No-one Dies of "Old Age"
From Courant.com: "Old people die, but they don't die of old age ... Organs wear down, diseases catch up; there's always a specific reason for a person's death. Though it's assumed that a centenarian didn't die in a rock-climbing accident, vague terms such as 'old age' don't help disease research. ... You're not trying to cure old age, you're trying to cure the conditions that caused the death." Which is at once the right and the wrong focus; right in that there should be no mystery left to aging once the biotech revolution is in full swing - every stone will be turned, every biochemical process recorded, every cellular change catalogued. But this focus is wrong in that we should not fixate on the end stage conditions if we want to make rapid progress in extending healthy life. Rather we should look for common forms of change and damage, and seek to repair them early and often. Our bodies are complex machinery, and the rules of maintenance apply here too. No machinery can last forever when left alone, but effective repair and preventative care can continue for so long as you care to do so - we just haven't developed the necessary technologies to do this for the human body. Yet.
Link: http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-oldage.artaug16,0,2771279.story