In the previous article, we presented Bell's idea of human enhancement for life extension, and wondered why during evolution we did not develop this trait naturally.
In the previous article, we presented Bell's idea of human enhancement for life extension, and wondered why during evolution we did not develop this trait naturally.
To answer the question, we will look at another disease that has been attacking humanity for a long time. This is the genetic Huntington's disease, which attacks its carriers around the age of 40 and causes them to develop neurodegeneration and ultimately death. In principle, we would expect that a hereditary disease that kills 100% of the population would disappear from the world quickly because there would be no one to carry it. But this disease was preserved simply because most people used to have children before the age of 20, and that's all that matters. If a person has five children before developing Huntington's, the disease will be passed on. And what does it matter if he dies twenty years later? The negro did his part - passed the disease on to his descendants - and the negro can go.
Old age, dear readers, is exactly the same in the eyes of evolution. You had children, you did your thing. now you can go
This symptom is exemplified in the extreme in Australian gerbils, whose lives more or less consist entirely of sex. The males mature quickly, locate a female and start a passionate 12-hour a day, for almost two weeks. After these two weeks of 168 hours of love, the males return their souls to the great pocket mouse in the sky. According to Armond Marie Laroy and his book 'Mutations' - "They have no more sperm, their prostate gland is like Moses, their testicles are filled with connective tissue, their livers are necrotic and their intestines are bleeding". And just to make it clear to the men among us how serious the situation is, they don't have an erection either. And this is the most extreme example in mammals that nature and natural selection are not really interested in what happens to us after our contribution to the next generation. Similar insights can also be drawn from the fact that in some species of insects, the female eats the male after she exploits him sexually.
So evolution doesn't really need us to stay young forever. This is our selfish ambition. Still, if Bell had succeeded in his plan, he would probably have succeeded in extending the human lifespan. This is only a theoretical assumption, since Bell died in 1922 before he could get the new matchmaking factory up and running. And maybe that's for the best, since we certainly might not like the results...
The danger in improving long life
In the previous entry I told about the researchers who tried to imitate Bell's idea and improve organisms for long life. They chose to use flies, and also managed to extend their lives twice - a number equivalent to more than 150 human years of life.
A closer look at the long-lived flies revealed that they are extremely robust. They managed to survive better than their friends in conditions of lack of water and food or exposure to toxic chemicals. They were even more resistant to cancer! But the success at their advanced age cost them dearly. As life expectancy increased, the fertility in their youth decreased. The females laid fewer eggs and the males less wanted to mate. Instead of investing energy in mating and producing offspring, the flies hoarded their resources and made reserves of sugars and fats. They became lean and healthy couch potatoes, with a slower metabolism than normal flies.
This result implies a relationship between life expectancy and the general metabolic rate of the organism. In other words, if Alexander Graham Bell's dream were to come true, then his gerontocrats - the elderly-young - would probably be endowed with low fertility, low sex drive and extremely slow metabolism. The young would gain all the vigor and enthusiasm of extreme seniors.
These are only guesses, of course, based on the fly experiment, but they are consistent with our familiarity with nature. Creatures with an extremely fast metabolism - mice and shrews, for example - live only a few years. In contrast, Galapagos tortoises measure slowly throughout their two hundred years of life. The genetic improvement apparently encourages the slowing down of the metabolism.
Are you starting to lose hope? If so, you are doing it right. These experiments suggest that whole mechanisms of metabolism are responsible for aging. It is very difficult to change these mechanisms through improvement and gradual evolution.
But what if we could drive a wedge into the gears of metabolism and aging? affect the metabolism by external means? What are the tools we can use to slow down - and maybe even reverse - the aging process?
These questions will be answered in detail in the following records on the subject.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
"Longevity" series by Dr.Roey Tsezana
Longevity - Part One: The Road to Eternal LifePart two - the evolution that killed me
To stop death - third part in the series, "longevity of life": the hunger for life
Longevity, Part 4 When Breathing Kills: Free Radicals and Aging
Keeping death at bay: the telomere theory. Fifth article in the longevity series
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Dear Roy
Although this is an article from 2013, it is "like new" and I will follow every chapter of it.
Question: How does the body know that the time has come for the living production to die? Should the conclusion be that sexual activity at a late age will prolong your life?, because evolution has no serious reason to want to eliminate you?.
Yehuda
The idea that death immediately after producing offspring is evolutionarily meaningless is true in organisms that do not help their offspring. But what if you put offspring at the age of 35 but he reaches adulthood only at the age of 20 and by then needs your help?
There is a theory that says that women live longer than men because of the benefit they bring to their daughters as nannies, or even help in raising the offspring. theory.
Anyway, the articles are interesting, thought-provoking and clearly written. What more can you ask for? pizza.
This moment when you realize that from a situation where the purpose of the male was entirely to be fed by the female and provide proteins for the next generation (although not exactly the same branch from the tree, but the intention is clear) or species where the male is almost completely unnecessary, to a situation where men invented a religion according to which some kind of superman (" God") created the woman in general to serve the man (hahahaha) too many things have been written and very violent activities have been carried out against females, precisely in the human race... and all because of feelings of inferiority of the less significant species in nature.