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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 2413

Apr 25, 2017

Rejuvenation would be forced on people

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Some people fear rejuvenation therapies would be only for the privileged, and yet some others think they would be imposed on everyone. This article discusses the latter case.


Somebody once told me they fear that, if we created rejuvenation therapies, they might be forced on people who don’t want them, and in a way, we’d end up forcing people to live ‘forever’. Is this a good reason not to develop rejuvenation? No, of course not. I mean, imagine if we never came up with blood transfusions for fear that Jehovah’s witnesses might be forced to undergo them!

Besides, if rejuvenation therapies shouldn’t be invented because someone is afraid they’d be forced on people who want to grow old and die, let me ask: How about the people who do not want to grow old and die and yet would be forced to, because somebody else didn’t want rejuvenation therapies to be created? Dying despite the existence of rejuvenation therapies is certainly more easily attained than not dying despite the lack of rejuvenation therapies.

Rejuvenation is a set of medical interventions, and as such, a patient has the right to refuse all of them, if they want to. Indeed, the right to refuse or halt medical intervention already exists (see this WHO paper of 1994, page 11, article 3.2, which states this right for European Citizens, for example), so, if one really doesn’t want to undergo rejuvenation treatments, that is in their right already.

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Apr 25, 2017

An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep — and humans could be next

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop — much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb. One day, this device could help to bring premature human babies to term outside the uterus — but right now, it has only been tested on sheep.

It’s appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy. But it’s important not to get ahead of the data, says Alan Flake, fetal surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and lead author of today’s study. “It’s complete science fiction to think that you can take an embryo and get it through the early developmental process and put it on our machine without the mother being the critical element there,” he says.

Instead, the point of developing an external womb — which his team calls the Biobag — is to give infants born months too early a more natural, uterus-like environment to continue developing in, Flake says.

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Apr 25, 2017

Possible approach for treating Alzheimer’s

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, neuroscience

Quercetin may be able to influence apoE and could be a potential therapeutic for Alzheimer’s disease.


The Apolipoprotein E connection

The most common type of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease and as the average life expectancy has risen in recent decades so has the occurrence of this and other neurodegenerative diseases. Aging is the primary risk factor for Alzheimer’s and researchers are searching for new ways to combat this devastating disease.

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Apr 24, 2017

The SkinGun can quickly heal serious burns

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The SkinGun has been waiting on that FDA approval for years.

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Apr 24, 2017

Fight Aging sees effective antiaging treatments for medical tourism within 5 years

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Fight aging is a site that is highly focused on radical life extension medicine and science. They have a forecast that within five years the first meaningful life extension treatments will exist.

Senescent cell clearing overseas within five years for $5K-25K .

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Apr 24, 2017

Elon Musk wants to enhance us as superhuman cyborgs to deal with superintelligent AI

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, cyborgs, Elon Musk, robotics/AI

(credit: Neuralink Corp.)

It’s the year 2021. A quadriplegic patient has just had one million “neural lace” microparticles injected into her brain, the world’s first human with an internet communication system using a wireless implanted brain-mind interface — and empowering her as the first superhuman cyborg. …

No, this is not a science-fiction movie plot. It’s the actual first public step — just four years from now — in Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s business plan for his latest new venture, Neuralink. It’s now explained for the first time on Tim Urban’s WaitButWhy blog.

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Apr 23, 2017

Artificial intelligence could build new drugs faster than any human team

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, robotics/AI

Artificial intelligence algorithms are being taught to generate art, human voices, and even fiction stories all on their own—why not give them a shot at building new ways to treat disease?

Atomwise, a San Francisco-based startup and Y Combinator alum, has built a system it calls AtomNet (pdf), which attempts to generate potential drugs for diseases like Ebola and multiple sclerosis. The company has invited academic and non-profit researchers from around the country to detail which diseases they’re trying to generate treatments for, so AtomNet can take a shot. The academic labs will receive 72 different drugs that the neural network has found to have the highest probability of interacting with the disease, based on the molecular data it’s seen.

Atomwise’s system only generates potential drugs—the compounds created by the neural network aren’t guaranteed to be safe, and need to go through the same drug trials and safety checks as anything else on the market. The company believes that the speed at which it can generate trial-ready drugs based on previous safe molecular interactions is what sets it apart.

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Apr 22, 2017

Elon Musk’s new company wants to link human brains with computers in 4 years

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, Elon Musk, neuroscience, space travel, sustainability

Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with computers by creating micron-sized devices.

Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke and cancer lesion in about four years, Musk said in an interview with the website Wait But Why on Thursday.

“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview. Neuralink will be Musk’s third company along with Tesla and SpaceX.

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Apr 21, 2017

Daisy Robinton — The Fight Against Aging

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, business, genetics, life extension, neuroscience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkxgRIgo2dA

Primarily talking about CRISPR.


Daisy Robinton explores bioengineering and its potential to end ageing.

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Apr 20, 2017

Real-life tricorders are here 230 years early, courtesy of the Tricorder XPrize

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, futurism

In the far future, tricorders are invented and humanity spends many centuries prospering due in part to their widespread adoption. It’s too early to tell whether we’re on that timeline or a different one, but rest assured that one part of Gene Roddenberry’s quixotic vision for the future has indeed come to pass. Tricorders are coming to the mass market, courtesy of the just-awarded Tricorder XPrize.

The $2.5 million first prize went to Final Frontier Medical Devices, a team of seven including four Trekkie siblings, for their DxtER diagnostic device (below).

Continue reading “Real-life tricorders are here 230 years early, courtesy of the Tricorder XPrize” »