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215 points XzetaU8 | 10 comments | | HN request time: 0.297s | source | bottom
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adastra22 ◴[] No.45076538[source]
There is no physical/chemical/biological reason you can’t live indefinitely with the health and vitality of a 25-35 year old. Aging isn’t a law of nature.
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1. tokai ◴[] No.45076593[source]
It out of my wheelhouse but isn't telomeres a physical/chemical/biological reason we can't live forever?
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2. andrewflnr ◴[] No.45076695[source]
I believe the argument would go "there's no fundamental reason we can't fix telomeres".
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3. chpatrick ◴[] No.45076728[source]
Isn't the reason cancer? Eventually the DNA copying errors add up.
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4. __turbobrew__ ◴[] No.45076759[source]
We need ECC for DNA, I could probably use a deep scrub.
5. sodality2 ◴[] No.45076804{3}[source]
Cancer is not fundamentally unsolvable (AFAIK?). This is a tough question to answer though. Can we prove cancer to be solvable without solving it?
6. JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.45076827[source]
> isn't telomeres a physical/chemical/biological reason we can't live forever?

It’s one component, but not the only reason [1].

Naked mole rats’ telomeres do “not shorten with age but rather showed a mild elongation” [2]. They are long lived, for rodents, and don’t degrade into balls of cancer [3]. They nevertheless age.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence#Theories_of_aging

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6651551/

[3] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe0174

7. andrewflnr ◴[] No.45078331{3}[source]
There are a handful of animals, mammals even, that essentially don't get cancer (some/all large whales and naked mole rats IIRC). So that might be solvable other ways.
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8. adastra22 ◴[] No.45078772{3}[source]
You also fix the copying errors.
9. ◴[] No.45080598{4}[source]
10. AngryData ◴[] No.45080871{4}[source]
Nitpick, it is far less likely, but they can still get cancer.