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by danieltillett 2724 days ago
Get a very high paying job and then donate your money to research. If you want to get involved with the research then just start giving the money to the researcher you want without strings (no grant or report writing). Then use this as a chance to chat to the researchers about the research.

We can't really do much about ageing until we solve cancer as ageing is the evolutionary original anti-cancer system.
1 comments
dekhn 2724 days ago
since many people progress to late 80s and 90s without cancer, it's likely we can increase longevity (not immortality) without addressing cancer as a dependency first. After all, the greatest advances in mortality came from reducing child mortality and addressing infectious diseases that lead to long-term health effects.
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danieltillett 2724 days ago
Most people in their 80s and 90s have cancer, but thanks to ageing the cancer is very slow growing so they die of something else. For example, in men the percentage probability of having prostate cancer is equal to your age yet few men die of prostate cancer.

There are some mutations in people that slow ageing at the expense of increasing the cancer rate. There is a very interesting one from Brazil where a mutation in the p53 gene has this exact mechanism [0].

0. https://youtu.be/URKJ7LLXc3E (you can skip the first 5 minutes - the relevant part is around minute 15).

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dekhn 2724 days ago
I think you mean, most people in their 80s and 90s have benign tumors, not cancer.

Heart disease research investments would likely have equal or superior payoffs to cancer research investments.

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danieltillett 2724 days ago
No they have full non-benign cancers, they are just so slow growing that the person with them normally dies of something else first although plenty of people in their 80s and 90s die of cancer.

Yes the life expectancy increase from curing cancer is only around 2 years, but it is the essential first step to doing something major about ageing.

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dekhn 2724 days ago
non-benign cancer = invasive tumor. people with invasive tumors rarely die of other causes which are not correlated.

anyway, I don't think anybody in the serious scientific community believes that a cancer-only research program would have a huge impact on longevity and instead, most people advocate for a portfolio with roughly 70% spent across cardiovascular and cancer, and the rest on other causes.

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tormeh 2724 days ago
Heart disease and cancer are symptoms of aging, not causes. Why would we treat the (very many) symptoms individually if we can treat the cause?
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