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Category Archives: Transhuman News

Fearing stigmatization, patient’s father seeks retraction of paper on rare genetic mutation – Retraction Watch (blog)

Posted: August 10, 2017 at 5:47 am

The father of a boy with a rare genetic mutation has accused a scientist of exploiting his child by proclaiming the defect a genetic syndrome and naming it after herself.

At an impasse with scientists investigating, publicizing, and interpreting his sons condition, the father seems willing to use any leverage he can muster to remove the syndrome entry in an online genetic disease database. Based solely on an email he obtained from the database director, the father became convinced that if the paper underpinning the entry were retracted, the syndrome would go down with it. So earlier this year, he withdrew his consent and asked the journal that published the paper for a retraction, based on improper patient consent. He has also threatened to lob accusations of research misconduct at the papers last author.

Marc Pieterse, of The Netherlands, is the father of Vincent, a teenager who has a mutation in the RPS23 gene that has only been found in one other person, so far. In March, an international team of researchers published a paper on Vincents RPS23 mutation in the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG), linking it to defective ribosomes, organelles involved in protein synthesis.

One of the scientists Pieterse engaged several years ago is Alyson MacInnes, a rare disease researcher at the University of Amsterdams Academic Medical Center. She is last author of the AJHG paper and the person whose name is now connected to an entry in the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database. MacInnes told Retraction Watch that, contrary to what Pieterse claims, she played no direct role in naming the syndrome; OMIM confirmed this account.

The OMIM entry for MacInnes Syndrome, which links the RPS23 mutation with a collection of features that resemble Vincents hearing loss, issues with the hands was created on March 29, weeks after the paper was published. Pieterse said he was shocked when he found it in April as he was browsing the database.

Pieterse told us he feels used and fears that the designation will stigmatize his sons mutation. A syndrome is a disease, he said. Now, he wants the database entry either changed he prefers the umbrella term ribosomopathy, which is used in the paper or taken down.

Believing MacInnes submitted Vincents condition for consideration, Pieterse demanded she find a way to remove it. When she didnt respond, he went directly to AJHG and OMIM to get the paper and syndrome entry removed.

So far, nothing has worked.

A campaign begins

The Pieterses found out about Vincents mutation after a long diagnostic odyssey that ultimately resorted to sequencing all the protein-coding regions of Vincents genome. In 2015, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a news feature on Vincents diagnosis, saying it heralded a new era of clinical genomics.

Marc is a former telecommunications engineer and entrepreneur who has shifted his focus to raising his four children. He told Retraction Watch that although hes not a scientist, in the years since receiving Vincents diagnosis he has committed himself to advocating for further study of the mutation and has even co-authored a paper on RPS23. Marc claims he played a role in connecting MacInnes, Baserga, and several other European scientists, who eventually published the AJHG paper together.

When Pieterse found the OMIM entry for MacInnes syndrome, he believed that MacInnes had created it to boost her career. He told us that after he found it, he tried asking her to take it down. However, their relationship had at that point already suffered a communication breakdown and he didnt hear back. This further upset him and he began a campaign to bring down the entry by any means possible.

But MacInnes told us she had nothing to do with either the OMIM entrys creation or its naming:

I did not submit this paper to OMIM or in any way initiate this entry as a syndrome. This was independently picked up by OMIM and registered as such; apparently such registrations are made upon their decision only.

OMIM director Ada Hamosh confirmed this to Retraction Watch:

Dr. Macinnes did not ask for this to be named after herself and did not bring it to our attention.

We are dealing with this gene-phenotype relationship exactly as we would any other. We did this because this is what we do.

Hamosh, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University, told us that the term syndrome is for a constellation of features and that the naming was done in accordance with policies that have long been in place at OMIM:

Sometimes something has too many features to be described succinctly. In that case, the default way to name something is to use the first authors last name and last authors last name.

