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Two pivotal conferences on the topic of “death” coming up!!

First at the INSERM Liliane Bettencourt School on March 16–18 will be “Death: From Cells to Societies — Aging, Dying, and Beyond” -

Then, April 11–13 at Harvard Medical School, will be “Defining Death: Organ transplantation and the 50-year legacy of the Harvard report on brain death”

http://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/annual-bioethics-conference-2018

An important inflection point for all!!

In the course of the last century, science fiction has been a harbinger of things to come. From the automatic sliding doors of Star Trek to visual communication, cyberspace, and even the moon landing, many of our present technological achievements were dreamed up in the futuristic visions of science fiction authors of the 1960s and 70s. Indeed, the fantastical world of science fiction, while not intended to be prophetic, has ended up acting as a blueprint for our modern world.

We have learned from science fiction not only the possibilities of technology, however, but also its irreconcilable dangers. Readers of the genre will recognize the many stories warning us of the hazards of space travel, mind enhancement, and artificial intelligence. These fictional accounts cautioned that if we were not careful, our freedom to transform the world around us would transmogrify into a self-enforced slavery.

Nonetheless, while many of us remembered that these were just stories, intended as speculations about a possible future—in other words, they were fiction before science—through them, we became used to the idea that any advanced technology was inherently dangerous and its use always suspect. Moreover, it became a commonplace idea that technologies whose aim was to change or transform the human being—whether genetic, biological or reconstructive—would lead to a future worthy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

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Before the 7.6 billion people alive today, demographers estimate that about 100 billion people lived and died. This is the reality of the human condition. Memento mori, as medieval Christians reflected—Remember that you have to die.

What if it didn’t have to be this way? There are, in fact, organisms whose bodies steadily and reliably replace cells with healthier cells, and whose tissues and organs self-repair and maintain their vigor. They’re called children. And there are cells in adults that divide indefinitely. They’re called cancer. What if there were a way to genetically re-engineer and chemically reprogram our cells to divide indefinitely like they do in children, and to continue this process throughout adulthood without becoming cancerous? Could we become immortal?

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work,” Woody Allen once said, “I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” There are today well-funded groups of scientists who believe we can do just that. If these techno-dreamers succeed, would you want to live for 150 years? 300 years? Or even 500 years? I’m not talking about being brain-dead and bedridden on a morphine drip. I mean living a full, rich physical and mental life for centuries, possibly forever. Would you opt for immortality?

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According to China’s National Central Cancer Registry, Esophageal cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in China. Like many other types, cancer of the esophagus can be treated with chemotherapy. But, as is also true of other forms of cancer, chemotherapy isn’t always successful. In China, and around the world, there’s a great need for the development of new treatments.

Dr. Shixiu Wu, president of the Hangzhou Cancer Hospital, has tested a somewhat new treatment that takes a patient’s T-cells from the body, genetically edits them to target cancerous cells, then puts the altered cells back. If the process sounds at all familiar, it’s probably because using T-cells in this manner was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration back in August 2017.

We reported on a pair of CAR-T studies in December that used T-cells to fight cancer, as will the first CRISPR trial set to take place in the United States.

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http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cafeesotericaradio/2018/03/02/cafe-esoterica-radio-with-shawn-cohen-do-over-show-with-ira-pastor-regeneration

Summary: Treatability of cancer was raised to over 80% by a new intelligent system that sifts through massive genetic datasets to pinpoint targets for cancer treatment, say these scientists. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Scientists in Singapore have discovered a significantly improved way to treat cancer by listening to many different computer programs rather than just one.

Their new computer program reaches a consensus on how to treat a specific tumor, and it is significantly more accurate than existing predictive methods. The system isolates the Achilles heel of each individual tumor, helping doctors to choose the best treatment.

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Summary: Researchers who just finished a precision cancer treatment trial at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles just reported that three out of four adult and child cancer patients responded favorably to a new precision therapy which targets a gene mutation. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) reports that three-fourths of adults and children with a variety of advanced cancers in different sites of the body responded to a novel therapy called larotrectinib that targets a specific genetic mutation.

The researchers published the results of this phase 1/2 trial on February 22, 2018, in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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