Scientists reverse aging in cows - Bill Joy's nightmare unfolding?

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SCIENTISTS have achieved a medical first by reversing the ageing process in animal cells. Six cloned calves have been born with cells appearing younger than a normal animal and they could live for 50 per cent longer.

The benefit for humans is that cloning could be used to create youthful tissue from elderly patients to treat degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and diabetes, as well as heart, liver and kidney conditions.

Scientists still do not fully understand why the ageing process was reversed. Dr Michael West of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) the American company which made the breakthrough, said: "We can run biology in reverse."

He said the cellular clock in the aged cells used to clone the calves had been wound back beyond the embryonic state so they live longer than normal. A cell's life ends when it can no longer divide. Cells from a normal new-born calf divide 60 times in the laboratory. Cells from the clones divide 90 times, so the calves could live up to 50 per cent longer, to an age of 30.

But because ageing takes place at the level of the organism as well as the cell, Dr West will have to wait decades to see if these calves really do live longer than normal. He doubts the method could rejuvenate a human although he accepts that, combined with genetic modification, it could lead to tinkering with the rate of ageing of a cloned embryo.

If the results could be transferred to humans, and if the rate of cell ageing is reflected by the entire organism, then humans cloned in a similar way could live up to 200 years. Dr West said the advance will have an immediate impact on efforts to create "young" tissue to treat the diseases of old age, for instance by recreating the bone marrow of a cancer patient.

He said: "With this research we have shown that it may eventually be possible to improve the quality of life for millions of people. In addition to patients with heart, liver, and kidney disease, over 16 million patients worldwide suffer from neuro-degenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. Millions more suffer from diabetes and other diseases that may one day be treatable using these new technologies."

The researchers describe how they rewound the ageing clock in cells in the journal Science. The clock consists of a strand of DNA on the end of all chromosomes called telomeres. Every time a cell divides they become shorter. The ageing clock is eventually run down when the cells stop dividing.

The results of previous research indicated that even cloned cells retained the ageing clock of the clone donor. For example, the technique used to clone Dolly the sheep turned back time in one sense, converting an adult cell into an embryonic cell. But it did not reset the cellular ageing clock, so that her telomeres were shorter than for a normal newborn.

Today's report describes the cloning of six calves generated from cells at the end of their lifespan, after 1,900 attempts. The calves suffered the usual problems of cloning, being large at birth and suffering breathing problems and high blood pressure.

But they were normal at two months, except for their telomeres. Dr Robert Lanza of ACT, first author of the report, said: "The old cells were not merely returned to a youthful state. They were actually given a longer life span than those from normal animals." The team suspects rejuvenation is linked to the type of cell used, a skin cell called a fibroblast, rather than the mammary cells used for Dolly.

If the feat can be routinely accomplished it will be possible to regenerate and rejuvenate cells and tissues for the repair of age-related disease. The cloned animals, one of which celebrates its first birthday this week, have telomeres that look like newborn calves although they were cloned from senescent cells.

The company aims to create human stem cells - the basic cells that form all the cells in the body. These cells would then be capable of differentiating into a variety of human cells, such as heart cells, neurons, blood cells or islets for transplant therapies. By showing the cellular clocks of these stem cells can be reset, ACT has shown that human therapeutic cloning may give scientists the potential to grow young cells, tissues, and organs for an ageing population.

Therapeutic cloning is controversial because it requires creating a human embryo and harvesting stem cells, which would destroy it. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics says the potential benefits outweigh ethical concerns and a committee is expected to approve research.

-- Is this exciting or scary? (@ .), April 27, 2000

Answers

It's neither exciting nor scary. It makes me ANGRY!

-- y (y@y.y), April 27, 2000.

I don't understand why the stem cells have to come from a human embryo. Human stem cells are currently being taken from human umbilical cord blood, a process safe for mother and child. Human stem cell transplants help treat leukemia and other blood-related diseases -- but so far I've only heard about this material coming from umbilical cords that are routinely destroyed anyway. As a bone marrow donor, I receive yearly updates from the American Red Cross about these procedures.

WHY do the stem cells used in cloning have to come from embryos?

PLEASE sign up to be a bone marrow donor. It involves a blood test. You could save a life.

-- helen (home@the.farm), April 27, 2000.


y,

Why are you ANGRY? Did the Saulk vaccine make you angry too?

helen,

Sounds painful, is it?

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), April 27, 2000.


