It is one of the most remarkable things that in all of the biological sciences there is no clue as to the necessity of death. If you say we want to make perpetual motion, we have discovered enough laws as we studied physics to see that it is either absolutely impossible or else the laws are wrong. But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable, and that it is only a matter of time before the biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble and that terrible universal disease or temporariness of the human’s body will be cured.  

Richard Feynman (1918 – 1989), Nobel Prize in Physics.

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Theme of the month: Average and maximum longevity. Progress and stagnation.

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Longevity – the positive side

We live in a comfort and state of health that would have been unimaginable even for the monarchs of the past. We travel faster than in the wildest dreams of the sailors of the time of Christopher Columbus. We fly. We have been to the moon. We have in our pocket a 100-gram object that is more powerful than the science fiction objects envisioned by the most imaginative writers, even from the near past.

Thanks to extraordinary advances in medicine, hygiene and economics today, our life expectancy is three times that of only two centuries ago. Both the speed of development and the heights reached are unparalleled in the history of mankind. Never before have we lived so long. We have never lived in such good health. Never before have we lived so well. And whether pessimists like it or not, these developments have not dried up in recent years, on the contrary they have accelerated even more since the start of the 21st century: we have gained around 6 years of life expectancy since the start of this millennium. Today, even in the country with the shortest life expectancy at birth in the world, this is 53 years (in the Central African Republic), which is to say 6 years higher than the life expectancy two centuries ago in the country where we lived the longest  (Norway).

Longevity – the negative side

However, despite the advances in medicine, hygiene and full-speed-ahead scientific and medical research that are advancing science as never before, we are living no longer than some of our distant ancestors. In the year 6 A.D.,  Terentia, Cicero’s widow, died in Rome. She was 103. The oldest person in the world today is 117, barely 14 years older than Terentia when she died. And, throughout the world, of the almost 8 billion inhabitants, barely 100,000 have reached the age of Terentia.

To expand on this lack of progress, or even regression, it should be pointed out that Jeanne Calment, who lived the longest in the history of humanity (a few controversies aside) died almost 23 years ago. On the side of the men, the oldest man in the world today is only 40th in the list of the longest-lived men.

Average lifespan – maximum lifespan, two concepts that do not only concern humans

The difference between the average, improvable, lifespan and the maximum lifespan, an almost immutable boundary, extends far beyond humans.

In animals, the average lifespan in the wild is much shorter than the maximum lifespan of the same animal in captivity. A mouse will generally live less than a year in the wild, whereas in captivity it can live for more than two years. A great tit will live two to three years, whereas in a cage it could sing for more than 10 years.  

As for as rats and mice in the lab are concerned, the average lifespan is 2 years and the maximum 3.8 years for rats and a little over 4 years for mice. Countless laboratory experiments measure the longevity of rats and mice after a treatment. For both rodents and humans, while we know of treatments that increase average life expectancy, the maximum life span remains to this day an almost impassable frontier.

Stagnation and even regression is what we called in an earlier letter  « the mystery of the centenarians« .

We humans, like other mammals and the vast majority of animals, are beings of built-in obsolescence. What demonstrates the almost impassable nature of the limit is the Methuselah Mouse Prize. It is awarded by the longevist organization SENS to a person who manages to make a mouse live longer than any other mouse. This prize has not been awarded since 2004.

Average lifespan – maximum lifespan, two less and less different concepts for humans

A few centuries ago maximum lifespan bore no resemblance to average lifespan. Indeed, 30-60% of individuals died in infancy. A century ago, in rich countries, the death of children was already relatively rare but infectious diseases and other causes of death killed the majority of people before old age. Today, in rich countries, dying before the age of 75 is often referred to as « premature death ». The average age of death is 80 and the median age is even higher.

In other words, today in the majority of deaths, what ends our lives are diseases and conditions related to what was yesterday, the extreme longevity of a small minority.

Those who say that we will never cross certain lines may be right.

