In the search to stall aging, biotech startups are out for blood | Hacker News Reader

In the search to stall aging, biotech startups are out for blood

smithsonianmag.com

101 pointssamizdis101 comments

If replacing plasma with saline works, shouldn't that occur naturally with bloodletting? Maybe there was something to the practice of leeching.

I always thought this. There seem to be issues with a few things which the body has problems eliminating (heavy metals, new synthetic chemicals not found in nature, etc) Why not give your body a break by diluting all that a liter per month of blood at a time. I don’t imagine there would be a huge effect, but I do imagine a nonzero effect.

Indeed. On the other hand, with classic bloodletting, you're also losing red and white blood cells, unlike the plasma-only technique, which preserves them.

Blood donation and blood letting have other effects and confounding factors. You're supposed to be healthy to donate blood regularly, so right there you have an explanation for the observed longevity correlate. But it would also have other effects like reducing iron: people argue many men have too much iron later in life, while other donators like women may have too little, so that's mucking up your net effect.

Filtering blood, or diluting with saline, avoids these issues and helps get at the question of inflammatory & aging factors vs youthful factors.

Sounds like the solution is to both donate blood and get saline drips regularly.

> Maybe there was something to the practice of leeching

Yes. Hirudine.

"Although the trials to date have been small and not always placebo-controlled,"

That's a giant caveat, but it may simply mean that the experiments are exploratory.

For anyone with experience in clinical research, it very literally means: "we don't know what we're doing".

Longevity and lifespan estimation is already well researched within actuarial science. Why couldn't actuarial tables be used for this kind of thing?

The solution to pollution is dilution.

I skimmed the article and didn't see it mentioned -- has there been any recent news about Google's Calico acquisition in 2013?

It's still acquired

Calico seems like a vestige of Larry’s Google. Hope Ruth doesn’t Loon it. https://killedbygoogle.com

Calico is a company criticized for not being product or engineering driven business.

Got to vaguely plug Dr Aubrey de Grey here, hes an excellent speaker on this area.

He has one talk that he’s been giving for years presenting his hypothesis on solving aging. He’s done great work legitimizing longevity research. Though, I’m not convinced that he has the solution.

2 days ago, he said in an interview:

> A month or so from now, there's stuff I can't talk about, that is happing that will be really seismic in this field. Somebody whose name we all know, and whose name I cannot mention, but who has been talking to me and has been interested in this for more than 15 years is finally going to be doing something. And if you're listening for god sake don't fuck it up the way Larry Elison did 20 years ago and the way Larry Page did 8 years ago. Get it right."

My thoughts: The biggest problem about radical life extension is still cultural. I honestly don't understand how this is not the most important thing in everyone's life. I'm not trying to attack or shame anyone, I'm genuinely clueless. What are people doing that is more important?

Why aren't you doing it? It's still not clear that this can even be solved, so it's a risky venture to dedicate your life to.

Can you imagine how aging would blow up the current social programs?

Even countries like Japanese are facing a situation where social programs will need to be cut as the number of workers per retired person is getting very lopsided.

I would imagine if we extended human life expectancy to say 120 on average, we’d need to bump the retirement age to 85 just to keep the books balanced.

I don’t think that would be very controversial. Work is just 40 hours a week on average.

The whole concept of retirement is based off of peoples’ bodies breaking down to the point where they can’t work anymore. If we had genuine rejuvenation, a 100 year old would be just as capable of working as a 20 year old.

So get to live another 40 years but it’s just working longer?

Obviously not, it depends on the ratio. Because roughly every year you contribute is a year you can rest on your laurels. If we currently live to 80, and work on average 20-65, that's 45/80, so the same ratio of working years is 67 of the 120 living years. Retirement would be 87.

This comment section is really funny, because it's really HN incarnate. A bunch of people with enough hubris to want to live forever and implicitly think they can make the world more interesting by staying around a few centuries.

I don’t see why it’s hubris. I enjoy being alive, it’s as simple as that. I guess you think cancer treatment is hubris too?

If proven technology existed to significantly extend your lifespan (and you remained healthy), would you nobly refuse to use it?

Is the “Out for Blood” phrasing coincidental or an intentional reference to the documentary about Theranos?

