On 12/2/22 02:00, Jeffrey Schwartz - schwartz.jeffrey at gmail.com (via
tml list) wrote:
> "Nanovirals" would be short for nano-based anti-virals. Basically
> something that cruises along in the body looking for unexpected
> viruses. T5 mentions that injected nano that does gene changes is the
> most common +1 to stat in character generation, so this technology
> being available has some support in canon.
>
> <snip>
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This has been rattling around in my mind for a few days now, and
recently crashed into itself.

Traveller has long had anagathic drugs, fantastically rare, expensive,
and high tech, which dive into a sophont's metabolism (complex subject
at best of times) and does a set of unspecified somethings to stop aging
while on the pillz (and the crash is a _bitch_).

Instead of _mucking around with meatbag metabolism_, a la anagathics,
Schwarz nanovirals would seem to be a great way to selectively clean up
senile/malfunctioning cells (seno- + -lysis, to nick from the wikipedia
article) and give the patient a chance to go find something else to die
of.  See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32686219/ for an example of
reasonably-recent research in the area.

For example, immune cells themselves, when they go geezer, don't merely
take up functional space, they actively gum up the works.

We'll take He Of The Wheatonic Dice Karma, Herr Sweep.  Late 40s (which
Wombat _loves_ bagging him about - when we can get the latter to talk),
so his metabolism has had nearly half a century to build up junk, get
tangled up, etc etc.  Almost certainly, some of Herr Sweep's immune
cells ain't working right due to metabolic wear and tear.  Assuming I
understand it right, merely cleaning out half of the
senile/malfunctioning immune cells from Herr Sweep, with no other
treatment, would improve his immune function essentially immediately,
with the associated second-order effects due to reduced disease
exposure, length, leaving handbrake on when getting out of car,
severity, etc.

The underlying causes of the junk buildup are still there, (namely, Herr
Sweep is alive and thus his metabolism is running), so either the effect
reduces with time, or Herr Sweep lobs for successive treatments.

As I understand Jeffrey's write-up, either a variant strain of wet
nanites, or expanded programming of dry ones, could expand the
definition of "unexpected virus" to include "senile/malfunctioning
immune gubbins".  Nanoviral senolysis would be continuous (up to the
fraction of senile/malfunctioning cells they can reach/handle - I fully
expect some forms of WTFness to be beyond their capability at any given
time), so Herr Sweep wouldn't be darkening his doctor's door anywhere
near as often.  In effect, Herr Sweep's immune system would be aging
somewhat slower than beforehand, after the initial cleanup.

Brute-force-over-underpants cancer immunotherapy seems to be another
go-to application, backing up more conventional treatments such as
surgery, radio/chemotherapy, etc.
Those treatments are brilliant at clobbering primary tumours, but
metastasis is a problem (as my father found out the hard way). A
patient's blue goo, suitably fortified to target whatever cancer they're
suffering from to catch cancerous cells bailing out of primary tumours
and any bits remaining after other treatments, would then result in
(AFAICT, as long as the nanovirals don't go boink) lifetime remission
from that particular cancer.
As secondary/tertiary/quarternary/etc tumours get cut off at the ankles,
the patient has to go find something else to die of.

So much for the Terran baseline.  Those two treatments combined might
result in (for sake of argument, pulled from thin air) another 15 years
of life expectancy when widely rolled out at (say) TTL10, compared to today.
How does that apply to Vilani, or other human race (eg Daryens) or
sophont species, who are somewhat notorious for their longevity?

As always, the devil is in the details.

If Vilani have _the same distribution_ of aging damage accumulation as
Terrans, but simply _less of it_, then I'd expect a proportionately
similar increase in life expectancy (if Vilani LE is 1.5x Terran LE,
then would expect 22 years more on Vilani, ceteris paribus), as roughly
the same _fraction_ of damage is being treated.
If Vilani simply _don't suffer from_ the easier-to-treat types of aging
damage that Terrans do, the outlook is bleaker - they come factory
standard with having collected some of those gains, so the proportionate
results would be less.

Would nanoviral (a la Schwarz) senolysis pre-emptively obsolete anagathics?

How would you see the two interacting?

Comments?

Alex