Free Republic

The idea of using genetic engineering to enhance human beings scares a lot of people. For example, at a 2006 meeting called by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Richard Hayes, the executive director of the left-leaning Center for Bioethics and Society, testified that “enhancement technologies would quickly be adopted by the most privileged, with the clear intent of widening the divisions that separate them and their progeny from the rest of the human species.” Deploying such enhancement technologies would “deepen genetic and biological inequality among individuals,” exacerbating “tendencies towards xenophobia, racism and warfare.” Hayes concluded that allowing...

A regular uptake of the trace element lithium can considerably promote longevity. This is the result of a new study by scientists of Friedrich Schiller University Professor Dr. Michael Ristow's team along with Japanese colleagues from universities in Oita and Hiroshima have demonstrated by two independent approaches that even a ow concentration of lithium leads to low concentration of lithium leads to an increased life expectancy in humans as well as in a mode humans as well as in a mode organism, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. The research team presents its results in the online edition of the scientific publication...

People living in remote villages in Ecuador have a mutation that some biologists say may throw light on human longevity and ways to increase it. The villagers are very small, generally less than three and a half feet tall, and have a rare condition known as Laron syndrome or Laron-type dwarfism. They are probably the descendants of conversos, Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal who were forced to convert to Christianity in the 1490s but were nonetheless persecuted in the Inquisition. They are also almost completely free of two age-related diseases, cancer and diabetes. A group of 99 villagers with...

Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who inspired television viewers to trim down and pump iron decades before exercise became a national obsession, has died at age 96. His agent Rick Hersh says LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay on California’s central coast.

The first-ever national study of Latino life expectancy reveals that Latinos in the United States live 2.5 years longer than their white counterparts -- a poor-in-wealth, rich-in-health paradox that mystifies doctors. A Latino baby in the U.S. will live to the average age of 80.6 years, compared with 78.1 years for a white baby, according to the new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, released Wednesday. "This is surprising because of low social status," said Elizabeth Arias, of the CDC. Based on rates of poverty, education and access to care -- factors long known to be linked to...

Questions have focused on the analytic platform used to find about 150 genetic variations linked to longevity Just like the fountain of youth, a study that purported to find genetic secrets to longevity may be a myth, critics say. Researchers led by Thomas Perls and Paola Sebastiani from Boston University reported July 1 in an online publication in Science that they had identified 150 genetic markers that distinguish centenarians from people with average life spans with 77 percent accuracy. Almost immediately the study came under fire because of a technical flaw. Most of the controversy stems from the devices used...

Scientists studying aging have long been fascinated by those rare individuals who somehow manage not only to live at least 100 years but also remain relatively healthy and spry even in their final years. What's their secret? Is it clean living? A positive attitude? Or is it something in their genes? A federally funded study released Thursday took an important step toward trying to answer that question by scanning the genes of a large number of centenarians and identifying genetic signatures that appear linked with living a long, healthy life. "This is groundbreaking research," said Winifred K. Rossi, deputy director...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Getting a bit more calcium in your diet could help you live longer, new research suggests. Swedish researchers found that men who consumed the most calcium in food were 25 percent less likely to die over the next decade than their peers who took in the least calcium from food. None of the men took calcium supplements. The findings are in line with previous research linking higher calcium intake with lower mortality in both men and women, the researchers point out in a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology. While many researchers have looked...

WESTMORELAND, N.H. (AP) -- Two of the oldest people in the world have died on the same day, one in New Hampshire and one in Michigan. Mary Josephine Ray was certified as the oldest person living in the United States. Her granddaughter Katherine Ray says she died in a Westmoreland, N.H., nursing home Sunday at 114 years, 294 days. The Gerontology Research Group says Daisey Bailey died in Detroit hours later at 113 years, 342 days. The group tracks and studies old people and certifies those 110 or older, called supercentenarians.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People with fat in their thighs and backsides may live longer because the fat traps harmful fatty particles and actively secretes helpful compounds, according to a report published on Tuesday. Many studies have shown that people who accumulate fat around the abdomen and stomach are more likely to die of heart disease and other causes than bottom-heavy people, but the reasons are not clear. This may be because several different mechanisms are involved, said Konstantinos Manolopoulos of Britain's University of Oxford. "It is the protective role of lower body, that is, gluteofemoral fat, that is striking," Manolopoulos...

