Monday, July 06, 2009
Ray Kurzweil on How to Combat Aging
The noted futurist says that exponential advances will allow us to intervene in the aging process.
By Ray Kurzweil
Submitted in
response to Technology Review's interview with Leonard Hayflick. See "Can Aging Be Solved?"
Entropy
is not the most fruitful perspective from which to view aging. There are
varying error rates in biological information processes depending on the cell
type, and this is part of biology's paradigm. We have means already of
determining error-free DNA sequences even though specific cells will contain
DNA errors, and we will be in a position to correct those errors that matter.
The most important perspective in my view is that health, medicine, and biology
is now an information technology, whereas it used to be hit or miss. We not only
have the (outdated) software that biology runs on (our genome), but we have the
means of changing that software (our genes) in a mature individual with such technologies as RNA interference and new forms of gene therapy
that do not trigger the immune system. (I am a collaborator with a company that
performs gene therapy outside the body, replicates the modified cell a million-fold, and reintroduces the cells to the body, a process that has cured a fatal
disease--pulmonary hypertension--and is undergoing human trials.)
We can design
interventions on computers and test them out on increasingly sophisticated
biological simulators. One of my primary themes is that information technology
grows exponentially, in sharp contrast to the linear growth of hit or miss
approaches that have characterized medicine up until recently. As such, these
technologies will be a million times more powerful in 20 years (by doubling in
power and price performance each year). The genome project, incidentally,
followed exactly this trajectory.
Hayflick cites the automobile as an example to support his thesis that you cannot stop aging. Yes, automobiles will wear out if you don't maintain them adequately. However, we do have the knowledge to perfectly maintain automobiles and completely prevent aging. There are century-old
automobiles around in vintage (perfect) condition that are still driven around.
That is because the maintenance was sufficiently aggressive for those cars.
Most people don't think it's worth the trouble with regard to an
automobile, but it will be worth the trouble for our bodies. With regard to
automobiles, we have all of the knowledge and tools needed to completely stop aging. We do not yet have all of the knowledge and tools to do this with the human body, but that knowledge is growing exponentially.
As for the implications of radical life extension, Hayflick assumes that nothing
else would change. But the same technologies that will bring radical life extension
will also bring radical expansion of resources (nanoengineered solar panels,
water and food technologies) and radical life expansion (merging with the
intelligent machines that we are creating, virtual reality from within the
nervous system, etc.). We have already democratized the tools of creativity so
that kids in their dorm room can create a full-length high-definition motion
picture or write software that results in disruptive change (e.g., Google). Hayflick
has not considered the implications of these recent developments. We don't have
to do any of these things perfectly (and there is no such thing as perfection
in the real world)--just well enough to stay ahead of the curve.
Our intuition is linear, so many scientists, such as Hayflick, think in linear terms
and expect that the slow pace of the past will characterize the future.
But the reality of progress in information technology is exponential, not
linear. My cell phone is a billion times more powerful per dollar than
the computer we all shared when I was an undergrad at MIT. And we will do
it again in 25 years. What used to take up a building now fits in my
pocket, and what now fits in my pocket will fit inside a blood cell in 25
years.
With regard to Hayflick's own limit, he acts as if that limit is impossible to
engineer. Just in recent years we have discovered that just one enzyme controls the telomeres and that cancer cells use telomerase to become immortal.
Now, I realize that it is not a simple matter to just apply telomerase to
overcome this particular aging limit, as we have to figure out how to administer
it, and we don't want to encourage cancer, but these are all solvable
engineering problems.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
mother of PH...
07/06/2009
Posts:1
Regards
Marry Davidson
marrydavidso...
10/16/2009
Posts:1
Surtuin
Glycerol
Isotopes of H, C, O,
Yes, Many areas have shown increased life span and no doubt many others surprises are to be reasonably expected.
eric25001
07/07/2009
Posts:3
StupidPeasan...
07/07/2009
Posts:43
http://www.stayingvertical.com/?q=node/203
Ashton
07/07/2009
Posts:1
Kurzweils (present-I believe) ideals have more to do with slowing the aging process (to a crawl) than eliminating it all-together. In the last 30 years we have created roughly, 11,000 times the technology and knowledge base for society as a whole than the previous 10,000 years of existence. Based upon these exponential calculations, by the year 2024, we should have created synthetically or found naturally, a cure for at least 10% of the world simplest diseases, and the common cold. As a businessman involved with biotech - stem cells, I spend my days studying research that as little as 7 years ago would have been impossible. Exponentially speaking, we will extend life (as through the manipulation of Telomeres) and, it will get even better when we start treating ourselves (our bodies) a bit better.
cjneill
07/07/2009
Posts:3
kemolledog
07/07/2009
Posts:2
What, exactly, is hubristic about people who propose to try and cure disease (of which aging is a conglomerate) with emerging technologies? I think more likely what is happening is that the idea itself conflicts with assumptions you cling to about the world and your place in it, and rather than attack those assumptions you prefer to deny out-of-hand any evidence that contradicts certain of those assumptions.
