Young Blood May Hold Key to Reversing Aging

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/science/young-blood-may-hold-key-to-reversing-aging.html

Yeah, I immediately thought "vampires" when I saw the title.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

This is a useful topic, but a recommendation: when crafting an OP, cite enough of the article that people aren't forced to read it if they want to participate. Otherwise it's a "link/discuss", which we don't typically allow.

The main reason I am doing so is because I wanted to add that full-blood transfusion as a medical rejuvenation technique was proposed in the Speculative Fiction realm a long time ago, in particular by Robert A. Heinlein in Methuselah's Children. If we've arrived at that point now, then it's yet another case of him being uncannily prescient.

Anyway, the key takeaways from that article are that old mice gained the resilience and healing capabilities of young mice when the young mice' blood was transfused into them, and the young mice became "old" when the reverse procedure was applied.

The problem for us now is that we don't have a reliable method to grow artificial human blood; the only way to accomplish this sort of feat today is to take the blood from living humans.

One imagines, somewhat grimly, a black market industry akin to organ trafficking, where young folks are murdered to rejuvenate wealthy old folks...

edited 5th May '14 7:00:28 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Yikes, that's a pretty grim thought. Not much grimmer than the current state of organ trafficking, unfortunately.

What if there’s no better word than just not saying anything?

We can't clone blood? I mean seriously, this isn't like brain matter or lungs or whatever. It's blood. We can make quite a bit if we need to*

*To the best of my knowledge, humans can survive and recover from losing a liter.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

But wouldn't we risk catching Youngblood's Disease?

In all seriousness, an interesting development. I didn't even know full-body blood transfers were possible.

They do have medals for almost, and they're called silver!

I wanna say we can but it's expensive stuff.

This is why we need more stem cell research.

edited 5th May '14 8:04:42 AM by LeGarcon

Oh really when?

Well, all the rich gerontocrats need is to find some healthy young people, kidnap them, remove their higher brain functions and keep them on life support while they produce more blood for them.

That may not actually be a joke, unfortunately.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

You could grow bone marrow stem cells to make blood but a) we don't know how they would develop in the long term in a culture (and you need to culture an entire bone marrow, not just the stem cells) and b) creating a large quantity of blood cells would require a massive cell growth, hence a massive supply of growth factors and/or genetically modified stem cells, both a huge risk factor for cancer formation.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I'm a little skeptical. Before this treatment can be approved it has to go thru a whole bunch if studies confirming the results, and then we need to know why young blood reverses aging.

I am guessing that it has something to do with younger stem cells (and the cells derived from them) which work better and take more damage.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

@Fighteer: It was actually a reference to a vampire kingdom from a Tabletop Game.

But yeah. Or we could get the Larry Niven problem where, because of the value of blood (organs in the original Man Kzin Wars series), the death penalty is extended to less and less serious crimes so that everyone else can have an ample supply of farmed young blood to prolong their lifespans.

Thus, more stem cell research is probably a good idea so we can culture blood cheaply enough that we can undercut the potential market in vampirism.

Who would have guessed vampirism would become a real thing. But were still talking speculatively of course

I would think that with all the various factors that have to be matched for a successful transfusion, culturing/cloning blood is the only way this is going to be feasible. I don't see a way to flush every single drop of blood from a living body to prevent a reaction with the new blood, and I don't see any ideas for how to keep the bone marrow from making fresh blood with all the factors of the "old" blood, which means, if I understand the working of reactions correctly, the reaction would be chronic.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

@Septimus: According to that article, the stem cells exist in both old and young tissue, but the younger blood stimulates them to significantly faster growth. The exact mechanism will bear some research to discover, but consider that the aging mechanism may not just be a side-effect of evolution, but may instead be an actual evolutionary advantage. Once an organism is beyond reproductive age and is not needed to care for the young, it is no longer of use and is consuming energy that could go to sustain younger members of the species.

Thus, the aging mechanism may well have evolved specifically for the purpose of killing off non-reproductive members of a species. Think about it.

edited 5th May '14 9:20:47 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Oh well fuck you aging system, maybe I just don't want kids.

Oh really when?

@Fighteer: plus, there is a strong argument that aging is actually to do with reducing cancer risk. If the body continued to repair itself at the speed it does in youth, we'd die of cancer faster.

A brighter future for a darker age.

Or, as I've formulated in college (and others before me, surely), "chronic repairing wound = cancer".

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Cell reproduction inevitably leads to errors in DNA transcription. Most of those errors get weeded or edited out. Some give rise to mutations (favorable or unfavorable) in offspring. Some affect the parent entity in a malign sense by causing cells to grow out of control, and therein we get cancer.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'm not a doctor, but I think you could sort of do something by essentially sticking a needle in both arms of both patients so that they are in a loop - the young blood goes into the old guy, the old blood goes into the young guy. After a few hours, it'll be thoroughly mixed, and then you can disconnect them both and send them home. (At least, that's easier than stitching their bodies together like the scientists did to the mice.) The article mentions that, at least in the test mice, it's largely due to the presence of a specific protein. Injecting just that protein into the old mice produces almost as much rejuvination as giving them the young blood. Assuming there's something similar in humans, mass producing the protein alone would be far easier than trying to do massive blood transfusions.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Good. The last thing we need is rich people literally becoming blood sucking parasites. But if course the question would come down to the distribution of said protein

It's this protein - I do not see a specific problem with producing it the same way as insulin, although some of its functions (especially regarding muscles and neurons) makes me worry about side effects.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

could see young people being paid for their blood, which the elderly would buy.

I'm baaaaaaack

Wouldn't a summer job just be more comfortable?

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Quote from the head researcher, Dr. Vlad A. Lucard, at his blood laboratory in Transylvania;

I don't know what you guys are so worried about.