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Comment by AC__ | Hacker News Reader

Vampires! Technically speaking, parabiosis. Although it is not actually a new discovery at all, personally I'm convinced there are humans who have already transfused young blood plasma(as the linked article points out illegal stem cell transplants are common as well). Yeah, that's right, vampires.

http://www.nature.com/news/ageing-research-blood-to-blood-1....

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I have gotten into the habit of appending "except when it doesn't" to every one line life sciences headline...

http://www.nature.com/news/young-blood-anti-ageing-mechanism...

I went a massive life extension technology reading binge a few months back, IMHO it is, right now, possible to extend human life indefinitely.

Do you have a recommended reading list?

Just off the top of my my head: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO_%28antiviral%29 CRISPR as mentioned, anything nano(robotics, surgery etc.), as well as stem cell tech.

Ageing has several causes, including the accumulation of clutter (basically poison) inside and outside of our cells. I'm not sure becoming a vampire is enough to overcome that.

Given the uncertainties, I'd still want to keep cryonics as a back up. (Though it looks unavailable here in Western Europe.)

The wear and tear theory of aging is just one of many currently popular, the body is not a mechanical machine necessarily bound to wear and tear, it can in some cases successfully heal itself, some species basically don't age (some can actually revert in lifecycles).

A competing theory is programmed aging (in which "clutter" would be an effect of, not a cause): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369273/

Any idea if that Ray Kurzwiel guy is doing young blood transfusion? It sounds like it would fit his goals as an early adopter of life extension tech..

Down-voters know I am on to them...

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