I find it amusing how companies are pursuing long-shot life extension technology when the vast majority of people haven't even optimized the basics of nutrition, sleep, exercise, sun exposure, and toxin avoidance. But perhaps they'll find enough customers among the "worried well".

If your average person became fanatic about nutrition, sleep, exercise, sun exposure, and toxin avoidance - how many extra years do you think they would add to their life?

5? 10?

What percentage of their free time do you think they would need to dedicate to those things?

---

Meanwhile, an average 20 year old who is unconcerned about optimizing those things, is healthier than the average 40 year old who is. A "miracle cure" that fixed the effects of aging would be worth orders of magnitude more than being fanatic about your health today, and would (note the miracle part) consume orders of magnitude less time.

Of course that miracle cure is expected to be metaphorical gold.

i believe you can add 10-15 years easily if you: eat right, exercise and avoid nasty chemicals. Easily. It does not take that much more time, but it can be more expensive when it comes to food and products you use.

If you go into the experimental / really expensive territory I think you can add another 5, maybe 10 years.

So I firmly believe, that today, you can expand your lifespan by 25 years if you do all the right things, you can afford it and of course you don't have very poor genetics.

That's good, but ultimately, it's still only 25 years. Pursuing long shot life extension tech is complementary to your effort to keep yourselves healthy.

well. it depends.

most people i’ve talked to are not afraid of being old, they’re afraid of all the health issues and poor quality of life that comes with being old.

so, my question is: if you could have the life quality of a 40yo at 80, and live to 105 instead of 80, would you only consider the improvement to be only 25 years?

> you can add 10-15 years easily if you: eat right, exercise and avoid nasty chemicals.

Where is this estimation coming from ? Out of thin air ?

There are many studies that show that healthy people live longer on average, I’m not sure it’s 10-15 years though.

> Healthy people live longer on average

It's like saying the sky is blue. Obviously extraordinary claims of +10/15 years lifespan require extraordinary evidence.

It’s probably closer to 1 or 2 years, on average.

here is a starting point for you:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00917...

if you workout (strength + cardio), you eat properly, you minimize stress level and you sleep well 10 years is not only achievable but expected. your life quality will also be day an night in your 70s and beyond (have you ever met someone that is 80 and moves like they’re 50? i have)

> What percentage of their free time do you think they would need to dedicate to those things?

You can become reasonably competitive in triathlon on just 6-8 hours a week. A “healthy” level of exercise is likely lower than that.

Add in the feel-good factor of exercise and the fact you can do it as part of a hobby or lifestyle (cycle to work, ride with friends, play football, etc.) that in itself is enjoyable. If you have children, incorporate them into it.

If you’re separating “exercise” from “living” then you’re missing out on so much of life.

There was a very good book, Being Mortal, where one of the points is that from the point of view of a doctor working with old people our bodies slowly but surely degrade until we are no longer to get on with our lives. So one aspect of life expectancy that gets missed very often is that my life expectancy is not the only thing that's important. During those extra years of life I also want to not be stuck in my bed, I would like to be able to go do stuff that I consider to make up my life. Exercise especially, among the other good things, doesn't just raise the life expectancy, it also makes sure you can do things yourself independently during those extra years. You don't even need to be forty for being sedentary to affect your life, it just comes to the fore as you age. It was a very motivating, slightly scary, interesting book, by Atul Gawande.

The total amount of time recommended as the minimum is something like 90min cardio + 90min strength training per week, that's like 30min/day. I spend more time watching Youtube than that.

There is an old Greek myth that made the same observation about age and mobility. It's not exactly a new idea. :)

A nymph asked for immortality for her lover, but forgot to also ask that he remain young. So he just got older and older, until he shrank so far that he transformed into a cricket.

My problem with exercise is just that I hate it. In my youth I went to the gym to build muscle and was fairly successful, but I hated it.

Now I am older, married, and don't see much point in wasting time building muscle anymore. So I bought a treadmill for my own home. I use it ever 2-3 days for only 20-30 minute and I hate it. It's painful, it's unbelievably boring, after using it I'm exhausted and have to take a shower. I cannot listen to podcasts or watch TV shows to fight the boredom because the experience is too intense to fully focus on something else. I cannot even really think about things.

