Category Archives: Longevity Medicine

Every year something on the order of 50 million people die, and the fine structure of the brain that houses their minds is allowed to decay, destroying them forever. It does not have to be this way: the technology exists to plastinate and store the newly deceased, preserving the data of the mind until such time as medical technology can work a restoration. "The Open Letter on Brain Preservation seeks to raise awareness regarding the science, ethics and legality surrounding the emerging scientific process of chemical, whole-brain preservation. ... We, the undersigned, hereby publicly profess our human right to undergo a high-quality elective chemical brain preservation procedure immediately upon our physical death, and demand that such a procedure be made legal and accessible within the existing medical system in our countries of residence. We further demand that if medical evidence exists that an individual's brain is being substantially damaged by Alzheimer's, tumors, or other disease processes that elective brain preservation be available prior to that individual's natural death."

View the Article Under Discussion: http://brainpreservation.org/index.php?path=letter

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

A Newsweek article runs through some of the standard foolish objections to greater human longevity. There is no change so beneficial that people will refrain from protesting it - it is the human nature to be vehemently against a new idea before being grudgingly for it: "When we consider the problem of aging, and imagine that we might be able to cure it, that alternating current we feel consists of longings and dread. We are afraid of what we wish for; and most of our fears, like our hopes, have always cycled in us. Dreams of immortality have led to terrible nightmares of boredom ever since people began writing down their thoughts. ... What happens when we have real antiaging pills that pass the tests of clinical trials? As bioethicists have begun to note, this is a problem that would make all our bioethical debates to date look small. What are the bioethical problems that have exercised us in the last 10 or 20 years? Stem cells. Cloning. Gene therapy. The privacy of genetic information. Steroids. All these problems matter in themselves, but all of them would be subsumed in the transformations of society and human nature that would be wreaked by a significant success with the human life span. And then will come the option of changing the genome itself. We will add or subtract genes to lengthen our lives, until there is no going back, because no human beings alive (however long they may live) will ever be human in the same way again. If we are going to survive to enjoy a good portion of the future, our health and happiness depend on a great deal of luck. The trouble with immortality is endless." There is no objection to longevity that comes close to touching the present horror of aging - the more than 100,000 people who die each and every day.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://services.newsweek.com/id/238720/output/print

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

From BusinessWeek: “Patients blinded in one or both eyes by chemical burns regained their vision after healthy stem cells were extracted from their eyes and reimplanted … The tissue was drawn from the limbus, an area at the junction of the cornea and white part of the eye. It was grown on a fibrous tissue, then layered onto the damaged eyes. The cells grew into healthy corneal tissue, transforming disfigured, opaque eyes into functioning ones with normal appearance and color … The stem-cell treatment restored sight to more than three-quarters of the 112 patients treated. … The key to success is to be certain that when the stem cells extracted from the limbus are grown in culture they have the right mix of stem cells and the differentiated cells that form the corneal tissue … If there are too few stem cells in the transplant, the improvement won’t last because there will be no reservoir to form the new corneal cells needed with the normal recycling of cells over time. … Depending on the depth of the injury, some patients regained sight in as little as two months. … Others with deeper injuries needed a second procedure and waited a year before sight was restored.”

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-18/stem-cells-from-own-eyes-restore-vision-to-blinded-patients.html

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

An opinion paper by researchers who feel that too much emphasis is placed on the discovery of longevity mutations: “The biological reasons for ageing are now well known, so it is no longer an unsolved problem in biology. Furthermore, there is only one science of ageing, which is continually advancing. The significance and importance of the mutations that lengthen the lifespan of invertebrates can be assessed only in relationship to previous well-established studies of ageing. The mutant strains of model organisms that increase longevity have altered nutrient signalling pathways similar to the effects of dietary restriction, and so it is likely that there is a shift in the trade-off between reproduction and maintenance … To believe that the isolation and characterisation of a few invertebrate mutations (as well as those in yeast) will ‘galvanise’ the field and provide new insights into human ageing is an extreme point of view which does not recognize the huge progress in ageing research that has been made in the last 50 years or so.” I believe that the focus on longevity mutations is not the most effective use of resources, but for different reasons: it’s a part of the metabolic manipulation school of slowing aging, which is a slow path to a poor end result in comparison to repair strategies.

View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20549352

Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/

http://newsroom.gehealthcare.com/

GE Health Care is rolling out a new, cloud-based platform that makes it easier for physicians with small practices to maintain and keep track of the electronic medical records of their patients. The new SAAS offering is part of GE’s Centricity offering.

Introducing Centricity Advance
Colonnades Family Medicine is running on Centricity Advance, a web-based EMR solution launched today by GE Healthcare and specifically designed for the smaller physician practice.

Unlike most clinical and financial management solutions, Centricity Advance is a web-based service that costs less than a standard client-server software deployment and is maintained and supported with little or no strain on the healthcare provider’s resources, freeing up more time for patient care.

Ideal as a Web-Based Service
The fact that Centricity Advance was designed from the ground up as a web service is significant. Instead of simply providing web-based gateway into a standard EMR application, the Centricity Advance is created with anywhere/anytime access in mind, resulting in an intuitive and efficient interface without sacrificing functionality. Since system management is centralized as part of the Centricity Advance service, small practices don’t have to worry about data protection, updates, equipment failures and other typically stressful responsibilities of user-driven IT management.

Another key feature of Centricity Advance is the Patient Self-Service Portal, which connects patients to their care. By using their own secure password to log in, patients can communicate privately with their doctor and view their own information such as statements, prescriptions and lab results. Patients can also request and confirm appointments, request prescription refills and get automatic reminders for immunizations and lab tests.