Fight Aging!

This is very old news for anyone who participates in the aging research community, but a significant fraction of the leading researchers of recent generations are either not interested in or actively opposed to efforts to extend human life. Leonard Hayflick, for whom the Hayflick limit is named, is in this camp. This is one of the contributing factors in the story of how research and funding institutions spent decades working to suppress any inclination among their members to try to treat aging as a medical condition. It is arguably the case that we could be much further ahead than we are today on the road to human rejuvenation - even given the lesser technological capabilities twenty and thirty years ago, meaningful progress towards, for example, senolytic drugs might have been made in a world in which treating aging was considered seriously by those who steered research strategy.

The potential for undying tyrants or tyrannical bodies is one reason Leonard Hayflick, one of the world's preeminent experts on aging, is against slowing down or eliminating the aging process. He has other reasons, too. "To slow, or even arrest, the aging process in humans is fraught with serious problems in the relationships of humans to each other and to all of our institutions. By allowing antisocial people - tyrants, dictators, mass murderers, and people who cause wars - to have their longevity increased should be undesirable ... I would rather experience the aging process as it occurs, and death when it occurs, in order to avoid allowing the people who I just described to live longer."

Despite his reservations about radical life extension, Hayflick is a big proponent of studying aging at a more fundamental level. "Most studies are either descriptive, studies on longevity determinants, or studies on age-associated diseases. None of this research will reveal information about the fundamental biology of aging. Less than 3 percent of the budget of the National Institute on Aging in the past decade or more has been spent on research on the fundamental biology of aging." He's a bit annoyed, for instance, that about a half of the National Institute on Aging's budget goes toward researching Alzheimer's disease. "The resolution of Alzheimer's disease as a cause of death will add about 19 days onto human life expectancy. I have suggested that the name of the institute be changed to the National Institute on Alzheimer's Disease. Not that I support ending research on Alzheimer's disease, I do not, but the study of Alzheimer's Disease and even its resolution will tell us nothing about the fundamental biology of aging."

Hayflick also has some advice on what we should teach scientists and the public about aging. "That education must include an understanding that the massive amount of research funds spent on studying the leading causes of death will not advance our understanding of the basic biology of aging. It also must include an understanding that the study of longevity determinants (anabolic processes) will not reveal information about the basic biology of aging (catabolic processes). Finally, we need to educate scientists and the public, to support research on the differences between young cells and old cells that make the latter more vulnerable to age-associated diseases."

Link: http://nautil.us/blog/this-famous-aging-researcher-doesnt-want-us-to-live-forever