Somewhat related, there is a vaccine for cats in the works meant to prevent feline chronic kidney disease. If successful it could massively increase the lifespan of domestic cats.
That killed my childhood cat. Would be awesome for future kids to not experience what I did.
Some scientists actually are working on this. I haven’t read this article in particular, but it was near the top of a search.
tl;dr is that there may soon be a drug available which can extend the lives of large dogs.
Who stop at 60? Immortal dogs!
This is your father’s dog. An elegant puppy for a more civilised age. Take care of it, you and your descendents, for it will outlive you all.
Oh wait, now I realised that’s basically r2d2
R2, stop licking the lightsabers, you’ll get a hairball!
R2! Hold still while I give you this oil bath! Oh no, he’s run off to the desert again to find Old Ben.
“Captain! All the other droids died, but this little one fixed the ship and saved us!” “Be careful in the future though, it says 8 out of 9 lives left.”
R2D2 is a cat.
I think I prefer that my dog dies before I do. Being a King Charles spaniel it’ll probably just sit by my rotting corpse until it dies from hunger.
Science is just the method by which technological advancements are achieved, it doesn’t decide the priorities. That privilege falls to capital, and by extension, capitalists.
First and foremost, priorities are set by reality.
Extending a dog’s lifespan by 60 years would be a very high demand product and could be sold for much more than what smartphones cost. If it was feasible, it would have already been done.
Though aging is a lot more complex than shrinking cpu transistors.
One idea I’ve heard is that telomeres gain increasing stress and damage after years of DNA replication, from the torsional strain of the spiral of DNA as it splits and reforms in the replication process. How in the world could you fix that? DNA lube?
I thought telomeres just get shortened during replication but not in stem cells or something like that? A while ago since i was in that rabbit hole.
I think my conclusion was, we would have to fix programmed cell death vs. immune system & cancerous behavior, add 4x replication for dna-repair like some algae do it, and fix something in ribosomes (which i forgot).
Then again, we probably don’t have to meddle with programmed cell death at all?
