your consent so you should be allowed to leave whenever you want. I'd call that polite and the least we can do.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

2) Euthanasia (somehow I got the feeling you're against it, although maybe I just misunderstood you - it was quite a wall of text

Apologies for the length.

I'm strongly in favour of euthanasia. For people.

It's just that these advances can't come fast enough for so many good people, who end up dying.

 

[jasonbarron]

Okay, couple points here. (however controversial and unpopular)
While I agree with you that medical advanced are amazing and we should definitely try to create a world without suffering etc...

1) If anything is a real threat for this planet, it's human overpopulation. Which is already unmanageable. If we are going to introduce virtual immortality or in the least hundreds of years long life spans, some serious eugenics and breeding regulation MUST take place. We are decades from achieving this, yet we are centuries of maybe millennia from colonizing other planets. This ball of rock is all we have for near future and it's already squeaking in agony under our weight.

2) Euthanasia (somehow I got the feeling you're against it, although maybe I just misunderstood you - it was quite a wall of text)
To be able to take your own life (preferably painlessly and without bothering other people, like firefighters who have to scrape you off the pavement) should be a worldwide acknowledged human right. Especially in regard to my pt. 1). Although I find the fact that in some countries you can get an electric chair for attempted suicide quite funny, we have to work on this. You were brought to this world without your consent so you should be allowed to leave whenever you want. I'd call that polite and the least we can do.

The reasons "eugenics and breeding regulation" haven't taken off and aren't popular as you say is because they are evil, and a majority of human's still recognize this. Setting the clinical math aside, the world that embraces those two ideas is neither worth saving nor living in.

 

[jasonbarron]

Apologies for the length.

I'm strongly in favour of euthanasia. For people.

It's just that these advances can't come fast enough for so many good people, who end up dying.

Clarification, please: how exactly are you "in favor of euthanasia?" Do you mean helping ease the pain of the terminal patient such as the one mentioned in the OP, or are you talking something a little broader such as Chris was getting into?

 

[Chris Simon]

The reasons "eugenics and breeding regulation" haven't taken off and aren't popular as you say is because they are evil, and a majority of human's still recognize this. Setting the clinical math aside, the world that embraces those two ideas is neither worth saving nor living in.

Well, it ain't pretty, but in words of the great dr. Attenborough - We became good at changing the environment to benefit the humanity. But maybe it's time to start changing the humanity to benefit the environment.

 

[jasonbarron]

Well, it ain't pretty, but in words of the great dr. Attenborough - We became good at changing the environment to benefit the humanity. But maybe it's time to start changing the humanity to benefit the environment.

I like me some Planet Earth Diaries as much as the next guy don't get me wrong, but no, not at the expense of our humanity.

 

[Chris Simon]

You can look at it from the jungle law perspective, of course. We're the dominant species, therefore we can do what we want, get as comfortable as we want,...

...but the bottom line is the definition of humanity itself and at this point I feel the definition of humanity includes too much selfishness, arrogance and neglect. And that little compassion and responsibility that we've retained, we reserve for ourselves, also. Maybe some bigger picture would come in handy.
You know - to see humanity not as a force to overwhelm, but as a part of the whole system. Because no matter how high and mighty and successful as a species we may see ourselves to be, we have failed as a part of nature. We may see ourselves above the nature, but ultimately we simply stepped aside.

I'm not saying we should flatten our cities and go live on the trees, again (And definitely not to somebody like you, whose life style I respect) but some moderation is in order and if I return to my previous point - what's better? To watch billions people slowly starve in dirt like pigs while hiding behind morals or to not allow them to be born in the first place?
I know I'm coming over as an insensitive idiot, btw. Still, though...

 

[jasonbarron]

You can look at it from the jungle law perspective, of course. We're the dominant species, therefore we can do what we want, get as comfortable as we want,...

...but the bottom line is the definition of humanity itself and at this point I feel the definition of humanity includes too much selfishness, arrogance and neglect. And that little compassion and responsibility that we've retained, we reserve for ourselves, also. Maybe some bigger picture would come in handy.

