Fight Aging!

There's nothing like a good divide to get the press interested. Here's a view from the Independent of the two ends of biogerontology: "Valter Longo is one of the small but influential group of specialists in this area who believes that an 800-year life isn't just possible, it is inevitable ... We're very, very far from making a person live to 800 years of age. I don't think it's going to be very complicated to get to 120 and remain healthy, but at a certain point I think it will be possible to get people to live to 800. I don't think there is an upper limit to the life of any organism ... The attitude of most mainstream gerontologists towards the idea that people may one day live for many centuries - or even 1,000 years, as one scientific maverick has suggested - is best summed up by Robin Holliday ... Like many experts on the science of ageing, Holliday is deeply sceptical about the idea that the ageing process can somehow be circumvented, allowing people to extend their lives by decades or even centuries. ... The whole [anti-ageing] movement not only becomes science fiction; it is also breathtakingly arrogant, Holliday says. An immense hinterland of biomedicine suggests that death at a maximum age of about 125 is inevitable." In other words, sensible people who know how science and progress works versus the flat-earthers who don't. The article is actually somewhat wrong in that respect: the majority of the community these days is much closer to Longo than to Holliday in outlook.

Link: http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3362350.ece