If we project the changes of the past into the future, a baby born today in a rich country should live on average about 110 years. This is considering that we already live on average 80 years and that we have gained about 30 years of life in the last 110 years.

But to do this, we would first have to break a glass ceiling. Currently, even for the most promising research (senolytics, metformin, NAD+, …), it is mainly a question of gaining years of healthy human life within our current biological limits. Maximum life expectancies do not seem to be exceeded, both for humans and animals.

Optimistic longevists may be right

As Richard Feynman, quoted at the beginning of this letter, wrote, there is no impassable biological boundary equivalent to the wall of sound or the maximum speed of light. But there is the genetic code. This genetic code that means that a man has never lived to be more than 116 years old, a woman 122 years old, a Galapagos tortoise about 200 years old and a mouse just over 4 years old. However, this genetic code, we can modify it through gene therapy. In fact, we are already changing it for a number of diseases, even in adults.

This perhaps ultimate barrier to health could one day also be overcome by other means, for example by the production of proteins normally expressed by certain genes related to aging.

And the day this frontier is crossed, first in mice and then in humans, it could be like the conquest of flight at the very beginning of the 20th century, like the discovery of insulin in 1922 or like the use of penicillin at the end of the Second World War. A time before and a time after, that is to say, this time, relating to the frontiers of longevity, extended radically beyond the century.

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News of the month: « Rejuvenation » of the rat epigenetic clock thanks to a plasma. Collective progress in the fight against Covid-19

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An article on the use of plasma given to old rats has generated considerable enthusiasm in the longevist community. Two-year-old rats were given blood plasma and their physiological indicators during the test became almost those of 6-month-old rats. If true, this is an extremely promising discovery. Moreover, this article is signed in particular by two renowned scientists (Steve Horwath, specialist in epigenetics and  Harold Katcher, of the University of Maryland).

Unfortunately:

• No actual longevity tests have been done (only longevity markers)
• Only 6 rats were treated
• The article has not yet been peer-reviewed
• The composition of the plasma is not known
  

Let’s hope that the enthusiasm will translate into the announced longevity tests. Or that it will encourage further research for radical rejuvenation.

In the fight against the coronavirus, hundreds of research projects are underway. The majority of the authorities and groups that speak out insist on the pooling of research and its future availability to all. « Thanks » to the virus, attention to health and protection of the immune system, especially of the elderly, is greater than ever. On 19 May, the World Health Organization General Assembly adopted a resolution to respond to Covid-19. 

A WHO press release announces the creation, by May 29, of a platform to centralize data, knowledge and intellectual property related to existing and new health products against Covid-19. The aim is, following a proposal by Costa Rica, to make global public health products available to all people in all countries.

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To find out more:

 

• See in particular: heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org and longecity.org.

• Source of the image. 

 

 

 

Même en volant Je n’aurai pas le temps, pas le temps De visiter toute l’immensité D’un si grand univers Même en cent ans Je n’aurai pas le temps de tout faire (…) Et pour aimer Comme l’on doit aimer Quand on aime vraiment Même en cent ans Je n’aurai pas le temps Pas le temps

Even if I fly I won’t have the time, won’t have the time To visit all the immensity Of such a vast universe Even in a hundred years I won’t have time to do everything (…) And to love As one must love When you really love Even in a hundred years I won’t have time Won’t have time

I won’t have time. Lyrics by Pierre Delanoë, sung by Michel Fugain (translation).

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Theme of the month: Radiant Longevity 

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In the last hours of April 2020, the fight against Covid-19 is in full swing. We seem to be well positioned to win a battle. But the war is not over.

Among the beautiful lessons of this struggle is the mobilization of billions of men and women from all countries and all walks of life to protect the weakest and the oldest.

To make women and men live much longer and in perfect health; to achieve « amortality » (biological immortality) – many humans have dreamed of it. In fiction, alongside negative visions of longevity without limits, there are more nuanced or positive stories. Some of these will be discussed in this letter. You may like to read it while listening to the song Forever Young by Alphaville or Je n’aurai pas le temps, quoted above, by Michel Fugain.

