Weight Battle

From JET, a Nick Bostrom fiction in the spirit of the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant: "Your body is a deathtrap. This vital machine and mortal vehicle, unless it jams first or crashes, is sure to rust anon. You are lucky to get seven decades of mobility; eight if you be fortune's darling. That is not sufficient to get started in a serious way, much less to complete the journey. Maturity of the soul takes longer. Why, even a tree-life takes longer. Death is not one but a multitude of assassins. Do you not see them? They are coming at you from every angle. Take aim at the causes of early death - infection, violence, malnutrition, heart attack, cancer. Turn your biggest gun on aging, and fire. You must seize the biochemical processes in your body in order to vanquish, by and by, illness and senescence. In time, you will discover ways to move your mind to more durable media. Then continue to improve the system, so that the risk of death and disease continues to decline. Any death prior to the heat death of the universe is premature if your life is good. ... One day you or your children should have a secure home. Research, build, redouble your effort!" The road to Utopia is to continue to live well - which, as Bostrom notes, will require great labor devoted to new medical technologies of engineered longevity.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://jetpress.org/v19/bostrom.htm
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Here's an essay from Aubrey de Grey in one of the recent issues of the Journal of Evolution and Technology: "A pervasive reaction to the idea of extreme or indefinite postponement of human aging - one heard from many professional bioethicists and also from a high proportion of the general public - is that aging differs morally from other causes of debilitation and death in a manner that exempts us from the duty to combat it that we perceive as so self-evident in respect of those other causes. Precisely what characteristic of aging underpins this alleged distinction? I argue here that it is in fact a false distinction, perpetuated only by unwarranted psychological forces posing as philosophical arguments. ... There are many conspicuous issues regarding which contemporary Western society generally takes a different moral view than it did a century or two ago. Slavery, universal suffrage and homosexuality constitute a representative selection. In all these cases, the view that originally prevailed was overturned because the arguments for the status quo were eventually seen to come down to no more than a fear of the unknown, a faith in the 'natural order' and other similarly unrooted emotions."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://jetpress.org/v18/deGrey.htm
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BANGALORE: GE Healthcare, the $17-billion healthcare business of General Electric Company, is planning to invest $200 million in India to tap the rural market for diagnostics and disease monitoring equipments such as ultrasound, computed tomography (CT scanners), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X-rays.

While the company has already signed agreements with Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh government to outsource radiology equipments in government hospitals, it plans to cover over 12 states in three years.

Following a public-private partnership (PPP) model, the medical device maker, with a revenue of $500 million, would facilitate the rural population with technologies and equipments like to diagnose their diseases at an early stage and would also enable them to monitor it.

“As per the agreement we would try and usher in radiological technologies and experts to provide services to patients. The rural market for diagnosis still remains largely untouched. Our idea is to how to reach the masses and make it affordable,” said GE Healthcare South Asia president and chief executive V Raja.

GE Healthcare has earmarked an investment of around $60 million for equipments under this programme. In Gujarat, the company has already installed devices in five medical colleges, said Mr Raja.

LONDON: A Chinese herbal remedy called horny goat weed is a promising alternative to Viagra for impotent men, Italian researchers said on Monday.

The herb has long held a reputation as a natural aphrodisiac. The lab experiments, which did not look at whether the plant actually increases desire, could lead to new drugs to help men get erections, said Mario Dell'Agli, a researcher at the University of Milan, who led the study.

"This could be the natural Viagra," he said in a telephone interview. "The novelty is that we have synthesised a new molecule that one day may be able to replace Viagra."

Erectile dysfunction is a common condition worldwide, and drugs like Pfizer Inc's But the medicines, which inhibit an enzyme called phosphodiesterase type 5 that restricts blood flow around the body, including to the penis, can have side effects ranging from headaches, upset stomach and visual problems including blindness.

The Italian team looked for alternatives by studying a number of plants reputed to boost sexual performance.

After homing in on horny goat weed, the researchers modified a compound in the plant called icariin and found it blocked the erection-inhibiting enzyme as well as Viagra did.

Because the compound targets the enzyme more precisely, it may have fewer side effects than Viagra, known generically as sildenafil, Dell'Agli said.

Further tests in animals and humans are needed but the extract from the herb represents a potential new erectile dysfunction treatment with fewer side effects, Dell'Agli said.

"The compound icariin is present in the horny goat weed in large amounts and its activity against (the enzyme) is lower compared to Viagra," he said. "But the new molecule we synthesized from icariin is as good as Viagra against (the enzyme)."

It is plausible that mechanisms of unlimited tissue regeneration will be learned from lesser species and then ported to humans: "Urodele amphibians such as the axolotl are the champions of tissue regeneration amongst vertebrates. These animals have mastered the ability to repair and replace most of their tissues following damage or amputation even well into adulthood. In fact it seems that the ability of these organisms to regenerate perfectly is not affected by their age. In addition to being able to regenerate, these animals display a remarkable resistance to cancer. They therefore represent a unique model organism to study regeneration and cancer resistance in vertebrates. The need for this research is even more pressing at the dawn of the 21st century as we are faced with an ever aging world population which has to deal with an increase in organ failure and cancer incidence. ... studying tissue regeneration in salamanders could yield significant knowledge to help regenerative medicine achieve the desired goal of allowing humans to repair and regenerate some of their own tissues as they age."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://pmid.us/18814845
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