My grandpa is very old and will probably die soon

my grandpa is very old and will probably die soon
he is the only person genuinely happy when he sees me, he always smiles and hugs me
he survived german concentration camp when he was a teenager and always had some interesting memories to share
i'm so sad

we have all felt the sting of loss in some way, sometime, Polish brother
Take solace he will meet those he lost after bonding in chains and will be free of any pain inflicting him currently, and that there is always someone going through bitter loss

We all die.

...

>he survived german concentration camp when he was a teenager

umm no sweetie the Holocaust did not happen, so he was never in a camp.

You should always be proud of him

Mine (father's side) hated us more than a bit, don't know if he tried to make amends, but is slowly losing himself to dementia and is a few hours away by bus, I am ashamed to go see him

Only because our governments find it more important to invest billions in foreign aid and welfare and not invest in medical advances to stop or reverse the aging proces.

I heard some radio program about it on the Dutch business news radio.
And some professor blatantly said:
>why invest in giving a handful of people some extra years through experimental research, when you can instantly feed and save millions of people right now?
That's how they think about life extension research.

spend more time with him mane, my grandpa died a few months ago and it's one of my biggest regrets that I thought he'll be fine and delayed my hospital visit. wasn't that sad back then but it's starting to settle in now.
god bless yall

Love him until the day comes.Family is the most important thing that you have.

> muh concentration camp
he's a fucking liar, retarded holohoax has been disproved already
probably not even your grandfather, just some stupid cuck who raised his wife's son

What is the point of trying to bait people like this? Stop hating yourself

Sorry man.

I really wish that these stupid muh "holohoax" are sarcastic and ironic

>foreign aid
That takes a fraction of the national budget and serves an actual positive purpose.
>welfare
Corporate welfare is a bigger money sink than individual welfare even though the trickle down economics justifying it are still unproven unlike individual welfare which shows tangible results. If you want your country to shift priorities you should focus on its more expensive and arguably less beneficial sources of spending.

Sorry user, losing family you actually like is tough
Most of my family hates me for being a wedlock baby, but my grandparents always liked me. Losing my grandfather was hard. If your grandma is still alive, spend more time with her after she dies, she will appreciate it very much

That's rough. I don't know what I'll do when mine dies. I'm closer to him than my own parents.

No, i wont, i will live FOREVER AAAAAAAAA

>suffering forever

the true horror

The Dutch government has a budget of 285 billion euros. 80,4 billion goes to health care. 79 billion goes to social security. 35,4 billion goes to education. These are the three biggest expenses.
We currently have a somewhat right wing government, so they try to hide the exact amount we spend on foreign aid. But in 2015 it was 5,6 billion dollars.

Now imagine if you could spend 6 billion dollars on life extension. That would change the game entirely. Imagine if every country would spend 2% of their budget on that.

>he survived german concentration camp

If people aged more healthily people would put less strain on the health care budget and could even stay productive for more years as they can keep working to an older age.

I know how you feel. Sometimes I get thoughts like that and feel sad. I only have one grandparent left, my nanny and she is over 90 so she will probably die within the next few years. The others died before I was born so I have no real experience of a family member dying. On top of that, I'm the youngest of 9 kids so I'll probably have to go through all of the deaths of my parents and siblings

>9 kids
what the fuck

do you look like this by any chance?

...

Yes, I'm aware that statistically I shouldn't exist. My mam's family was bigger (big families a bit more common in 60's Ireland though) so I guess she was open to having a lot of kids

are your parents rich or what the fuck

All of these things contribute to making people live longer. Healthcare and social security are self explanatory and education simultaneously makes people employable and generates the world's future researchers. On the other hand what does corporate welfare do for you? A quick Google search tells me corporate welfare makes up about 19% of public spending in the Netherlands (read p.135 of pictured book). Think of what we could do if we put that money to better use. Public programs aren't the problem, corporations socializing their costs and privatizing their profits are.

what is the age difference between you and your oldest sibling?
i had a friend who had 20 years older sister and i thought it was extreme

You can't just elongate the telomere and predict reduced senescence, assuming the technical hurdles disappeared there could be disastrous effects. I don't even claim to be familiar with them either. And why not study and observe Sicilians and Okinawans to find epi/genetic effects

