/ News
Want To Live Forever? Trials For Drug Believed To Slow Down Aging Process Will Begin Next Winter
The Food and Drug Administration has given the go-ahead for clinical trials of what may be the world’s first anti-aging medication to begin in winter 2016. The medication is a common diabetes drug known as metformin, and experts believe it may be able to extend human lifespan well into a person's 120s.
Metformin is a common, inexpensive medication widely used to help control the sugar levels of those with type 2 diabetes. However, a 2014 study revealed an interesting side effect of the medication: It can increase users’ lifespan.
“Patients treated with metformin had a small but statistically significant improvement in survival compared with the cohort of non-diabetics,” explained lead study author Craig Currie, a professor from Cardiff University’s School of Medicine in Wales. “This was true even without any clever statistical manipulation.”
Experts believe metformin works to prevent aging by increasing the number of oxygen molecules released into a cell, which in turn boosts an individual's robustness, The Telegraphreported. The medication has already been proven to extend the lifespan of animals and the FDA has now allowed for a similar trial, referred to as Targeting Aging with Metformin, or TAME, to be replicated in humans. In preparation for the trial’s launch, scientists are currently raising funds and recruiting around 3,000 70- to 80-year-old participants to take part.
According to Dr. Jay Olshansky, a researcher from the University of Illinois, Chicago, who outlined the upcoming study in the National Geographic documentary, "Breakthrough: The Age of Ageing," a drug capable of slowing down aging could be the most important medical intervention in the modern era. "If we can slow aging in humans, even by just a little bit, it would be monumental," Olshansky told The Telegraph.
The trial’s ultimate goal is to create an anti-aging “vaccine” which, when taken, could slow down the aging process. However, this is not to be confused with eternal youth, although slowing down aging may be able to reduce the prevalence of many age-related conditions, such as loss of muscle tone, dementia, and loss of eyesight.
According to Professor Gordon Lithgow, an aging expert at the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing in California and one of the study’s advisors, expanding a population’s lifespan may even be more beneficial to humanity than finding a cure to cancer.
“If we were to cure all cancers, it would only raise life expectancy by around three years, because something else is coming behind the cancer, but if we could slow down the aging process you could dramatically improve how long people can live,” Lithgow told The Telegraph.
Source: http://www.medicaldaily.com/want-live-forever-trials-drug-believed-slow-down-aging-process-will-begin-next-winter-363508
/ About us
Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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