Wow Bill Nye got so old. What happened?
mostpowerfull777
+LeftBrain He caught a terrible disease called Age. It affects 100 out of 100 people and is incurable.
Doomrider
+mostpowerfull777 According to some trials involving blood transfusion from younger mice into older mice that I read about a while ago, it may not be curable, but it may become treatable. ...Quite soon, in fact.
mostpowerfull777
+Doomrider Yeah, I heard a lot of ways on how age can be slowed down with blood transfusions to changing the genetics of unborn babies to slow aging. But I doubt there will ever be a 'cure' of a sort because aging is your DNA unraveling. And everything eventually has to decay or suffer other problems. Aesthetically wise, people may come to a point of 'not aging,' but internally it will continue.
Doomrider
+mostpowerfull777 Yeah, I think the issue is primarily the fact that even with the rejuvenation effects of the transfusions, it was the brain that bore the brunt of the lasting damage of deteriorating DNA. You'd need to find a way to properly preserve the brain and nervous system to counteract aging and its conclusion.
mostpowerfull777
+Doomrider As well as preserving your cells so as to not be more prone to illnesses. It's really either you dying from your body giving away, or your body decaying to a weak point so that you die from something else.
deathtokoalas
+Doomrider
the blood transfusion thing is bunk. but, while time moves forwards perpetually (as we experience it), biological aging is a strictly chemical process and should consequently be completely reversible. there's been promising testing around the idea of preventing telomeres from shrinking on cell division, which seems to have some kind of a clock worked into it. and i do believe that scientists have created some immortal mice by turning certain gene expressions related to cell death off.
ultimately, the reason that we age and die is that our cells are programmed to. while i'd think this is probably impossible to reverse in aging humans, we should be able to genetically engineer humans that are immortal.
WhatsAfterThisPlace
+Doomrider That sounds nice, how ever what about our memories? Remember that the brain can only store so much information before it needs to start deleting other info. Even if we could stop aging, we cannot stop the brain from eventually deteriorating.
deathtokoalas
+WhatsAfterThisPlace
your brain does not biodegrade over time - and, even if it did, that would also be a reversible chemical process.
the reason you experience memory loss and other mental issues related to aging is that you are programmed to. you don't expire. your body actively kills itself.
your body begins this procedural, genetic self-destruction starting around the age of 25.
reversing aging is consequently quite easy, in theory. you just need to reprogram the dna to not do that.