Anagathic regimen

[Waldemar]

The anagathic regimen was always one of the parts I thought old Traveller: 2300 had "brought over" from the Traveller Imperium setting.

While I don't doubt that longevity has increased radically since the 20th century, it seems strange that there is a single drug treatment for increasing life span. Seems more like a very difficult combination of different treatments. Is a thing such as anagathic regimen even theoretically possible?

It has been around in testing and use since 2264 but the results seem a bit vague after 56 years of its introduction. Yes, it could be difficult to see the big changes as test subjects live longer, but shouldn't it be possible to make a more thorough examination of its effects?

And if anagathic regimen works, what would be the long term effects on the 2320 AD universe?

 

[Anders]

As I argued in the "How do anagathics work?" thread, a toolbox approach like SENS might make sense. There is one set of drug-like treatments that are taken every day, and regular checkups where stem cells, genes and mitochondria are tweaked. The general idea is to fight cumulative damage causing ageing symptoms rather than trying to fix ageing causes directly, since these are complex and deeply embedded in the nature of our metabolism. While still pretty complex the toolbox just has to deal with a smaller set of damage types.

I think the main problem in applying anagathics in 2300 is that the biotech up until EC was pretty low-tech: it made sense that the anagathics were recent and not yet reliable. But the more advanced biotech invoked since then ought to have made anagathics much more likely and advanced. Maybe the key problem is simple regulatory approval: since most countries are anti-enhancement, anagathic treatments are not approved as medical treatments (they dont cure a "disease") and exist only as a high end black market products. Another explanation might be that they must be individually fine tuned to a large degree, making them expensive.

I don't think anagathics are changing society fast. But there would be a creeping effect as people like Ruffin simply hold on, filled with vitality. Maybe they accelerate the move outwards of young from the core: there are simply more career opportunities in the colonies than in the Core, where every job is taken by an experienced, energetic elder. The colonies are becoming the target of youth culture and where innovative mistakes are being made.

 

[epicenter00]

I've always assumed that it's a regimen - like a program. It's not just some drug you pop once a week or a month. It's expensive and pretty much custom-tailored to the user right now. Parts of it in my 2300 are actually sort of ghoulish - for instance, cell samples are taken from the patient, treated with special virii, then grafted into fertilized embriyos, hijacking their development. A number of these embriyos are treated this way, then allowed to develop until there's multiple "clones" of yourself halted in the foetal stage of development - babies hanging in sterile liquid filled wombs, which are then disassembled like cars at a junk yard and sorted into replacement systems for the current body.

At the same time, the effects of aging are repaired - it's not really possible to de-age people yet (at least safely), but instead to halt the aging process and repair damage as it occurs. However, with the return of vitality most people are going to start having an aura of being decades younger (in older people), various chemicals no longer produced by the body are reintroduced. Organs that don't work right are outright replaced (hence the need for spare parts). Cancers are considered a natural side effect of all of this, and weekly checkups destroy offending issue as non-invasively as possible. Brittle bones are replaced by younger, healthy bones containing younger, more healthy marrow. Worn out nerves are replaced. Thus the need for the chop-shop.

Thus, provided you can afford the resources of a small hospital full of specialists, you can have "eternal" life.

I really don't think the anagathic regimen's social effects have been adequately explored in 2300. My personal opinion is that for the longest time, people simply refused to believe that it actually worked. It was more like a pipe dream and the stuff of questionable "drugs" and so on sold on late-night commercials. There's probably still a very thick layer of that which surrounds the modern anagathics industry, but it's beginning to be something that the industry intentionally keeps.

Why?

Marx is going to find no better catalyst for another revolution when people hear that not only immortality but eternal youth and vitality exist ... but only for a few people. I really wouldn't want to think of the clamor people would put up simply for the desire for more life. Ironically, it's something that people will die for ... and kill for. Even if state-sponsored media and corporate media were in on it, and tried to present it as "well, we're still testing it, but soon!" it wouldn't be difficult at all for Provolution or some similar group to widely disseminate the truth with the subtle innuendo that some group or groups are reserving it for themselves - that kind of knowledge might not bring down civilization, but it's going rock governments...and that shirt that guy in wearing in the ECS takes on a new meaning: Roy Batty Lives - "I want more life, f**ker"

 

[Anders]

The ageing inequality trope has been done a few times. I think there is a more "modern" twist: anagathics *could* become cheaper if the process was more automated. The current "handcrafted" regimen could be replaced by souped up autodocs (autohospitals?) doing all the treatments. It would require some pretty big advances in medical automation, AI and biotech as well as heavy investment in such systems - but it is not outside the range of what Core taxpayers would be willing and able to pay for. But developing such automedicine would not just revolutionize the medical profession, it would also profoundly change the biopolitical landscape. Everybody would be enhanced to some extent. It would be a transhumanist world.

The gene conflicts seems to have led to a status quo that views human enhancement as deeply suspicious, and no doubt that is the prevalent consensus view among decisionmakers. Allowing anagathics to bloom is just against their values and would be destabilizing. But the pressure is mounting, not just from transhumanists and elderly organisations but also medical companies. All it would take is for (say) Freihafen to make it a national priority, and it might turn into a longevity silicon valley and get massive health tourism. Mortality futures have become very volatile in the 2310's...

 

[epicenter00]

In the past, I had a RPG scenario where there was a society of stalwart Eugenicists hiding out on some island somewhere, cooking up humanity's future. One of their plans was a kind of "humanity 2.0" that they had perfected but their plan was that everyone in the entire world should be allowed to participate in this grand upgrading of humanity. A big debate they were having was how to introduce the changes so that everyone would be hit by it and there would be no genetic "haves" and "have nots."

I realized that might actually be kind of provolutionist plot. Perhaps on some world, the local cell decides that the selfish wealthy and powerful plan to keep the secrets of longevity to themselves and not share. They plan to even the playing field by releasing some sort of "foundation" program that would upgrade those living at the time to be more receptive to future Provolution "upgrades" as well their children - a kind of longevity virus. The drawback is that some people are allergic to the program (that they plan to release, say, into the jetstream or something using ultralight high-atmosphere LTA vehicles), being Provolution, they consider these people "acceptable casualties." The allergic would develop a variety of problems, such as fevers that would kill them, cancers, and so on. Those that survived would be stronger, hardier, and so on and a host of inherited genetic illnesses would vanish from any children they have. Of course, what Provolution considers "necessary" for human upgrades might also prove to be pretty weird by our standards and perhaps 3 out of 10 people casualty rate might also be a bit extreme for the players who might want to stop the Provos.