Aging is a Disease, and it Happens Just for the Fuck of It

Aging is a disease. If you don't believe it take a look at this guy.

If you are to tell me that everyone has to get sick like this, forget it. This is a progressive, slow moving sickness whose greatest tool is inflammation. And as sure as cancer is caused by viral code in your DNA - and shutting it down by removing telomerase, the condition of this human being is and can only be described as, sick.

And of necessity, recovery capable to 100 percent. Don't want to live forever? Fine. But if you stop and recognize viruses are the dominant form of life on this planet... the picture you have up there is of a human being feeding them with his face.

Ok, so. Why. Shouldn't a virus want to keep its host alive? Seriously. The answer is - just for the fuck of it.

A virus writes into our DNA and uses our DNA to replicate itself. Its random patterns often carry it into writing sequences that can copy themselves without end. This is referred to as cancer. And so, we evolved a defense against it. We kill ourselves.

Thats right folks, we kill ourselves, because its the only way we can stop cancer. The broken telomere exists as a way to keep uncontrolled replication from occuring occuring - think of it as a sort of one time pad, you use to replicate your cells. The part that breaks off prevents the virus from replicating itself uncontrollably. This means that a cancer mutation, has to replicate itself almost 800 times consecutively, to overcome the break-off and figure out how to read itself into and out of your dna , and then - at that point, the cancer is on its own - replicating without control. This is also why cancer susceptibility is genetic in nature. The expression genes are there in your defense system - if you have ancestors that fell to cancer, its kind of like your genome just has an easy password to hack. The telomere breaks off too easily, for a certain set of cells - liver, throat, skin, or blood. And the cancer mutation replicates itself the magic 800 times or so, and then you've got cancer.

But that doesn't explain why. Why would a virus delete its host organism? Why would it replicate itself so many times, it destroys the environment that could carry it. Modern, mild viruses like H1N1 are better examples of evolution - the virus keeps you alive so it can spread farther.

The answer is - sometimes the virus, simply wants to write itself where it's never been before. I argue this is a basic life process, a sort of exploration that is irresistible to living beings. And I have a simple way to prove it.

Would you like to write your name into the rover, that is going to mars? There is a JPL link that lets you write your own name into its memory. Now, you know that there - there is only a really, really tiny percentage chance that the information you write will be useful to anyone, anywhere. Ever. You know that by doing so, you're just taking up space on the rover, really - but somewhere, way far in the back of who you are ... aren't you hungry to go somewhere else?

See if you can resist doing it. Here's the link to the rover and send your name to mars.



Was it good for you too?