Why Worry About Aging?
In Search of Enlightenment, a piece on Why Worry About Aging?, an extensive post which looks at the aging issue from the point of view of risk taking and biogerontology.
When people ask me what I am working on I inevitably mention aging and the aspiration to retard human aging. This provokes many different responses. The most common response is a sense of surprise that we might actually be able to do something about aging. This is of course understandable, for if one had not been following the field of biogerontology for the past few years one might assume that aging is immutable, for that was a common belief. But this belief has been proven wrong- aging is not immutable.
Once I note this people often persist in their scepticism, and express doubt that we could actually develop a technology that could slow aging in humans (rather than just in mice). Again, this scepticism is understandable, indeed some scepticism is warranted. But I often ask them how much scepticism they have about finding a cure for cancer, or reversing climate change. And when it comes to these issues they are pretty optimistic about the likelihood that these goals could be achieved.
So I push them a bit further… and it becomes evident that this optimism is not based on any scientific experiments that demonstrate a particular therapy could cure all 200+ types of cancer, or that climate experiments demonstrated that we could reverse the rise in global temperature. What their optimism is based upon is the desire to achieve these things, that they would create enormous benefits for humanity. Again, I understand the appeal of this line of thinking. We want to believe that we can achieve those things that would really do a lot of good in the world.
And:
And so at some level everyone knows, to some degree, that aging is a big problem for them as individuals. No one enjoys the fact that their risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, AD, etc. will continue to rise for all of their remaining years. When in certain moods, we can all admit this. But we don’t want to go on and on about it every day. It’s depressing! And so we tend to bury these feelings deep inside and go on with our daily activities wearing “aging-blinders”.
And so we find there is an enormous disconnect between what the public actually demands of their governments- like protection from terrorists, tackling abortion , etc.- and what would actually substantively improve their lives. If you really want government to reduce your chances of death and disease, then get behind aging research. If there was no chance that scientists could actually develop a drug or intervention that could modify the rate at which the molecular and cellular damage of aging occurs then it would be cruel to tell people to “worry about aging”. But given where the science actually is, it is irrational and irresponsible *not* to tell them to worry about aging. Especially when people fear so many things that really do not pose a great threat to their health and well being.
Via Fight Aging.