Can you really be bored to death? ...experts say there's a possibility that the more bored you are, the more likely you are to die early.

You really can be bored to death, scientists discover Tedium: People with dull jobs must find outside interests, experts warn Boredom could be shaving years off your life, scientists have found. Researchers say that people who complain of boredom are more likely to die young, and that those who experienced 'high levels' of tedium are more than two-and-a-half times as likely to die from heart disease or stroke than those satisfied with their lot. More than 7,000 civil servants were studied over 25 years - and those who said they were bored were nearly 40 per cent more likely to...

A PILL to help people live to 100 free from debilitating health problems is set to "revolutionise" ageing, experts said yesterday. The breakthrough has come after scientists identified three “super-genes”. People born with the genes are 20 times more likely to reach a century – and 80 per cent less likely to develop the senility disease Alzheimer’s. Even being overweight or a heavy smoker does not stop a third of those with the genes living to 100. Now US researchers are working to produce a drug that can mimic the genetic benefits and hope it will be ready for testing...

People who carry a few extra pounds after age 70 tend to live longer than people who don’t, new research finds. Overweight older adults who took part in the Australian study had a clear survival advantage over those who were normal weight, underweight, or obese. The findings suggest that the widely accepted body mass index (BMI) weight guidelines may not be particularly useful after age 70, lead researcher Leon Flicker, PhD, of the University of Western Australia tells WebMD. Last summer, researchers in Canada reported the same findings after analyzing data from more than 11,000 adults followed for more than...

Lounging in front of the tube not only eats up hours in your day, it may also shorten your life, according to a new study. The study, which looked at the connection between watching TV and death for 8,800 Australian adults, found that each hour of TV-viewing was associated with an 11 percent increased risk of death from any cause, and an 18 percent increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease. These findings held true even after the researchers took into account other factors that could raise the risk of dying, such as age, gender, waist circumference and exercise habits....

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States ranked 29th in the world in 2006 in life expectancy at age 50. That places it more than three years behind the world's leader, Japan, and more than one and a half years behind Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Iceland, Spain, and Switzerland. About 4 million Americans reach the age of 50 each year, so an average loss of one and a half years per person means an aggregate loss of some 6 million years of potential life, valued at anywhere from $600 billion to $1.3 trillion annually. In 2007, the...

Long life may stem from a proper imbalance of dietary nutrients. A new study in fruit flies suggests that the life-extending properties of caloric restriction may be due not only to fewer calories in the diet, but also to just the right mix of protein building blocks, called amino acids. The study, published online December 2 in Nature, may help explain some of the health benefits of restricted-calorie diets. Coupled with other data, the new study should prompt researchers to reevaluate whether it is calorie count or the nutrient composition of a diet that is most important for regulating lifespan...

(BRONX, NY) — A team led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has found a clear link between living to 100 and inheriting a hyperactive version of an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres — the tip ends of chromosomes. The findings appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Telomeres play crucial roles in aging, cancer and other biological processes. Their importance was recognized last month, when three scientists were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for determining the structure of telomeres and discovering how they protect...

Scientists have shown that feeding a simple polyamine called spermidine to worms, fruit flies and yeast significantly prolongs their lifespan. In addition, adding spermidine to the diet of mice decreased molecular markers of ageing, and when human immune cells were cultured in a medium containing spermidine, they also lived for longer.Spermidine - a simple linear molecule found in large quantities in human sperm and grapefruit - is known to be necessary for cell growth and maturation, and as cells age their level of spermidine is know to fall. Now, Frank Madeo from the University of Graz in Austria and his colleagues have shown...

So what does the world's oldest man eat? The answer is not much, at least not too much. Walter Breuning, who turned 113 on Monday, eats just two meals a day and has done so for the past 35 years. "I think you should push back from the table when you're still hungry," Breuning said. At 5 foot 8, ("I shrunk a little," he admitted) and 125 pounds, Breuning limits himself to a big breakfast and lunch every day and no supper. "I have weighed the same for about 35 years," Breuning said. "Well, that's the way it should be."...