The coming revolution over anti-aging research

On Bloggingheads’ Science Saturday, Methuselah Foundation chairman Aubrey de Gray argues that eternal life is within reach and attacks those who think it’d be a bad idea.

But here’s something he and interviewer Eliezer Yudkowsky don’t address: on the day eternal life becomes available, it might be a bad idea for everybody over a certain age. Those people would be locked into life at their current age indefinitely, while the rest of the world — their future friends, enemies, bosses and lovers — would become an ever-swelling group of 24-year-olds.

How would society react to this approaching possibility?

Untimely Ripped

If you’ve had a child in the last ten years or so – or rather, if you’ve seriously contemplated having a child for more than about fifteen minutes of your life – there’s one fact you’ve probably heard: Caesarean rates in the first world, especially in the US, are too high. Every few months brings along another article like this one, deploring the Caesarean rate and explaining (1) why it’s so high and (2) what doctors and patients should be doing to solve it, and aren’t. In many circles, unmedicated natural childbirth is held to be the best possible birthing experience — “our birthright” according to one midwife — and women who end up having a Caesarean for causes which aren’t immediately and obviously life-threatening for the baby (for instance, prolapsed cord) quite often feel that they’ve somehow been denied a good birth, or that they have let themselves or the baby down. On Plans, we were discussing how “birth is not a competition”, but human nature is such that some people will inevitably regard it as one; to have had an unmedicated birth somehow gives you a head start in the Good Parenting Stakes, and to have had a Caesarean shows lamentable weakness.

The Placebo Price Effect

On my way home from work, I heard this story on Marketplace explaining a new drug placebo study done recently. From the story:

Participants thought they were testing a new drug for pain relief. In fact, everybody got placebos. Only one difference. Some were told the pills cost $2.50, while others were told they only cost a dime. Dan Ariely, author of “Predictably Irrational,” was the lead researcher.

DAN ARIELY: What we found was that the expensive pill reduced pain to a much larger degree than the cheap pills.

This could be significant for the $59 billion generic drug industry. The study helps explain why patients generally prefer brand-name drugs, and why consumers think they are more effective than generic drugs, even though they have the same active ingredients. Glen Melnick is a health economics professor at USC.

The apocolyptic plague is fake, but the research is real

I ran across an article while browsing Wikipedia the other day which caught my interest. It was talking about the Corrupted Blood Plague which swept through the massively multi player online game World of Warcraft. This is hardly new news, having taken place all the way back in September of 2005, but like many such things, it has bubbled to the surface at a time that I was already thinking about several related topics, and has captured my attention. The interesting thing to me had less to do with the details of what happened in this particular case than it had to do with the broader concept of what incidents like this mean to the world beyond the game.

The plauge itself was entirely virtual, and never reached past the confines of the game. Within the game, many characters were affected, but even they faced no lasting ill effects. What is interesting to me is that the way in which the events of the plague played out in the virtual world has attracted a great deal of attention from serious researchers who are interested in how observation of these phenomena can be applied to improving our understanding of the real thing.

Walking the walk

Today, for those of you who don’t keep up on such things, is World Sauntering Day. This is a day during which one is supposed to walk in a “very casual, yet stylish” way. Of course, it never fails but that today would be the day I spent limping around everywhere I’ve had to go.

I woke up this morning badly dehydrated, and when I tried to get out of bed, both of my legs cramped up, and I collapsed. After stretching them out some, I was able to stand up, and eventually get ready for work. I almost didn’t make it to the car, but I did somehow get into the office. I spent the rest of the day hobbling as my calf muscles (the gastrocnemii, to be technical) slowly unwound. Even once they’d loosened up again, they hurt from having been cramped up for so long.

Knowing that I was dehydrated, and that this was likely the cause of the excruciating cramps in my legs, I drank a huge quantity of water today. In spite of this, it took until well after lunch before I could even walk at more than a slow, grinding pace. Even now, my legs ache when I walk. What should I have done to speed up this process?

The web offers little help. I have found any of a number of sites which recommend that I gently stretch the muscles that are cramping, which I certainly did. Suggestions for gentle massage also abound. Several sites suggest that one should attempt to replace lost electrolytes, as well. I had already thought of that, and tried drinking a bottle of Gatorade that I bought when I had to stop for gas on the way to work. I pity the poor clerk who tried to make pleasant conversation with me as I limped up to the counter. I fear I might not have been polite. Perhaps as punishment for my treatment of the clerk, the Gatorade did nothing to ease the discomfort in my legs.

I begin to fear that this is a problem for which there is no quick and easy solution. My conditioning in a culture of instant gratification has made me ill-equipped to deal with this situation. With luck, however, it will have gone away on its own by morning. Tomorrow, so help me, I will saunter.

Overrated: Health care innovation

Personally, I’d like to survive the next five years. I expect this will always be my position on the matter.

But should I have the same goal for the public at large? Is maximizing health really a good social policy? Here’s a novel answer: no.

I don’t object to titanium hips, defibrillator implants or other modern marvels. But as rich people’s life expectancies climb past 80, we should ask: what’s the goal here?

It’s not a trivial question; the best argument against public health care is that it slows general increases in health by dampening innovation. I agree.

But innovation is a price I’m willing to pay. My policy goal isn’t maximizing health, it’s maximizing happiness. At this point in our health-care progress, maximal happiness will come from keeping everybody sorta healthy, not keeping two-thirds of us extremely healthy.

Would I prefer cancer to be cured before I die of it? You bet. But I’m not going to vote against health care for everybody else in order to keep myself alive for a few extra years. That would be macabre.

Morning lull

Yesterday, I read an article on the BBC news site that came as a crushing disappointment to me. Which is to say, it confirmed something I’d always kind of known, but never been willing to admit to myself. The short version: a cup of coffee in the morning doesn’t actually make you energetic.

“But wait,” I cried to myself in desperation, “I always feel groggy in the morning until I have a cup of coffee!” As it turns out, the research presented in the article confirms this to be true. Now comes the crushing disappointment. You know what causes that groggy feeling? Sadly, it’s coffee.

The research shows that people who drink coffee in the morning are no more alert than their peers who go without a cup of joe. Tests of reaction and alertness show that those who consume caffeine score no better than those who abstain. This is because caffeine consumption in the morning does not provide a boost, it only provides relief from the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal.

Those who drink coffee (or other caffeinated beverages) on a regular basis aclimatise their bodies to the stimulant. Let me restate that in a way that is less of a lie to myself: Those who drink coffee on a regular basis become physically dependant on the stimulant. Overnight, they’re not getting their fix, so when they wake up in the morning, they are suffering from a mild form of withdrawal, and feel groggy and out of sorts until they get some of their drug of choice into their system. Thus, it feels like a pick-me-up, but that morning cup of coffee is in reality just getting you back to the baseline that your clean-living friends were cruising at without any chemical assistance.

The article does say that it is possible to get a boost of energy and alertness from caffeine, but it only works if you haven’t had any for quite some time. If it’s been a month (I just made that time-frame up, to be honest) and then you have a quadruple espresso, it will give you a great buzz, but it really only works the first time. Once your body gets used to it, you’re back to being a troll until you get your morning latte.

 I will note that there is a quote from a member of the British Coffee Association in the article which says, in part “…moderate coffee consumption of four to five cups per day…”. Four or five cups per day? Goodness! I don’t have a problem after all. I can stop any time I want to, honest.