An « amortal » future?

In the science fiction movie In Time, technology makes it possible not to age. Humans can live for centuries with the body of a perfectly young person. But every human has an electronic counter inside him that kills him if he reaches 0. The time on each counter can be bought, sold, and stolen in an extremely socially divided society.

But at the end of the story, thanks to the hero’s revolt, the clocks stop. In this story the « good guys », victims of the merchants of time, prevail against the « bad guys ». It is also a victory in a world that promises to have no more aging.

Mr. Nobody, in 2009, was the first widely distributed science fiction film in which « normal » human beings are those who live without aging. And the hero is, at 118, the last man to die of aging.

Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of The Mars Trilogy. In these books, scientists have developed treatments that allow them to live for more than 200 years. This does not prevent accidents, there are health problems and it is not an unlimited life, but it does make life easier in a strange world.

Reborn or rejuvenated without limits?

2001: A Space Odyssey is, for many, the best science fiction film ever made. Right at the end of the film, the hero, after seeing himself as an old man, seems to be reborn as a baby. And in the book, written in parallel to the film, the last sentence illustrates the hope of what we cannot even imagine yet. For though he was now the master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.

The film Cocoon is a beautifully optimistic science fiction story. Old people in a Florida retirement home discover a pool with strange stones that regenerate their bodies. These stones are in fact extraterrestrial. Visitors allow those who wish to do so to leave the earth for their distant world. Retirees, except one, will prefer space to decrepitude.

The series born in the Sixties, Doctor Who is the longest science fiction series of all time. Its impact has been considerable. The doctor hero of the film is an alien who can regenerate after his death, return in another body and carry on like this for centuries.

In the beautiful cycle of novels To Your Scattered Bodies Go by the great science fiction writer Philip K. Farmer, humans who have lived since the beginning of mankind (and even other species of hominids) are resurrected in a world organized around a huge river. In this world, created by superhuman beings, death is impossible and leads to a systematic resurrection. Some people regret it, but the majority of humans are very comfortable with it.

Wisdom and religion for unlimited longevity?

In some stories, extraterrestrials or beings different from humans live extremely long lives. This makes them more sympathetic because they have had time to accumulate wisdom. It is the cliché of the « old master », which is rather positive. Longevity is serene and even funny. The most famous example is that of Yoda in Star Wars who is more than 800 years old. But there is also Nicolas Flamel in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Elrond in the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien and, for the youngsters, the 542-year-old Papa Smurf.

And let’s not forget. Whether we are believers, atheists or agnostics, we all know the stories of heavenly life associated with a life without end. According to these accounts, humans could exist beyond death. And in these visions, even though existence often lasts for eternity, boredom, decrepitude, weariness… do not appear.

Indeed, religions, almost without exception, explain to us what happens after death. And many of these futures are radiant for the faithful who behaved well. It is the paradise of the Christians or Muslims, the Valhalla of the Nordic peoples, the Elysian Fields of the ancient Greeks, the fields of Aaru of ancient Egypt, the heaven and the realms of immortality of the Taoists, …

Positive stories of a much longer life are therefore countless. Technical, social and healthcare advances already allow us a much more radiant and much longer life than we could have dreamed of a few centuries ago. Current events show us that progress is still fragile. And it shows us that we can mobilize more than we would have thought in order to make progress together.

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News of the month: The fight against Covid-19 even more intense

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As already mentioned in last month’s letter, never before in the history of mankind has a disease been fought so quickly, with so much energy, scientific, economic, political and financial means.

Today, it is mainly containment that saves lives, a technique that has been around for thousands of years. But clinical trials are accelerating. Research into immunity, vaccines, stem cells, antivirals and antibodies has never been so numerous. The work is also being done with more interaction and sharing of knowledge than ever before. Tomorrow it will probably be with even more cooperation. This could be done at the level of the World Health Organization or by other organizations with an international dimension such as that recently announced by American and European public and private bodies.

