[ExI] reverse aging

[The Avantguardian]

----- Original Message ----
> From: Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Sent: Tue, November 30, 2010 7:38:16 PM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] reverse aging
> 
> On 1 December 2010 12:13, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> > On 11/30/2010 7:22 PM, John Grigg wrote:
> >
> >> Stuart, and so was this simply a first step toward rejuvenating
> >> normally aged mice?
> >
> > I don't see any obvious reason why this should follow. As I commented on a
> > biogerontology list when a few people were getting prematurely excited (IMO)
> > by this report:
> >
> > On the face of it, this sounds like an incredibly silly "discovery". Build a
> > car without wheels. You can't drive it anywhere. Put the wheels on. Look! A
> > miracle! Now you can drive it! Ship a crew of old sea dogs from England to
> > Australia without any vitamin C in their diet. They get scurvy and start to
> > die. Feed them some citrus and they all recover. A miracle! Lemons will make
> > you young again!
> 
> I thought the interesting thing here was that a big complex organism
> would essentially repair itself just by switching on telomerase, where
> the shortened telomeres were the problem. Is there previous research
> actually showing this happen (as opposed to in-vitro experiments, or
> extrapolations from theory)?

Not to my knowledge. Which is why, aside from the tremendous labor involved in 
installing a controllable genetic switch into a lineage of mice, it deserved to 
be in Nature.