Choose: a cure for old age or for rejuvenation?

Siberian angler tooth vs. naked digger
What would attract people more – the opportunity to live forever
or rejuvenation, but without eternal life?Alexey Turchin, "Expert Online"

Let's imagine two options – a drug for old age appeared in pharmacies, which extends life expectancy from 70 to 80 years, and is expensive, but affordable.

And the second option: a serum appears on sale, which immediately rejuvenates a person for 20 years, both his appearance and internal condition and his life expectancy.

In fact, the first option is already available in pharmacies – a combination of existing drugs. They can be called even now: vitamins C and D, aspirin, metformin (diabetes medication), a group of blood pressure medications, melatonin (sleep hormone), rapamycin, cholesterol-lowering statins.

Some of them are already sold abroad in complexes, for example, Polypill – a group of statins and antihypertensive drugs that have a proven effect on increasing life expectancy and reducing mortality from cardiovascular diseases. All this I have said should not be considered as medical advice, since the mutual influence of these drugs in the complex has simply not yet been investigated – more research is needed.

The second medicine – a means for rejuvenation – is still more difficult to imagine, but there are already developments in this area. For example, "longevity viruses" have been developed – genetic vectors that embed a telomerase gene into the genome of mice, which prevents DNA from being cut off at the ends with each division and therefore disables the mechanism built into them to limit the number of divisions. Of course, this cannot yet be applied to humans, since it is known that the same telomerase plays a key role in cancer cells. But in mice, embedding the telomerase gene prolonged their life and youth without increasing the incidence of cancer.

But such a rodent as a naked digger does not suffer from cancer and lives 10 times longer than a mouse, because it has doubled protection against cancer in every cell – scientists are still arguing about exactly how it works, but it is clear that it is genetically programmed, that is, a naked digger has several genes that effectively they protect him from cancer. These genes could also be extracted from his genome and embedded in longevity viruses. Then each cell that receives telomerase will also be protected from cancer, that is, the animal will not only be rejuvenated, but will also be protected from cancer. It's not necessarily this approach that will work, but what if?

In general, we have two alternatives – a cure for old age and a means for rejuvenation. And here is my forecast – the medicine for old age will be sold barely, and the means for rejuvenation will cause a violent stir. Most young and even middle–aged people do not care at all whether they will live 80 or 90 years - discounting distant time intervals makes this difference close to zero. Another thing is rejuvenation – it will immediately increase social status, sexuality, well-being and reduce the likelihood of death.

And there is an animal that is continuously rejuvenating itself. This is a hydra, a representative of the genus of sessile coelenterates. The hydra's body is a long cylinder that grows in both directions from its middle, and this is the secret of its eternal youth – in the middle of this cylinder there is a kind of belt of stem cells that are continuously dividing. And on both sides of this belt, up and down, it turns out that parts of the body grow, which, accordingly, become younger than the more distant parts of the body, which fall off and die off as they are damaged. Even if you cut off a piece of hydra, a whole hydra will grow out of it. And a person could do it in principle, too, because each cell contains all the information about the structure of the body.

But there is another way to live for a very long time – it is practiced by the Siberian angler tooth. This is a newt that lives in the far north. It is well adapted to the transfer of low temperatures due to its ability to fall into suspended animation. It can tolerate cooling up to -45 degrees, and there are specimens that have survived after many years (up to 100) of being frozen. He does this due to the fact that he produces glycerin in the liver. Because of this, the question arises about what his real life expectancy is. If we count from the moment of birth to the moment of death, it will be very large, larger than that of humans and most other species of living beings. And if we count by the time of active life outside the state of suspended animation, then it is common for animals of this size, several years. And if people could dive into such suspended animation, they could live much longer. And contrary to seeming logic, they would have won not only in absolute years of life, but also in active ones, because when they woke up, the ways to prolong an active life would also have improved.

Actually, this text is not about the physiology of vertebrates, but the psychology of human choice.

A cure for aging would be less popular than a cure for rejuvenation – although, in fact, one is impossible without the other. It is much more interesting what would attract people more – the opportunity to live forever or rejuvenation, but without eternal life. This is, in fact, a question of discounting.

About the fact that a person colludes with himself that he painfully gets up for work early this morning, but in the evening he has money for a delicious lunch, and in general there is a house in which you can get up early. This contract is concluded between morning and evening, yesterday and tomorrow, spring and summer. But no further. Different people have this border in different ways, but in ten years someone else will be in my place (that is, by me), and very little is being done for his benefit. And after 80 years it will be a completely different creature and how long it will live there is of little importance. The value of future years for us today is rapidly decreasing.

If a person begins to think about the importance of extending life for 10 years, for 20 years, then soon he recognizes that death in general is bad, and it should be extended for 200, 2000, and indefinitely.

Let's go back to that pharmacy. The point is not only that, in principle, drugs that can prolong people's lives are sold separately in it, but also that there are a lot of activities around this pharmacy that clearly shorten people's lives. These are, first of all, smoking, alcoholism and speeding while driving a car. And I would also attribute the latter to a kind of drug addiction. The speed of the car generally has little effect on the travel time – since traffic jams and traffic lights affect it more. For example, someone rushes ahead of everyone, taking risks. And then he smokes peacefully for 20 minutes in a roadside cafe, and you overtake him. Speed primarily affects not the travel time, but the pleasure of driving, because driving faster is more pleasant. And the fact that the risk increases in proportion to the fourth degree of speed, it also seems to deliver.

The more pleasure there is in any process, the faster we discount time: pleasure tonight is everything, and in a year - almost nothing.

The principle of pleasure wins: a lot of people are looking for drugs in the pharmacy, if not narcotic, then at least killing pain, but much fewer people are interested in finding out which substances can prevent the aging process – although there is much more suffering and pain, but it will be sometime later.

We don't know who will win: the naked digger or the Siberian angler–tooth - whose strategy of prolonging life will be more correct. And we risk not finding out during our lifetime, because all this is being investigated very poorly.

Here, according to the logic of the article, there should be a call for increased funding for scientific research. But I don't like talking about the need to increase funding: every topic screams about it, this mute appeal is hidden in every article. And the result of the work is equal to funding plus the amount of intelligence when making a decision on spending money. That is, if the organization is very stupid, then it will spend huge amounts of money mediocre, even to the detriment. If we have a genius, then he will find how to buy the necessary equipment almost for nothing, use the existing premises and so on, that is, he will make the result for small funds. That is why different student teams are proud of how little money they spent on the result: they built a hang glider for $ 300, for example. And if the applicant can get funding from the outside, then it is already more difficult with intelligence. The mind is the source of immortality, let's be smarter, let's be more competent.

The anglerfish lives in Siberia, and the digger in Africa – both small animals are similar in size, and spend most of their time underground. The digger's genome (its funny name was translated by a translator at the conference "Genetics of Aging" – "bald shrew") has recently been sequenced, and soon we will find out everything important about it.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru15.01.2013