Well, go ahead and explain to me (please) how eugenics and breeding programs are going to be compassionately and "non-selfishly" enforced by the government. This should really help to sell your point about selfishness/arrogance/neglect being somehow re-mediated from it's present state.

 

[Chris Simon]

Well, go ahead and explain to me (please) how eugenics and breeding programs are going to be compassionately and "non-selfishly" enforced by the government. This should really help to sell your point about selfishness/arrogance/neglect being somehow re-mediated from it's present state.

I never said anything about government or enforcing. This is something we have to do ourselves, if it's going to work.
(it'll never happen, of course)

 

[jasonbarron]

I never said anything about government or enforcing. This is something we have to do ourselves, if it's going to work.
(it'll never happen, of course)

Ok, fair enough. Eugenics & breeding regulation demand some form of enforcement, so I'm going to assume that you meant something else

 

[Shinji Ikari]

The reasons "eugenics and breeding regulation" haven't taken off and aren't popular as you say is because they are evil, and a majority of human's still recognize this. Setting the clinical math aside, the world that embraces those two ideas is neither worth saving nor living in.

What's so evil about limting the population growth? If you really want to have a lot of childs then adopt...

 

[jasonbarron]

What's so evil about limting the population growth? If you really want to have a lot of childs then adopt...

If by limiting population growth you mean Bob and Ethel decide to only have two kids instead of three or four then there's no problem with that at all. That's just responsible family planning. The "evil" part is when Gregg Rulz ok decides that Bob and Ethel can only have two kids, and the Government enforces this.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

If by limiting population growth you mean Bob and Ethel decide to only have two kids instead of three or four then there's no problem with that at all. That's just responsible family planning. The "evil" part is when Gregg Rulz ok decides that Bob and Ethel can only have two kids, and the Government enforces this.

I mean the "evil" part, why is it "evil"?

 

[Morbad]

If anything is a real threat for this planet, it's human overpopulation. Which is already unmanageable. If we are going to introduce virtual immortality or in the least hundreds of years long life spans, some serious eugenics and breeding regulation MUST take place. We are decades from achieving this, yet we are centuries of maybe millennia from colonizing other planets. This ball of rock is all we have for near future and it's already squeaking in agony under our weight.

https://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/GEAS_Jun_12_Carrying_Capacity.pdf

Earth's carrying capacity is highly dependent on a series of assumptions about what resources are available and how they are allocated. Our current burden is clearly unsustainable in numerous respects, but that doesn't mean that it needs to stay that way, even if population continues to rise.

I'm also doubtful that we are only decades away from generally and radically increased biological lifespans, though I'm certainly hopeful for it, irrespective of the population boom it would initially result in. Things would need to get a lot worse before I was comfortable limiting people's reproductive rights, and positively hellish before I thought dying was better than continuing to exist.

As for eugenics...it's widely discredited for damn good reasons. Even defining what traits are desirable or not is highly subjective and the potential for abuse in determining who would be allowed or incentivized to reproduce is extreme.

You can look at it from the jungle law perspective, of course. We're the dominant species, therefore we can do what we want, get as comfortable as we want,...

...but the bottom line is the definition of humanity itself and at this point I feel the definition of humanity includes too much selfishness, arrogance and neglect.

I think humanity is something to be surpassed, but I've never limited my definition of personhood to humans, even if every person I've met thus far has been one.

Anyway, in my view, people do come first and I have no particular sentimental attachment to 'nature' for it's own sake. Nature and it's balance are important, as long as it is not practical for me to exist wholly outside it.

What's so evil about limting the population growth?

In and of itself? Nothing.

However, coercion is another matter.

If you really want to have a lot of childs then adopt...

I'm not sure I want to have any and if I ever do, adoption will be my first choice. Helping those that already exist seems far more sensible to me than creating new people that would have to compete with them.

I'm still not going to tell people what they can or cannot grow in their own uteri.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

However, coercion is another matter.

Virtually all laws are a form of coercion as laws have no power unless enforced and they are not enforced with persuasion or nice words (though they may help).