After several years of research, Harvard scientists announce that using a chemical known as NAD+ reversed the aging process in lab mice.
Dr. David Sinclair, from Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues reveal their new findings in the latest issue of Science. They focused on an intriguing compound with anti-aging properties called NAD+, short for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. It's been known that younger mice had more of it than older mice and back in 2013, the researchers found that when they boosted the NAD+ levels in older mice, they looked, biologically, like much younger animals.
In the latest paper, the scientists revealed new details on how NAD+ works to keep cells young. Sinclair put drops of NAD+ into the water of a group of mice, and within a couple of hours, their NAD+ levels started to rise. Within the first week, the scientists saw obvious age reversal in muscle and improvements in DNA repair. “We can’t tell the difference between the tissues from an old mouse that is two years old versus a young mouse that is three to four months old," Sinclair says.
Immortality appears to be mere years away if the human research pans out.
What social effects can we see come about from an effectively immortal population? Political effects? Religious? Do you think that governments could enforce population controls akin to what China has done to prevent a population explosion?
