How long does a Prolong recipient live?

isaac_newton wrote:

Robert_A_Woodward wrote: SNIP


I would expect that even WITHOUT Prolong, state of the art medical science in the Honorverse era would extend the useful human life from today's expectancy of 70 to 80 years to a possible 120 years or more, give or take depending upon the abuse you might heap on your body from "recreational" drugs or other such idiocy.

In fact, we have some examples of people, RMN Admirals, who never received prolong. Hamish's father was over 110 T-years old during _On Basilisk Station_. He had died sometime in the interval between that and _The Honor of the Queen_. Vice Admiral Jonas Adcock was 114 at the time of _In Enemy Hands_ (I think he died 2 years later).

How does Rajampret's experience play into this... IFRC
1) he was an early Prolong recepient
2) he had been in the Solarian Navy for decades not centuries
3) he certainly gives the impression of "getting on"
4) his deputy [whats his name?] was looking forward to 'ascending' to his office in a couple of decades more [I think I recall this, well before the crisis really broke?].

That doesn't seem to tie up with 300-400years life span.

Maybe the early Prolong wasn't so effective or maybe??[/quote]


VADM Adcock date of death is a little ambiguous in HoS he's listed dieing in 1915 PD in other books he's listed as 1913 PD.

At the end of a few millennia, it would be interesting to note whether the fact of being bonded, statistically has a positive effect on life expectancy as well. Inasmuch as being bonded should ease worry and stress. Treecats should essentially act as live furry stress balls.

All else being equal and the stress of being an officer of the navy and the target of an asshole like Pavel Young, his father and the North Hollow Files isn't an issue, that is.

.

For current third gen prolong people like Honor and Hamish, I'd imagine there is the possibility of further advances in their 300+ allotted span anyway?

Daryl wrote:For current third gen prolong people like Honor and Hamish, I'd imagine there is the possibility of further advances in their 300+ allotted span anyway?

Hamish is first generation. IIRC he's in his early to mid nineties while Honor is in her mid sixties.

kzt wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:I'd like to see textev on the idea that Manpower is using prolong to create sex slaves for people with [redacted] tastes. Not that I would put it past them, but my limited knowledge of the situation suggests that it wouldn't create the product that such people want.

I remember suggesting it here, not sure it ever made it into a book. But given the way that manpower is set up and what they are noted to have done, modifying prolong to exaggerate the aging pause at early tanner stage 3 or so seems like a perfectly logical move for them if it's fairly easy to do and has customer demand. There are a huge number of brain changes that start occurring at age 10-11 or so that they would want to slow in concert, so intellectually they stay kids. Not nice people.

JohnRoth wrote:Thanks for pointing me at the Tanner scale. There's a comment at the end of one of the snippets on the snippet site that Generation 3 prolong can be administered before puberty starts, but it's rarely done.

I have serious problems with the scenario. There are two situations. Either the slave is going to be sold to someone with those tastes, or ce will be at a Manpower resort for rental to patrons of the resort. In the first case, Prolong would be an obvious sales point, but there's an issue with keeping people's lips zipped about what's going on. In the second case, I can't see them bothering with prolong.

While I remember a number of "exotics," the only mention of actual perversions seems to be with pirates and slavers; the situation in Let's Dance comes to mind. But none of that involved prolong.

The first two mentions of genetic sex slaves or exotics is either Ginny Usher or Paulo A's ancestors. (I've forgotten which came first in publication order.)

The woman with blue hair on a political show is probably one of Eric Flint's characters. She inherited it from an ancestor who was an "exotic."

We have the officer in SoV who has cat adaptations, likewise inherited.

Rufino C.'s girlfriend/mistress/agent/assistant seems to be another out of the same mold as Ginny Usher. Possibly Captain Gweon's "fiancee" and control is another.

None of these involve actual sexual perversions.

I've got problems with the genetics on the woman with blue hair and the woman with cat features. The first problem is very simple: given the amount of hair dyeing, etc, I would expect that DNA mods to change hair color to just about any imaginable shade are readily available. In fact, I have a vague memory of a story where a school-girl had her hair modified so it was a plaid that matched the skirt on her school uniform.

