That's interesting. 20 years ago a neurologist told me that he could tell just by looking, which of my organs are likely to fail. He said my brain was 90. I said, isn't that good? Wouldn't that make me extra smart? Do age and wisdom deteriorate equally? He didn't know the answer to that. He just said I would be dead in five years. I'm still here. Unfortuntely, the neurologist is not.

This report fails to tell us about AI, and Stanford's use of the same to make medical determinations. We should be VERY scared about that. I don't really care how my body parts are aging. Why would Stanford even do a study like this? What does it prove? We are walking around in our bodies in good health and bad health. No study will change it. Survival is based on moderation. Every organ is designed to be used moderately. Save something for later. Stanford is teetering on the edge of using predictive values of organs to assess which organs can be used for donation, and they are a transplant center. Hellooooooo

MyFeelz, you will find the rationale for the study in the very first line of the article. If you had read the article carefully, you would note that Stanford only led the multi-center study. Four other medical centers contributed to it.

Furthermore, your personal experience as an N of 1 is of great interest to you but does not achieve anything close to statistical significance, which is why five medical centers enrolled 5,678 study subjects.

As to your speculation that Stanford as a transplant center is ghoulishly awaiting to see which study subjects will die of which type of organ failure so that the transplant vultures can carry off the healthy organs in their beaks, let me put it this way: If I were you, I would have left that part of your letter out entirely.

I read it, and stand by my comment. [Portion removed.]

As a retired medical researcher and not-retired public health advocate, I am simply unwilling to allow unmerited attacks on medical research conducted in good faith pass without comment.

Such unmerited attacks are precisely how this country earned itself over a million deaths from Covid-19 over the past several years, a significant number of which could have been prevented BUT FOR unreasoning assaults on medical and public health expertise, including what appears to be a willful misconstruing of the scientific method.

[Portion removed.]

As a card carrying Stanford not-retired medical researcher, have you been reading all of the articles about AI that Stanford is investing in, and offering degrees in this subject? Are you aware of the recent federal response to this unregulated vocation? And where it can lead? Did you read the letter from the Dean, published in November? We (the dim-wits like me) are facing a rapid advance to an unknown end. ANYTHING is possible. Are you aware of how AI can impact patients who have disabilities? So we are both public health advocates, coming from different angles. People's privacy is being taken away, by transitioning to AI without patients' consent. You, as a researcher, may be only seeing the side you want to see. I have to look at the side I am looking at, and look far ahead to what is coming via AI.

As for the horrible outcome of COVID, I have enough relatives who were adversely affected, one of whom died in the first wave, in a Santa Clara nursing home. What we needed when COVID burst on the scene was LEADERSHIP. Sorely lacking in that, we had a president who told us to shoot bleach into our veins. Talk about "willful misconstruing of the scientific method" -- it was deadly advice. Not exactly the kind of "leadership" we needed. What we needed was information. Stanford's AI program was building long before COVID got here. Why didn't they sound the alarm on day 1?

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Dueling test tubes. I wonder why anyone would be critical of a study that might help medical science perform better. They may not all work out right, but some do. Where is the loss?

Kudos to these researchers for taking this truly preventive approach! Wow, if this pans out, it’s Nobel prize territory. I’m guessing the intestines were different because nobody’s intestines really age, since the cells all get replaced every few days? (Other reason?) Wouldn’t it be amazing if stem cell or other treatments for aging organs gave us all a shot at a good quality of life over an optimal life span if we took reasonable care?

Just a comment: I think the next level in medicine from my perspective, not just in this study, is not only markers but rate of change.

Also, were there gender differences? I would have liked to see that mentioned. Women are far more likely than men to be sent home from the hospital right in the middle of a stroke of heart attack. Women’s heart disease is less well defined because of gender differences in the study of medicine. Will work like this help women’s medicine in general? Were gender differences taken into account in this study?

Someone I love with a curable cancer and exact bone marrow match died of lung complications after a successful transplant. She initially wasn’t going to do the treatment because she felt she had things left to do with the years she otherwise would have had but was talked into it by promises of cure. Could this work give someone like her a better picture of the chances of negative consequences of treatment?

In reality, I don't think anyone knows which organs will fail first. It depends on genetics, lifestyle, race, gender, etc. Some people live past 100 while others die in their 30s, 40s or 50s.

@Jennifer
I think that’s the whole point of this research, to be able to predict because currently no one knows.

The great benefit to medicine is how doctors can begin to truly find effective and specific preventive measures while people are still healthy. This is paradigm changing, jaw dropping, clever work. If it’s what it claims to be. That’s always the problem with research press releases. We haven’t been investing in ourselves enough for decades as a nation (in so many ways), so press releases become the way to funding. So the public gets jaded. And yet, for the first time in a long time, it feels more like this is understating rather than overstating the promise. That is, if it’s not a gender-skewed dataset the AI worked from that once again ignores differences in women.

Silver Linings, preventive measures are already well known. Don't smoke, don't do drugs, eat in moderation, exercise regularly, drink alcohol in moderation (if at all), etc. I don't think this is "jaw dropping" at all. The "truly preventive" approach is treat your body well, and your organs will last longer. Not everyone chooses to live a healthy lifestyle, and sadly they die prematurely.