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Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

True, though also my amateur understanding is that ageing-related illness is better modelled that’s e.g. cancer. This is because ageing is a natural thing in all species, whereas for specific diseases, indeed you genetically engineered “mice with cancer”, which behaves then very differently.

Could be wrong ofc!

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Words like "natural" can be tricky. Dying when struck by a bus is natural. That doesn't mean that busses are a natural feature of the world, or that you shouldn't look before crossing, or that an ER shouldn't make an effort to save the bus-stricken.

What do you make of the fact that connecting aged organs to young mice restores the organs? I think we should pursue drugs and treatments that improve function in aged populations, do you? Maybe ageing bodies just need to be occasionally cleaned out to restore healthy function.

Maybe it is "natural" to die, but unnecessary to suffer collapse along the way? Worst-case we have to compete in our careers and marathons with then healthy elderly and endure that same happy fate ourselves.

What I meant is, “cancer” mice are carefully bred / engineered to develop cancer. You can imagine their disease dynamics are very different from the normal population of mice who get cancer more rarely (and presumably are eaten first by something else).

Whereas aging, you just let the mice get old. They have “real”, “natural” old age, not an artificial one.

Age is not considered a disease because everyone does it. If we can learn to change things, such as reset the Horvath clock through epigenetic methylation hacks, or through other methods, then some day aging will be something that affects a minority of people and will be redefined as a disease.

Ha, I think I can read David Sinclair's words there! (not a bad thing at all IMHO)

@see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifespan:_Why_We_Age_%E2%80%93...

I follow his work and Dr. Yamanaka's work very closely, along with several other scientists working in this area. They have made substantial progress and there are some promising side benefits that have come from their work, including nerve damage repair, which has massive potential.

I believe brain tumors and bone cancer are natural. Also being eaten alive by wolves is even more natural. The entire point of medicine is to get rid of nature’s influence on our vitality

> ageing is a natural thing in all species

Not all [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Organ...

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