The cat modifications bring up a different issue. The Beowulf code's prohibition against mixing non-human DNA is, in my considered opinion, not even wrong. It stinks of essentialism. The genetic programs to produce a body plan are really intricate and almost certainly couldn't be transferred by the equivalent of a simple copy and paste.

I would imagine that if Generation 3 is applied that it would invariably be applied to females. Except to quell the tastes of the most rarest of sexual deviants - the type counted on one thumb of one hand.

The practice also leads me to expect that the MA not only has extended the effectiveness of prolong - increasing life expectancy, as my previously lucky but educated guess born of intuition and supported by JohnRoth's post a few clicks upstream - but intuitively again, has smoothed the effects of prolong and the accompanying awkward stage that so plagued Honor's - and probably many other advanced stage teenagers and young adults' - self-esteem.

cthia wrote:I would imagine that if Generation 3 is applied that it would invariably be applied to females. Except to quell the tastes of the most rarest of sexual deviants - the type counted on one thumb of one hand.

Umm, really? Let me point out that, as an example, the majority of the victims of the RC sex perversion cases have been boys. Not exclusively, but certainly the majority if not the vast majority. NAMBLA is (or was) an actual organization.

It doesn't take all kinds, but we have all kinds anyhow.

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:I would imagine that if Generation 3 is applied that it would invariably be applied to females. Except to quell the tastes of the most rarest of sexual deviants - the type counted on one thumb of one hand.

Umm, really? Let me point out that, as an example, the majority of the victims of the RC sex perversion cases have been boys. Not exclusively, but certainly the majority if not the vast majority. NAMBLA is (or was) an actual organization.

It doesn't take all kinds, but we have all kinds anyhow.

Thanks. I was not aware of NAMBLA.

I think that you misunderstood my overarching thought, right or wrong. I was not suggesting that I intuitively felt that there was any diminished inherent capacity of perversion emanating from either end of the spectrum. Rather, simply that Generation 3 as applied to boys would possibly, or and consistently, not yield the desired results. Or rather, would seem to infer more of a touch-and-go application of the prolong - i.e., more often than not producing a varying bag of mixed nuts. Pun intended.

Of course I could be wrong, considering my incomplete understanding and knowledge of the application and a total and complete inability to psychologically place myself in the shoes of a sexual deviant of the worse kind and correspondingly think like said perp, feel like said perp and sexually respond like said perp.

That was in reference to earlier replies to you - I don't appear to have actually said that, for some odd reason.

For one, somebody said that biological age was frozen at the point when the treatment was applied, or words to that effect. That is clearly not the case - and that takes the notion of freezing pleasure slaves in prepubescence indefinitely off the table too. Which is just as well since the textev is that slaves didn't get prolong, period. There were a couple of other things that were inaccurate or overly simplified, which is why i pulled the infodump references for you. You should check further, actually, since ISTR another one on the subject that I didn't find on this run. Not sure if it really had any further info, though.

DMcCunney wrote:

Louis R wrote:From which, BTW, Dennis, you should be able to determine that some of what's been said is incorrect, and more simplified.

Such as?

I estimated a potential Prolong lifespan between 300 and 400 years. The fact that it was not "one and done" was established elsewhere. I implicitly assumed around 300 years as normal, with longer in special cases depending upon recipient.

One point about Prolong was established in the effect on Treecat adoptions of humans. Treecats have a lifespan of about 250 Earth years, that the tragedy for treecats, pre-prolong, was the the human they bonded with was likely to die long before they did. With Prolong, that was no longer the case, giving a Prolong recipient a lifespan at least as long as a treecat's.

The stuff in the Infodump clarified but did not fundamentally change my assumptions. For instance, while later generation Prolong was administered earlier, and froze cosmetic age at an earlier state, there was no indication total lifespan was longer with later generation Prolong. And someone older than 19 could still get the first generation treatments up till age 25, which could be significant for folks in places like the Talbott Quadrant who could now potentially get Prolong through Manticore.

