David Wood
Death of Death
Aired On: November 17, 2023
Episode Description
Is death inevitable? In his book Death of Death with José Luis Cordeiro, David Wood postulates that the incontrovertible fact of death is no longer an absolute certainty. He believes that science and technology are preparing to tear down the final frontier: that of immortality. He provides insight into recent exponential advances in artificial intelligence, tissue regeneration, stem cell treatment, organ printing, cryopreservation, and genetic therapies that, for the first time in human history, offer a realistic chance to solve the problem of the aging of the human body. Major developments, initiatives, and ideas for eternal life are discussed Such breakthroughs may slow down if not conquer the aging process.
Book. Death of Death
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- What scientific discoveries are on the horizon?
- What can we expect from health care in the future
What motivated him to write Death of Death
- Awareness that we are on the dividing line between the last mortal generation and the future immortal generation
- He believes it is an engineering possibilities to undo all the systematic affects of aging
- We have been defeating death because science found approaches diseases such as infections and pneumonia via medications and tidying up hygiene
- This pushed back likelihood of death by decreasing the likelihood of these diseases
- For most of history, the life expectancy was 30 – 40
- Recently, the average lifespan has shot up to more than 70 years
- There are other causes of death that we have little ways of combatting including cancer, dementia, heart disease and diseases that are triggered by our metabolism and diabetes
- The good news is we are understanding the causes of these diseases
- If we have a similar revolution to deal with theses diseases as we did with combatting infection
Three bridges
- There are things we can do today to improve our life expectancy to improve our life span by five to ten years. But will eventually succumb to old age
- Good sleep, exercise, positive life, don’t eat too much
- Apply solutions of biotech at the cellular and intercellular levels
- Biological mechanisms augmented by human ingenuity
- Learn about what makes cells age
- Looks at damage consisting of seven categories
- These involve the application of engineering principles backed by data and intelligence to do things that are inspired by nature
- Artificial intelligence is at the point where we understand intelligence at least as well as humans which will come up with new insights in the biological world
- Senescence
- Recycling senescent (old cells) for recycling
- As one ages, these old cells hang around triggering inflammation
- New techniques
- Small molecules
- Special delivery methods
- Gene therapy reprogram DNA to be aggressive to turn on proteins to recycle
- Sickle cell treatments through gene therapy
- If have one recessive genes gives protection against malaria
- If two recessive genes, blood cells are misshaped and painful
- Stem cell therapies
- Stem cells gradually weaken
- Epigenetic programming
- Methyl groups attach to DNA which make genes inactive- as we age get attached to the wrong places
- Techniques applying three of the yamanaka factors (proteins, transcription factors, will undo epigenetic aging allowing cells to rejuvenate to a younger state
- If this is done too much, may reset cell to pluripotent stem cell (revert to stage before cell differentiated to particular cell type)
- We don’t want these replacing functional cells
- David Sinclair (Harvard is studying)
- Altos labs is studying epigenetics reprogramming
- Funded by Jeff Bezos
- If this is done too much, may reset cell to pluripotent stem cell (revert to stage before cell differentiated to particular cell type)
- Mitochondrial problems
- The energy power sources in our cells
- They become less effective with age
- Regenerating mitochondria
- Introduce more powerful mitochondria introduced in a “mitlet”
- Is smaller than a cell and travels around the body
- The more powerful mitochondria will to replace more tired mitochondria
- Introduce more powerful mitochondria introduced in a “mitlet”
- Damage in the intracellular matrix
- The contents between cells become dysfunctional
- Damage inside cells
- Misfolding of proteins
- Too many cells
- Root cause of cancer
- Also shortening of telomeres
- As cells divide, they don’t divide totally leaving off the tips 9telomere). At the Hayflick limit, cells can no longer divide
- Can use telomerase to lengthen telomers so cells can continue to divide.
- This means cells will be more active and aging can diminish
- Senescence
- Apply nanotech. These can travel through the body systematically to target particular areas.
Artificial Intelligence
- We need to be careful of any powerful tool
- Same for fire, atomic energy, electricity need to be treated with respect
- Can help predict how proteins will fold
- Alphafold (Google) will predict what the protein will fold into
- Use for discovery and testing of drugs
- Every eight years the amount of time to bring new drugs to market has doubled
- AI can assist in finding drug targets
- AI can help determine shape of molecule that will fit in and have the desired effect.
- AI might be able to predict in advance which drugs will pass through phase III of drug tests
- Does this through patterns
- Insillica Medicine Company (Alex Zolonarkov)
Final Points
- We need to collectively apply what we learn
- Holding us up is the thought of the inevitability of aging and believe this can be selfish
- The point of life is to live fully in sustainable abundance which invokes living
- What about over crowding
- He believes we can live sustainably
- He is concerned about cows and advocates lab grown meat (which host disagrees with)