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Bioethicists Consider the Search for a Treatment for Aging


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Posted 11 January 2018 - 12:02 PM


This press release from a UK bioethics organization announces a recently published and comparatively innocuous short PDF primer for policy makers on the present state of research into the treatment of aging as a medical condition. Innocuous or not, it still contains a fair dose of utter nonsense mixed in with its view of the field, as is fairly standard for this sort of thing. Professional bioethics, it has to be said, has done little to make itself useful in the past generation in my view, and in fact has used regulation to slow progress in those areas where bioethicists have attracted the most attention. It is a corruption of the older, actually useful field of medical ethics, which had the merits of being simple, valuable, and requiring little upkeep. Bioethics, on the other hand, has become a cancerous political institution, ever growing, and its practitioners ever incentivized to justify their budgets by making up obstacles where none actually exist.

Geroscience, also called biogerontology, is a field of research that is exploring the biological processes that underlie ageing. Researchers working in this field believe that intervening in these processes could be a more efficient way of increasing health span - the number of years we are healthy - than tackling each condition individually. Recent advances in the tools of research are likely to accelerate our understanding of ageing processes in the near future.

Compressing the period of poor health experienced by many in old age could have a transformative effect on the lives of older people and is widely considered to be the primary goal of geroscience research. Biomedical interventions, along with environmental, social and lifestyle modifications, have already contributed to the extension of human lifespan. Depending on other factors that could affect lifespan, ageing interventions could lead to a further delaying of death. Some suggest that a realistic target of geroscience research is to delay all ageing-related disorders by about seven years. Other commentators believe that scientific advances will lead to much more radical effects on ageing and human lifespan in the near future.

There are differences of opinion about the value and morality of extending lifespan, even moderately. Some philosophers believe that we think of our lives as having a certain shape, which underpins how long we think people should work and how long it is appropriate to be old. Increased longevity therefore might threaten the shape we envisage for our lives and our sense of personal identity. The benefits of experiencing the pleasures of life over a longer time period are used by some to justify life extension; others argue it is quality not quantity of years that matters. Some equate extending life with saving lives, and suggest there is a strong moral imperative to pursue treatment for disease, even if the side effect is an increase in lifespan.

A common concern of lifespan extension is that it would accelerate population growth, and that this would have a range of adverse consequences, particularly for the environment. However, one study suggests that population changes would be surprisingly slow in response to even a dramatic extension of lifespan and would not necessarily lead to overpopulation. It has also been argued that using finite resources in a nonsustainable manner is a problem that needs to be solved independently of how long people live.

Estimations of the impact of increasing health span on the economy are generally positive. For example, one analysis suggests increasing human health span would reduce healthcare spending and lead to significant economic savings. Another suggests that delayed ageing could mean increases in social benefit and public healthcare costs, but that these would be far outweighed by economic gains as a result of a healthier workforce who remain employed for longer and are given more time to save for retirement. These effects would depend on the relative increases in health span and lifespan that could be achieved by ageing interventions, which currently are highly uncertain.

Ageing interventions are likely to be available only through the private sector initially. As with any paid for therapy, it is probable that access to ageing interventions will be unequal, leading to an exacerbation of existing health inequalities according to income, socioeconomic status, and geography. In addition, personal choices about uptake of ageing interventions could have implications for entitlement to state care and health insurance. There are calls for government policies to ensure unequal access to ageing interventions is avoided. Global health inequalities present particular challenges in this context, given that the citizens of some countries still have low life expectancies owing to poor sanitation, nutrition, and healthcare provision. The duties of developed countries to put efforts into addressing these problems, in relation to the efforts put into research on ageing interventions, require consideration.

Some argue that the focus on finding medical treatments for ageing is unhelpful, in that it suggests ageing is a problem that requires fixing and reinforces negative views of ageing. There are parallels with how the medical community view frailty. Frailty is commonly regarded as a state of overall poor health, weakness and vulnerability, but diagnosing people with frailty may serve to marginalise them from society and unfairly label people as being destined to decline. There is also concern that other important elements of successful ageing, such as personal relationships, social position, physical environment and independence, are side-lined by geroscientists.

An important question for geroscience research is whether potential interventions should be tested in younger people, before biological ageing has started, or in older adults already experiencing symptoms of ageing. In the past, involving older adults in research was thought to be difficult and of no benefit to them. This view has broadly changed. The challenges of research have been found to be much the same whatever the age of the participant, and medical interventions in people aged over 80 can have beneficial effects on their health. In addition, 'older adults' are a diverse group and generalisations about people's ability and willingness to take part in research should be avoided.

Link: http://nuffieldbioet...l-briefing-note


View the full article at FightAging




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