Let us remember: the virus can affect almost everyone, but it almost only kills the elderly or the very elderly. Tomorrow, when the virus is defeated or tamed, the elderly will not be spared from other diseases. It will be necessary that human and material resources are then directed to enable the elderly to enjoy health as defined by the WHO. This is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

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For more information, please visit:

• heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org and longecity.org.
• Image source. Fountain of Youth (detail). From Sphaera.

We are calling for (…) maximum openness of medical data from patients with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, in order to facilitate medical research and the development of new therapies and new avenues of treatment. (…)

The increase in mortality rates from COVID-19 with age raises questions about the characteristics of biological aging that lead to greater susceptibility to this and other infectious diseases. (…)

Perhaps if there were ways to boost or regenerate the immunity of older people, this disease would not kill them.

Excerpts from an open letter to the President of the World Health Organization and Heads of State (the text can be signed here).

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Theme of the month: Coronavirus and longevity

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In the last hours of March 2020, there may not be a single adult human being in full possession of their faculties who is unaware of the spread of the viral disease called Covid-19.

This event is unique in many ways. Never in the last five centuries of human history has a health event had such an impact. Never in recent human history has global economic productivity declined so much in such a short period of time. Never before in the history of mankind has a disease been fought so quickly, with so much energy and with so many scientific, economic, political and financial resources…

The economic, sociological and cultural consequences are incalculable. We are living in an apocalyptic film scenario. An invisible organism is spreading rapidly throughout the world and causing an increasing number of deaths everywhere. The streets are deserted by the inhabitants. Humans avoid each other and remain locked down except to buy food. Supermarkets are under siege.

Are all the ingredients there for an apocalyptic film? No. One is missing. The virus doesn’t kill everyone who’s exposed. In fact, it kills « eclectically », especially the oldest and weakest. According to the data available to us, the fatal outcome appears to be about one in 15 people affected in a worst-case scenario. Other estimates are that it may only be 1 in 100, and there are even researchers who predict an even lower death rate of around 0.25 %. They rely heavily on the idea that many people are asymptomatic carriers of the virus. However, this seems highly unlikely, especially in view of the knowledge gained in places where whole groups have been tested.

In recent weeks, saving lives threatened by the virus has become a top priority. Authorities and citizens are acting with a determination that goes far beyond the normally accepted economic and material « inconveniences ».

Longevists had been talking about it for a long time. Those who yesterday considered life to be « long enough as it is » would mobilize if the day came when an illness threatened to shorten lifespan. Nick Bostrom had even considered this under the term inversion test. What no one imagined was the extent of public reaction.

The situation in recent weeks has been one of two snowballing phenomena. As the number of people affected increases, so do the measures taken. Once this double growth has been « launched », it becomes almost impossible to stop it. As long as therapeutic means such as antivirals or vaccines are not discovered, to stop fighting it would be to lose face, to admit that hundreds of billions of euros have been spent in vain and to come to terms with millions of deaths of elderly people. If the human life of the weakest had weighed only slightly less in the balance, many states, perhaps almost all of them, would have limited themselves to more moderate measures, « accepting » more deaths.

The determination of the authorities and citizens is extraordinary and moving. However, care must be taken to ensure that it does not become irrational. Every avoidable human death is a tragedy. A death from coronavirus is no more tragic than a death from influenza or septicemia. But the flu alone causes hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. And the mere application of strict vaccination and hygiene procedures for all people in direct contact with the elderly would probably save hundreds of thousands. Without getting the epidemic under control, millions of women and men are at risk of dying from coronavirus. But tens of millions of women and men will also die from other diseases generally associated with aging in the next 12 months alone.

Covid-19 shows several similarities with all the degradation mechanisms concerning aging. Let’s detail some of them.

The age at which people are dying

The probability of dying after infection follows an exponential curve that looks a lot like the Gompertz curve of aging.

