Category Archives: Transhuman News

SAN FRANCISCO -- The latest, most exclusive status symbol in Silicon Valley isn't a car, a coat, or a high-tech gadget. What everyone is clamoring for is immortality.

Now, a new health assessment is leading the way to give you precise information on how to lead the healthiest, longest lifepossible, CBS San Francisco reports.

Touting everything from cryotherapy to blood transfusions to digital devices, inventors and futurists are trying to harness science and technology toslow down aging and cheat death.

"I know there are a lot of people who are very, very curious or interested in the idea of extending human lifespan," said University of California, Berkeley assistant dean of journalism Kara Platoni.

"We want to conquer biological death specifically to stop and, hopefully, reverse aging," added entrepreneur and author Zoltan Istvan, whose novel "The Transhumanist Wager" envisions a radical future.

The latest addition to that effort is an exclusive new medical checkup offered by Health Nucleus of San Diego though it comes at a cost. It promises to help you cheat premature death for years, if not decades. The cost is $25,000 all out-of-pocket.

The company is part of Human Longevity Inc., founded by human genome pioneer Dr. J. Craig Venter.

"We want to find things early when they are treatable and preventable," Venter told KPIX 5 News. "What we're looking for is what's unique to each person and how that would predict their future."

The checkup begins with eight hours of diagnostic testing. It includes whole genome sequencing, as well as the sequencing of all your microbiota the germs both in and on your body.

It also includes a blood test that looks at 20 different chemicals, and extensive MRI body imaging that begins with the brain and uses very sophisticated software.

"We have an algorithm that measures very accurately 20 regions of the brain, can predict Alzheimer's disease 20 years in advance," Venter claimed.

So far, more than 500 people have signed up.

Venter says all presumed they were perfectly healthy. However, the exam showed they were not.

"Forty percent of those people you think are healthy, we're finding have serious disease, and 15 to 20 percent have something that needs to be acted upon almost immediately as a life-saving measure," he said.

One of those individuals included the genome pioneer himself. Venter's workup and whole genome sequencing revealed a hidden high-grade prostate cancer that he had surgically removed.

"We can really see the future," Venter said.

A single person's genome generates a huge amount of data: up to 100 gigabytes.

The company's ambitious goal is to decode 100,000 genomes every year, creating the world's largest clinical, biological, and behavioral database in the world, including comprehensive genomic and phenotype content.

That's where Silicon Valley, cloud computing and machine learning all come into play. "You have the computer look at that data and it can give you back an answer," said Human Longevity's Chief Data Scientist, Dr. David Heckerman.

In Mountain View, California, Heckerman and his team are using machine-learning super-computers to scour the details of all the data. They hope to uncover powerful new insights into your health.

"This is all a new world," said Heckerman. "We don't know where we are going to find things. But we're pretty sure we're going to find things."

The powerful computers will look at patterns in the genome along with clinical data, and see whether they can identify areas of vulnerabilities that may help to guide our future health decisions.

It's a body of immense knowledge that may potentially help all of us. However, some doctors are skeptical.

"I would save my money," said Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco cardiologist. She believes testing otherwise healthy individuals preys upon their fears.

Redberg wants to see peer-reviewed published data before she would recommend this test for anyone. "Right now there is no data that getting this testing is going to make you feel better, make you healthier, or help you to live longer," said Redberg.

Moreover, numerous studies have documented the high cost and medical risks of unnecessary treatments resulting from false-positive test results.

That kind of criticism doesn't faze Venter.

"Some notable physicians complain about what we're doing and they consider it wrong to do tests on healthy people and my response to them is, how do you know that they are healthy?" he smiled.

Human Longevity is currently piloting a lower-cost, fewer-tests Health Nucleus product that it hopes to roll out later this year.