When I got the usual vaccine side effects the other day, I thought "at least I have an excuse not to exercise".

I know exercise is important, but I wish it wouldn't be so terrible.

I also hate the treadmill and gym. But I absolutely love playing squash with my buddies. Get a sport with friends and make weekly exercise fun that way. (I play 2 - 3 one hour sessions of squash a week) (squash can be hard on the back and knees)

I don't, I'm sorry. 2-3 sessions that last one hour a week are effectively 2-3 evenings a week that are entirely dedicated to that. I have to get ready, go out, get there, get back, shower.

I love my buddies, but mostly because I actually want to talk to them.

> It's painful, it's unbelievably boring, after using it I'm exhausted and have to take a shower. I cannot listen to podcasts or watch TV shows to fight the boredom because the experience is too intense to fully focus on something else.

This is basically me for all repetitive maintenance activities including exercise. I could not imagine having a job where I needed an ironed shirt every day. I don't think I could ever bring myself to exercise all that seriously either for similar reasons.

I actually love menial tasks like doing dishes, laundry, cleaning etc., because I can just listen to podcasts or audiobooks that I really find entertaining. With exercise, that's not possible, I cannot focus on it.

It's actively boring.

Running hills solves, if you have hills nearby: short (steep), variety, views

Painful, exhausting, and boring is a combination that usually means you are running too fast for your fitness level. It's usually recommended people run at a pace that allows them to have a conversation relatively easily, and it's rare for people to find that pace painful and exhausting. Especially (!) if you can't focus enough to watch something on TV. When I run hard I can't listen to podcasts either, that's pretty normal and just part of how things work, but it's nothing to do with running per se. Obviously I don't know what your fitness level is, but running can be a humbling experience sometimes, so one shouldn't give up just like that.

I know people like to play up individual preferences and personalities, genetic variability and all that, but the basic physiology of running is (scientifically) basically the same for all people barring some health conditions. So if you hate it there's still a good chance that some experimenting will get you running quite fine even if you hate it now. We're all just humans anyway, you know, you're not that special.

Hmm, thank you, that's actually really good advice. Next time, I will just keep the speed so low that I can listen to my podcast without problem, and see what happens.

I will probably still wish I would do dishes while listening to that podcast instead of running, but hey, it's necessary.

If you find that your slowest running pace is still not conversational (which happens a lot), try the run-walk method, and accumulate as much total running time as you can with enough walking breaks that keep you listening to podcasts. That's pretty much where I started myself.

Cool, I will try that. I will likely be a bit disappointed how slow my pace is, but I guess it will improve over time...

From what I have learned from running with various people, most people don't know how to properly breathe during running. At normal jogging pace, that's good for exercise, you can breathe at a very normal and steady pace. Once you have learned to do that, which is not necessarily easy, a lot of the difficulty of running disappears.

Except the boringness of it. There is no solution to it, except running in a large park or nature.

> Except the boringness of it. There is no solution to it, except running in a large park or nature.

I like podcasts and audio books. Since I started running I got through a lot of books, way more than I could possibly read physically. But yeah, if you have things under control, then sometimes it's like doing nothing for an hour straight: pretty dull, so you have to have something else going on.

Try something like Mysore Ashtanga yoga. It can be difficult but it's never boring if you are doing it right. It hits everything, strength, flexibility, balance, breathing, concentration, every muscle group. And you learn and do the routine on your own rather than a group, except once a week. All you need is a mat and you feel brilliant afterward. Might be hard to get started with covid but check it out once the studios start up again.

Genuine question, not trying to be sardonic: Why is that not boring?

It's a specific sequence of dozens of poses, each different, each with countless aspects you learn and work on. There's so much going on, if you are actually trying to do it right, that there's no cycles left for your mind to wander.

Examples are the angle which you hold your arms and legs; the location of your center of gravity; keeping your knee behind your toes; direction of your gaze, engagement of stomach and perenium muscles; reaching as far as you can in extended poses; balance; remembering the name of the pose; synchronizing the breath with the movement; keeping the breath smooth and slow; learning your body's limits; working with pain; how to hold your hands; the list goes on. And it all works together in an integrated fashion to leave no stone unturned in your body.

