The latest Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences looks to be of interest to healthy life extension advocates and supporters, with section titles such as "The Earthly Cage of Aging: Can We Escape from It? Theories, Concepts, Views, Proposals" and "Biomolecular Interventions Suitable for Interpreting, Preventing, or Curing Aging." Take some time to wander through. Interestingly, Ronald Klatz of the American Association of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) - an organization I've taken to task in the past - has a paper in this issue outlining his present public position on anti-aging medicine:

Anti-aging medicine is a medical specialty founded on the application of advanced scientific and medical technologies for the early detection, prevention, treatment, and reversal of age-related dysfunction, disorders, and diseases. It is a health care model promoting innovative science and research to prolong the healthy life span in humans. As such, anti-aging medicine is based on principles of sound and responsible medical care consistent with those applied in other preventive health specialties. Because it embraces the use of biomedical technology, anti-aging medicine offers a hopeful model of health care in which healthy human life spans of 120 years and longer may be achieved—if we employ anti-aging therapeutics today, and encourage the continued expansion of biomedical technologies to prevent, treat, and cure diseases.

I have thought - and still think - that this is a positive direction for A4M in the long term, provided that the actions match the words. Now if they could just ditch their support of and association with the shady, unhelpful segments of the "anti-aging" marketplace...

You might recall last year's publication of work by Valter Longo advancing his ideas on the degree to which aging is programmed (versus, say, an accumulation of cellular damage leading to various unprogrammed failure modes - simple decay, in other words). Here, Longo and a fellow researcher are trying to tie - tenuously, I think - concepts of programmed aging to the production of damaging reactive oxygen species (free radicals):

Many of the steps of programmed cell death are shown to be common for yeast and animals, including mammals. In particular, generation of the mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) is involved in the suicide programs. Aging of higher animals is accompanied by an increase in damage induced by mitochondrial ROS. Perhaps prevention of such damage by scavenging of mitochondrial ROS might slow down or even switch off the aging programs.

Technorati tags: anti-aging, science

Posted by Reason at January 11, 2006 10:31 PM | TrackBack (0)