The Future of Aging

Fight Aging!

Do you want to live a longer life in good health? Simple practices can make some difference, such as exercise or calorie restriction. But over the long haul all that really matters is progress in medicine: building new classes of therapy to repair and reverse the known root causes of aging. The sooner these treatments arrive, the more lives will be saved. Find out how to help »

Via Maria Konovalenko, I see that the book The Future of Aging will be published soon. It's a collection of chapters written by well known names in the field of aging and longevity science, spanning a wide range of the present field - and its goals for the next few decades.

Just as the health costs of aging threaten to bankrupt developed countries, this book makes the scientific case that a biological "bailout" could be on the way, and that human aging can be different in the future than it is today. Here 40 authors argue how our improving understanding of the biology of aging and selected technologies should enable the successful use of many different and complementary methods for ameliorating aging, and why such interventions are appropriate based on our current historical, anthropological, philosophical, ethical, evolutionary, and biological context. Challenging concepts are presented together with in-depth reviews and paradigm-breaking proposals that collectively illustrate the potential for changing aging as never before.
The proposals extend from today to a future many decades from now in which the control of aging may become effectively complete. Examples include sirtuin-modulating pills, new concepts for attacking cardiovascular disease and cancer, mitochondrial rejuvenation, stem cell therapies and regeneration, tissue reconstruction, telomere maintenance, prevention of immunosenescence, extracellular rejuvenation, artificial DNA repair, and full deployment of nanotechnology. The Future of Aging will make you think about aging differently and is a challenge to all of us to open our eyes to the future therapeutic potential of biogerontology.

A steady stream of popular science books and articles pointing out the potential of modern biotechnology is a required part of ongoing advocacy for healthy life extension. It's still very much the case that most people in the world either don't care or don't know that we stand within striking distance of true rejuvenation medicine. This is a problem, as raising funds and building a research community to create medical technologies to reverse the course of aging requires greater public support and understanding.