h+ Magazine

The immune system of older people declines in reliability and efficiency with age, resulting in greater susceptibility to pathology as a consequence of inflammation, for example, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, autoreactivity and vaccine failure, as well as an increased vulnerability to infectious disease.

Recent CLIO links on Robots, AI, Cryonics, Genetic Research

Transhumanism, it’s time we had a talk. I know you’re excited, giddy, even, about the prospects of medical immortality, mechatronic implants, stem cells, lollipops and genetic engineering helping you achieve the beingness you so badly want to become.

Gene Clears Brain Plaque, Dirt Cheap Genetic Testing, Cancer Bursts

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (the Bioethics Commission) will meet April 30 in Washington, D.C. to discuss the ethical implications of incidental findings.

For decades, we have been treating cancer by hammering away at cancer cells with radiation and chemical poisons. Fearful that even one surviving cell can seed a recurrence, we routinely apply the maximum tolerable dose, with side-effects ranging from nausea and hair loss to permanent impairment of the immune system. Is there a better approach?

The availability of a range of new psychotropic agents raises the possibility that these will be used for enhancement purposes (smart pills, happy pills, and pep pills). The enhancement debate soon raises questions in philosophy of medicine and psychiatry (eg, what is a disorder?), and this debate in turn raises fundament questions in philosophy of language, science, and ethics. In this paper, a naturalistic conceptual framework is proposed for addressing these issues. This framework begins by contrasting classical and critical concepts of categories, and then puts forward an integrative position that is based on cognitive-affective research. This position can in turn be used to consider the debate between pharmacological Calvinism (which may adopt a moral metaphor of disorder) and psychotropic utopianism (which may emphasize a medical metaphor of disorder). I argue that psychiatric treatment of serious psychiatric disorders is justified, and that psychotropics are an acceptable kind of intervention. The use of psychotropics for sub-threshold phenomena requires a judicious weighing of the relevant facts (which are often sparse) and values.

Dr. Harold Katcher of the University of Maryland believes that signals in our blood tell our stem cells how old to act, and that some key disabilities of old age might be reversed by serial transfusions of blood plasma from a young donor. Plasma transfusion is a routine medical procedure, established to be safe for humans, but remarkably, its potential for rejuvenation has never been tested in humans or even in animals.

Ang’s research focuses on embedded devices such as routers, printers and VOIP phones. And he is the inventor of a novel, host-based defense mechanism known as Symbiotes. Symbiotes are software defenses “designed specifically to retrofit black-box, vulnerable, legacy embedded systems withsophisticated anti-exploitation mechanisms”. Ang’s work with symbiotes might very well be the first line of defense for your future cybernetically enhanced mind.

When cold-blooded animals are exposed to a cold environment, their metabolisms slow and they live longer. When warm-blooded animals are exposed to a cold environment, their metabolisms speed up (to maintain body temperature) and they live longer. In a new study from University of Michigan, both responses are traced to a common genetic mechanism that senses the temperature and signals a slower rate of aging. This adds to a mountain of evidence that animals life spans are fixed by genetic choice, and not by any kind of passive physical deterioration.

Ben Goertzel converses with Hugo de Garis on his transhumanist argument for the reality of a Creator.