Who Needs A Can Of Worms?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by ytzk, Aug 23, 2017.

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  1. ytzk

    ytzk Well-Known Member

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    Hear about the teen blood transfusion? Apparently it rejuvenates aging cells.

    A private company can do you a liter for a thousand clams.

    But you know some oligarchs somewhere are plugging street kids into dialysis machines like skeksies juicing gelflings.

    Anyway, old Rupert Murdoch lost nine hundred million on a biotech company which, after doing mass screenings at Walgreen, was shut down for gross misconduct.

    And I've noticed he's had a real spring in his step since the research was published.
     
  2. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, I don't even need to research this one to know that it's nonsense.

    I mean, I don't doubt that some rich people somewhere are trying it, in case it works. But it doesn't work.

    ... cut to me as an old man being given a teen blood transfusion.
     
  3. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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  4. ytzk

    ytzk Well-Known Member

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    You're a smart guy, Smuel, but biology is not your forte.

    It worked on mice, and that's enough, indeed, for people to try it, for a given value of money and selfishness.

    And it's worth about a thousand bucks a liter, which is double gold.

    I think it's justifiable but ultimately horrible. I personally will not be bathing in the blood of the innocent to stay young.

    But I can accept that it is among the least of the atrocities we can look forward to.
     
  5. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, I'm pretty sure that if injecting yourself with teenage blood actually did prolong lifespan, we'd have discovered it by now. People started experimenting with blood transfusion in the 1600's, and by the start of the 1900s we understood blood types and were able to make it safe. So we've had roughly 100 years to experiment properly, and injecting yourself with the blood of someone younger seems like one of the first things that we might try.

    Also, there's nothing magical about blood - aging is programmed into our DNA and occurs in nearly all the cells in your body. How would a few younger red blood cells in your system be able to influence any of that? If you get a series of blood transfusions from someone else, you don't start to look like them. If a man has a blood transfusion from a woman, he doesn't start looking like a woman. How would a blood transfusion from someone younger be able to make you younger? It's clearly nonsense.

    Of course, there could be some kind of future gene therapy thing of which a young person's blood forms the basis, but by the time we've worked out all the gene stuff the blood itself will likely be synthetic.

    Incidentally, I have zero moral issues with young people selling their blood to old people. Young people are often short of money, and blood donation is a relatively harmless activity. If it did work, I'd be first in line to sell my blood while I'm still young, and then to buy and inject it when I'm old.

    But that's probably just what you'd expect from an unapologetic capitalist for whom biology is not his forté.
     
  6. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

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    It has to be blood from a virgin, drawn at midnight during a full moon.

    Come on, I've known that since the 1500s.
     
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  7. ytzk

    ytzk Well-Known Member

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    Smoolio there are faulty premises in your logic.

    blood =/= a few red blood cells

    woman-man =/= young-old

    cell health =/= "life span"

    100 years of transfusions =/= decades long studies of every possible witchdoctor myth for immortality. But I bet the third reich gave it a spin.

    It's an intuitive idea, but I think the elephant in the room is that in practice you need a lot of blood, and often.
     
  8. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

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    As you say, what with the amounts of blood required, you need an elephant in the room.
     
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  9. ytzk

    ytzk Well-Known Member

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    let's say nine liters a day, with sustainable donation of 450mL every 6 months per donor.

    hm, so maybe we can increase that to .9L every three months.

    one nonagenarian oligarch would need about a thousand compatible donors

    or, maybe 9L per donation, one off. Just 365 orphans per year.

    why didn't we try this sooner I wonder?
     
  10. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Ah, my mistake, I thought it was something to do with staying young. But it seems the researchers are positioning it more as a treatment for alzheimers or similar. i.e. something in the blood can reverse specific symptoms of specific degenerative problems.

    Well, yeah, that might work, but again, there's nothing magical about the blood. It will turn out it's human growth hormone or some other compound that we can probably synthesise without needing any actual teenagers. So sorry ytzk, you'll have to put your paranoid old white men conspiracy theories on hold, again.
     
  11. Zanza

    Zanza Well-Known Member

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  12. ytzk

    ytzk Well-Known Member

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    Also so sorry old bean, but I never said magic and, you'll have to put this scifi fantasy on hold, again, because if you could just synthesize organic molecules like that, then Jobo would already have his PhD.

    My point is not that it has a theoretical basis, which it does, or that it is the stuff of horror, which it is, or that it works or doesn't, which I don't know.

    It's just that I bet the psychopathic generation is gonna be trying it.
     
  13. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Oh, sure, teenager blood helping old people to stay young has a theoretical basis, even though you don't know if it works or not, but synthetically mass-producing organic molecules that cure various ailments is a sci-fi fantasy, despite the fact that it's the whole basis of western medicine.

    It's funny, you have the correct amounts of skepticism and sense floating around in there, it's just that you consistently apply them in the wrong places.
     
  14. ytzk

    ytzk Well-Known Member

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    It's just you lack a perspective on the complexity of living systems that you form faulty premises, and I fear you may be a little naive about the darkness that lurks in the hearts of men.

    All the while minions are comparing mice from different isolated molecules, the moneybags are getting older by the day.

    When the gentlemen in England are still writing grant applications for splicing E. coli to mass produce rapidly decaying enzymes 1 - 400, you can buy a human baby for the same price as an adult kidney, or a grad student.

    But hey, I'm sure the psychopaths out there with failed kidneys will just wait until we can grow cloned organs on mice.

    P.s, sorry to make fun of your thesis work, Jojo. It's hardcore, you rock.

    To my point, fiddling with submicroscopic soggy clockwork molecules just to stay ahead of the wild antibiotic resistance is the most urgent, important and difficult work in the world.

    Kudos.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2017
  15. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Actually, I don't think it's the billionaires you have to worry about. They can afford, and have enough sense, to do it legitimately. Chuck a few million at an orphanage in India, where teenagers get free education and three meals a day in exchange for a pint of blood once a week for medical research. Easy.

    It's the old folks without those level of resources who will resort to kidnapping some hapless kids and juicing them in their basement. But I guess that doesn't play into your evil Bilderberg Group narrative.
     
  16. ytzk

    ytzk Well-Known Member

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    I'm curious what gross misconduct the blood screening company committed.

    But I do recall that the board member who reported the company was a former Rothschild employee, so my current assumption is that the very very wealthy are policing the very wealthy.

    I think the logistics are a bit tricky for a lone, aging psychopath. The blood has to be compatible, not carrying pathogens, and probably freshly squeezed. Rather, I think Murdoch, being an outsider and new money, and merely obscenely rich rather than unimaginably, counts as old folk without much resources, compared to people like Putin or the Rothschilds, so he tried a stab at a poor man's vampire stables.

    I truly wish I were wrong about human nature, and that everyone else were right but my experience is that 1% of people are monsters. Not the one percent, just 1/100 in general.
     
  17. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

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  18. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Given the ease and unmasked glee with which people turn to violence when given an excuse, I suspect the proportion of monsters who walk among us is far higher than 1%.
     
  19. ytzk

    ytzk Well-Known Member

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    I refer specifically to cold blooded killers, who do it for a reason, without any glee or passion.

    The lack of empathy frightens me much more than any excess of passion.

    Most folk are monkeys, but monkeys have redeeming virtues. I wouldn't call them monsters.
     
  20. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Weird. I find it far more disturbing to realise that a significant percentage of my neighbours would happily slaughter me if they were given an excuse to do so. What's even more concerning is that I might be exactly the same. If the authorities declared that gingers were a menace and should be exterminated, would I join the hunt? My instinct says no, but my logic says I can't possibly know for sure.
     
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