Are there no hikes are available to you? No mountain peaks you could crest and see spectacular views? Camp under the stars? No nearby lakes you could go for a swim in? Take a kayak on? No ocean where you could learn to surf? No rocks nearby you could climb on? No forests into which you could disappear for an hour or two to lose yourself? Heck, no possibility to live close enough to work to commute by bike?

I really, REALLY do not understand people whose idea of staying fit begins and ends with gyms/treadmills. Hell, treadmills would make me want to shoot myself, so you have my sympathies there. But I've been outside running in sub zero temperatures, and walked on exposed peaks under the hottest sun, biked in absolutely torrential downpours. All of what you're saying sounds like excusitis to me, sorry.

I was never interested in a single thing you listed in your first paragraph... it's incredibly boring for me. I understand it's fun for a lot of people, for me it's the opposite. I'd literally rather do mildly annoying chores. But hey, I can lose myself for days on end building circuits or reverse engineering things.

During my university days, I sometimes would do stuff you suggested with friends (a little bit), but for me it was just to hang out with them. Ultimately, I was always happy when the "main activity" ended and we found ourselves in a café or bar talking afterwards.

I love nature and want to preserve it, but I choose to enjoy it by sitting in it with friends, or reading a book.

I'm curious what is the net tradeoff between all those activities you listed in which you're in the sun and not being in the sun. IIRC the sun actively ages you AFAIK and this topic is about trying to not age.

Pick a different activity just do it longer. Golf, bird watching, gardening...it doesn't have to be mindless. Mindless routines are for mindless people :)

Treadmills are not a good experience, having only ever run outside for years, I was stuck in a hotel for a week and wanted to run, so treadmill it was. Comparing the two things I can’t understand why anyone uses a treadmill (maybe if outside weather is too extreme?), it’s all the bad things about running and none of the good.

For me running it is about a basic simple thing (legs, feet, shoes one in front of the other.. not much gear) that you can scale up (speed, elevation etc) or scale down (speed, intervals/rests etc) to suit your mood. You are outside experiencing the world for better or worse (sometimes it’s cold/rains outside).

I wouldn’t run on a treadmill either it’s a terrible experience, bad for your running form too.

I have a basement, and use that to work out. (Canuck here, this is more reliable for me, than convincing myself to work out at -40C or +40C.)

I have a bike machine, which works well in front of a TV for some of my workout. Yet I found walking in large laps in my basement, to be preferable to a treadmill. Just the fact that my scenery changes, my view changes, even if I've seen it all a million times, seems to make a massive difference. I often end up thinking of work, or life in general, and my walking time is up before I know it.

I agree 100% outside is better, but even just circles in the basement seems better than a treadmill...

Haven’t tried it, but expect it would work, just a smaller version of doing laps Aron s a 400m track. There was also something about the movement of air too, treadmill is so stagnant (can get fan I suppose, not quite the same?)

Yes, I actually notice the air movement cooling me, as my basement is nice and cool in the summer.

I also reverse direction from time to time, so I get an even workout of "turn" during the oval parts of the loop. As I age, I've found I've had to increase my walking a bit, to maintain health. Maybe a 20% increase in walking time. :/

I got into bodybuilding about six years ago, and at the time felt much the same way.

Going to the gym was an ordeal, it was painful, made me feel sick, and I didn't see much (if any) benefit from all the effort.

For me, the key was calisthenics. When I first saw Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow holding herself on her fists, I was entranced.

I learned what a double arm elbow lever was, a planche, handstand progressions and all sorts of other cool things.

I started from not being able to do a pull up, to being able to do six decent muscle-ups in a row, as well as other cool bar work (pull overs, archer pull-ups, etc...)

It took years, but the process was actually enjoyable.

Now I mostly do weightlifting. I'm approaching 50, and in the best shape of my life. Hoping to compete in a masters competition next year.

The key is to find something that you enjoy that also builds strength.

Bodyweight exercises are great for this, there are a ton of tutorials online.

I've grown into the same mentality: used to be happy just going to the gym and seeing my numbers improve, but over the years it's become too boring to continue.