For ordinary aging, from the age of about 20, the probability of dying is multiplied by about 2 every 8 years. For deaths due to coronavirus, age is also, by a long way, the factor that makes the most difference. As a result, there are almost no deaths of children under 10 years of age anywhere in the world. Only 0.2 per cent of young adults die when they are affected and 1.3 per cent of people aged 50-59. But 8 per cent of people aged 70-79 die and more than 20 per cent of persons in their nineties. Coronavirus may be more age-related than any other infectious disease. In Italy, the country now most affected by the epidemic, the average age of death of infected people is 79.5.

It is worth noting that today, infectious diseases are almost all more dangerous for the elderly than for young people. But this has not always been the case. For example, the dreaded post-World War I Spanish flu “targeted” above all young soldiers, exhausted by the war. .

More men than women, more sick people than healthy ones…

All over the world, women live longer than men. At the same time, the coronavirus is less lethal to women than to men. One explanation is that women smoke less than men, which has an impact on a disease that most often causes death from respiratory distress. However, this does not seem to explain the significance of the differences, namely more than 50% more deaths among men.

Not surprisingly, coronavirus, like aging, causes more deaths in people who already have other conditions. The main risk factors are very close to those that most accelerate death as a result of aging: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, hypertension and cancer. 

A deficient immune system

One aspect of aging is immunosenescence. Our immune system becomes less and less effective as we age. It no longer recognizes « friendly » bodies or « enemy » bodies.

This is one of the reasons why infectious diseases, whether viral or not, are much more often fatal in the elderly. That is why vaccines are less effective, even if they remain useful. That is probably why the coronavirus is so lethal in the elderly.

We know a lot, but we have a lot of uncertainty…

For the coronavirus, as with aging, we have accumulated a tremendous amount of knowledge. However, for the coronavirus, as for the mechanisms of aging, we also have huge areas of ignorance. Starting with what is most important: how to stop the developmental processes that lead to death.

But that’s where the similarities end.

As far as the coronavirus is concerned, our many uncertainties include:

• The duration of the incubation period
• The degree of contagiousness during incubation, during illness and after illness.
• The number of asymptomatic people and the level of risk of them contaminating other people
• The mortality rate of infected people (already dealt with above)
• la duration of immunity after the disease (if it occurs) and the risks of reinfection

Knowledge is advancing at a rate unparalleled in the study of disease in history. Millions of people and organizations are mobilizing to fight it.

It is essential, as part of containing this crisis, that international efforts be strengthened, coordinated, with anonymized data accessible to all. Under these conditions, it is likely that therapies that greatly reduce mortality will be available in the coming weeks or months. A vaccine may be available in 18 months’ time.

The main avenues are:

• A vaccine 
• Antiviral medicines  
• Antibodies produced by patients who have recovered 

But there are other avenues to be explored, including the use of stem cells. 

When it comes to viruses, cure is better than prevention.

In the meantime, prevention can work. It seems that it will achieve its goal, but at an incredible economic cost. To paraphrase a phrase from La Fontaine, right now « Few die, but all are struck. » 

Billions of people remain at home. The world’s stock markets are collapsing. Millions of companies are threatened. And everywhere, citizens are mobilizing out of fear for themselves, out of an obligation set by the authorities, and also out of a desire to protect the weakest and the oldest which has never been matched.

To put it somewhat provocatively, cure is even better than prevention. Preventing all new diseases by preventing the birth of new viruses lethal to humans is impossible and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Indeed, new kinds of viruses can appear anywhere and at any time. The means to prevent their spread must be improved. Especially since we cannot guarantee there will not be viruses that are much more lethal and have an even longer incubation period.

Finding ways to combat infectious diseases more quickly is therefore an issue that could become a matter of survival, not only for the elderly and weak, but for all humanity. Finding preventive cures for more and more types of viruses that are infectious to humans is impossible today but not unthinkable in the long term. And this can, or even must, be part of a global environment in which everything that makes humans more resilient and capable of living in good health for longer must be sought.

Cure is better than prevention when it comes to age-related illnesses

The prevention of age-related diseases is important. A healthier lifestyle, more sport, less stress, a more balanced and less abundant diet – all of these help to gain a few years of healthy life.

