More on the FDA and Aging as a Disease
From ShrinkWrapped: "If a physical change affects half of all people as they age, this would seem to suggest that it is a normal variant of human aging, which to the best of our knowledge is an accumulation of metabolic and genetic errors that accrue as we get older until some sub-unit(s) of the processes reach a threshold at which continued functioning of the body is impossible. Our current regulatory apparatus remains trapped in a 20th century mindset which fails to recognize how various diseases are nothing more than unfortunate variants of the aging process that all of us will one day fall prey to. For example, in Alzheimer's 'Disease' errors of metabolism (malformed proteins) in neurons in the brain lead to an accumulation of defective protein parts which eventually disrupt the functioning of the neuron, ultimately killing it. When this process has gone on long enough to have damaged and destroyed some as yet unknown fraction of the brain, the person becomes neurologically symptomatic. This 'Disease' is not communicable, nor is it caused by an exogenous agent. The damage to the brain occurs as the result of biological failure that all of us will have to face in one form or another. ... The FDA does not recognize aging as a treatable condition and only approves treatment for 'Disease.' ... Because the FDA only evaluates treatments for Diseases, and its definition of disease versus aging is completely arbitrary (why is Type II Diabetes a disease while Sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass and function that accompanies aging, is not?) we are forced to develop treatments that primarily address symptoms rather than either repairing damage or rejuvenating systems."
Link: http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2010/07/when-is-a-disease-not-a-disease.html
God help us if regulators in other countries take a similarly cramped view.