So I've switched my focus to sports! I now play tennis, surf and dance on a regular basis and I love it! It's a powerful change for anyone who thinks of exercise as a drag - find activities/people you enjoy who happen to involve moving vigorously.

Have you tried walking around outside?

> Meanwhile, an average 20 year old who is unconcerned about optimizing those things, is healthier than the average 40 year old who is.

The average person that just ate a batch of bad oysters feels better than the average person than ate a batch of bad oysters an hour ago.

I'm not sure about it. I tried the oyster my girlfriend ordered and realized that I never want to eat it raw again, while she loved it.

Basic nutrition, sleep and exercise aren't being fanatical about one's health. These are quite simple things which are nonetheless extremely difficult to learn if your childhood didn't set you up for those things (speaking from experience here). Meanwhile a "miracle cure" would be orders of magnitude more impactful I agree however it is many orders of magnitude less likely to occur. Therefore, I think you're wrong. In addition, I disagree with how you're framing these things as chores and purely in relation to life extension, these things improve quality of life and are good things to spend part of your life doing.

> I agree however it is many orders of magnitude less likely to occur. Therefore, I think you're wrong.

I don't think that makes me wrong?

I'm also not arguing against living a healthy life now (indeed, I take some steps in that direction in my personal life), I'm saying no matter how healthy a life you live now (hence the fanatic part) it doesn't really help that much, and the cost is high. I.e. it is not a real competitor to the miracle cure, and lack of interest in the inferior product is not evidence that the miracle cure would not succeed as a product.

Perhaps "Listening to music before you sleep" might pique your interest, because it requires very little investment with proven increase in sleep quality. We spend 1/3 of our lifetime sleeping so even a few percent increase in sleep quality is significant.

It's not the majority that is the market. Billionaires will pay billions per person for even a provably modest increase in life.

Plus you get a huuge bonus to quality of life. That said, I'm doing all those things already and since I really appreciate life, I am a big fan of any even remotely feasible life extension efforts.

Aging sucks, and is by no means a physical necessity. If it were up to me, we would be devoting to it at least as many resources as were devoted to COVID, indefinitely until it's fixed.

> If it were up to me, we would be devoting to it at least as many resources as were devoted to COVID, indefinitely until it's fixed.

That. Governments around the world didn't hesitate on committing huge amounts of money and draconian, even devastating restrictions on society to fix what kills at most 3%. But what kills 95% of people--aging--doesn't get nearly the same obsession and resources. Worse, scientists who research aging need to apply for grants to research cancer or Alzheimer's, which is sad and silly when you think that the same money could be used to cure cancer, Alzheimer's and a broad variety of other diseases if we didn't have these taboos around the science of aging.

Most people don't dare to think that aging is solvable, and a 99.9% of books I read, even science fiction that happens 200 years into the future, adopt the same mindset. There are are a few startups, talented scientists, and a "small elite" that thinks different, but they don't get billions in government budget nor around-the-clock media coverage.

At this point, aging is much more a cultural issue than a scientific or technical challenge. After all, we can't fix what we are not trying to fix.

It's absolutely nuts to me that anyone would focus on this (idealistically, I understand the economic incentive) before fixing quality of life first.

What's the point of living eternally if you can't enjoy it?

I can only conclude that the people advocating for this live an immensely privileged and sheltered life.. for now. Eternity is a lot of time for bad luck.

Living eternally is something else entirely. Curing every disease and completely stopping aging gives average life expectancy of a few hundred years only.

Beyond health, quality of life is up to choices made by every individual and every society. It's not like there are technological fixes to most systemic issues that cause so many people to lead miserable lives.

>> before fixing the quality of life first...

That sounds like whataboutism.

Many people are happy with the way they live their lives, except for the aging bit. Many social problems that affect quality of life are caused by aging, including the need for child birth (emphasis in need because some enjoy raising children), the need to care for aging parents, horrible health problems (and their associated financial cost), and even poverty--just check wealth distribution across age cohorts. Speaking of which, what's the point of working hard and saving, if when retirement comes one is already an old wretch?