But, even more than in the fight against viruses, progress towards a much longer and healthier life cannot be made without breakthrough medical and scientific progress. Significant progress can only be achieved by mastering the mechanisms leading to a real halt (or radical slowdown) in the aging process.

In the fight against senescence, mobilization is weak and knowledge is progressing slowly. Age-related diseases are still too often seen as acceptable because they are « natural ».

However, this has now radically changed for one of the diseases linked to aging, namely the current epidemic. A virus, however, is only natural. Whether it is the plague virus or the 2019 coronavirus. We no longer accept that they kill even the unhealthy elderly who have lived much longer than the average lifespan. And thank goodness for that!

And tomorrow?

The fight got under way, hardly 100 days ago, to control the epidemic, for the sharing of knowledge, for scientific advances and new therapies against Covid-2019. They will be exhausting. But mankind has been through even more difficult times.

By early 2020, we were already caring more than ever for the elderly. We were already living longer. But the qualitative and quantitative leap between January 2020 and March 2020 is gigantic. Every death of an elderly person due to coronavirus has become a tragedy.

Soon we may be able to move from almost unanimously approved scientific research against a new disease that reduces life expectancy to medical research for new remedies that increase life expectancy (in good health, of course). 

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Good news of the month: Aged human cells rejuvenated 

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The main non-coronavirus-related health science news was announced by a team from the famed Stanford Medical School. Californian researchers used proteins called Yamanaka factors and managed to rejuvenate human cells. They also found that muscle cells from mice, treated in a similar way and re-injected into the mouse body, had a rejuvenating effect on mice.

The researchers want to continue their work so that one day human tissues will be rejuvenated.

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To find out more:

• See: heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org and longecity.org.
• Source of the image

 

 

I think a man actually spends his life healing from his childhood. (…) It’s hard to grow old without being an adult. Jacques Brel (Belgian singer).

We only think of death as something future. But the future one day will be the present. You are selfish about yourself, your future self, the person you will become. Fortunately, there are ways to stop this terrible disease of aging. But mankind invests too little effort in it. (…) Perhaps we will be part of the generation of those who will live eternally, or perhaps we will be the generation that will fall forever into oblivion. Bold quote from 4 creepiest mysteries of the body.

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Theme of the month: The Old Man and the Child

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Some say that the value of life comes from its brevity. And yet children have their whole life ahead of them. Do you see in young people a lack of willpower, a form of boredom? Sometimes perhaps, but less so than in adults.

It is often the same people who also say that if we had a much longer life or a life without limits, we would be affected by a kind of lethargy. Indeed, nothing would be urgent any more. Do you think when you look at our very young fellow human beings in a kindergarten, a playground or in a group outside a café that, because the horizon seems limitless to them, they tend to take everything slowly?

On the contrary, the broad horizon usually contributes to enthusiasm and energy. In fact, would you be more active, energetic and enthusiastic tomorrow if you knew you had only a few weeks to live?

The human being is the only animal to be aware of the inevitability of its end. But until the age of 3 or 4, children are not at all aware of what death is. Then he or she becomes aware of it, but first of all without realizing that it concerns all humans. Little by little, the child will perceive that death is an irreversible and inescapable phenomenon. However, even after the discovery of inevitability, adolescents see aging as a more than distant future.

Of course even in middle-aged adults this awareness is still relative. This concerns believers who affirm that there is life after death. This also concerns non-believers. This aspect was addressed in a 2010 letter concerning the Terror Management Theory. This theory states that we are so terrified of death that in order to make the idea of death bearable we need to see it as positive, so that imagining how to find a remedy for it becomes null and void; impossible.

Young children thus discover the inevitability of aging and physical death, along with the often ambivalent attitude of their parents. They will often be outraged. This will sometimes enable them to be pioneers in the struggle for longevity.

Nina Khera is a 13-year-old gifted young scientist from Canada. She studies longevity and genomics and specializes in the fight against senescent cells.

