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Post by housesparrow on May 16, 2011 19:22:20 GMT
Assuming of course that you could afford it.
A blood test that can show how fast someone is ageing – and offers the tantalising possibility of estimating how long they have left to live – is to go on sale to the general public in Britain later this year.
The controversial test measures vital structures on the tips of a person's chromosomes, called telomeres, which scientists believe are one of the most important and accurate indicators of the speed at which a person is ageing.
Scientists behind the €500 (£435) test said it will be possible to tell whether a person's "biological age", as measured by the length of their telomeres, is older or younger than their actual chronological age.
Medical researchers believe that telomere testing will become widespread within the next five or 10 years, but there are already some scientists who question its value and whether there should be stronger ethical controls over its wider use. In addition to concerns about how people will react to a test for how "old" they really are, some scientists are worried that telomere testing may be hijacked by unscrupulous organisations trying to peddle unproven anti-ageing remedies and other fake elixirs of life.
The results of the tests might also be of interest to companies offering life-insurance policies or medical cover that depend on a person's lifetime risk of falling seriously ill or dying prematurely. However, there is a growing body of scientific opinion that says testing the length of a person's telomeres could provide vital insights into the risk of dying prematurely from a range of age-related disorders, from cardiovascular disease to Alzheimer's and cancer. "We know that people who are born with shorter telomeres than normal also have a shorter lifespan. We know that shorter telomeres can cause a shorter lifespan," said Maria Blasco of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, who is the inventor of the new commercial telomere test. "But we don't know whether longer telomeres are going to give you a longer lifespan. That's not really known in humans," she added.
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Post by everso on May 16, 2011 21:15:15 GMT
I wouldn't take it. I don't want to know how long I have.  |
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on May 16, 2011 22:06:51 GMT
Fuck no!
AH
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Post by everso on May 16, 2011 22:28:22 GMT
Precisely.
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on May 16, 2011 22:43:26 GMT
No man should know his time.  AH |
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Post by housesparrow on May 17, 2011 6:17:29 GMT
Oh, I might be tempted. If someone told me I had less than 15 years to live I'd spend all my savings and have a ball.
Mind you, it would be a bit of a bugger if I reached 90, penniless.
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Post by jean on May 17, 2011 8:04:03 GMT
This is the really dangerous bit, though:
The worrying thing is that if this information ever got to a point where it is believable, insurance companies would start requiring it in terms of insuring people.
When the NHS has been privatised away, we'll be in real trouble.
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Post by rjpageuk on May 17, 2011 16:08:17 GMT
I would definitely take the test as the results (if accurate) would help me make better decisions in my life.
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Post by aubrey on May 17, 2011 16:46:56 GMT
I'd spend the £500 on something else.
It might be illegal if an insurance company found out that the test said you had 5 years (stuck on my eyes - been playing that a lot recently) and didn't tell them. And, as Jean says, it might become compulsory for insurance purposes anyway. Like car alarms: and they work, don't they? They've made all our lives a lot better.
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Post by sesley on May 18, 2011 8:39:14 GMT
then what happens if the person with long tellythings gets hit by a bus? they get insured for a long life and bam! a bus comes along.
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Post by everso on May 18, 2011 11:07:21 GMT
That's so unfair! ;D
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Post by riotgrrl on May 19, 2011 9:09:48 GMT
Oh, I might be tempted. If someone told me I had less than 15 years to live I'd spend all my savings and have a ball. Mind you, it would be a bit of a bugger if I reached 90, penniless. But Housey, at any given time, you may well have less than 15 years to live. You never know when your plane will crash/ the psycho will behead you in the supermarket/ Islamists will blow up the bus you're on/ etc. etc. People die in such random ways at such random times. We were talking about death in the chatroom last week, and I got a row for saying it would be interesting to see a beheading video. But I think it would be. I've never seen a real life dead person, and I've never seen a real life person die. Yet every single person I see in my life is going to be dead within 100 years, most of them well before that. We need to lighten up and embrace the inevitable. |
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Post by everso on May 19, 2011 13:47:12 GMT
I couldn't watch a beheading video. It's not the actual beheading (although that would be pretty scary to see* ) but it would be the terror of the poor bugger about to be topped that I wouldn't be able to watch. * I may have told this before, but years ago I worked for a south american bank in its research department. They used to have a monthly magazine in their library that came from Brazil - "O Cruzeiro" I think it was called - and I've never forgotton the photo I once saw in it of someone who had just been beheaded. Literally, the head had just left the neck. Now, I don't know if it was an old photo taken during WW2 (the Japanese tended to lop the heads off POWs who disobeyed rules) or Vietnam (which was all the go at the time) but it was a terrible photo for an 18 year old girl to see. It affected me quite badly for years afterwards and it was ages before I could even talk about it. Looking back, I guess I suffered some kind of trauma - who can I sue? Brazil? God knows what I'd be like if I witnessed that kind of thing in real life! |
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Post by housesparrow on May 19, 2011 17:16:15 GMT
Perhaps Riot has a secret longing to become a medical student; I dare say not many doctors get to see a cross section of the bits that attach the neck to the head.
The more I think about it, the more sure I am that she has taken the wrong career path; no-one yet has found a way of re-attaching a severed head to the neck. Someone has to be first.
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Post by everso on May 19, 2011 18:11:35 GMT
Perhaps Riot has a secret longing to become a medical student; I dare say not many doctors get to see a cross section of the bits that attach the neck to the head. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that she has taken the wrong career path; no-one yet has found a way of re-attaching a severed head to the neck. Someone has to be first. Dr. Frankenstein, I believe. |
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Post by everso on May 19, 2011 18:12:31 GMT
The blood would drain out of the head too quickly and the brain would die.
Good lord, why are we even thinking about this? What a subject!
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