Don't stem cells come from rhe stem?

-- (nemesis@awol.com), April 27, 2000.

Am I understanding this correctly? Cells from my derma could be used to create a clone that could quickly develop, enabling replacement tissues to not only be AVAILABLE, but AVAILABLE with a longer lifespan than the original?

We're not talking about sex here, J, so you can chill.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 27, 2000.



I am angry because, in man's attempt to conquer and dominate the universe, all sense of morality is non-existent. Stupid selfish people. They will meet their demise at their own hands.

-- y (y@y.y), April 27, 2000.

Anita,

Am I the "J" that you are addressing?

If so, can you explain how creating a human without sex would then make it ok to kill and dismember said human for spare parts?

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), April 27, 2000.

J:

Sorry...when I saw the one letter I just assumed it to be a J. The response was meant for the OTHER letter...Y?

Regarding your question, however, if I can turn dried milk into yogurt and eat it, I have no problem scraping a few cells off my arm and receiving a new liver in return. We're not talking about a NEW human in this regard. We're talking about the aggregate of the asexually produced progeny of an individual.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 28, 2000.


Am I understanding this correctly? Cells from my derma could be used to create a clone that could quickly develop, enabling replacement tissues to not only be AVAILABLE, but AVAILABLE with a longer lifespan than the original?

Maybe, but it would also have a Brain, personality, and life of it's own.... maybe even it's own name..... not just a part number.

Now the other side of this story is that maybe....just maybe they can develop a "gene therapy" that will rejuvenate "old cells" to a state that is younger than when you were born... possibly in our own life times.... Imagine... hit 50... next year you look, feel, and are.... 20 :-)

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), April 28, 2000.


Telomeres were big news about 3 years back when they extended the lifespans of some mice. They do, in fact, appear to be the controlling factor in aging (as this experiment confirms).

Frankly I don't think we'll NEED to have 'spares' available. Once we get gene therapy/delivery down pat (figure 10-15 years) we'll be able to grow OURSELVES younger. That's right. Just replace the DNA in your existing body with a YOUNGER version of itself and Bam! You ARE Younger. This isn't fantasy folks. This is the technology we are developing today.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: Biotechnology will be to the first 25 years of the new century what computing techology was to the last 25 years of the prior century.

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.CON), April 28, 2000.



I am angry because, in man's attempt to conquer and dominate the universe, all sense of morality is non-existent. Stupid selfish people. They will meet their demise at their own hands.

-- y (y@y.y), April 27, 2000.

If you are a Bible Thumper you should know that God created Man to Dominate the earth... it's our job :-)

If you are just plain afraid of tech..... get used to it, the next 10 or 20 years will scare you to death....

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), April 28, 2000.


Oops! Missed the end of Netghosts post. Yes, that's what I'm talking about...

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.CON), April 28, 2000.


It goes a lot farther than just bio-tech..... everything is getting smaller and faster,... I forget how small that new "motor" was, but it's made of Atoms.. ( nano-tech )... and how about the new "tera-bite" chip?..... just wait until they can combine all three :-)

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), April 28, 2000.

FYI on the subject of "gene therapy" ... saw this today:

Gene Therapy May Have Scored First Cure

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), April 28, 2000.


I am angry because, in man's attempt to conquer and dominate the universe, all sense of morality is non-existent. Stupid selfish people. They will meet their demise at their own hands.

Actually he may have something here. I don't doubt for a second that we (as a race) will experience designer viruses at some point. You know, a virus that only attacks peoples who's skin is too dark, or too light, or who are of asian descent, or who aren't of asian descent, or....well, you get the picture.

How about more specific viruses, say one that attacks a particular political leader's entire bloodline? You know, get a DNA sample from their kid (a piece of discarded chewing gum would do it) and design a virus to kill only those with a matching DNA pattern. All of this is *completely* do-able from a technical perspective. I'm a programmer and to my eyes DNA looks just like (because it IS) a program that we haven't quite got all the source code to yet. Once we do, all (and I do mean ALL) bets are off. -TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.CON), April 28, 2000.



TECH...... that's what they said about the "Atom bomb" many years ago, and bio-weapons today..... we're still here.

Is it luck or "common sense"?

The human race has had the ways and means to destroy it's self for 30 years.... luck?.... or a selfservering, biological imperitive?

Really... if you so pissed at someone you were going to kill them.... and you were neek deep in propane...... would you pull the trigger?

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), April 28, 2000.