Laura Deming was 12 years old when she started working. At that age, she travelled halfway around the world from her native New Zealand to join the California laboratory of aging specialist Cynthia Kenyon. Today she is an adult who is convinced of the importance of research and investment in this field.

Laurent Simons, at the age of 9, already wanted to become a scientist and a doctor in order to put an end to aging.

One of the impressive aspects concerning Laura Deming and Laurent Simons is that their ideal was born out of the same concern at a young age: to protect their grandparents.

Laurent Simons declared in a Flemish newspaper: My goal as a scientist is to prolong life. My grandparents are heart patients and I want to help them. And make them live forever.

Laura Deming explained in an interview: I remember once when my grandmother came to visit us. I had never spent time with anyone over 60 years before. (…) for my grandmother, just getting up from a chair was really painful. It hit me. (…) Then I remember asking my parents what the disease was. They told me: she doesn’t have a disease, she is old. I asked them what disease it was to be old. They said, « Oh, no, no, you don’t understand, it’s a natural process. And as a child, you say to yourself: This is stupid. Why is there a natural process that we should all get, a disease that makes us so damaged?

The youngest people are often the most inclined to be concerned about the fate of the oldest people and to defend them. They have not yet learned to put up with injustices, even if they are those of nature.

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This month’s news: Coronavirus research and artificial intelligence for antibiotics

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While concerns about the SARS-CoV-2-virus (coronavirus) are widespread, two aspects are important and concern the « fight against aging »:

• It has been noted that the risk of death is much greater in the elderly. As with any infectious disease, one of the main aggravating factors is age.
• Archivists have mobilized to ensure that all scientific articles useful in the fight against the new disease are accessible regardless of copyright. They speak of a moral imperative. They therefore implicitly argue that the right to life takes or should take precedence over the right to profit.

Finally, in another area, this time concerning pathogenic bacteria, for the first time an antibiotic has been developed using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. The new antibiotic, called Halicim, has already proved its effectiveness in mice and human cells.

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To find out more:

• See in particular : heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org and longecity.org.
• Source of the image

 

 

My mother died of lung cancer, apparently because she smoked. Her risks increased fivefold with smoking. It’s terrible, this fivefold increase, of course, it’s potentially fatal. But from the age of 20 to 70 your chances of getting cancer are multiplied by a thousand and we are not talking about aging. David Sinclair, Australian biologist.  Cracking and reversing the aging Clock. 2019, June 2019.

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Theme of the month : Ethics committees, a brake on the right to health and advances for rejuvenation? 

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We live in an extraordinarily complex administrative and political environment, particularly with regard to decision-making processes. As a result, in the field of health, in the world, there are tens of thousands of public institutions with authority at one level or another. Of these, medical ethics committees that give their approval in relation to human experimentation are not among the best known.

Let us take the case of political and social security decisions in the field of health in three wealthy countries: France, Belgium and the United States. The averagely well-informed citizen knows that decisions on drug approvals depend on certain authorities (the FDA – the US Food and Drug Administration – being certainly the best known) and that the most important decisions are decided in parliaments and prepared by ministers. If he or she is Belgian and well-informed, they will know that in this small country there are 9 ministers with responsibilities for health matters, numerous mutual (‘friendly’) societies, a directorate for each public hospital (sometimes several hospitals are grouped together), doctors’ organizations and multiple advisory committees. If they live in France, they will most likely have come across the Caisse primaire d’assurance maladie, the Ministry of Health, hospital directorates etc.

But does a citizen, even an informed one, know that for almost every medical trial, which could one day save him, hundreds of organizations are able to prevent research (but not to require research to be done)?

The institutions vary greatly from country to country. The biggest are in the United States. They are known by the abbreviation IRB for Institutional Review Board. In France, there are Committees for the Protection of Persons, in Belgium Medical Ethics Committees. In Belgium alone, there are 144 active committees!

