|Sci|: Your Future in Agelessness |Fi|: A Singular Panda Chapter 6

Science IRL: Your healthspan care & unintended social consequences+ Fic: Our heroine chooses between the uncomfortable comfort zone of a natural death and agelessness

Jump to this week’s fic

Jump to Reclamation of Eve: Table of Contents

Jump to what to expect in the next Scifirl installment: The Cain Era

|Science IRL|: Your Future in Agelessness

Image by Rachel with Canva

|Science IRL|: Your Future in Agelessness

Welcome, age rebels, to your graduation day. This will be the last episode of ScifIRL’s Anti-Aging installment.

Last week we talked about some ways you can augment your anti-aging journey today: I covered 1 supplement, 1 drug, and introduced you to CAS9–the protagonist driving the major human gene-editing tech, CRISPR.

To close us out, I’ll share:

• How CRISPR gene-editing treatments may look by 2030 and 2035.

• Anticipated drawbacks of solving aging and my own opinions on each. 

The near-future possibilities of CRISPR Gene therapies:

Gene therapy is still in its infancy, but here’s a summary examining how gene therapy via CRISPR will advance in the next few years. It is currently being applied first to single, specific tasks like curing gene-related sickle cell disease. I (and many others more in the know than I) are predicting CRISPR will be generalized to address broader treatments relevant to anti-aging.

Patient Process, 2030: CRISPR as a cancer treatment and personalized vaccine

1. You go to your oncologist to get blood drawn, which will be used to genetically sequence the cancer and pull a sample of your blood’s T-cells.

2. Your T-cells are put in the classroom of a Petri dish to learn how to tell the difference between your normal cells and your cancerous cells. After all, the cancerous cells are still your cells, not those of a virus or bacteria. CAS9 is the teacher, the curriculum is the cancer’s genetic identifier.

3. Your Petri dish soup with your educated T-cells are re-injected into your body where they mount the aggressively effective attack they were always capable of. Your body’s natural defense system is extremely effective at killing things it reads as bad. It just needed a bit of help identifying the wolf in sheep’s clothing that is cancer.

4. Your T-cells teach your thymus gland to forevermore identify that cancer as the villain and automatically mount the defenses in future fights—essentially this process serves as both a treatment and vaccine for cancer.

Patient Process, 2035: Total genome treatment for maximizing health span

1. You go to your doctor and spit in a cup. Your DNA from your phlegm gets analyzed to map your entire genome—the billions of codes that make up the book that is your life form.

2. You get a list of the bad guys in your genetic story. These bad actors were either malevolent from day one, or they were good for you in infancy, but could turn pathological later in life. A great example is that APOe4 gene we’ve discussed, which likely improves IQ, but can cause Alzheimer’s as one ages.

3. You and your doc identify which bad guys your insurance will pay for and what you are willing to change—you and your doc make an editing game plan.

4. You decide if you’re fixing this genetic bad actor for yourself only or for you and your future kids (this is likely to be heavily regulated).

5. You choose your therapy vectors:

• First wave replaces organs with new organoids or artificial organs. If your heart or liver are too far gone to rejuvenate, it may be best to replace it.

• You go through a series of injections with CAS9 and other CRISPR agents trained for a specific gene-editing task, like replacing that APOe4 gene

‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’, instead live all your days, gently

Dylan Thomas’s incredible poem admonishes us to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”¹. He was charging us to live life to the hilt, to take advantage of every moment with wild courage because our time is short and the meaning of our lives is fleeting.

Humans are the only conscious entities we know of that are self-aware enough to consider their own shelf life. So much about the way societies have been constructed was influenced by how they handled this awareness. Faith, religions, codes of ethics and honor all try to make sense and provide a path from pain to meaning and comfort. I’m not pointing at any particular religious code or creed, nor hopefully making an incendiary statement when I say we’ve had a real mixed bag of results from these approaches.

When philosophers and scientists today think about how human society could look if we were no longer faced with this claustrophobic lifespan, we get a lot of fascinating panic, denial, and disaster-predicting reactions. Recall the Dragon Tyrant allegory? For the more promising anti-aging treatments coming in the next few years, I predict even weirder reactions.