Netghost,

But that's the WHOLE point of designer viruses. You can SAFELY attack your enemy at a genetic level while making the virus harmless to YOU. Drop a nuke and you've ruined a city/country for dozens if not hundreds of years. Create a plague and all you have to do is move in and clean up the bodies.

Kinda gives a whole new meaning to 'ethnic cleansing' now doesn't it?

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.CON), April 28, 2000.


TECH... That's what I ment by being neck deep in propane.... all bio's mutate faster than we can keep-up... go for a specifice geno-type and you will get to us mongrels, then what?

Does it spread to everyone?.. or piss off the ones that live thru it?.... Then what?

Hopefully the human race has more sense than to get into that pissing contest.... but that's just my personal hope, just mine.....

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), April 28, 2000.


BTW.... anyone that thinks they are "pure breed".... they just hasen't been getting enough... for a longggggggggg time :-)

-- Netghost (ng@no.yr), April 28, 2000.

Again though, adding telomeres will only help with tissues that DIVIDE. Things like neurons and muscle that don't will slowly deteriorate anyway. This technology, if ever practically applicable to man, may lengthen people's lives, but it's not a fountain of youth (yet).

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 28, 2000.


Another thing is that errors in replication are no big deal if the cell isn't going to divide anymore, it just dies or acts abnormally during its lifespan. Making cells that can live for longer than they were meant to *may* result in some bizarre cancers showing up later down the line.

I'd still like to see the *research* done though, preferably on *animals* before mankind ;-).

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), April 28, 2000.


Uncle D -- I didn't mean to say that I've donated already. I'm tested and entered into the donor registry, which means if someone needs a bone marrow transplant and I match, they'll call me. The initial screen is a simple blood test from the arm, about 4 cc. When you're called, another blood test is done for more extensive screening. Donation is made under anesthesia, and most donors feel a back ache for a few days afterward.

Replacement tissues are being grown in the lab right now from cells taken from the recipient. I saw something on a the news that showed how a whole new trachea was grown around some special kind of material that can be molded into the desired shape. The cells from that particular body part are taken from the patient and grown in a nutrient solution until the new part is complete. So far it works well for ears, tracheas, etc. The doctor doing the research said it could eventually be used to grow new spinal cords, hearts, lungs...very exciting and it doesn't involve embryos.

The ethical implications of extended human life spans will most likely follow the usual medical lines...who gets the treatment, how much will it cost, do we all have a "right" to it? Then there will be other problems such as changing the societal expectations of career length. If you're modified to live to 200 years, I don't want you retiring at 67!

Heinlein wrote so many senarios that have come to pass. I wonder about this one.

-- helen (home@the.farm), April 28, 2000.


Tech32:

I just wanted to butt in and say I agree with your assessment of the effects of Biotech in this century. I too believe it will have the same impact as computer technology. On the matter of henious manipulation of DNA, I side with Netghost-Somehow we keep on keeping on, even though we have enough nuclear weaponry to destory our entire population severla times over.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 28, 2000.


If so, can you explain how creating a human without sex would then make it ok to kill and dismember said human for spare parts?

J,

Nowhere in that article does it say that human clones will be sacrificed for organs. Human skin is grown in the lab now, I think the point was in the future they may be able to grow organs the same way.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), April 28, 2000.


Anita,

Why would it be OK to kill "the aggregate of the asexually produced progeny of an individual" when it is not OK to kill the aggregate of the sexually produced progeny of two individuals?

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), April 28, 2000.


Futureshock, Netghost

Yes, we have managed to survive. But do you think someone like Saddam or Hitler would restrain themselves from using a weapon they thought it would only kill their enemies? Especially if they thought it would kill ALL of their enemies?

The reason we haven't nuked ourselves out of existence was Mutually Assured Destruction. If we started lobbing nukes we could be sure nukes would be coming back at us. With a designer virus no one would know where it started or who to strike back against. All we would know is that people were dying en masse and that we'd better find a cure (if at all possible) before everyone was dead. Could a virus mutate? Yeah, but if the designers did their jobs properly (ie. they wrote a correct 'program') then the risk would be quite slim.

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.CON), April 28, 2000.


Unk:

If we want to look at cloning in a spiritual sense, we'd have to ask a whole lot more questions than THAT. If the DNA from a skin cell, strand of hair, drop of blood, etc. is nurtured, does the end result have a spirit, or is the spirit simply an extension of the donor? If the end result doesn't live [due either to circumstances outside control of the donor or due to intensional harvesting requests by the donor], is the donor guilty of neglect, murder, or suicide?

