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This discussion relates to Technology Review's article Can Aging Be Solved?.

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  jpontin
  

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  07/02/2009 04:52 PM

  Diseases of aging vs. modulation of aging

  There seems to be a very widespread misconception about the differences between treating disease and modulating or even reversing aging.
  
  Our wonderful increase in human lifespan over the last 300 years has come from treating trauma, acute conditions, and chronic disease. I can imagine further, significant increases in lifespan from treating the diseases of old age like senile diabetes, heart disease, etc.. But that is a very different thing than truly reversing aging. Hayflick's point, supported by Robin Holliday, and most other major biogerontologists, is that aging is a systemic wearing out of the entire organism, and that natural selection has synchronized the multiple causes of aging. This makes treating aging itself a very hard problem - probably one that we will never solve.
  
  As Holliday writes in "Aging is No Longer an Unsolved Problem in Biology" (Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci 1067): "Although it may be possible modulate life span, it is unreasonable to assume that all the different causes of aging could be reversed."
  
  The conflation of the treatment of diseases that have extended lifespan with the reversal of aging is a nice rhetorical trick, superficially attractive, and useful to those who want to pretend that real anti-aging science will be easy, or who wish to say that those who oppose anti-aging science are inconsistent or hyprocritcal. It scores easy points. But it's biologically ignorant.

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    Phineas
    

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    07/03/2009 04:34 PM

    Re: Diseases of aging vs. modulation of aging

    Mr Pontin is correct. He said my criticism of professor Hayflick was a 'rhetorical trick'.  Pontin's acumen and insight are astute and accurate. I am guilty, as charged.
    
    I apologize to professor Hayflick and thank Mr Pontin for not using a stronger term than 'biologically ignorant'.

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    gabrielg01
    

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    07/03/2009 06:32 PM

    Re: Diseases of aging vs. modulation of aging

    We agree to disagree.
    
    Conflation of diseases with aging is not always a straightforward issue. Indeed, if one cures a childhood disease and therefore extends life, that is not equivalent to solving aging. However, there are quite a number of age related diseases, and in those cases the story is very different. Very few people die of generic "old age" per se. Most die of something specific such as cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's etc. Since there is a very strong correlation between age and these diseases, it has lead some to think of aging as a progressive "disease". Ultimately it is almost an exercise in semantics whether you consider aging a normal phenomenon, or a disease in its own right. Once we will have detailed knowledge (and hopefully cures) for these diseases (cancer, AD etc.), then in fact we will have made an incremental step for treating aging itself. Obviously, many such incremental steps will be required to push lifespan beyond it's current limit.

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      jpontin
      

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      07/05/2009 08:47 PM

      Re: Diseases of aging vs. modulation of aging

      With respect: the distinction between the diseases of old age (and our growing ability to treat them) and aging (and, so far, our complete inability to reverse aging, and our limited success in extending the lives of c.elegans, flies, and mice) is not semantic - but central to Hayflick, Holliday, et al's conception of aging (and the subject of this Q&A).

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    Jean-Pierre
    

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    07/08/2009 05:02 AM

    Re: Diseases of aging vs. modulation of aging

    * Opposing "aging diseases" to "aging" seems to me like opposing facts that could be checked (diseases) to concepts (aging).
    
    * Won't "aging" concept could be further refined in many sub problems and each one tackle at a time?

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      jpontin
      

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      07/08/2009 08:51 AM

      Re: Diseases of aging vs. modulation of aging

      I do not think so. Hayflick, Holliday, and most reputable biogertontologists (with the exception of Guarante, Kenyon, and a few others who think that aging may be simple) now believe that aging is a systemic wearing out of entire organism, synchronized by natural selection, that is complex and may be very difficult, if not impossible, to treat. The diseases of old age, like some cancers, senile diabetes, dementia, are symptoms of aging - the results of that wearing out. But even if we could reliably treat all those diseases of aging, we'd still die of old age.
      
      Indeed, Hayflick's famous "Limit" on the number of times a cell can reliably divide is a good example: it is not a disease of old age, but it is a organic boundary on how long we can live.

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        gabrielg01
        

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        07/08/2009 12:44 PM

        Re: Diseases of aging vs. modulation of aging

        The "systemic wearing out of entire organism" is basically nothing else than a collection of many accumulated biochemical errors. These are amenable to research questions such as:
        - what exactly are these errors?
        - how do they happen - what is the mechanism behind them?
        - could these errors be prevented?
        - if they already happened, could they be fixed?
        
        Nobody said this research would be easy, nor quick. One problem is that some very naive characters as Kurzweil, or de Grey captured the public's imagination with their fairy tales, and this detracts from recognizing the serious research done in several labs. (also, de Grey, Kurzweil et co. don't actually do any research themselves - they just pontificate)
        
        Why not do some interviews with David Sinclair, or Lenny Guarante?...That should counterbalance the "cannot do" attitude of Hayflick.

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          jpontin
          

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          07/08/2009 01:38 PM

          Re: Diseases of aging vs. modulation of aging

          We have covered David Sinclair, and Guarante's work on Sirtuins that underlies Sirtris. In fact, many times, but most expansively here:
          
          http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/19172/
          
          Also, see this description of the current state of anti-aging science:
          
          http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/16482/
          

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            gabrielg01
            

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            07/08/2009 06:00 PM

            Re: Diseases of aging vs. modulation of aging

            Thank you!

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  bankixsystems
  

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  07/04/2009 09:08 PM

  Are we moribund?

  The human species may become extinct sooner than we fully understand aging if the depreciation in the quantity and quality of human sperms by chemicals such as phthalates and dioxins continued unchecked.

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    bankixsystems
    

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    07/08/2009 07:56 AM

    Re: Are we moribund?

    Scientists in Newcastle, England, announced yesterday (July 07, 2009) that they have created human sperms, or more specifically, are in the early stages of creating viable human sperms, from embryonic stem cells. Does this mean that we no longer need men to make babies, or that we no longer need to worry about the damage certain chemicals do to human sperms, among others? Some contend the sperms are not fully developed, others that it is unethical to destroy one life to create another. Legal prohibition of the use of such sperms to fertilize human ova also poses a potential obstacle. The full ramifications of this scientific ‘breakthrough’ remain unknown, but not that we need to urgently address the issues we know seriously endanger our species

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