This isn't a Marvel/DC comic where some guy cooks up immortality in a lab

I'd say working class to lower middle class. When I was a kid, my oldest siblings would've been away from home a lot of the time and were working for themselves so you can see how the financial burden wasn't as bad on my parents as you initially might think

My oldest sister is 16, almost 17 years older than me. 20 years does seem a little more extreme though. Like take 00's vs 80's or 90's vs 70's for example. Big differences there

>grandpa's turning 92 this year
>experienced the great depression
>served in newfunland merchant navy crossing the north atlantic, picked up some clogs for the missus in holland
>came back, did some whaling in norway
>came back again, ran the newfunland mental institutions
>got hired as a "consultant" for the mental institutions for the gov't (only do anything when shit hits the fan a few times per year)
>retired at about 50
>comfortably lives on military pension and savings with his wife
pretty lucky that they're both still healthy 2bh, see them once every couple weeks

There have been several methods to have proven to rejuvenate the body of animals.
For example it seems injecting the blood of younger animals seems to have a positive effect on older animals.
You could focus on genetic modification and reduce the chance people get (especially brain related) illnesses.
You could focus on biological or mechanical implants to replace failing body parts.
There are already animals that do not age that you could study.
There are studies on activating cells that aren't purposed yet (forgot how it's called).

There are countless ways to go about it. And the solution is probably one we haven't thought of, as with every revolution.

*hugs*

source?

>or example it seems injecting the blood of younger animals seems to have a positive effect on older animals.
Still unconvincing though

>You could focus on genetic modification and reduce the chance people get (especially brain related) illnesses.
We're there, private or public, CRISPR/Cas-9 as much of a meme as it is, stem cell research, pluripotent cells being created all over the place

>You could focus on biological or mechanical implants to replace failing body parts.
Prosthetics are doing well, privately a lot too

>There are already animals that do not age that you could study.
Won't be as feasible in a much more complex organism

>There are studies on activating cells that aren't purposed yet (forgot how it's called).
Pluri/toti/potent cells, and 'reversion' of fully differentiated cells to mesenchymal/epithelial precursors and letting them start over

All of these have massive private and public investment if you look them up, a lot of challenges too, but are starting to yield immense results

I remember that the Rotterdam hospital recently released a report on the effect of proxofim on the aging of mice (which seemed to reverse it). And now there is a run on that medicine.

FOXO4-DRI
Apparently it forces itself between two cells. Causes one to die off. And the other to replace it with younger cells.
Not sure how it will work on humans.

Looked it up. They basically took a drug which reduces the chemotoxic effects of an anthracycline, and used it to remove a drug which partakes in the control of the cell's natural suicide switch

This is promising but its obvious it could have disastrous long-term effects, p53 has been the central star of oncology since 5ever and does horrendous stuff if rekt

Of course it happens and it gets funded on a smaller scale. But there is no priority behind it. That's the problem. The truth is that you can solve most problems just by throwing enough money at it.

So what you're saying is that European governments should dump a larger portion of their national budgets on this specific area of research?

How on earth would you justify this to citizens and people within the government themselves?

Why would you want to stop the aging process? It would cause overpopulation and every country would become India-tier.

Your kids won't die as fast of the same illnesses as we do.

p53 abberations cause a host of ridiculously aggressive cancers, and this is just an incremental step and hypothesis, this would be extremely difficult to justify IRL

You can't just sit there and tell them to take your word that it would increase lifespan without problems ahead, they need factual evidence and guarantees. And even before you go that route there are current health problems that the government (even western) are already having difficulty with

It wouldn't be research if the results were guaranteed. But I'm convinced most problems are just engineering problems. Cleaning up your current body and replacing where it is needed. True prevention of aging will have to wait a while longer.

But there isn't even an ethical discussion going on to what extend we should engineer our way out of it. In the Netherlands breeding embryos for research is still forbidden. It was accepted by our last government, but now the christians are in power again so it got banned again. So we can wait another four years for that.

Why do we even want people to become super old?

Just look at an average 80 year old. They are in bad health and not happy at all.

Isn't that exactly the problem we're trying to solve?