The Limit of Good Genes
April Smith makes a succinct point: "Whenever the subject of life-extending, age-reversing biomedicine comes up, someone always has to say, 'Well, I'm not worried about aging because I have good genes.' To which I ask one question: 'Has anyone in your family ever died?' If anyone at any point in your family has died or is currently dead, then I suggest that your genes are not so great. ... The whole point of [Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence research] is to find therapies that actually reverse the aging process, making death, well, not absolutely unavoidable but a lot less likely to come as soon as it comes now." What you can do for your healthy longevity today is merely a stepping stone; best we recognize that truth and act to improve the situation. Without advocacy, without significant progress in real anti-aging science - progress that is neither funded nor taking place at this time - we will not live that much longer than our parents.
Link: http://www.mprize.org/blogs/archives/2006/06/i_have_good_gen.html