Reply To: Toshiba's "Micro Nuclear Reactor" – it's not fusion, but it's here now

[JimmyT]

Rezwan wrote:

I saw an interesting statistic fairly recently. The gist of it was: If we eliminated all death from all forms of disease how long would the average individual live before he/she died from an accident/murder/other trauma.

The answer was around 600 years.

Really? I heard your outside lifespan is controlled by telomere, and is naturally considerably shorter than 600 years.

Allegedly, every time the cells in your body replicate (your body replaces most of its cells so that every 7 years you have a whole new set of cells – you’re constantly dropping cells and creating new cells. Only brain, heart and cancer cells are immortal – I think). In any case, as these cells replicate, the DNA does its thing and the new cell gets its copy of the previous cell – minus a few bits on the end. Some genes just drop off. Or they would be in danger of dropping off without telomere – but the telomere are limited to a fixed number of divisions…so that sets the limit on lifespan.

You have a built in termination date predicated on the length of this extra tail in your DNA. For most people it maxes out at 120 years. For many people considerably less.

So, without disease, you would nevertheless, at some point, in a peak state of health – just keel over because your time is up.

Use it well.

The Methuselah Foundation considers old age to be a disease. And I have adopted their view. Hence my comment “absent all diseases” is meant to include old age. And you are right, the telomere problem is one of the major obstacles in curing this disease.

My broader point was: Even if we eliminate all diseases as a cause of death, we will not have become immortal.

Use it well indeed. (well said, Rez!)