Indeed, Hamosh told us that at first the syndrome was called Paolini-MacInnes syndrome, after first author Nahuel Paolini, of the University of Amsterdam. However, Hamosh said OMIM later realized there were four co-first authors. OMIM never adds more than three names to a syndrome, so Hamosh simply named it after MacInnes:

Given how little we know about it, it makes more sense to name it eponymously than after some features I cant put my hands on, especially since we have a policy on not ever naming something after a gene.

Its stigmatizing

Part of Pieterses issue with dubbing the condition a new syndrome is the early and ongoing nature of RPS23 research, and he isnt alone. In an email to Hamosh, MacInnes co-author Susan Baserga, a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, said:

I was very surprised that you are so pressed to name the phenotype as a new syndrome, especially since the clinical findings are so non-specific. I find this very odd indeed, and worry that it muddles the medical and genetic literature instead of providing clarity. This is so new that I am not even sure that it is a syndrome, and worry that it is presumptuous at best and wrong at worst.

Baserga, who did not respond to our requests for comment, also suggested that OMIM simply call the condition a ribosomopathy, as the AJHG paper does. But Hamosh told Retraction Watch:

We never, ever, ever, name a disease after a gene.

Gene symbols are not stable. More fundamentally, many, many, many genes have more than one condition associated with them. It is not a good idea to put a gene name into a disease name. Thats why we wont call it RPS23 ribosomopathy. Its not personal, we wont do this for any gene.

Pieterse told us that neither Hamosh, nor anybody else from OMIM, has ever informed him that OMIM itself created the entry and that MacInnes Syndrome is the result of standard naming procedures.

Like MacInnes, Hamosh wont respond to his attempt at contact. But Pieterse has obtained an email chain, from late April, between those two scientists, as well as Baserga. In it, Hamosh wrote:

Are you planning to retract or correct the paper to indicate the apparent uncertainty regarding its conclusions? If so, we will remove the phenotype and reclassify the variants.

Niether MacInnes nor Baserga thought a retraction was necessary, but this exchange convinced Pieterse that a retraction would force OMIM to remove the entry. So he wrote MacInnes to inform her he was withdrawing his parental consent and asked AJHG to retract the paper. Pieterse told Retraction Watch that the consent form he submitted to the University of Freiburgs medical center, in Germany (cells used in the study were created there) was very broad and that he believed it would allow him get the paper pulled.

Readers may recall some of the cases weve covered in which patient consent issues have led to papers being retracted. Pieterses situation most closely resembles a story we covered in 2015, where the authors requested a retraction from the Journal of Medical Case Reports after a legal guardian withdrew permission after publication.

But his attempt to trigger retraction didnt work. AJHG editor David Nelson, of the Baylor College of Medicine, told Pieterse the journal had looked into the situation but found nothing improper. According to an email shared by Pieterse, Nelson wrote:

Because there was no reason to retract the article due to misrepresentation of scientific content, we investigated the issues around withdrawal of patient consent. We have been in communication with the [University of Amsterdam Academic Medical Center] Biobank Committee and Medical Ethics Committee and they have confirmed that withdrawal from the study is not relevant to the article and data that have been published already.

Given the serious implications of a retraction on the journal, the authors of the article, and the scientific record, we have therefore decided that the American Journal of Human Genetics will not retract the article.

In an email to Retraction Watch, Nelson expanded on what he told Pieterse:

Our understanding from the authors and their institutions who obtained and approved consent for this study is that it is possible for research subjects to withdraw their consent at any time and that samples and information should be destroyed upon withdrawal. However, published scientific articles deriving from the studies are not subject to the consent withdrawal and this was confirmed by individuals familiar with European Union Regulations relating to personal data.

Pieterse told us that knows a retraction would be counterproductive to his long-term goal, which is to see the research around Vincents mutation grow. But he still wants to see the OMIM entry come down:

At a certain moment, people are going to cite OMIM in genetics papers and its going to spread. If you want to correct something, you should correct it fast. Once the internet is soaked, you cannot do that.

