2 replies to this topic

[kevin]

Here's a link to an interesting essay from 2001 where a group of scientists fly in the face of popular academic opinion and propose that significant increases in longevity could be made possible a lot sooner than most scientists care to think.

Is human aging still mysterious enough to be left only to scientists?

Edited by kperrott, 15 March 2003 - 05:24 PM.

[kevin]

New York Academy of Sciences
A. de Grey, et al. (2001) Time to Talk SENS: Critiquing the Immutability of Human Aging," In: Harman, D., Ed., Increasing Healthy Life Span: Conventional Measures and Slowing the Innate Aging Process; Proc. 9th Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 959 452- 462.

Time to Talk SENS: Critiquing the Immutability of Human Aging
Aubrey D. N. J. de Grey, Bruce N. Ames, Julie K. Andersen, Andrzej Bartke, Judith Campisi, Christopher B. Heward, Roger J. M. McCarter and Gregory Stock

Abstract

Aging is a three-stage process: metabolism, damage and pathology. The biochemical processes that sustain life generate toxins as an intrinsic side-effect. These toxins cause damage, of which a small proportion cannot be removed by any endogenous repair process and thus accumulates. This accumulating damage ultimately drives age-related degeneration. Interventions can be designed at all three stages. However, intervention in metabolism can only modestly postpone pathology, because production of toxins is so intrinsic a property of metabolic processes that greatly reducing that production would entail fundamental redesign of those processes. Similarly, intervention in pathology is a "losing battle" if the damage that drives it is accumulating unabated. By contrast, intervention to remove the accumulating damage would sever the link between metabolism and pathology, so has the potential to postpone aging indefinitely. We survey the major categories of such damage and the ways in which, with current or foreseeable biotechnology, they could be reversed. Such ways exist in all cases, implying that indefinite postponement of aging – which we term "engineered negligible senescence" – may be within sight. Given the major demographic consequences if it came about, this possibility merits urgent debate.

Link to Full Article

Edited by kperrott, 29 March 2003 - 05:45 AM.

[kevin]

Biogerontologists call for public input

"More input is required from the public."

is a sentiment expressed by more than a few biogerontologists. They acknowledge that science has a way of sneaking up on society citing the cloning of mammals as an example.

Here's a fairly recent article that we might compare with the earlier one in the first post of this thread.

Antiaging Research and the Need for Public Dialogue

Edited by kperrott, 25 March 2003 - 06:42 AM.