Lifeboat Foundation

A new and extensive interview I did at New Atlas, including ideas about my #libertarian California Governor run. Libertarianism has many good ideas, but two core concepts are the non-aggression principle (NAP) and protection of private property rights—both of which I believe can be philosophically applied to the human body (and the body’s inevitable transhuman destiny of overcoming disease and decay with science and technology):

Zoltan Istvan is a transhumanist, journalist, politician, writer and libertarian. He is also running for Governor of California for the Libertarian Party on a platform pushing science and technology to the forefront of political discourse. In recent years, the movement of transhumanism has moved from a niche collection of philosophical ideals and anarcho-punk gestures into a mainstream political movement. Istvan has become the popular face of this movement after running for president in 2016 on a dedicated transhumanist platform.

We caught up with Istvan to chat about how transhumanist ideals can translate into politics, how technology is going to change us as humans and the dangers in not keeping up with new innovations, such as genetic editing.

Continue reading “Zoltan Istvan on transhumanism, politics and why the human body has to go” »

This is one breakthrough we need badly to help finally solve Dystonia, and other Central Nervous System disorders and diseases.

Researchers squeeze a three-step optogenetics process into one nifty probe and demonstrate it in mice.

Rare breeds of chickens could soon come from entirely different types of hens. The University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute with help from US biotechnology company Recombinetics used gene editing techniques to create surrogate hens that grow up to produce eggs with all the genetic information of different breeds.

We’ve seen gene editing and transfer techniques used to create better yeast, bigger trees and even glowing pigs, among numerous other examples, but this is believed to be the first gene-edited bird to come out of Europe.

The team used a gene editing tool called TALEN (for transcription activator-like effector nucleases), which is similar to the more widely publicized CRISPR/Cas9, to delete part of a chicken gene called DDX4 that is related to fertility. Hens with this modification did not produce eggs but were healthy in all other ways.

Continue reading “Genetically-engineered hens produce birds of a different feather” »

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Our society has never aged more rapidly – one of the most visible symptoms of the changing demographics is the exponential increase in the incidence of age-related diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases and osteoarthritis. Not only does aging have a negative effect on the quality of life among the elderly but it also causes a significant financial strain on both private and public sectors. As the proportion of older people is increasing so is health care spending. According to a WHO analysis, the annual number of new cancer cases is projected to rise to 17 million by 2020, and reach 27 million by 2030. Similar trends are clearly visible in other age-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease. Few effective treatments addressing these challenges are currently available and most of them focus on a single disease rather than adopting a more holistic approach to aging.

Continue reading “CellAge Campaign: iPhone Reward Raffle Draw” »

Scientists just endorsed human gene manipulation.

Husar, a 38-year-old telecom salesman, had spent most of his life eating the sort of Eastern European fare typical of his native Ukraine: lots of meat, potatoes, salt and saturated fats. DNA Lifestyle Coach suggested his body might appreciate a more Mediterranean diet instead.

Recently, Vitaliy Husar received results from a DNA screening that changed his life. It wasn’t a gene that suggested a high likelihood of cancer or a shocking revelation about his family tree. It was his diet. It was all wrong.

Cool story!

Biohackers push back as the scientific establishment charts a course through the ethics of genetic interference.

Potentially describing how general artificial intelligence will look like.

Since scientists started building and training neural networks, Transfer Learning has been the main bottleneck. Transfer Learning is the ability of an AI to learn from different tasks and apply its pre-learned knowledge to a completely new task. It is implicit that with this precedent knowledge, the AI will perform better and train faster than de novo neural networks on the new task.

DeepMind is on the path of solving this with PathNet. PathNet is a network of neural networks, trained using both stochastic gradient descent and a genetic selection method.

Continue reading “DeepMind just published a mind blowing paper: PathNet” »

Definitely yes on gene mutations; however, those where the disease has already appeared, or cancer that has occurred before will require another form of eradication/ prevention. And, that is where Quantum Biosystem technology will be effective in eliminating disease.

ALL inherited diseases could be cured within 20 years, a leading British expert claims.

It includes eradicating life-limiting conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s disease.

Continue reading “All inherited diseases including cancer ‘could be cured in the next 20 years’” »