Depressed Metabolism

On June 6th the next Cryonics Oregon meeting will coincide with a downtown Portland aging conference. As a result we have been successful in persuading Cryonics Institute President Ben Best and Alcor member and biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey to attend our meeting. The theme of the evening will be “Strategies for Life extension and Rejuvenation: [...]

The biology-of-aging blog Ouroboros has posted a skeptical post about cryonics that is highly representative of how most biological scientists respond to questions about cryonics. The discussion of cryonics is largely reduced to a discussion of the technical feasibility of suspended animation and resuscitation requirements. But suspended animation is not cryonics. Cryonics should be discussed [...]

The June 2009 issue of Rejuvenation Research features an article by Cryonics Insitute President Ben Best about the involvement of nuclear DNA damage in the aging process: Abstract This paper presents evidence that damage to nuclear DNA (nDNA) is a direct cause of aging in addition to the effects of nDNA damage on cancer, apoptosis, [...]

Unless you are a long-time cryonicist or a surgeon, you may not have heard of BioTime before. This company, recently profiled for its innovative stem cell research in Life Extension Magazine, is best known for producing the blood-volume expander Hextend, which was initially developed by Trans Time, an early cryonics company performing ultra-profound hypothermia research. [...]

At the blog Fight Aging!, Reason draws attention to the possibility that taking large amounts of antioxidant supplements may not necessarily be an improvement: Our biology is complex – why would we expect that successfully modifying it with chemicals would be as simple as eating those chemicals? Ingesting antioxidants in the hope of benefit because [...]

In August 2008, Neurobiology of Aging published the interesting observations of den Dunnen, et al. of the post-mortem body of a 115 year old woman, which showed no evidence of atherosclerosis. Her brain was devoid of the amyloid plaques characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease and neural density was on par with healthy persons 60-80 year of [...]

The full text of the Life Extension Foundation magazine article (August 2008) describing the use of Enbrel for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and announcing LEF’s new Enbrel trial, is now available. As previously discussed, Enbrel (entanercept) has been shown to provide immediate benefits in Alzheimer’s patients, improving memory performance and less frustration and agitation [...]

More than a decade of basic research and clinical evidence now implicates inflammatory processes in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). TNF-alpha is a pro-inflammatory cytokine, also known as the “master regulator” of the immune response, and is the key initiator of immune-related inflammation in the brain. Much evidence has linked excess TNF-alpha to the [...]

Let’s face it: we’re all (still) getting older, and aging leads to death. This is a major reason for cryonics’ existence — to preserve ourselves, usually in an aged, diseased, and/or deteriorated state, until medical science is capable of curing our ailments and prolonging our lives. Because many people (especially young cryonics supporters) tend to [...]

Most life extensionists and transhumanists do not buy into many of the myths about cryonics. But one perspective that is sometimes voiced by futurists is that cryonics is a rational backup plan until aging is cured. This position has some serious shortcomings and potentially lethal implications. Human cryopreservation is the practice of placing terminally ill [...]

Immortality as a zero probability of information-theoretic death may not be possible or realistic. A more practical (and less controversial) objective of radical life extension would be to minimize the chance of information-theoretic death. In analogy with Aubrey de Grey’s objective to cure human aging by engineering negligible senescence (SENS), the objective of radical life [...]

Press Release Methuselah Foundation Announces Aging 2008 at UCLA Have you ever dreamed of climbing Mt. Everest – on your 125th birthday? Los Angeles, CA (May 19, 2008) On Friday June 27th, leading scientists and thinkers in stem cell research and regenerative medicine will gather in Los Angeles at UCLA for Aging 2008 to explain [...]

The practice of balneotherapy, also known as water treatment or spa therapy, has experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent years, especially amongst those with skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. Salts, minerals, and bacteria particular to certain geothermal springs in various locations throughout the world have long been touted as having beneficial [...]

Cryonics Reports was the publication of the Cryonics Society of New York (CSNY). In April 1968 a call to arms to conquer aging was published. This editorial stressed that the problems of aging will not be solved until we decide that we want to conquer aging and extend our lives. Heart disease and cancer are [...]