World's oldest person dies at 115 years
November 28, 2008An American woman who held the record for being the world's oldest person for over a year died Wednesday at the ripe old age of 115 years, 220 days, the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group said.
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Display comments: newest first
What's up with Physorg and it's writers?
Still though, it's sad to see her go.
I'm going to go way out on a limb and say it's Maria....
LOL! Xrays invented... Yeah cause they didn't exist before someone discovered them! HA!
What's up with "it's" ?
help and support the cure for aging
aging is a deseas help to cure it
http://www.mprize.com
I could see one person wanting to live for a long time (Hell, I would love to see more than one century pass. It'd be interesting!) But if you do want to call aging a disease... you have to admit we require this disease to survive as a species. I wouldn't be in a hurry to find a cure for it. Maybe to improve the quality of life until the end, sure.
Aging (senescence): 'the combination of processes of deterioration which follow the period of development of an organism.'
Calling aging 'just a' disease would be underrating this set of changes in an organism, but I'm fed up with the people who hear about 'the quest to fight aging and prolong the healthy lifespan' and try to defend the process of aging.
"How does that affect the overpopulation we are currently experiencing?"
*(note that we don't really have overpopulation, but a seriously bad infrastructure in our world)*
Of course there would be many social problems like the question of overpopulation, but are these real problems or just our fears? We already need to seriously start looking for solutions, because we have a bad infrastructure throughout the world already. And by solutions I don't mean collective birthcontrol, because these things don't work and have even bigger side-effects, but maybe it doés work in private matters. I don't know, but I'm sure there are many people who can find solutions over the decades.
"Does everyone get to live on?"
Probably not, I think a very small percentage of our population would want to live for a great deal longer (there are several reasons why one wouldn't).
"Do you retain all your memories, or do they fade over time?"
The mind has a big storage capacity, I don't think that it will be a problem. Next to that, it won't be in a 'new memories in, old memories out' kind of fashion, that's not how our brains work.
"Is ANY of this desirable?"
Yes, and I will say it even stronger. I think we are ethically obliged to this. Aging goes hand in hand with frailty, disease, psychological and physical stress, cancer, alzheimer, parkinson. The reason why most old people have peace with dying after their many years, is because they are frail and have pain and suffering. They can't do the things they could when they were young and vital.
Now you tell me all the good sides of aging.
"you have to admit we require this disease to survive as a species."
No, we don't. Aging clearly has no point, especially with humans. It's not an evolutionary trait, but more of a consequence of our body's sloppy build (Evolution doesn't care whether we live after our reproduction). We humans have been taking our own evolution in hands for many, many years now.
Because.. Is this so much different than the quest to cure cancer? Bacterial diseases? Viruses?
Because it has a greater implication does not mean, aging is a good thing. And because it's quite new and radical to say aging is a set of detoriation and diseases does not mean we shouldn't touch aging.
When I was young, I've always find aging normal.. We even tend to give positive connotations to it, because we can't cope with the fact that we can't do something about it. Religious people create stories of an afterlife, other people think of wise men and women when they think of aging.
I've decided to get rid of this pink glasses I was looking through.
I don't want me to die, I don't want my family to die and I don't want anyone to die who wants to live longer, contribute to our world, share my interest for science and this universe.
" I wouldn't be in a hurry to find a cure for it. Maybe to improve the quality of life until the end, sure"
But that's the whole point, these two are strongly interconnected. By improving lifequality, we prolong life too. Longer life without good health, would be pointless.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on your entire post. I think that humanity would benefit a great deal if our minds could work longer. I do not believe that overpopulation would ever be problem. We are finding more and more ways to grow our food more efficiently and there are many places on earth that are not populated that could be. I am also a firm believer that within next 30-40 years, we will have fully functional space elevators that will allow expansion of humanity way beyond our planet. Very long lifespans would be very useful in the interstellar travel as well.
We definitely should cure this "disease".