THE SEEKERS: DEFYING THE YEARS
You grow old and eventually lose your vitality. But maybe one doesn't have to lead to the other.
Monday, December 02, 2002
BY AMY ELLIS NUTT
Star-Ledger Staff
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Time unravels us. Day by day, it peels away the layers of our lives until nothing is left but the nub of our own mortality.
Human beings are the only animals on the planet capable of contemplating their own demise. We mourn, we memorialize, we philosophize and we pray. And when it happens on that rare occasion that we "cheat" death or "escape" our fate, we believe, just for a moment, in the myth of immortality.
Today scientists are tempting fate in ways never before imagined as they demystify the secrets of longevity. Biochemist Bruce Ames believes that vitamins can repair damaged cells and make them "young" again. Molecular biologist Judith Campisi is studying how to keep cells from aging.
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