Re: Historic Moment Missed

Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Wed, 30 Jul 1997 13:15:45 +0200 (MET DST)


On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Forrest Bishop wrote:

> Aging also involves macroscopice changes in various tissues. The cornea
> has to keep growing in order to remain transparent, cartilage of the
> ears and nose continously grow throughout life, and so on.

Yes, wear and overgrowth may be a major problem for very long lived
people. Another reason for periodic check-ups.

> >More in the future things like (say)
> >linking the telomerase gene with an artificial promotor so that you
> >can activate it by an injection of a drug, lengthening your telomeres
> >under medical supervision.
>
> Lengthening telomeres doesn't look as promising as it did a year ago.
> Apparently it can decrease cell division life or not affect it at all,
> depending on still unknown factors.

Yes, this is too bad. But it is an exciting area.

> >New species are not a goal per se; what would we (or they) use them
> >for?
>
> Other environments.

Haven't there been some rather detailled discussions of an aquatic
homid species? I would guess we could borrow a lot from the seals and
dolphins.

> Just because you don't get a response posted to the list does not
> mean that people didn't read it and think about it. It is not
> possible to keep up with everything. I only read maybe 30% of the
> messages, and reply to maybe 1%.

True. What we might need is a function that gives the poster an
impression of the mean facial expressions of people when they read
his posts...

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Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
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