Conservatism In Aging Research

From Penn State Live, a good example of conservatism in aging research: "As far as maximum lifespan goes, we suspect it's around 125 years. There's no evidence that humans can live any longer than that. ... I don't suspect that we'll see maximum lifespan increasing beyond 125." This is a "magic number" - and an example of magical thinking, if you ask me. Laboratories around the world are teeming with life-extended flies, mice and worms, we can make the strong case for describing and repairing the causes of aging, and rapid progress is being made in our understanding of human biochemistry and genetics - the cogs of the complex machine that is the human body. Yet the aging research mainstream insists that we will never make any meaningful progress in healthy life extension. This, not to put too fine a point on it, is utter nonsense.

Link: http://live.psu.edu/story/13373