this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
1140 points (98.1% liked)
Technology
59174 readers
1811 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is the step where a heavy [citation needed] comes along. There are a lot of complex processes involved in aging, we have no idea if simply "make the telomeres longer!" is going to solve all of that. Frankly it seems unlikely that that's all there is to it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm an optimist when it comes to longevity research. I think aging is a problem that will eventually be solved. But there's not going to be just one "cure for aging", there's a lot of things that go wrong over time and we're probably going to have to find ways to fix each of them as they come along.
Right. You would have to look at alzheimers, osteoporosis, arthritis, liver failure, heart failure, gut microbe health, and a million other things that can go wrong in old age. It's a tall claim to say "all this can be solved by telemerase". In fact, having one thing claiming to solve a million different issues is a big red flag for quack medicine.
A good rule of thumb in medicine is “anything that does everything probably does nothing”.