🚀 go-pugleaf

tateg wrote:

> This makes sense when put that way. It just seems to me that there are
> so many complicated systems that must be ramped up in the organism to
> reverse any kind of aging that it is nearly impossible...

That is by no means clear.  The complexity of the human body may work in
our favour in such an endeavour, because of the synergistic interactions
that comprise most of that complexity: identification and reversal of the
few most influential primary degradative molecular processes in aging may 
retard or reverse nearly the entire panoply of secondary symptoms.

> Or it has to
> be done at a fundamantal genetic level. This of course would leave
> most already mature organisms(you and I for example) out in the cold.

Not once we develop comprehensive somatic gene therapy (i.e. the ability
to get engineered DNA into any chosen cell type).

> I was watching This Week this morning and one of the two
> gentlemen taking credit for was asked when we would have extended
> lifespan as a result af this. His response was that he didn't forsee
> any kind of life extension resulting form the tinkering of genes in
> the near future if ever.

Yes, many of my colleagues still prefer to err on the side of pessimism
when speaking to the media.  The "if ever" part of the view you quote is
not remotely compatible with known facts, however.  The "near future"
part is a matter of opinion -- and of definition of "near", of course.

Aubrey de Grey