Baby boomers are dying, and they have money. I'm also pretty sure most of them are orphans at this point, and have seen siblings die of things that look a lot like old age.

If that requires lots of efforts to optimize for each of the variables you mentioned then it becomes a opportunity cost calculation.

being stuck in eternity with the kind of people who are full enough of themselves to think the world's foremost problem is to build the future of Altered Carbon might ironically enough be the closest version of hell on earth we may actually manage to build

Why would only the people who are full of themselves get the benefits? No reason you couldn’t bring your family with you.

I've had the discussion with family members before and pretty much all of us (including me) came to the conclusion that we don't want to live forever or be ageless to begin with

I’m sorry, I know this comes across as arrogant, but I don’t believe you. It’s too easy to say that when the technology doesn’t exist.

Aging is not going gracefully into the night. It’s pain in every movement. It’s forgetting what your kids look like. It’s forcing your family members to clean your shit-stained clothes.

In a few centuries, being pro-aging will be seen in a similar light to being pro-virus. After all, they’re both natural.

The thing is that there are optimizations for all those things already. Most people just do not want to use them as the cost is too high.

…and 100% the ones that have optimised nutrition, sleep, exercise, sun exposure, and toxin avoidance still die before the age of 122.” (probably well before).

Edited to add: the whole point of technological progress is to expand our horizons, making impossible things possible and possible things commonplace.

Otherwise, we’re forever trapped into thinking In my day the only way into orbit was when an asteroid hit the Earth! etc.

Most diabetics could also have been cured if they had optimized for all that before being too advanced. Doesn't seem to deter people from preferring pills and insulin instead. Morality: the easy path is far more bankable than the logical path

Even in advanced cases of type 2 diabetes, many patients can still put the disease into remission with weight loss and a low carb diet.

https://www.ajmc.com/view/low-carb-diet-may-help-achieve-typ...

I find it amusing how people ridicule progress because some other progress isn't being chosen by people. I'm fat and going to die early because of it. A health pill would greatly improve my life. Stop ridiculing those trying to save me, thanks.

You can stop being fat if you want to. None of the blood treatments described in this article will heal the damage caused by carrying around excess adipose tissue.

When you have enough money it's way easier to pay for medicine than to develop healthy habits

Great. So now we'll see blood supplies for actual life-saving proceedures dry up in favour of blood going to VC snake oil aimed at keeping Peter Theil alive for a few more years.

Young blood doesn’t seem to be necessary, just removing some of the old blood is enough.

It’s touched on in the article.

Ole Pete needs more time on this earth getting corrupt, criminal politicians to take chunks out of the nation's democratic foundations. He's running neck and neck with the CCP on that goal. What a race!

I no longer believe in aging, it just doesn't make any sense. It's heavy metals. NOT their presence but the fact that they were depleted. Fossils consistently show concentrations that would be considered extreme by current health standards. Many tried to correctly fix aging with heavy metals, but cadmium was unknown to them.

What PhD's do you have to make this radical conclusion?

This is not the best way to confront the OP’s idea.

Um, I would be careful about ingesting cadmium, my friend. Anyway, you can easily test your hypothesis on mice if you actually want to pursue this idea.

Its toxicity seems to be nonsense.

The replacement of soluble collagen with insoluble collagen with age doesn't seem to occur.

Bones are indeed less mineralized, but in a way that makes more mechanical sense i.e. less concrete, but more rebar.

Some wound healing pathways are inhibited, but it's scar tissue formation that is inhibited. Repair and remodelling as seen in dolphins takes place instead.

Kidneys indeed excrete things they don't normally do, but it seems to be an active process, where larger molecules are moved through, not leaking.

Also stable levels of cadmium are sought, its levels are regulated, excess levels are excreted.

Where are you getting this info? Also, nonsense looks like a very strong word, there seems to be a huge amount of evidence that Cd is in fact very toxic.

There in fact isn't really any. There is the japanese poisoning accident, which however seems to be Paget's disease. Then there are poisonings with ridiculous amounts, like 120g(IIRC, won't look it up again) of cadmium chloride, or combination with other chemicals or metal fumes. Then crickets.

We used to cure many ills with mercury, though. But now, we left the natural solutions behind and use only chemicals.

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