At 08:14 AM 1/15/98 -0600, John E. Rylander wrote:
>The scientists involved also say this won't necessarily increase life-span,
>but may help with what they called "health-span".
>
>I don't know -why- it wouldn't help with life-span, but that's what they
>said.
>
>It seems a fountain of youth for the individuals cells does not imply a
>fountain of youth for the organism as a whole. (Or maybe they were just
>being conservative, meaning only that the former does not -necessarily-
>imply the latter, based on our current understanding.)
There are several reasons for caution. As they note in the article the
division limitation on cells helps guard against cancer. If you have cancer
or precancerous cells that don't have telomerase they can quickly go through
their alotted 50 divisions and then die. Unfortunately, cancers often have
telomerase turned on anyway.
What I draw from this is that it may keep you healthy but if you still are
going to get cancer at 62, you will die at 63. But I would say that if man
is ever to live for 300 years, the cells of his body must be able to go
through more than 50 divisions. So this may be part of the answer to
longevity but not necessarily all of it.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm