Longevity therapy the road to oblivion?
by Salim ali Salim, Jakarta
March 30 2050
"If longevity therapy had been available two hundred years ago, Charles Darwin might have called it the 'Doomsday Drug' "
This is the stark warning to emerge from one of the speakers at the WHO CCR5 Gene Therapy global crisis meeting in Jakarta this week.
The conference was urgently called by the WHO to discuss the implications of CCR5 based therapies going off patent in 2055 and becoming both cheap, and widely available throughout the world.
Unless you are Rumplestiltskin, you would know the CCR5 was the wonder treatment launched in 2019 in Europe, as a cure for HIV, but it had the side effect of making CCR5 treated patients highly resistant to a range of other mortal conditions such as skin and breast cancer, pneumonia, influenza and various other contagious diseases. People treated with CCR5 were soon shown to have an average life expectancy 20 years longer than the normal population, with one documented case of a CCR5 treated man living to the age of 153.
Until now though, the incredibly expensive therapy has been limited by most governments to either people who can prove they have either HIV or relevant cancers, or to the very rich who fly to clinics in South Korea, Thailand, or Brazil for a course of CCR5.
The therapy is not without side effects. It does not slow the aging process and has no beneficial effect on brain function, so although CCR5 treated patients are not beset by chronic diseases, they can still become demented or be effected by Alzheimers disease, and have to live with it for decades.
Similarly, they can be effected by strokes and brain haemmorages, and face decades in a vegetative state, or handicapped. The cost to society is already huge and has forced several nations, led by the richer Scandinavian states, to enact laws allowing euthenasia of CCR5 patients who have been diagnosed with dementia or final stage Alzheimers disease.
"If copy-drug makers are able to start mass producing CCR5 therapy, and it gets down to a price where the average middle class person can afford it, we could be looking at a species killer," Professor of Immunology at the Bangkok University Hospital, Pak Thang Wilson, told ZI today.
"Our models show 60% of the population by 2070 would be over the age of 100. 25% of those in the age range of 100-110 would be severly handicapped, either mentally or physically. Of those who survive to 120-130 years, 55% would be handicapped," he said.
Your ZI reporter hit the streets to ask the average Jakarta pedestrian what they thought of this scenario. "If I have a 45% chance of staying relatively healthy until the age of 130, I'm going to take it thankyou!" was the typical response.
"That's why we are calling it the Doomsday Drug," Professor Pak said when I told him this, "You are going to finish up with a minority healthy population under the age of 70, working to support a majority unhealthy population who will become decrepit from the age of 100 and may live another 50 years!"
by Salim ali Salim, Jakarta
March 30 2050
"If longevity therapy had been available two hundred years ago, Charles Darwin might have called it the 'Doomsday Drug' "
This is the stark warning to emerge from one of the speakers at the WHO CCR5 Gene Therapy global crisis meeting in Jakarta this week.
The conference was urgently called by the WHO to discuss the implications of CCR5 based therapies going off patent in 2055 and becoming both cheap, and widely available throughout the world.
Unless you are Rumplestiltskin, you would know the CCR5 was the wonder treatment launched in 2019 in Europe, as a cure for HIV, but it had the side effect of making CCR5 treated patients highly resistant to a range of other mortal conditions such as skin and breast cancer, pneumonia, influenza and various other contagious diseases. People treated with CCR5 were soon shown to have an average life expectancy 20 years longer than the normal population, with one documented case of a CCR5 treated man living to the age of 153.
Until now though, the incredibly expensive therapy has been limited by most governments to either people who can prove they have either HIV or relevant cancers, or to the very rich who fly to clinics in South Korea, Thailand, or Brazil for a course of CCR5.
The therapy is not without side effects. It does not slow the aging process and has no beneficial effect on brain function, so although CCR5 treated patients are not beset by chronic diseases, they can still become demented or be effected by Alzheimers disease, and have to live with it for decades.
Similarly, they can be effected by strokes and brain haemmorages, and face decades in a vegetative state, or handicapped. The cost to society is already huge and has forced several nations, led by the richer Scandinavian states, to enact laws allowing euthenasia of CCR5 patients who have been diagnosed with dementia or final stage Alzheimers disease.
"If copy-drug makers are able to start mass producing CCR5 therapy, and it gets down to a price where the average middle class person can afford it, we could be looking at a species killer," Professor of Immunology at the Bangkok University Hospital, Pak Thang Wilson, told ZI today.
"Our models show 60% of the population by 2070 would be over the age of 100. 25% of those in the age range of 100-110 would be severly handicapped, either mentally or physically. Of those who survive to 120-130 years, 55% would be handicapped," he said.
Your ZI reporter hit the streets to ask the average Jakarta pedestrian what they thought of this scenario. "If I have a 45% chance of staying relatively healthy until the age of 130, I'm going to take it thankyou!" was the typical response.
"That's why we are calling it the Doomsday Drug," Professor Pak said when I told him this, "You are going to finish up with a minority healthy population under the age of 70, working to support a majority unhealthy population who will become decrepit from the age of 100 and may live another 50 years!"
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