17
Jul
2007
Don't Whitewash Aging
Permalink | View Comments (0) | Post Comment | Posted by Reason

Thoughts from FuturePundit:

Some oppose the development of therapies to reverse aging because they argue that aging is a beautiful and dignified natural process. In this Panglossian view of aging the silver in one's hair is akin to a measure of accumulated wealth of wisdom and understanding. But the reality is a much uglier accumulation of losses - most notably including cognitive losses.

...

Aging is an accumulation of damage and loses. We should defeat aging. The breakdown and decay of our metabolisms is a bad thing. We need rejuvenation therapies. Such therapies are on the horizon but we should push harder to pull that prospect closer in our future.

Quite true. Aging is the unpleasant slope down into a real chamber of horrors: frailty, pain, the inability to care for yourself, and death. That the benefits of experience come with time is no reason to whitewash the ugly reality - that the systems that form you, the individual, are slowly breaking down as you read this.

But we live in the early years of a revolution in biotechnology and its inherent possibilities for regeneration and rejuvenation. Aging is merely biochemical damage, and the laws of physics show us nothing to say that we cannot learn to repair that damage - like all our technologies, the medicine that will put a halt to aging is just a matter of putting the molecules in the place you want them to be.

You do know that you can presently help to support and advance medical research that could plausibly put us on the way to halting aging within our lifetimes, right? The fight to cure aging is not a mythical beast - it's underway today.

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