Here’s a brief summary of the anticipated drawbacks for curing aging. What follows are my own thoughts and opinions about these, not facts. I invite you to continue thinking about them as well—I don’t claim to have answers, just inviting a lifelong discussion:

1. Only the Rich Get Older

2. Overpopulation

3. Stagnation

1] The fear is that only the elite will benefit from revolutionary anti-aging treatments: 

That the so-called 1st world, which already has more than its fair share of wealth, will expand its advantage over developing countries with tech like this. As y’all already know, I work in space and have an engineering degree. I am for sure biased to the side of advancing technology, and I live in the US. All that said, I think this fear about only the rich achieving Longevity Escape Velocity is ultimately unfounded. Like many tech development segments, the early years of a game-changing product or service tend to be incubated by wealthy investors who get the first dibs at the perks (if the tech pans out). This is true both of their wallets and, in this case, possibly in life and health improvements. But in a capitalistic system (not saying medicine should be this or all societies are this—we’ll get to that) the economics of that investment only work if there’s a general population that will pay for the ultimate product. Otherwise, there isn’t enough money in it to repay investors and make the product a self-sustaining engine of commerce. That means these developments are only worthwhile fiscally if a significant portion of the population is willing and able to pay for the end product. A good analogy I can’t claim to have made up myself (winks at some boy she knows) is the smart phone—my smart phone is the same device found in the hands of the rich and the royals all over this planet. Apple doesn’t have an elite version only available to the top 1%. Revolutionary producers goals are to democratize and make their wares available to the max amount of people to maximize profit. In this case, that’s a good thing.

2] The fear is that with fewer people dying (since most of us die from age-related diseases), we’ll suddenly be drowning in a literal sea of humanity, overburdening our ecosystems:

Again, I have to confess my bias—I am a woman who has never felt the need to have children. I know I’m not alone—statistically, women with access to birth control tend to have fewer children. The biological motivators to procreate are strong, but the data shows they are not overwhelming when people have levers to pull and a choice in the matter. The motivators have thus changed in very recent history. One of the biggest motivators I hear for folks deciding to have children nowadays is a mix of wanting someone to love and nurture, combined with a lofty idea of leaving a legacy. 

Not long ago, people wanted as many kids as possible because the mortality rate for babies was pretty grim. Even as those odds improved, the agricultural era and early industrial favored those families with many kids, increasing the amount of work that could be done. Today, having kids is more of a financial burden than a resource, so the motivations have moved up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. 

Now, let’s do a thought experiment. Fast forward a few centuries, projecting all your expectations on how technology and societies evolve. You and your children and grandchildren all around a VR campfire over a holiday. How many do you think there are? Where are your physical bodies calling in from, now that your lives are centuries-long? One of your adult grandkids is telling a story about one of her peers deciding to have a baby. How does everyone react? To my mind, this has become a rare thing and everyone on the imaginary call is congratulatory and possibly politely curious because this many generations after aging is cured, people don’t think of having kids as a way to leave a legacy or fulfill a social life-milestone expectation.

To summarize my thoughts after this thought experiment: we have some effective ways to manage overpopulation now, and the reason it hasn’t in affected areas isn’t related to the cure itself—as always with humans, these things are complicated and delicate. But I don’t think curing aging will make overpopulation worse: If anything, I think it could decrease the motivation to have children instead. Which could be another problem altogether :)

3) Stagnation is the fear that a lack of generational turnover will freeze society’s pro-social and scientific progress. 

This fear is a reaction to two things we used to believe were true but we’re actually relearning now.

Let’s take these worries one at a time. 

Connservativitis: We used to think the older one got, the less risk one tended to take, becoming comprehensively more conservative. If this were true, the forecast for an ageless population would be a sea of Scrooge-like curmudgeons. But Gen X and Millenials are not behaving according to this prediction.These folks range from ages 28 to 59 and they seem to be maintaining their political positions, unlike the two varieties of Boomers who preceded them who tended to become more conservative. The studies that originally drew this conclusion were founded on political party and economic data such as home ownership, but Gen X and Y are the first generations to go to brunch instead of mowing the lawn on weekends.² It seems like the historical correlation was indicating a relationship between home ownership and conservatism, not that conservatism was a natural state of growing older! 

Old dog brain: We used to think the mechanics of aging on our brain universally led to more rigid thought patterns, starting as early as mid-30s. We thought that as one aged, brain cells literally formed rigid thought patterns like highways and railways. Recent studies have shown it's more complicated than this and there are more silent synapses (unformed neurons ready to called into action when learning something new) in adult brains than previously thought.³ However, it is true that after around age 65, the brain does shrink and begins to be susceptible to degeneration. However, if our anti-aging therapies are functional, there should be significantly less of both rigidity and degeneration. Our 200-year-old minds should be more neuroplastic (more able to rearrange neural pathways literally leading to new thought patterns) than today’s typical 70-year-olds.