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High-tech medical venture aims to slow aging, cheat death - CBS News

Forbes

Why Isn't Business Preparing More For The Future Of Aging? Forbes In a booklet for his summit participants, the center's chairman Paul Irving wrote that the potential offered by human longevity is a transformational business opportunity. And yet, he added too few business leaders appreciate that population aging ... and more »

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Why Isn't Business Preparing More For The Future Of Aging? - Forbes

The man who successfully mapped the human genome is hoping to figure out how to cheat death with a new test.

Your chances of getting every disease goes up with age, even Alzheimers can be prevented, Craig Venter, executive chairman of Human Longevity, said during an exclusive interview on the FOX Business Networks Mornings with Maria.

But it wont come cheap. The extensive exam costs $25,000 and includes MRIs, ultrasounds, blood tests and cognitive exams that can detect diseases up to 20 years before you have symptoms, Venter said.

The new techniques with the MRI its extremely high resolutionTumors light up, we dont use any contrast media, your blood vessels light up. If you have a brain aneurysm, it shows up immediately, he said.

Venter said the test is a good first screen but hopes to make it more appealing to more people.

We are starting a new clinic called Health Nucleus X-- trying to get it so its faster and much cheaper to let more people do it. So its $7,500 and its the whole genome plus the whole body and brain MRI scan, he said.

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So will people be living into their second century? Venter says much more will, but health care is a challenge right now.

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Top Geneticist Working on How to Cheat Death | Fox Business - Fox Business

While the average life expectancy has steadily increased since the 19th century, data from the International Database on Longevity showed that the age of the very oldest people on the planet appeared to plateau in the mid-1990s -- at a mere 114.9 years.

The grim reaper comes for everyone in the end, but sometimes he is in less of a rush. This was certainly true for Sodimedjo, an Indonesian man who died on Sunday, but whether he was the full 146 years he claimed remains doubtful -- not least because his purported birth date is 30 years before local birth records began.

Scientists have their own reasons to be sceptical. A study published last year pointed to the existence of an upper ceiling on the natural human lifespan.

While the average life expectancy has steadily increased since the 19th century, data from the International Database on Longevity showed that the age of the very oldest people on the planet appeared to plateau in the mid-1990s - at a mere 114.9 years. Since the apparent plateau happened at a time when the reservoir of healthy centenarians was expanding, scientists concluded that an intrinsic biological limit had been reached: even if you evade accidents and disease, your body will still steadily decline until it passes the point of no return, the data appeared to suggest.

Jan Vijg, a geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, who led this research, said: We simply provided evidence that humans do indeed have a ceiling that they really cannot go beyond. Thats part of being human.

There will be the occasional outlier - the French supercentenarian and oldest woman to have lived, Jeanne Calment, was 122 when she died in 1997, but most of us have a shorter intrinsic shelf life. The probability of someone living to 146 is infinitessimal, Vijg said. If somebody told you that they saw a UFO yesterday but its gone now, youd probably be polite, but you wouldnt believe it, said Vijg. Thats my reaction with this story.

Before resigning yourself to the knowledge that you will almost certainly expire by the time you reach 115 years, it is worth noting that this ceiling could be moveable in the future.

Internal clock makes some people age faster and die younger - regardless of lifestyle.

Richard Faragher, professor of biogerontology at the University of Brighton, puts it this way: How long can a human live if you dont do anything to them? Probably around 120. But there is a separate question, how long do people last if you can do something to them?

Until now, the steady increase in average life expectancy (as distinct from lifespan) has been driven by fewer people smoking, better nutrition and antibiotics. Drugs and surgery for heart disease and cancer have also played a part.

However, scientists are only just beginning to explore the possibility of therapies designed to target the process of ageing itself, as well as the illnesses that come with advancing years. This field has recently taken an intriguing twist, as evidence has emerged that ageing is not simply the manifestation of environmental wear and tear. Instead, the latest work suggests that ageing is at least partly driven by an internal genetic clock that actively causes our cells and organs to grind to a halt.

This raises the intriguing possibility that ageing could be slowed or even reversed, and some animal studies have already claimed to do just this.