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Fearing stigmatization, patient's father seeks retraction of paper on rare genetic mutation - Retraction Watch (blog)

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DNA From Unflushed Toilet Flushes Out Burglary Suspect – HuffPost

Posted: at 5:46 am

They say he was done in by his dookie.

Police inThousand Oaks, California, used DNA found in an unflushed toilet to finger a burglary suspect.

Andrew David Jensen,42, was arrested on July 28 on suspicion of committing a burglary last October.

Detectives managed to sniff out the suspect after they found some fecal matter in a toilet at the crime scene and had it tested forDNA, according to the Ventura County Star.

The sample was sent to the Ventura County Sheriffs Office Forensic Services Bureau for processing before being submitted to theCombined DNA Information System to see if there was a match with a known suspect.

Most people dont assume or dont know that DNA can be obtained by other things besides hair and saliva, Ventura County Sheriffs Office Detective Tim Lohman told the BBC. We look for any type of evidence that might be left behind.Whether its a smoked cigarette or a can that may be left behind, we will analyze it.

Ventura County Sheriff

Police got a DNA match on July 25 for Jensen, who they tracked down to his home in nearby Ventura.

He was arrested three days later on suspicion of first-degree residential burglary, a felony, according to the Associated Press.His bail was set at $180,000.

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DNA From Unflushed Toilet Flushes Out Burglary Suspect - HuffPost

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Malicous code written into DNA infects the computer that reads it – TechCrunch

Posted: at 5:46 am

In a mind-boggling world first, a team of biologists and security researchers have successfully infected a computer with a malicious program coded into a strand of DNA.

It sounds like science fiction, but I assure you its quite real although you probably dont have to worry about this particular threat vector any time soon. That said, the possibilities suggested by this project are equally fascinating and terrifying to contemplate.

The multidisciplinary team at the University of Washington isnt out to make outlandish headlines, although its certainly done that. They were concerned that the security infrastructure around DNA transcription and analysis was inadequate, having found elementary vulnerabilities in open-source software used in labs around the world. Given the nature of the data usually being handled, this could be a serious problem going forward.

Sure, they could demonstrate the weakness of the systems with the usual malware and remote access tools. Thats how any competent attacker would come at such a system. But the discriminating security professional prefers to stay ahead of the game.

One of the big things we try to do in the computer security community is to avoid a situation where we say, Oh shoot, adversaries are here and knocking on our door and were not prepared,' said professor Tadayoshi Kohno, who has a history of pursuing unusual attack vectors for embedded and niche electronics like pacemakers.

From left, Lee Organick, Karl Koscher, and Peter Ney from the UWs Molecular Information Systems Lab and the Security and Privacy Research Lab prepare the DNA exploit for sequencing

As these molecular and electronic worlds get closer together, there are potential interactions that we havent really had to contemplate before, added Luis Ceze, one co-author of the study.

Accordingly, they made the leap plenty of sci-fi writers have made in the past, and that we are currently exploring via tools like CRISPR: DNA is basically lifes file system. The analysis programs are reading a DNA strands bases (cytosine, thymine etc, the A, T, G, and C we all know) and turning them into binary data. Suppose those nucleotides were encoding binary data in the first place? After all, its been done before right down the hall.

Heres how they did it. All you really need to know about the transcription application is that it reads the raw data coming from the transcription process and sorts through it, looking for patterns and converting the base sequences it finds into binary code.

The conversion from ASCII As, Ts, Gs, and Cs into a stream of bits is done in a fixed-size buffer that assumes a reasonable maximum read length, explained co-author Karl Koscher in response to my requests for more technical information.

That makes it ripe for a basic buffer overflow attack, in which programs execute arbitrary code because it falls outside expected parameters. (They cheated a little by introducing a particular vulnerability into the software themselves, but they also point out that similar ones are present elsewhere, just not as conveniently for purposes of demonstration.)