If these institutions are little known this is partly because organizations carrying out medical trials rarely express fears of slowness or blockages. Firstly, because it would send a signal to the public and potential investors that lengthy administrative procedures are still needed before products can be placed on the market. Secondly, because stakeholders almost always feel that the choice of discretion rather than media coverage in relation to difficulties in these areas gives a better chance of success. Moreover, while an appeal is theoretically possible in the event that a trial is refused by an ethics committee, such an appeal will almost never occur.

To avoid the blocking effect of the committees, some people are tempted to experiment in countries with much less restrictive legislation. This does not usually give good results because organizing an experiment in an « exotic » part of the world:

• presents many difficulties (insufficient medical infrastructure, risk of corruption or fraud and of course the need to work remotely or to travel);
       
• could be bad publicity for those organizing the trial because they could be accused of not respecting the ethical rules;
• Most importantly, the results of the trial would be difficult to publish; even if the results were potentially useful, they would therefore be poorly or not at all publicized and the available therapy could not be made available.

Finally, it should be noted that ethics committees also exist in countries often reputed to be little attentive or even indifferent to these issues, such as Russia or China.

Let’s imagine that today an ethics committee is asked to give an opinion on a potential human journey to the moon, not for reasons of prestige, but for medical reasons, for example by sending identical twins (monozygotic) to a space base (some remaining on earth, others leaving to measure the effects of reduced gravity, cosmic radiation, life in a confined space, etc.). No ethics committee would accept this experiment, which would nevertheless be a considerable source of useful information. And this would be so even if there are informed and aware people willing to risk their lives and/or who are suffering from diseases that are incurable and are fatal in the near term and who would therefore be happy to be able to devote their last days to being useful.

In French-speaking countries, an ethics committee appears at first glance to only give opinions but not to decide. This is because the ‘opinions’ (avis) of a committee can be of two kinds. In legal terms, this will be described as avis conforme or an avis simple. The latter is a real opinion that the one who decides is free to follow. The former however is best translated in English as ‘assent’ and is in fact an authorization procedure. And for the vast majority of ethics committees, what is required is assent.

The multitude of competent bodies depending on the place where trials are carried out is a strange arrangement. Human rights are generally regarded as universal and scientific research should cross borders, especially a country’s internal borders. Why would a trial for longevity be ethical in a Parisian hospital and not in a hospital in Lyon? It should also be noted that the fact that these committees are often small and therefore directly linked to an institution also implies the risk that an advisory committee is not concerned with the public interest or the interest of patients, but first and foremost with the interest of the institution in which the committee is located; or that the committee is not very attentive.

Above all, ethics committees only have the power to block, not to trigger or to encourage. While research that is triggered too quickly can cause injury or even death to people who have accepted the trials, delayed or abandoned research can prevent the survival of millions, or even billions, of people. If vaccine experiments, for example against polio, had been prevented, millions of people would have died in often excruciating suffering.

In a world more concerned with the collective interest, ethics committees would therefore be competent first and foremost, not to hinder medical progress, but to request useful medical trials. A change of perspective on this subject is not simple, but it is possible.

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Good news of the month : A positive interview with George Church and a great French-language video in favor of longevity

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The famous American scientist George Church gave a detailed and optimistic interview about longevity research: The goal of a Harvard geneticist: to protect humans from viruses, genetic diseases and aging. (With respect to the time horizon of age reversal in humans,) it is in clinical trials in dogs right now. So this veterinary product could be available in a few years, and then it will take another ten years for human clinical trials to be completed.

The ‘Zetetician’ (a person who casts doubt on and verifies unusual scientific claims) Samuel Buisseret has made a long video about how the search for immortality (more precisely life without aging) is a conceivable and desirable goal. He proposes in particular to envisage a better future, to dare to dream that « in 2100 we will all, including you and I, live as masters of our longevity in a world that will have been able to adapt and enrich itself with the consequences of its mistakes (…). There is nothing irrational about imagining such a world today. »

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To find out more :

 

• See in particular: heales.org, sens.org, longevityalliance.org and longecity.org