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In theory, it certainly can.Yet no single elixir will do the trick. Antiaging therapies of the
future will undoubtedly have to countermany destructive biochemical processes at once
Aging remains inevitable, but scientists now have a strategy in place for figuring out
how to retard the process.
Cultures throughout history have aspired to postpone aging, thereby prolonging vitality and life itself.
Today macrobiotic diets, recycled Hindu health practices, the latest fashions in gray-market hormone
therapy and other forms of chicanery continue to fan the flames of hope. All these attempts to restore or
sustain youthful vigor have just one thing in common: failure to achieve their goal. People who survive
past 65 these days are only slightly more likely to enjoy a robust old age than their counterparts were
2,000 years ago. Medical researchers have devised useful therapies for disorders that become more
common with advancing age, such as cancer and heart disease. And over the past 120 years, sanitation
systems and drugs that combat infectious disease have increased life expectancy in the developed nations
by reducing premature death. But nothing delays or slows the innate processes that cause adults to age, to
suffer a decline in physiological functioning as they grow older.
Discovery by evolutionary biologists explains why we age. Calculations show that the force of
natural selection on survival in sexually reproducing populations drops soon after the earliest age
of reproduction is reached. Aging has evolved because genes that produce deleterious effects late in
life meet little or no opposition from natural selection and thus become rampant in the gene pool.
Consequently, successful treatment of one illness late in life often means that another age-related
problem soon takes its place. Infirmity remains the lot of those older than 80, however much the media
may dote on the 90-year-old marathon runner. None of this means that postponing aging will be
impossible forever. Since 1980 many studies have achieved that feat in animals, albeit by methods that
cannot be applied to humans. The situation of aging research in 1999 is thus like that of atomic physics in
1929. Physicists by then had discovered previously unimagined quantum forces. The question was, Could
they harness those forces? Aging research has made great progress recently, but has it advanced enough
to defer our years of infirmity?
Not yet. To meet that goal, investigators need a much better understanding of the physiological
processes that underlie senescence and influence life span. I am, however, optimistic that these processes
can be discerned, because a more fundamental mystery has been solved: Why has aging evolved in the
first place? The answer has enabled researchers to develop a rational strategy for unearthing the
biochemical pathways that might bemanipulated to extend our years of vigor.