After developing a way to include executable code in the base sequence, they set about making the exploit itself. Ironically, its inaccurate to call it a virus, although its closer to a real virus than perhaps any malicious code ever written.

The exploit was 176 bases long, Koscher wrote. The compression program translates each base into two bits, which are packed together, resulting in a 44 byte exploit when translated.

Given that there are 4 bases, it would make sense to have each represent a binary pair. Koscher confirmed this was the case. (If youre curious, as I was: A=00, C=01, G=10, T=11.)

Most of these bytes are used to encode an ASCII shell command, he continued. Four bytes are used to make the conversion function return to the system() function in the C standard library, which executes shell commands, and four more bytes were used to tell system() where the command is in memory.

Essentially the code in the DNA escapes the program as soon as it is converted from ACGTs to 00011011s, and executes some commands in the system a sufficient demonstration of the existence of the threat vector. And theres plenty of room for more code if you wanted to do more than break out of the app.

At 176 bases, the DNA strand comprising the exploit is by almost any biological standard, very small, said Lee Organick, a research scientist who worked on the project.

In pursuance of every science journalists prime directive, which is to take interesting news and turn it into an existential threat to humanity, I had more questions for the team.

CONCEIVABLY, I asked, in all caps to emphasize that we were entering speculative territory, could such a payload be delivered via, for example, a doctored blood sample or even directly from a persons body? One can imagine a person whose DNA is essentially deadly to poorly secured computers.

Irresponsibly, Organick stoked the fires of my fearmongering.

A doctored biological sample could indeed be used as a vector for malicious DNA to get processed downstream after sequencing and be executed, he wrote.

However, getting the malicious DNA strand from a doctored sample into the sequencer is very difficult with many technical challenges, he continued. Even if you were successfully able to get it into the sequencer for sequencing, it might not be in any usable shape (it might be too fragmented to be read usefully, for example).

Its not quite the biopunk apocalypse I envisioned, but the researchers do want people thinking along these lines at least as potential avenues of attack.

We do want scientists thinking about this so they can hold the DNA analysis software they write to the appropriate security standards so that this never makes sense to become a potential attack vector in the first place, said Organick.

I would treat any input as untrusted and potentially able to compromise these applications, added Koscher. It would be wise to run these applications with some sort of isolation (in containers, VMs, etc.) to contain the damage an exploit could do. Many of these applications are also run as publicly-available cloud services, and I would make isolating these instances a high priority.

The likelihood of an attack like this actually being pulled off is minuscule, but its a symbolic milestone in the increasing overlap between the digital and the biological.

The researchers will present their findings and process (PDF) next week at the USENIX Security conference in Vancouver.

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Defining standards for genomes from uncultivated microorganisms – Phys.Org

Posted: at 5:46 am

August 9, 2017 The importance of standards is dramatically illustrated when they dont exist or are not commonly accepted. an international team led by DOE JGI researchers has developed standards for the minimum metadata to be supplied with single amplified genomes (SAGs) and metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) submitted to public databases. Credit: Zosia Rostomian, Berkeley Lab Creative Services

During the Industrial Revolution, factories began relying on machines rather than people for mass production. Amidst the societal changes, standardization crept in, from ensuring nuts and bolts were made identically to maintain production quality, to a standard railroad gauge used on both sides of the Atlantic. The importance of standards is dramatically illustrated when they don't exist or are not commonly accepted, e.g., Macs, vs. PCs, or even pounds vs. kilograms.

