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Originally Posted by wonkishere  Well I appreciate the feedback, but current science indicates that something like that can work. There is a huge correlation between what you eat and how likely you are to develop cancer. And lately, simply ingesting lutein is shown to help cut the size of an existing tumor. The idea in this case is that by completely controlling the nutrients and proteins that go into the body, they can eliminate those things which cause the development of cancer. They'd have to work on it for awhile, but a tumor is basically uncontrolled growth of a neoplasm, and the theory is that if you control what goes into the body completely you can determine exactly what makes the tumor bigger, and exactly what makes it smaller. |
There's a long way to go yet before science could nail down every single contributory factor to an individual tumour e.g. knowing that red meat contributes to the risk of colonic cancer on an epidemiological level doesn't mean that an individual can avoid it by avoiding red meat. Controlling exactly what nutrients go in and monitoring what comes out is unlikely to impact on a majority of tumours -- you need to target them more aggressively.
I can see the rationale in putting someone into stasis to stop a tumour growing, but it would have to be true stasis, where every bodily process is stopped. Just slow it down and the tumour will keep taking resources at the expense of the body.
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As far as not slowing metabolism, I'm not too sure why you'd say that. I can slow my metabolism today by changing what I eat, and I can track the difference. And I can speed it up by exercising. In this tube, I could be feeding them anything. Why could I not give them a combination of nutrients or drugs that would slow down their metabolism? I really have no idea why you don't think that could happen. They could be consuming just about any substance at that point
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I probably didn't express myself well there. You can speed or slow your metabolism, but if you want stasis for a decades-long journey, you'll have to stop it. You'll have to stop ageing too. Looking at your OP again, I see you're talking about travel within the solar system and not outside, so i may have been shooting ahead.