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The Spread of Ideas on Engineered Longevity
(Thursday June 18 2009)
 | It is pleasant to see the ideas of engineered longevity springing up in diverse places, from folk far removed from the core of the present advocacy community. There's a little garbling of concepts in this piece, but overall the fact that it was written and published at all is a promising sign: "Aging is still a fatal disease. Can we prevent it, or even cure it? The aging process is a highly complex biogenetic phenomenon. Some pieces of this process we already know today: with increasing age we accumulate metabolic byproducts, which progressively damage the cell, especially the cell nucleus where all our genetic material resides in the chromosomes' DNA. But aging is no longer considered an immutable fundamental process for which 'nothing can be done.' Any process that hastens age-related decline in health and performance is a component of the aging process that deserves our attention and possible intervention ... Today, the primary aim of a life extension strategy is the application of currently available anti-aging methods in the hope that one lives long enough to benefit from advances in biogenetic sciences when the prevention and cure of aging becomes possible. Research bio-gerontologists project this to happen in about 20-25 years. We are only at the very beginning of performing cellular hygiene, which might potentially lead to the cure of aging." |
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