I think Mr. Thiel is overly optimistic that we'll have cancer licked in 10 years. Certainly some subtypes, but anyway... Mr. Thiel is in his 40s. In 10 years, he'll be nearly 60, which is weaker, but still a fairly healthy age. I don't think he's risking dying from falls and such quite yet.<p>After reading Atul Gawande's book on ageing, aside from cancer and muscle weakness, it seems that one of the biggest killers is the dissolving of your skeleton as you age. When your skeleton weakens (e.g. in osteoporosis and other conditions), that alone is dangerous from a bone snapping standpoint, but those minerals and proteins don't just disappear. The excess calcium, released toxins (e.g. previously trapped lead if you were exposed before, and just stuff that shouldn't be in your blood), bio active proteins, etc wreck havoc on your organ systems as they are released into your blood. I think he mentioned that even artheosclerosis can be caused by "hard water" in your blood.<p>I know there's a lot of research going on into this as well, but as a cause of morbidity, it may be relatively overlooked as only the physical aspect is usually acknowledged by the public.<p>I'd love to see a doctor weigh in on this. :)
He's not concerned about cancer, but he takes human growth hormone to limit risk of... bone injuries? Am I out of my mind or is this a several-orders-of-magnitude confusion of relative risks?
This sort of thing just screams of narcissism. When you're rich, famous, and smart, it's pretty hard to accept the fact that you're eventually going to die and you can't take any of it with you.
Ya well, best of luck. I hope he does it.<p>Unless (like so many people elderly people around today), his mind stops working decades before his body goes. Then I'm not sure what the point would be. It might be better to keep it all together and die a bit earlier as a complete person. Personal preference I guess.
I find the desire that anyone would be this obsessively preoccupied with the desire to live either forever or an extraordinarily long time unsettling, but what I don't get is why stop at 120 years? The scientific signs pointing to the idea that humanity will eventually be able to halt the aging process altogether are compelling:<p>First, there are species of jellyfish and lobster (among others) that do not age. The mechanism of chromosomal deterioration isn't there. There are even plankton varieties that revert to a larval state <i>after</i> adulthood. Additionally, there are many life forms that, whether or not they actually age, are thousands of years old.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organisms" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organism...</a><p>In other words, aging is far more elastic and non-linear than first meets the eye.<p>And it's easy to understand why we evolved to age and die: Clearing out older populations leaves more resources for newer, fitter ones (in the evolutionary sense). Death became advantageous, but it's not, from a biological perspective, necessary.<p>So if you combine these two ideas together -- things don't really <i>need</i> to die but it just so happens that humans do -- does anyone really believe that technology won't find a way to beat the aging process, either by genetic modification or maybe nano-level chromosome reconstruction? At some point it'll be as "correctable" as laser eye surgery.<p>The implications of halting aging are staggering, earthshattering... there is not enough hyperbole in the English language to do it justice. I just know I don't want to be here when it happens.
The headline, here, should be:<p>"Founders Fund is investing in a number of biotechnology companies to extend human lifespans."<p>This is a useful and interesting piece of information.<p>Thiel's belief that's he going to buy his way out of being hit by a bus tomorrow is silly and it's <i>really</i> hard to not make wise-ass comments about it...
I feel like the cure to cancer is simply early detection.<p>Imagine some sort of device you could put in your toilet that could analyze your urine or some sort of painless blood test in your tooth brush that can let you know years before symptoms that you have cancer.<p>I think cheap, early and often screenings will be what revolutionize health.
Yeah, I wouldn't bet on it.<p>For every guy attempting to "live forever" I see a guy scared as hell of death. That is, a person that has left the realm of the common living humans a long time ago.<p>Brings to mind Michael Jackson, sleeping in an oxygen chamber and doing who knows what to avoid disease et al - and then dying in his fifties. Or Howard Hughes, the list is long.<p>Of course death is kind of scary, but being scared of death in that way is not healthy (first and foremost psychologically). It's more important to live (fully) than it is not to die.<p>If the "cure for death" comes, it won't be through BS individualistic lifestyle experiments such as this, it would be as a scientific breakthrough, like the cure for various diceases.<p>I also dislike the "screw you, I'll outlive you with my money and my access to stuff" inherent element in this.
"I’m hopeful that we’ll get cancer cured in the next decade." Believe that when I see it.<p>Seems to me we've solved the problem of near-instantaneous global communication, but little else of the myriad of human problems has been solved by the internet revolution.<p>We're nowhere with world peace and not sure we're that far along with diseases. In fact, the US health system in 2014 is generally considered a debacle.<p>I'm all for optimism and can-do attitude, but the wand waving away of really difficult challenges that has been coming out lately.. and it's SV culture the only ones doing it.<p>I hope he's right, but the cavalier attitude I just find very peculiar. This is <i>immortality</i> we're seriously discussing?
That's very modest. I plan to live longer to live forever. I'm not sure why people call it "fear of death". Of course, I'm scared of death, but that's not what makes me want to extend my life - it's the curiosity of how we can advance our civilization and the desire to help personally as much as I can. I want to witness us becoming an interplanetary civilization at least, maybe even interstellar. I want to see AI 50 years from now. I want to see my grand-grand-grand-grand children, and so on. So, let's not focus on the fear, please!
Even death is an evolved trait. It's not a problem to be solved. It's a fact of life and a feature of our being just like intelligence.<p>A person who wants to live forever must believe the resources of the planet belong to them rather than future generations. It's simply narcissism and small mindedness. It's also stupid to think that being a good investor makes a person ethically or scientifically knowledgable.<p>On the contrary, Thiel is being taken to the cleaners by quacks...