I see plenty of methuselah-skeptics out there, and I consider myself agnostic regarding the predictions of Kurzweil and others on this topic. But I never see the skeptics providing any DATA to contradict the bountiful evidence at the heart of Kurzweil's claims: that information technologies increase in capacity and capability, and decrease in cost, in an exponential fashion. This is clearly evidenced in Moore's law and in the gobs of charts that Kurzweil never leaves home without.
There is nothing particularly shocking in the notion that computers will continue to grow more powerful in an exponential fashion as they have, demonstrably, since their invention. So, even just taking this one technology into account, it is not a great leap to say that the computing power of an iPhone will in 25 years be contained in a package the size of a blood cell, and that will have a profound impact on our medical abilities. We have already created propulsion and other robotic systems at nanoscale, so it is not a great leap of faith to think that these techniques will be rapidly refined and improved over the next decade or two.
It is equally clear that our understanding of the megabytes of data that make up the DNA blueprint of our cells is growing rapidly - exponentially - as the amount of such data begins to soar (thus allowing for exponential gains in analysis). We are rapidly gaining understanding of the properties of these cells (helped a great deal by our exponentially growing ability to see very very small things in real time, and to simulate them to a finer and finer degree).
And yet you dismiss all this as hubristic.
I would rather see the methuselah critics actually put in something close to the thought and effort that the proponents have, as that's the only way there will be an informed debate. Kurzweil and others like him are no doubt wrong about some things, but reactions like yours shed no light on what they might be.
Steering clear of uncomfortable ideas is a recipe for getting locked into wrong ideas.
wightca
07/07/2009
Posts:1
mbloore
07/07/2009
Posts:29
For others who are interested in the more leading edge of this technology, there's the Methuselah Foundation, who's Mprize has now gone up to 1 million dollars.
Shiladie
07/07/2009
Posts:56
Miles Cohan
07/08/2009
Posts:1
But you're right about where research will be going, eventually. When we actually are able to merge with nonbiological material, it would be silly to work the biological angle.
Knowing that it gets better, is what keeps me going. Bad economy, corrupted politics, existential threats. None of these are enough to squash an optimism borne of Ray's research.
DCWhatthe
07/08/2009
Posts:7
Larryville
07/08/2009
Posts:1
DCWhatthe
07/12/2009
Posts:7
We are now on the very edge of being able to build computers using single molecules instead of bulky chips. We now understand that DNA and RNA are essentially digital systems and aging cellular machinery is essentially akin to information technology we understand (computers and software that runs on computers).
The DNA and RNA systems in our cells can be made to do logical computations, we are close to being able to make DNA computers and using that tech, to be able to make nanobot computers and sensors and manipulators so that we can understand now apply to monitoring and describing and reverse engineering and customizing and maintaining our cellular machinery and guess what! you have now fixed aging as we know it.
What else could be this important, certainly not waging wars or accumulating more stuff, as advanced nano could make and recycle any stuff you would desire (no more scarcity or want, all the stuff you want, cars, food etc). Aubre De Grey says that 10 years and 2 billion is all we need to really fix aging, we spend that much as a species on the war machine every day. Heck, a single rich billionare today could fund such a project, a group of 2 to 10 people could do this in 3 to 6 years. The payoff if you are interested in making a LOT of money will be 10,000 times bigger than microsoft!! The country to fund such a project will literally own the 21st century, people will say that it was beyond stupid to not see this obvious fact, it's like going back in time and givng bill gates $10,000 and taking a 25% cut in microsoft, who would not jump at such an offer today, really who wouldn't??
nerd1024
07/08/2009
Posts:1
Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality is is an unforgettable expression of such quest through the ages. And this is something unique to the human situation. We all lose the innocence which we once possessed. We feel damnation awalts us. And we are terrified. We grope hopelessly for the glory and the freshness of a dream’ of yore. Life becomes an eternal nightmare, and we make a desperate effort to break this spell. And we invent faith, religion and prayer, and astrology. Anything comes handy which serves to make us forget the agonies of the moment. We cling to it like a child does its mother. We have lost a Paradise and are frantic to reclaim it.
When T. S. Eliot said in his ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,.
“I am no prophet –and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid”
He just expressed in a beautifully precise manner the perpetual predicament of the human situation beset by the supreme fact of existence, that is, death.
Confronted with this immutable physical reality man feels lonely, forsaken, distressed and anxious. And, at the same time, it is inconceivable for him –gifted as he is by the capacity for self-transcendence from which emanates idealism not unmixed with pride – that he should be, after all, transitory and finite.
Yet his pride would not let him stop there: he would erect metaphysical castles to satisfy his craving for eternal being. And then he would even dare to defy death as in poet Donne’s words: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more, death thou shalt die.”
Philosophies begin thus. They are ultimately an expression of man’s undying urge to tear the veil off the face of death.For Plato philosophy was meditation on death. Metaphysics, for Heidegger, originates in the realization that man suffers from “a radical insecurity of being”, from dreadful convictions of death and transitoriness.