Establishing the necessary infrastructure to produce Prolong locally would be a longer term development, and that the infrastructure should be extremely expensive is no surprise. Advanced pharmaceuticals and the infrastructure needed to produce them are extraordinarily expensive now, and the reasons are the same.

And in any case, my speculation was prompted by Damien Hardahap getting a Prolong booster from the Alignment he was told would add a century to his life. I don't see Isobel Bardasanno having a reason to lie about that, and it indicates the Alignment research efforts extended to more than things like the Streak and Spider drives, and they may well have Prolong more effective than Beowulf's.
______
Dennis

The huge slowdown of maturity that gen 3 prolong has is considered an adverse side effect and has been minimized to the practical extent possible. I would suspect that if one wanted to maximize that effect instead that you could. And then you administer it and you get say 1:5 delay, so a 12 y/o 10 years later looks and thinks like a 14 y/o.

kzt wrote:The huge slowdown of maturity that gen 3 prolong has is considered an adverse side effect and has been minimized to the practical extent possible. I would suspect that if one wanted to maximize that effect instead that you could. And then you administer it and you get say 1:5 delay, so a 12 y/o 10 years later looks and thinks like a 14 y/o.

WARNING! UNCOMFORTABLE YET CANDID POST LIES AHEAD!


WARNING! UNCOMFORTABLE YET CANDID POST LIES AHEAD!


WARNING! UNCOMFORTABLE YET CANDID POST LIES AHEAD!




****** *




This post "fleshes" out my previous one. Pardon the choice of words, where it now seems the entire dictionary conspires against me if my goal is to avoid offense yet accurately communicate.


Indeed. Therein lies the problem, the side effect of impeded development.

Tanner Stage 3 in boys is not so clear cut. If you notice the data given for that stage you'll note that the average is 13.5. Some boys may not begin penis development until the latter part of that stage, some still wielding vienna sausages beyond 14 and some saluting and producing tents under their blankets as early as 11 or 12. I know this for a fact because gym class was always problematic for me. I had developed much faster than most boys, even at 12. All of the other kids at my age looked like the little boys that we all were. It worked out in the end when rumors began to circulate around the school and I began dating much older girls. Even at home it was a problem when I would awaken with morning wood, half asleep going to the bathroom. I've got five sisters and five brothers. It was problematic for all of us boys. Problematic for my sisters too, having to put up with it. (Wrong choice of words.)

"Mom! Tell him to do something with that thing!"

Morning wood wasn't good, but what was a sleepy-eyed little kid to do?


Playing sports and dressing out in the locker room, going to the pool and the beach, peeing outside as little boys do you're made glaringly aware of the huge difference with pointed comments as only little boys can do.

In boys, the difference may be exacerbated even further with a lack of mental maturity. It is a given that girls mature much quicker than boys. Some boys' minds remain in Tanner stage 2 much longer than others and as a result they are more turned on by their G.I. Joe's rather than the pigtails sitting in class.

"Eww! You kissed a girl!"

"Yes I did, and I liked it!"


So intuitively, in light of this rather uncomfortable conversation, applying Generation 3 to boys may not be so clear cut as with girls and may demand a closer inspection and more demanding criteria than age, as the dependence on both the genitalia and mental maturity simultaneously on a one to one basis. Depending of course on what said sexual deviant actually wants. Complicating the matter even further, penis development may not necessarily follow mental and emotional maturity and vice versa, i.e., one lagging behind the other.

In sum and to ensure we're on the same page, administering Gen 3 to just any old Tom, Dick or unHairy too soon, who is naturally a late bloomer emotionally, mentally and physically could trap him with an underdeveloped genitalia that does not respond to stimuli even at 17, who simply wants a G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip.

Gees! Probably even an inappropriate toy chosen for this conversation.

My apologies for any offense and or discomfort I may have caused. I assure you I share in the discomfort.

Now to go bury my head in the sand and not come back to school for a week.