Chainsaw Man - Ch. 174 - Ayyy, Aging

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Excessive plant growth, ever-multiplying cancers and diseases, and undying locust swarms.
they not deleting "death" (yet), only aging. Starvation, withering, death is still a thing.
Cancer by definition is uncontroable growth, that ends with death of the patient, not because cancer "gets old"
 
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Moldy politicians/bureaucrats wanting to sacrifice children for their own benefit? I thought I was reading fiction!
You are. They just want to kill the children instead of also taking them to a tiny private island in the Caribbean first.
 
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Telomeres do hold the important function of regulating cancer, as they prevent most cancers from ever getting out of control. Yes, sometimes cancers mutate the ability to either generate telomerase or "fix" their telomere shortening one way or another and get entirely out of control, but for every one of those occasions, there are thousands of other cancer occurrences that eventually just simply die out or go nowhere.

To get back into the magical world of CSM, if constraints of age simply magically go poof, this mechanism is no longer at play. The many thousands of irrelevant cancers that would typically go nowhere now are a very, very serious issue. Therein lies the stupidity of trying to whisk away "ageing" just like that.

And that's just telomeres, there are like, 7 other different things involved in senescence, and i frankly have no idea the repercussions they'd have on the human body.

And that's just considering the medical repercussions of this.
If we consider things like the logistical repercussions of this, a swarm of undying locusts isn't good for anyone, including the locusts themselves. We have some ""immortal"" species in real life but none of them are inherently dangerous to the balance of the eco system or their own species (i think).
 
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Removing aging as a whole is clearly such a bad idea.
If aging is removed the no living being can grow up, including humans, animals and plants.
No more new generations of humans when humans can still die through various other means, and no more renewable food sources from plants and animals is a slow way for humanity to die out.
Matters on what is defined as aging, i'd say untill your are in your physical prime at around early 30s you are growing not aging.
 
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Telomeres do hold the important function of regulating cancer, as they prevent most cancers from ever getting out of control. Yes, sometimes cancers mutate the ability to either generate telomerase or "fix" their telomere shortening one way or another and get entirely out of control, but for every one of those occasions, there are thousands of other cancer occurrences that eventually just simply die out or go nowhere.

To get back into the magical world of CSM, if constraints of age simply magically go poof, this mechanism is no longer at play. The many thousands of irrelevant cancers that would typically go nowhere now are a very, very serious issue. Therein lies the stupidity of trying to whisk away "ageing" just like that.

And that's just telomeres, there are like, 7 other different things involved in senescence, and i frankly have no idea the repercussions they'd have on the human body.

And that's just considering the medical repercussions of this.
If we consider things like the logistical repercussions of this, a swarm of undying locusts isn't good for anyone, including the locusts themselves. We have some ""immortal"" species in real life but none of them are inherently dangerous to the balance of the eco system or their own species (i think).
I'm not sure myself if telomeres have particularly much relevance to cancer prevention, especially compared to cell cycle regulation or DNA repair. Also, telomere shortening isn't itself "ageing". Plenty of other factors are much more responsible for age-related degeneration, such as stem cell pools shrinking, injury accumulation, degenerating connective tissues, joint wear, inflammation, causing less efficient vascular, lymph, pulmonary, renal, cognitive, cardiac, and glandular performance, etc etc etc...

I agree, though. Even if we disregard non-human life, in a world without ageing do children not develop? Are there births? If not, then all life is doomed.
 
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If this was their plan all along, why did they do nothing with him when he was on ice all those months?
They probably didn't have the Aging devil's offer. What surprises me more is that they're dealing with this at all when they know Death is coming. Do they not believe the prophecy or something?
 
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People rightly point out how much of a bad idea this could be.
Even so, I get the old politican. I'd probably make the same decision in a snap. If it all goes to shit, we can still take the manual way out.
 
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Telomere shortening holds one of the weakest effects on us when it comes to aging, but is very important in holding back the cancers that do not mutate the ability to regulate telomerase.
It's why im of the belief that it, as a trait, eventually ended up evolving as an anti-cancer thing, as it simply seems too convenient to be a mere happy coincidence (though it's entirely possible of course).

That said, it does technically prevent immortality, since while we have stem cells that constantly provide telomerase to our important tissues, not all of our tissues are affected by this, so on the very technical sense, deleting the ageing devil would also probably delete telomere shortening.

You do bring up a fine point though, didn't think of what if eating the ageing devil also means organisms can't grow up.
The multiplication of organisms would become conpletely impossible, and if one is pedantic, even the multiplication of tissues. Not a fun time to be a meatbag lol

Problem is if you remove ageing, you're also removing ageing for cancers. Therein lies the problem.
 
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This is not Fujimoto sassing the elderly and their "fuck the kids" attitude? Yeah? 🤣
 
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Who the fuck let the wrinkly dried up former minister of fucking FINANCE make the goddamn call.
 
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I might lean the other way
I think that makes sense.
don't tend to think of ripe fruit as old
It depends on the fruit, I'd say. I doubt you'll find any kind of consensus on when a banana is ripe vs when it's too old and mushy.
This also makes me think of how people perceive "old age." If you ask a group of 5-6 year olds if 30 is old age they'd probably agree.
 

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