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Kevin Jacobson

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Could we study cancer as a means of obtaining immortality in humans?

Cancer, the deadliest disease known to man, may just extend our lifetimes. Think about it, cancer is so deadly because cancer cells are immortal. They just keep multiplying and multiplying and none of the cancer cells die because they don have the 30 multiplications bio clock that normal cells have. So, if we could somehow study and decode cancer in such a way that the human genome could be modified for extended lifetime or immortality purposes, we could all avoid death, at least, for a very long time. What do you folks think?

Topics: cancer
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  • Robert Galway 20+

    • +1
    Jan 7 2013: Decoding cancer will no doubt have many benefits. I do not see any variant of it being used to slow aging or prolong life. Once decoded, coding cells and producing them such that they had the desired effect in all bodies seems like it would be quite a challenge. Cancer does not affect everyone equally, consequently, it would seem that recoding would require a custom tailoring of the cells for each body. Then there is the effect of physical and chemical things in the environment that might have a different effect on the body over period of time linger than a normal human lifespan. This increased life would likely also come in a body that was frail unless the effects were somehow distributed over the life of those receiving the cells.

    There is a lot of science between now and when this could even be realistically imagined. There would also be some pretty big political hurdles.

    • Kevin Jacobson

      • 0
      Jan 7 2013: I agree with you, but there is one trait that all types of cancer have and all people with cancer suffer from. Immortality. Cancer is deadly because a cancer cell will live forever as long as it has a blood supply. If the specific part of a cancers DNA that makes it immortal were to be separated, this could have great benefits for humans.

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