I wouldnt argue that the ceiling is unmoveable, said Vijg. But trying to say what the age limit is, science cant yet say, its predicting the future.

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Ageing: Scientists say human beings don't generally live beyond 120 years - Hindustan Times

The Lounge, at Soho Theatre, and its three versatile actors took some very risky steps and never put a foot wrong. Photograph: Ed Collier

It sometimes feels like weve stopped being human, were just commodities.

Elizabeths mood was low, and Joyce sympathised.

Know what you mean, were objects of care, not people.

Another post-bingo chunter at my companions elderly persons unit (EPU). As usual we had homed in on the travails of longevity, because, like it or not, its a total game changer. All of us, young and old, are confronted with issues, dilemmas and conflicts which did not occur in the good old days, when we died on time. Its about perceptions, how the young see us, how we see them. We need new eyes.

A week earlier, I had been in the audience for an extraordinary play, The Lounge, by Inspector Sands, which explored these novel issues with an unusual sensitivity. The portrayal of old age requires a delicacy of touch to avoid caricature, a courage and integrity to preserve all its ugliness and beauty. The Lounge and its three versatile actors took some very risky steps and never put a foot wrong.

It opened with three elderly armchairs on stage, identical to those in our EPU; two figures stood in the shadows at the wings and a woman came forward and stood staring ahead: half manic, half defiant. We knew from the programme that she was 97, and initially her appearance belied this. Challenging. Human. Ageless. Then in an explosive moment of theatre, she crumpled and contorted into geriatric reality, to be helped to sit down by the care workers.

From that moment, we were enthralled as the drama demanded our engagement. It tossed us about, teasing our loyalties, as the three actors moved seamlessly between parts, one moment carer, the next cared-for, one moment busy and bothering, the next collapsed and conniving.

It asked difficult questions. Why were the careworkers from eastern Europe? Was their behaviour condescending or affectionate? Was their language impertinent or comforting? It presented uncomfortable conundrums. Food concealed in a handbag, the struggle over control of the TV remote, dreams of elite uber-care and nightmares of bog-standard carebots.

Every exchange required us to make choices and judgments. Our sympathies were made to swing wildly between the carers, the management, the generations. We experienced the exasperation of the care workers at the perversity of the elderly residents breaking rules, sabotaging food, or refusing to speak. Then some small detail, a phrase, an expression, made us feel the helplessness and indignity of old age.

Two images especially have haunted me. There is a visceral scene when 97-year-old Marsha watches dislocated and distraught as her possessions are brutally auctioned off after the sale of her house as worthless tat; she had become disposable, a commodity without value, and she knew it.

The constant metamorphosis of the actors from carer to cared-for reminded us that the reaper waits for us all

The other involved the grandson who had come to deliver a birthday present to his grandad, who has gone awol. While he waits for the errant granddad, grandson delivers a sustained rant about the good fortune of the older generation compared to his own millennial disadvantages, which ends in a limp acknowledgment that maybe his grandad had earned his privileges, after all. The rant over, grandson morphs into grandad.

This dramatic ploy, the constant metamorphosis of the actors from carer to cared-for reminded us that the grim reaper waits for us all no distinctions, no exceptions. And now that we live longer, he is tormentor as well as terminator.

If we are to confront these added years with dignity and, yes, even joy, as we wait in the lounge for our turn to be called, we need above all that human genius of social connection which feels anothers pain, which walks in others shoes.

The Lounge makes a dramatic plea for this in its presentation of crumbly life in all its raw reality, the frailty and fortitude, the mischief and meanness. It gave new life to my old eyes, and when the lights came back on, I looked round the auditorium at an audience with hardly a grey hair in sight. I left hoping that their young eyes had also seen something new.

The Lounge is at the Soho Theatre, London, until 20 May. Box Office Tel: 020 7478 0100.

Stewart Dakers is a 78-year-old community voluntary worker

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Old people need to feel the joy of human interaction, too - The Guardian