Easter Island May Hold Anti-Aging Miracle Drug

By on July 8, 2011 in News 13

easter-island-head-289121-swThe secret to slowing down aging is in the soil? Easter Island continues to grow spookier and spookier. The Independent reports:

A drug originating on Easter Island, the mysterious South Pacific home of a lost statue-building people, may become the first substance to slow down human aging, new research indicates.

Rapamycin, a pharmacological product used to prevent rejection in organ transplants, has been found to extend the lifespan of mice by up to 38 per cent, raising the possibility that it may delay ageing in people.

Rapamycin is a bacterial product originally found in a soil sample from Easter Island. Originally developed as an anti-fungal agent, rapamycin was soon found to have powerful immuno-suppressant properties and thus be valuable for preventing rejection of transplanted organs. Now, however, it has been shown to affect the ageing of mice – the first time that this has ever been shown with a mammal.

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  • DeepCough

    Old news. This article is from 2009.

  • Ml

    Not to mention exaggerated to fuck.

  • Anonymous

    Or a fast acting poison, maybe?  May not do much to extend your life, but sure does deliver on the promise to stop aging.  It’s all about Truth In Advertising.

  • http://twitter.com/hornetmontana Hornet Montana

    So the Comte de St. Germain and the others were / are real?

  • Anarchy Wolf

    Yeah, because with a population that’s skyrocketing through the fucking roof, way beyond sustainable carrying capacity, we totally need to lengthen lifespans, making the elite essentially immortal “god” emperors.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HLDVFLOTKM37YKOG5B6FEZPA2I Jon

    How is Rapamycin working for the Easter Islanders?  Seems they had a population problem which decimated their completely deforested island with internecine wars.  When discovered by Dutch Captain Jacob Roggeveen in 1722, the few islanders that were left were cannibals. 

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    You know what seems like it lives for a long long time? Zombies.

  • http://profiles.google.com/nathanj37 Nathan J. Hamilton

    The article is two years old and, quite frankly, the human toxicities are already extensively characterized from rapamycin’s (AKA sirolimus’) use in organ transplant patients:

    >50% peripheral edema
    34% headache
    29-33% pain
    43-46% high cholesterol
    36-38% constipation
    26-33% urinary tract infection
    23-33% anemia
    25-31% arthralgia

    While the doses may be different for “life extending” versus “organ transplant,” it’s absurd to think of something with such significant toxicities as a ‘life extender’.  Load of crap, I say.

  • Hadrian999

    it wouldn’t have much of an effect on the population, plenty of people would still die of lazy and stupid

  • Anarchy Wolf

    Right. Whatever you say. 

  • rock monster

    they need a drug to make people smarter.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    I’m not sure we need to live longer so much as better. Does anyone want 20 or 30 more years of frantically trying to pay for basic sustenance long after the ability to labor has begun to evaporate? Does anyone want to compete with older coworkers who keep a job for 75 years instead of 45? It may seem like a wondrous fantasy to some…but the cynical realist in me only sees potential horrors.

  • cosmobonobo

    Anarchy Wolf-the population of the world is showing every sign of stabilizing at an easily managable 8-10 billion. Easy that is if we establish good governance, avoid dangerous fanatacisms and roll out carbon capture, 2 Gen. nuclear power and water desalination amongst other currently available technologies. I think the widespread use of life-extension drugs may well slow down population growth even further as people choose to delay or spread out their child-rearing years.