So, there you have it. These are my thoughts on why we should remain optimistic. However, major social transitions are the messiest bits, so I won’t say there won’t be inequities and unforeseen consequences we will need to contend with very sensitively.

But I’m one of those people who believes humans are ultimately good and human consciousness is a rare, precious phenomena in our perceived universe.

I believe YOU are ultimately a good, rare, precious phenomena. So I hope you will not go gently into that good night, but will be gentle with yourself and our communities as we continue to evolve together.

---

|Science Fiction|: A Singular Panda Ch. 6

“Such a precious and strange bridge between worlds—the memory of two sentients.” Original art by Ann Drew

Previously…alone after her wife discovered she’s been lying and not taking her anti-aging therapy prep, Bridgette texted with an AI chatbot trained on her alien mentor’s journals. Bridgette found evidence in the journals that consciousness is anything but fragile, and her company’s revolutionary anti-aging technology is not going break humanity, herself, nor her wife.

I disentangle myself from the sheets, holding my tablet to my chest like I once held my teddy bear.

Take HypBot and go to stand in front of the biggest window in our apartment, craving a view of the sky.

The ink-dark star cradle outside holds a mist-shrouded moon above the city. My breath catches in a romantic awe I've never felt about the sky before. Another planet, maybe another universe’s life form built technologies that bridged Hyp into my life and into the story of Earth’s climate salvation twenty years ago. Because of some intrepid aliens, maybe Original looks up at his stars and thinks of his clone’s time here. Of me.

Such a precious and strange bridge between worlds—the memory of two sentients. How many living things on Original’s planet had to be brave, making big leaps, molding the bricks of their life’s work to build that bridge?

How dwarfed and honored I feel that I have a chance to be one of them for my kind.

Maybe one day, I could even meet Original, or another clone.

First thing’s first, I have to reinforce my foundation.

I set the glowing tablet down at my feet. Feel the heart-crushing hope I always feel before starting a new project.

This body is decaying, not aging. It will fail me, and soon. I’ve been in denial. Tarra and I know down to the week when it’s likely cancer will revisit and this time, take me away. Two years suddenly seems like a looming cliff edge.

How scared and betrayed Tarra must feel.

I haven’t even asked her how she’s feeling about the changes in her body. Denial is such a labor-intensive, self-absorbed process. How I’ve been obsessing over maybes and whatifs about gene therapy generation 1, and even about Hyp, when my wife is several weeks down a life-changing path? It’s like I went to sleep through a major life transition. And now she knows she’s been going it alone.

My pill pack is a tad damp from being in the steamy bathroom for hours. I gather it, a glass of water,  and a few pillows, then I make a little nest in the floor in front of the window. In front of the stars. In front of HypBot. I need a friend, a witness.

I sit down and take lotus pose. My heart is sprinting when I swallow the first pill. I snap a photo of the empty pill pocket and send it to Tarra.

>>>“I’m so sorry. I’ve been selfish and scared and in denial and I’m ashamed at how I’ve been acting. Please come home, I want to know how you’ve been feeling. And maybe it sounds corny, but in retrospect, I can’t believe how I could have endangered our forever together.”

I set the tablet on the floor next to me and toggle the screen over to HypBot and turn it to face the window, like we’re looking out at the night sky together. Press my palms to the cold windowpane, my fingers reaching for stars.

This body was just the beginning. A cradle for my mind. A haven and a fortress. I don’t know what my body will become or how many I will have, but I trust I will still be myself. I trust Tarra will still be herself, that the love have will evolve with us.

I move my hands higher on the windowpane, reaching up as high as I can toward the night sky. Imagine my fingertips disappearing into darkness. That friendly darkness of depthless space travels up to claim the veins standing tall in my aging skin. Now my wrists dissolve, my arms, the tension in my shoulders melts as they cease to exist. Down and down the sky travels, pouring warmth and welcome over my body. When my heart surrenders and I feel the scars on my chest disappear, I feel free.

I close my eyes and feel myself stepping onto the bridge connecting me to an infinite future.

The End

Thank you so much for reading this Anti-Aging Scifirl Installment!

