A Good Op-Ed on Aging and Longevity
I'm always pleased to see more good writing on the topic of longevity science: "To extend our longevity, we'll have to advance in stages. ... With a healthy lifestyle and some luck (absence of accidents and natural disasters) we not only can increase our lifespan, we can increase the health in that lifespan and postpone debilitating illness to the very end of our life ... To go beyond this achievable life extension, we need more advances in the basic sciences. Considering aging as a disease is new concept. It will take time before we accept this not just as wishful thinking but as a real possibility in our lifetime. The end of aging does not mean that we will never die; we will still die of other diseases, accidents, or natural disasters but no longer of aging itself. ... Aging is not yet recognized as a disease. Some among us would like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to recognize it as a disease so that we could get funding for basic, translational, and clinical research on aging. ... These changes will be implemented incrementally. The unprecedented biological and technological evolution we face today will be the driving force for social, economic, and even political changes. Working conditions will change significantly: retirement will be changed, people will no longer retire after a certain age, they will take time off from work every few years and then return to it afterwards. Our goal is not to reach immortality but to postpone and eventually prevent aging. For now and the immediate future we can change our lifestyle toward healthier living. This will buy us time so that we can survive long enough for the advances in basic sciences, which will be made in the next 15 to 20 years, helping us move to the next stage where aging will no longer be the biggest killer of our species."
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