More than a century after the Industrial Revolution, advances in DNA sequencing technologies have caused similarly dramatic shifts in scientific research, and one aspect is studying the planet's biodiversity. Microbes play crucial roles in regulating global cycles involving carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus among others, but many of them remain uncultured and unknown. Learning more about this so-called "microbial dark matter" involves extracting microbial genomes from the amplified DNA of single cells and from metagenomes. As genomic data production has ramped up over the past two decades and is being generated on various platforms around the world, scientists have worked together to establish definitions for terms such as "draft assembly" and data collection standards that apply across the board. One critical term that needs standardization is "metadata," defined simply as "data about other data." In the case of sequence data, metadata can encompass what organism or cell was sequenced, where it came from, what it was doing, quality metrics, and a spectrum of other characteristics that add value to the sequence data by providing context for it and enabling greater biological understanding of the significance of the sequence.

Published August 8, 2017 in Nature Biotechnology, an international team led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, has developed standards for the minimum metadata to be supplied with single amplified genomes (SAGs) and metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) submitted to public databases. "Over the last several years, single-cell genomics has become a popular tool to complement metagenomics," said study senior author Tanja Woyke, head of the DOE JGI Microbial Genomics Program. "Starting 2007, the first single-cell genomes from environmental cells appeared in public databases and they are draft assemblies with fluctuations in the data quality. Metagenome-assembled genomes have similar quality challenges. For researchers who want to conduct comparative analyses, it's really important to know what goes into the analysis. Robust comparative genomics relies on extensive and correct metadata."

Categories of Genome Quality

In their paper, Woyke and her colleagues proposed four categories of genome quality. Low-Quality Drafts would be less than 50 percent complete, with minimal review of the assembled fragments and less than 10 percent contaminated with non-target sequence. Medium-Quality Drafts would be at least 50 percent complete, with minimal review of the assembled fragments and less than 10 percent contamination. High-Quality Drafts would be more than 90 percent complete with the presence of the 23S, 16S and 5S rRNA genes, as well as at least 18 tRNAs, and with less than 5 percent contamination. The Finished Quality category is reserved for single contiguous sequences without gaps and less than 1 error per 100,000 base pairs.

The DOE JGI has generated approximately 80 percent of the over 2,800 SAGs and more than 4,500 MAGs currently accessible on the DOE JGI's Genomes OnLine Database (GOLD). DOE JGI scientist and study first author Bob Bowers said many of the SAGs already in GOLD would be considered Low-Quality or Medium-Quality Drafts. These are highly valuable datasets, though for some purposes, researchers might prefer to use High-Quality or Finished datasets. "Single cell and metagenomic datasets vary greatly in their overall quality. However, in cases where a low quality, fragmented genome is the only representative of a new branch on the tree of life, some data is better than no data," he added. "Bringing up the proposed categories will force scientists to carefully consider genome quality before submission to the public databases."

From Proposal to Community Implementation

Moving from a proposal in print to implementation requires community buy-in. Woyke and Bowers conceived of the minimum metadata requirements for SAGs and MAGs as extensions to existing metadata standards for sequence data, referred to as "MIxS," developed and implemented by the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) in 2011. The GSC is an open-membership working body that ensures the research community is engaged in the standards development process and includes representatives from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). This is important since these are the main data repositories where the minimum metadata requirements are implemented. By working directly with the data providers, the GSC can assist both large-scale data submitters and databases to align with the MIxS standard and submit compliant data.

"Other key public microbiome data management systems such as MG-RAST, IMG and GOLD have also adapted the MIxS standards," said Nikos Kyrpides, head of the DOE JGI Prokaryote Super Program and GSC Board member. He notes that as part of the DOE JGI's core mission, the Institute has been involved in organizing the community to develop genomic standards. "The GSC has been instrumental in bringing the community together to develop and implement a growing body of relevant standards. In fact, the need to expand MIxS to uncultivated organisms was identified in one of the recent GSC meetings at the DOE JGI."

"These extensions complement the MIxS suite of metadata standards by defining the key data elements pertinent for describing the sampling and sequencing of single-cell genomes and genomes from metagenomes," said GSC President and study co-author Lynn Schriml of the Institute of Genome Sciences at University of Maryland School of Medicine. "These standards open up a whole new area of metadata data exploration as the vast majority of microbes, referred to as microbial dark matter, are currently not described within the MIxS standard."