And Naciketa (Indian Upanisadic figure) spurned the riches of the world in a supreme bid to unravel the mystery of death
Naciketa asked Yama (the god of death in the Hindu mythology): “When a man dies there is this doubt: some say that he exists; some (others) say that he does not exist. This I should like to know, being taught by you (god of death).”
Touched by young Naciketa’s intense desire to perceive truth Yama relented and gave him the vision of Supreme Spirit, of immorality of soul, of Nirvana.
Je pense donc je suis- I think, therefore I am, said Descartes. And that is precisely the tragic flaw and predicament of the human situation. A human being simply because one is endowed with this capacity for transcendence, of thinking, is also perennially afflicted with apprehension of what lies in store for him or her.
But I wonder if Ray Kurzweil has explored the issue what happens, or would happen, when a large section of the human population has ultimately found a nostrum to extend human life indefinitely by combating aging. How would the earth already faced with the nightmarish spectre of global warming, not to speak of the billions dying of hunger. What would the indefinite extension of human life to the blessed few who can access the life-extension therapy in a Kurzweilian fashion, with this proviso, that it is affordable!
Secondly, how would the world cope up with the increasing burden of the aging population blessed with Kurzweilian prescription of prolonging human life? How does it help the world already tottering on the brink of extinction such as nuclear holocaust?
The world today is embroiled in an economic turmoil caused by the globalisation process. It is a veritable confusion worse confounded by the North versus South polarities of trading policies, developmental disparities and stark reality of opulence contrasted with destitution. These are increasingly brought in close encounters of an unforeseen variety in an inter-connected global environment with unprecedented, unpredictable and unnatural fusion of economic systems mixed in a strange brew of socio-ethnic and cultural cross-currents buffetted hither and thither by perennial human greed. An unprecedented global dilemma posed by the merciless process of globalisation with all its ostensible benefits and built-in evils.
The natural resources of the earth are not inexhaustible. Oil is fast depleting. The last barrel of oil is not too far. A new energy future has to be worked out. Nearly 2.2 billion people in more than 62 countries, one-third of the world's population, are starved for water. Global population has tripled in the past 70 years while water use has grown sixfold due to industrial development, widespread irrigation, and lack of conservation. It is feared scarcity of water may lead to third world war.1 To top it all there is a projected 3C jump in global temperature caused by global warming which in turn would include a loss of up to 400 million tonnes of cereal production and put between 1.2 billion and three billion people- half of the current world’s population- at risk of water shortage. It is a case of double jeopardy. This is a wake-up call for the developed industrial nations.
‘Oh, yes, the time has come, my little friends To talk of food and things Of peppercorns and mustard ... The time has come,' as the Walrus said.2 Can the world really afford to hanker after opening this Pandora’s box? Isn’t this an appropriate time to think about the basic economic ideology of social justice? Equality is neither outdated nor is it the enemy of freedom. The voices of the voiceless, disadvantaged, the diseased and the destitutes, the less privileged in large parts of the world should not be lost in the clamouring sophistry of debates in the cloistered splendour of IMF and World Bank citadels.
Therefore, instead of concentrating the limited human resources on extension of human life by combating aging I think it would be worthwhile to allocate the scarce global resources to combating the great divide of the rich and poor nations based on economic and social justice.
And hence it was natural for the Father of the Indian Nation, Mahatma Gandhi to give a dire warning:
"Economic equality is the master key to non-violent revolution. A non-violent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and hungry millions persists.The contrast between the palaces of New Delhi and the miserable hovels of the poor, labouring class cannot last one day in a free India in which the poor will enjoy the same power as the richest in the land. A violent and bloody revolution is certainty one day unless there is a voluntary abdication of riches and the power that riches give and sharing them for the common good."
I think Mahatma Gandhi's warning to India has a vital relevance to the entire world today confronted with global recession.
BalPatil
07/10/2009
Posts:1
To argue that we should focus now on social problems reminds me of arguments against space exploration. Why go to the moon when people are suffering? People will continue to focus on social problems. But space produces enormous dividends that would never have been realized if only holding the status quo is an acceptable moral goal. It also creates hope.
The U.S. Congress keeps talking about "getting it right." But I think "getting it going" .. then tinkering over time to get it right is a much more rewarding approach to problem solving. That incidently was a key argument put forth by Aubre De Grey ... get on with the engineeering and let the basic science catch up.
Likewise, I am not persuaded by dire social consequence forecasts due to life extension. No one except the hopeless or the fanatic wants to die. The living can deal with the consequences of that desire. As they will and would gladly deal with climate change, energy problems, and all other problems only of interest to them. T.S. Elliot was right.
asiwel
07/11/2009
Posts:9
Yes our technology can evolve and create its own rules but at this point it becomes more an intuitive spiritual experience.
We will create things that will transform our perception of reality intensely. Information technology will eventually give us realization of our spiritual nature.
trustinspace
07/17/2009
Posts:1