RE: regeneration
I noticed that your description, although quite impressive in its information content, assumes a 2010 cutoff. But the TL reaches 2020. Isn't plausible that in the extra decade, they manage to make further significant advances ??
*Disclaimer*
Established principles can (and often have) become obsolete very quickly in molecular biology. Further significant advances in regeneration science are probable by 2020, not just possible. But we'll know less what those could look like than the 2010 version. We'd at least have a good idea about the problems they'd have to solve, but unexpected things lurk within us. We're making a projection based on the idea that undiscovered science around the corner (which exist independently of human will) won't be too wild and crazy. Also, projecting farther I don't feel comfortable just skimming 4-5 papers like with the p21 stuff: I'd want to read a heckuva lot more just to feel confident.
*End Disclaimer*
My very uncomfortable projection would be that the bad side effects of P21 deletion are hard to get rid of, its a protein with fingers in every pie (but then again, going from theory you'd expect P21 deletion to increase cancer rates, and that just doesn't happen). The first alternative would be turning it off outside the immune system and seeing what happens, maybe they'll get lucky. Even then, P21 doesn't seem to get you all the way to awesome salamander-style regeneration. They'd iron out many of the bugs in the salamander-style regeneration (taken and modified directly from salamander genes), and find presently-unknown ways to take advantage of their greater knowledge. More than any other aspect, problems would remain with central nervous system regrowth.
I think SENS is just about the right approach, though undoubtedly things will be discovered that demonstrate parts of it to be incorrect or incomplete. In reference to the list on that page, drugs could include include chemotherapy agents (targeted ablation of death-resistant cells, #4 on the list- fits under drugs I guess), or drugs to reverse the state of death resistant cells, and enzymatic drugs to break down ECM glycation end products (AGEs, #5 on the list). You could also sqeeze out a drug for #6 (extracellular aggregates) and #7 (intracellular aggregates) but you'd have to find a way past the blood-brain barrier. Besides drugs, therapies would include modification and replacement of stem cells and, like you said, adult or germline gene therapy. I personally think you'd need tissue engineering or transplantation for structures that don't end up repairing themselves spontaneously.What other progresses they could have made about life extension that aren't related to drugs ? Quite promising approaches that I'm aware of include calorie limitation and telomerase manipulation (and for all that we know, they may easily be cumulative). The former could be done the hard way, by manipulating metabolism with drugs, or by germline/adult genetic engineering. The latter could be done with drugs, or with genetic engineering.
If they find one without knowing that it's distinctively Jewish, then they might end up studying it. Otherwise, yeah, they'll copy this area from the CFN.About Ashkenazi intelligence genes, I suppose that this is a field where all the relevant progresses about their eugenetic selection would be first done in the CFN, and later copied (stolen) by the EL.
On an unrelated note, if the NEO doesn't stop trying to exterminate the Siberians until it gives up on colonization, then wouldn't that be 20-30 years the Siberians would be stuck without agriculture or permanent, above ground towns? Again, I'd think that you'd need an earlier relaxation of policy to have any substantial social organization to harness for building a Russian puppet state. I'd go with short-term profits subverting policy myself. Why send the army into Siberia all the time when you can get Siberians to collect the slaves for you?
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