She described the group and their mission as community-driven. "I think it helps that the people developing standards are the people conducting the studies," she said. "We have a vested interest in the data. Research is growing and expanding and it is critical that we capture this data in a rigorous way. Developing these novel metadata standards enables researchers to consistently report the most critical metadata for analysis. Capturing data using controlled vocabularies facilitates data consistency, thus making the databases richer and reusable." And in the end, it is to be hoped, sequence data accompanied by agreed-on standards for metadata will mean the same thing to everyone who wants to use it.

Explore further: New database of DNA viruses and retroviruses debuts

More information: Robert M Bowers et al, Minimum information about a single amplified genome (MISAG) and a metagenome-assembled genome (MIMAG) of bacteria and archaea, Nature Biotechnology (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nbt.3893

There are more microbes in, on, and around the planet than there are stars in the Milky Way. Microbes affect food production; air quality; natural breakdown of plants, trees and biomass; soil quality for agriculture; and ...

A new publically available database will catalog metadata associated with biologic samples, making it easier for researchers to share and reuse genetic data for environmental and ecological analyses.

The number of microbes in a handful of soil exceeds the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, but researchers know less about what's on Earth because they have only recently had the tools to deeply explore what is just ...

In a series of four articles published in the Database issue of the Nucleic Acids Research journal, DOE JGI researchers report on the latest updates to several publicly accessible databases and computational tools that benefit ...

Single cell genomics and metagenomics are pioneering techniques that have helped researchers assess environmental microbial community structure and function. As projects applying these techniques scale up, however, researchers ...

Massive amounts of data require infrastructure to manage and store the information in a manner than can be easily accessed for use. While technologies have scaled to allow researchers to sequence and annotate communities ...

If you've got plenty of burgers and beers on hand and your own stomach is full, an uninvited guest at your neighborhood barbecue won't put much strain on you.

Researchers at Newcastle University (UK) found that European sea bass experienced higher stress levels when exposed to the types of piling and drilling sounds made during the construction of offshore structures.

Small, seemingly insignificant mutations in fruit flies may actually hold clues as to how a species will evolve tens of millions of years in the future.

Most of us have had the experience of backing away when someone has stepped inside the bounds of our personal space. But, until now, little has been understood about the mechanisms that allow us to determine when someone ...

The color of T-shirts people wear affects escape behavior in western fence lizards, according to a study published August 9, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Breanna Putman from University of California, Los Angeles ...

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Rutgers scientists working on technology that could, literally, change the world – NJTV News

Posted: at 5:46 am

By David Cruz Senior Correspondent

You might just be hearing about it, but this technology has the potential to change pretty much everything and everyone in the world.

CRISPR is a programmable nucleus, so the power of it is. And what makes it work so well for gene editing and some of the techniques we use is this protein can use this small segment of RNA to find a site in the genome and cut it. And by making this DNA break in the genome is what allows us to introduce sequences and repair, explained Peter Romanienko, the managing director of the Genome Editing Core Facility at Rutgers University.

If you think of the genome as a Word document, youre basically cutting and pasting. And its that simplifying of the process that makes the potential for life-saving cures in cancer, HIV or heart disease possible.

You have this linear code of DNA and the CRISPR is programmable, so you can create a segment of this and say I want you to cut here, or I want you to cut there. So you can cut anywhere, and thats the power of it, he added. You can target it to any site in the genome to study any gene.

While Romanienko says the Genome Editing Core Facility at Rutgers University uses CRISPR mainly to study cells to fight disease, it has also raised concerns among some ethicists, who fear that the technology, available pretty much around the world, can fall into the hands of individuals, or states, that would unleash its power towards not so benevolent ends.

One could liken it to nuclear energy in that it serves a great purpose and is, in theory, clean burning energy, but it can also blow up the world.