It’s been a blast and a challenge to work on, and I hope you picked up a few things along the way that help you.

---

The Cain Era is on the horizon for our next scifirl serial.

Here’s what you have to look forward to:

Sci-fi| maybe-murderous, maybe malfunctioning cyborgs, a parallel universe parent trap, and space kale

Sci-IRL| the topic you most voted for was Space travel! Exciting since my career gives me a wealth of IRL experience on this subject.

Calendar of Events:

• Jan 19 - Folks who responded to 2024’s survey will get a character art sneak peek

• Jan 26 -  Member chat to decide what you want to know about current space travel

• Friday Feb 2nd - Debut Chapter 1!

While you’re waiting, enjoy the prequel serial “The Reclamation of Eve”

Chapter 1 is currently entered in Lunar Awards contest Season 5! Check out all the fabulous contestants!

Lunar Awards Season Five Starts Now!

---

Author’s Note—Cameo from ScifIRL’s Proofreader/Fact-Checker, Shawn French!

Hi ScifIRL,

I’m Shawn French, a writer and editor with 30 years experience in games, comic, and film. I also have a particular interest in experimental genetic therapies, as I’ve personally benefitted from it tremendously. I have a hereditary connective-tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that is considered incurable and untreatable. There’s nothing you can take for Ehlers-Danlos. It's a genetic condition folks like myself are born with and there are no meds or treatments on the market for it. In 400 BC, Hippocrates (of Hippocratic Oath fame) identified this condition, but Ehlers-Danlos has fallen through the cracks of the medical system for literal thousands of years and no treatments have ever been released.

When I was first diagnosed back in 1990, I refused to accept my prognosis and starting cold-calling research labs to see if anyone had anything I could try, which led me to Dr. John McMichael at Milkhaus Labs and his research into Resonant Molecular Signaling. He theorized that part of the reason my body creates faulty collagen is that it thinks it's always under attack. Being permanently locked in a hypervigilant fight-or-flight mode causes the body to react in all manner of self-destructive ways.

Resonant Molecular Signaling aims to address a wide range of illnesses by restoring normal cellular communications and correcting these imbalances. The treatment upregulates certain genes using modulated viral components. I went from being unable to walk a flight of stairs at age 19 to doing stuntwork in indie films at age 40. At 53, I’m still holding up fine thanks to Dr. McMichael and his team, who recently formed Resolys Bio (https://resolysbio.com/mcc-therapy) in hopes of finally bringing to market the long overdue first treatment for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

To learn more about me and my writing, visit my page.

Table of Contents for A Singular Panda + Anti-Aging Science Articles

1. A Singular Panda Chapter 1 + Science IRL: You’re Invited To Join the Aging Rebellion

2. A Singular Panda Chapter 2 + Science IRL: Defining Aging—Who’s Holding the Pen?

3. A Singular Panda Chapter 3 + Science IRL: Meet the Revolutionaries Fighting Aging

4. A Singular Panda Chapter 4 + Science IRL: Your Shield in the Aging Rebellion

5. A Singular Panda Chapter 5 + Science IRL: Your Sword in the Aging Rebellion

6. A Singular Panda Chapter 6 + Science IRL: Your Future in Agelessness

---

I’d love to hear from you!

Not Sure What to Say?

I can relate and many others can too!

• Click the heart—it lets Substack algorithms know this is worth amplifying

• Restack to help me reach other Scifi folks in our community!

• Comment:

  • to let me know what you liked or what you learned

  • add your own expertise and thoughts to the conversation! I’m just a dilettante here and there are so many fabulous experts—don’t be shy!

  • provide critique and feedback to help me improve ScifIRL.

    • Is there a way I could improve this week’s fic?

    • Did anything confuse you?

    • Are there topics in the science article that you don’t think I covered thoroughly or missed a current event?

  • Something in the Author’s Note you resonated with? Let me know!

1. Thomas, Dylan. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” Poets.Org, Academy of American Poets, 11 Oct. 2022, https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night/

2. Jones, Jeffrey M. “Millennials, Gen X Clinging to Independent Party ID.” Gallup.Com, Gallup, 31 May 2023, https://news.gallup.com/poll/397241/millennials-gen-clinging-independent-party.aspx.

3. Vardalaki, Dimitra, et al. “Filopodia Are a Structural Substrate for Silent Synapses in Adult Neocortex.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 30 Nov. 2022, www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05483-6.