If our skin, hair, blood, etc. are considered capable of eventually having an INDEPENDENT spirit, am I engaging in an abortion when I get my hair trimmed and the hairdresser throws the hair away? How about when I rinse the blood off a cut finger?

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 28, 2000.


Oops...that would be intentional...unless one considers the topic intense enough for it to be intensional.

The "bubble babies" were on the T.V. news tonight. They looked chubby and happy.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 28, 2000.


"We could take one young cell from a patient....."

It seems that the cell taken has a role in whether the clone is younger or OLDER than the donor. Dolly [the sheep] was cloned from an old sheep and an old cell. The 6 cows were cloned from an embryo.

Back to my question about hair, blood, etc., WHERE exactly is a young cell on an older person? Would one of what we oftentimes call "baby hairs" on the base of the hairline at the neck qualify? Since we shed old cells on the derma, would we need to perform a form of dermabrasion before a YOUNG cell is found?

More on the fountain of youth

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 29, 2000.


Hi, Anita,

What's a "bubbe baby"? Sounds like some Matel toy...

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 29, 2000.


Hey 'nita,

'Stop' inadvertantly caused me to turn up a couple of interesting articles during our tango yesterday.

Here's a quick article about the senate debate over stem cell research:

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000426/sc/science_cells_1.html

-- flora (***@__._), April 29, 2000.


For those interested in hot-linking to the Senate Hearings article, click here

From MY standpoint, Flora, if it's going to go to waste anyway [like the trimmed hair I mentioned above], it seems to me to be a good idea to use it for SOMETHING. Of course I totally disagree with the Republican from Kansas in the first place regarding WHEN life begins. My opinions are similar to those expressed in an article I presented to "Stop" in the "Sex education in the schools" thread.

JOJ:

The "bubble babies" were discussed in a post Patricia made above, I believe. Two children were born with immune deficiencies that were [at least apparently] corrected via DNA transfs from donors without the deficiencies.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 29, 2000.


Correct me if I'm wrong---a cloned human being would be genetically identical to its doner, righr?

But IMO, it would not be an identical person. We still have the whole nature vs nurture issue---I am not going to have the same thoughts as my clone, if I was raised in a very different way. Oh sure, there would be strong similarities---the Minnesota identical twin studies have already proven that, but clones would still be separate entities.

Then there is the issue of how do thoughts arise. Even perfectly identical bodies with identical brain cngfigurations would not equate to identical people. We are getting into chaos theory here.

Gfinally, dare I bring it up----would genetically identical people have identical souls? My thought is that they would not. Yes, I do believe we each have a non-corporeal essence that transcend our mortal essence. I have no problem calling it a soul.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), April 29, 2000.


Interesting concept, Lars,

Aren't identical twins mirror images of each other, rather than identical? So is there such a thing as two souls which are mirror images of each other?

I assume that clones are truly identical copies, right?

JOJ

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), April 30, 2000.


Lars:

I, too, believe there would be two differnt souls-All you are doing wit cloning is duplicating genetic material-can we really say that something would not mutate in the process? Would my clone be esactly the same, physically, as me?

I believe that nurture has as big a role as nature. I also believe that we pick up thoughts depending on the environment we are in. If I were to have two clones at the same time, one here in the US and one in, let's say the soviet union, I believe they would have two entirely different lives.

They would probably, however, have the same sized penis.

FWIW

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), April 30, 2000.


FS,

Ah, the same size but not the same expertise.

-- Lars (lars@indy.et), April 30, 2000.


JOJ,

You said, Aren't identical twins mirror images of each other, rather than identical?

No, identical twins are created when at an early stage ~2-8 cells (if I remember right) of development the embryo divides and separates rather than just dividing. They are therefore identical and not mirror images.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), May 01, 2000.


Frank's correct.

My better half is a twin. Some fraternal twins have the mirror thing happening {Big Time!} in physical and psychological attributes.

-- flora (***@__._), May 01, 2000.


Thanks, Frank, I guess I've been under a misconception, so to speak, for a looooong time. Probably springs from my friendship with Ronny and Tommy in grade school. One was left handed, one right. One's hair had a cowlick on the oppoisite side from the other. Proof positive, right?

-- jumpoff joe (jumpoff@echoweb.neet), May 02, 2000.

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