I think if were smart enough to come up with a technology, I think were smart enough to control it we should be smart enough to control it. And if we cant, we shouldnt use that technology. Its like a cell phone. Its a very great tool, but you cant text and drive, Romanienko said.

But, you know, people text and drive all the time, and while the law in some countries, like ours, prohibits taxpayer funding of testing on human embryos, private funding is available around the world. In fact, a privately-funded team in Oregon did exactly that, editing the DNA of a human embryo to remove the gene for heart disease. Again, sounds like a good thing, but whats to stop anyone from editing embryonic DNA to create, for lack of a better term, a master race.

People have been manipulating genomes for hundreds of years, crossing different plants and animals, livestock, so its nothing new that weve been doing. Its just the precision with which we can do it is the main difference, noted Romanienko. If you can create it, you have to be responsible for it.

Scientists have been changing our world since the ancient Greeks. You could say the world has done OK since then, but Hippocrates never had the ability to edit the genome, and its worth wondering what kind of world this would be if he had.

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Purcell: Living to 125 too much of a good thing? | Online Athens – Online Athens

Posted: at 5:46 am

A 125-year life expectancy for human beings? I have zero desire to stick around that long.

Ah, yes, you speak of a debate among scientists over human longevity. I read about it at Business Insider. Some scientists argue that the maximum age humans may live is 115 years, whereas others argue that 125 years is possible.

A hundred and twenty-five years of watching Republicans and Democrats going at it? The heck with that.

Living is rife with challenges, to be sure. But living a long life has its upsides. Wouldnt you want to visit your parents and other family members for a lot more years than most of us are able? Wouldnt you like to see them all at a Sunday dinner several more times than most human beings are able?

Maybe with your family. My family has taken years off of my life!

I see, but wouldnt it be awesome if some of our finest human beings could stick around longer? Don Rickles, one of the greatest entertainers ever, died this year at 91. How great would it be to keep him around for two more decades?

True, but if Rickles were to stick around longer, that means annoying celebrities would stick around, too, and keep yapping at us every time a Republican becomes president.

There are other upsides to a longer life. What if we could keep our greatest minds around longer? Where would the world be if Einstein had another 25 years to unlock the mysteries of the universe?

But what if he figured out ways to extend human life even further, which would require me and the wife to have to keep coming up with new things to bicker about? Who has that kind of energy?

The downsides are a fair point. As people live longer, they could overburden government programs, such as Social Security. Where would we get all the money to support them?

How about we especially extend the lives of the rich so we can take them to the cleaners?

And living is expensive. If you live to 125, how will you pay for your housing and food and everyday expenses?

Thank goodness McDonalds is always hiring, but I for one have no desire to flip burgers at the age of 125.

The costs of medical care are too high for millions now. I imagine that at 125 years of age, ones medical bills would be difficult to manage.

Look, as a middle-aged guy, who is already showing signs of fatigue, here is what I know about living. Life is largely made up of colds, bills, speeding tickets and people who let you down. These experiences are connected together by a series of mundane tasks.

Did anyone tell you how cheerful you can be? Go on.

Well, these drudgeries are occasionally interrupted by a wonderful meal, a really good laugh with friends or a romantic evening with a lovely woman. Then the mundane stuff starts all over again. Who wants 125 years of that?

A lot of people do. The human lifespan has improved significantly in the past few generations. Millions are living healthy lives beyond the age of 80 today, and, when they were younger, few of them expected to live that long. Why not live relatively good lives until 125?

Because then Id really worry about my slacker son.

Why?

Hes 35 years old and still living at home. If we drastically extend lifespans, my wife will have to tell him: Son, youre 100 years old! When are you going to move out of the basement and get a job?

Tom Purcell, author of Misadventures of a 1970s Childhood and Wicked Is the Whiskey, a Sean McClanahan mysterynovel, is a nationally syndicated Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Send email to Tom@TomPurcell.com.

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Purcell: Living to 125 too much of a good thing? – The Sentinel