CryoNet #32382 - #32384

CryoNet - Sun 14 Feb 2010

    #32382: What Darwin Got Wrong [David Stodolsky]
    #32383: Dietary Formula That Maintains Youthful Function Into Old Age... [oberon]
    #32384: cryonics terminology [oberon]

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Message #32382
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Subject: What Darwin Got Wrong
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:10:56 +0100

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/06/what-darwin-got-wrong

What Darwin Got Wrong....

The explanation for this might be the seductive myth that underlies  
it. That myth had its roots in Victorian social Darwinism but today it  
flows largely from two books - Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity  
(1971) and Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene (1976). Both these  
books, of course, contain lots of good and necessary biological facts.  
But what made them bestsellers was chiefly the sensational underlying  
picture of human life supplied by their rhetoric and especially their  
metaphors. This drama showed heroic, isolated individuals contending,  
like space warriors, alone against an alien and meaningless cosmos. It  
established the books as a kind of bible of individualism, most  
congenial to the Reaganite and Thatcherite ethos of the 80s. Monod  
first showed humans in Existentialist style as aliens - "gypsies" in a  
foreign world - and, by expanding the role of chance in evolution,  
concluded that our life was essentially a "casino". Dawkins added  
personal drama by describing a population of genes which - quite  
unlike the real ones inside us - operate as totally independent agents  
and can do as they please. It is no great surprise that these images  
caught on, nor that they can now persist whether or not the doctrines  
linked to them turn out to be scientific.


David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

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Message #32383
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:25:06 -0800 (PST)
From: [email protected]
Subject: Dietary Formula That Maintains Youthful Function Into Old Age...

[it is interesting that only an 11% increase in mean longevity was obtained, despite preservation of youthful vigor. Note that many of the ingrediants used in this complex supplement are likely inactive, or even detrimental. To my knowledge this is only the second trial which included chromium picolinate. Note that the free radical theory of aging which is talked up here has already been refuted in other research.]

Dietary Formula That Maintains Youthful Function Into Old Age
ScienceDaily (Feb. 12, 2010) - Researchers at McMaster University have developed a cocktail of ingredients that forestalls major aspects of the aging process.

The findings are published in the current issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine.
"As we all eventually learn, ageing diminishes our mind, fades our perception of the world and compromises our physical capacity," says David Rollo, associate professor of biology at McMaster. "Declining physical activity -- think of grandparents versus toddlers -- is one of the most reliable expressions of ageing and is also a good indicator of obesity and general mortality risk."
The study found that a complex dietary supplement powerfully offsets this key symptom of ageing in old mice by increasing the activity of the cellular furnaces that supply energy -- or mitochondria -- and by reducing emissions from these furnaces -- or free radicals -- that are thought to be the basic cause of ageing itself.
Most of the primary causes of human mortality and decline are strongly correlated with age and free-radical processes, including heart disease, stroke, Type II diabetes, many cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, and inflammatory and autoimmune conditions. Successful intervention into the ageing process could consequently prevent or forestall all of these.
Using bagel bits soaked in the supplement to ensure consistent and accurate dosing, the formula maintained youthful levels of locomotor activity into old age whereas old mice that were not given the supplement showed a 50 per cent loss in daily movement, a similar dramatic loss in the activity of the cellular furnaces that make our energy, and declines in brain signaling chemicals relevant to locomotion. This builds on the team's findings that the supplement extends longevity, prevents cognitive declines, and protects mice from radiation.
Ingredients consists of items that were purchased in local stores selling vitamin and health supplements for people, including vitamins B1, C, D, E, acetylsalicylic acid, beta carotene, folic acid, garlic, ginger root, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, green tea extract, magnesium, melatonin, potassium, cod liver oil, and flax seed oil. Multiple ingredients were combined based on their ability to offset five mechanisms involved in ageing.
For Rollo, the results go beyond simply prolonging the lifespan.
"For ageing humans maintaining zestful living into later years may provide greater social and economic benefits than simply extending years of likely decrepitude," he says. "This study obtained a truly remarkable extension of physical function in old mice, far greater than the respectable extension of longevity that we previous documented. This holds great promise for extending the quality of life of "health span" of humans."
Development of new and hopefully more effective supplements is ongoing.
Funding for this study was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

__________________________
Exp. Biol. Med. 2010;235:66-76
doi:10.1258/ebm.2009.009219
C 2010 Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine

Original Research

Dietary amelioration of locomotor, neurotransmitter and mitochondrial aging
Vadim Aksenov1, Jiangang Long2,, Sonali Lokuge1, Jane A Foster3, Jiankang Liu2 and C David Rollo1,
1 Department of Biology, McMaster University 1280 Main St W, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4K1
2 Institute of Mitochondrial Biology and Medicine, Department of Biology and Engineering, The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Xi'an Jiaotong University School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an 710049, China
3 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neuroscience, McMaster University and Brain-Body Institute, St Joseph's Healthcare 50 Charlton Ave. E T3308, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8N 4A6
Corresponding authors: C David Rollo. Email: [email protected] or Jiankang Liu. Email: [email protected]
Aging degrades motivation, cognition, sensory modalities and physical capacities, essentially dimming zestful living. Bradykinesis (declining physical movement) is a highly reliable biomarker of aging and mortality risk. Mice fed a complex dietary supplement (DSP) designed to ameliorate five mechanisms associated with aging showed no loss of total daily locomotion compared with >50% decrement in old untreated mice. This was associated with boosted striatal neuropeptide Y, reversal of age-related declines in mitochondrial complex III activity in brain and amelioration of oxidative stress (brain protein carbonyls). Supplemented mice expressed 50% fewer mitochondrial protein carbonyls per unit of complex III activity. Reduction of free radical production by mitochondria may explain the except
 ional longevity of birds and dietary restricted animals and no DSP is known to impact this mechanism. Functional benefits greatly exceeded the modest longevity increases documented for supplemented normal mice. Regardless, for aging humans maintaining zestful health and performance into later years may provide greater social and economic benefits than simply prolonging lifespan. Although identifying the role of specific ingredients and interactions remains outstanding, results provide proof of principle that complex dietary cocktails can powerfully ameliorate biomarkers of aging and modulate mechanisms considered ultimate goals for aging interventions.
Free text>
http://ebm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/reprint/235/1/66

J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2005 Mar;60(3):275-9.
A complex dietary supplement extends longevity of mice.
Lemon JA, Boreham DR, Rollo CD. Department of Biology, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4K1. [email protected]
Key factors implicated in aging include reactive oxygen species, inflammatory processes, insulin resistance, and mitochondrial dysfunction. All are exaggerated in transgenic growth hormone mice (TGM), which display a syndrome resembling accelerated aging. We formulated a complex dietary supplement containing 31 ingredients known to ameliorate all of the above features. We previously showed that this supplement completely abolished the severe age-related cognitive decline expressed by untreated TGM. Here we report that longevity of both TGM and normal mice is extended by this supplement. Treated TGM showed a 28% increase (p < .00008) in mean longevity. An 11% increase in mean longevity was also significant (p < .002093) for treated normal mice, compared to untreated normal mice. These data 
 support the hypothesis that TGM are a model of accelerated aging, and demonstrate that complex dietary supplements may be effective in ameliorating aging or age-related pathologies where simpler formulations have generally failed.
PMID: 15860460

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Message #32384
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:29:27 -0800 (PST)
From: [email protected]
Subject: cryonics terminology

I received one "non-supportive" email from an influencial cryonics proponent regarding my proposed change in cryonics terminology to delete all mention of fraudulent terms such as patient or person in reference to stored corpses. The sender stated that the "eyes of the law are irrelevant".

Below is an extract from my reply, which I hope will serve as a warning to cryonics organizations that are still using such potentially dangerous terminology.

"It was the law which shut down CI for awhile. CI is regulated as a respository only for corpses, yet CI continues to use terms that imply it is violating the law. CI has been shut down by the law in the past, and will again when at some point in the future when the local law is more strictly enforced. Using terms that are not in the dictionary elminates some of this risk. Terms like "suspendee", my own proposed "cryonaut", and "preservee" as suggested elsewhere all possess the advantage of being low risk terms because they are not in the dictionary. They would mean the same to members of the cryonics movement, as "patient" would, but are not in technical violation of the law. As you know, the dictionary states that "patient" can only refer to live human bodies and not to corpses. This dic
 tionary reference can be used by any unsympathetic bureaucrat to shut down both CI and Alcor at any time. For institutions that may have to survive hundreds or even thousands of years to fulfill their purpose, taking needless risks such as using words like "patient" is imprudent."

>From CI's website:
[Cryonicists make best efforts to minimize tissue deterioration to maximize the future potential for life. For this reason, cryonicists refer to people who have been cryopreserved as patients, rather than as corpses.]

>From Alcor's website:
[The cryopreservation phase of cryonics will not be reversible for a very long time. But this still does not mean cryonics patients are dead.]

According to a court ruling in the state of Michigan a patient can not be a corpse, and thus technically CI is guiltly of making a fraudulent claim. Any unsympathetic bureaucrat could take CI to court and win the lawsuit.
Snipped from the web>
[A ruling however by the Michigan Court of Appeals determined that "because a dead body is not a person, it is not protected under a statute that protects patient abuse in nursing homes."]

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