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Aging and Rejuvenation

Aging is generally an accepted part of life. People expect to age and usually accept the explanation that a person has died of "natural causes" or of "old age". Most people do not ask for much explanation when aging kills, but death does not simply happen to the aged for no reason; one always dies of something. Yet though we try to cure cellular damage caused by illness and injury, we do not apply the same logic to aging nearly as often. The cellular damage caused by aging is similar to other causes of death from disease or injury. No-one understands exactly what aging is and there are a number of competing theories of aging which overlap to some degree, as each theory by itself does not entirely explain the process of age. These theories can be characterized as follows:

Wear and tear: Important molecules incur damage and are not adequately replaced because the mitochondria cannot repair DNA. Genetic mutation: Mutation can occur as the organism grows, causing inefficiency. Free radical: Free radicals are molecules with outer orbits containing an odd number of electrons. These can only become stable by gaining or losing an electron through uniting with any available molecule. The effects of this often cause the target molecule to function improperly or not at all. Error catastrophe: The growth of an organism results in a dwindling capacity to repair DNA. This results in the loss of vital genes, or poor synthesis of proteins, or defective copies of essential proteins. Cellular clocks: With each cell division the sequence of chromosome "telomeres" are reduced at a fixed rate. This means that cellular function and cell division have determined limits that, once reached, result in cellular dysfunction or death. Neuroendocrine: Programmed changes in hormone levels and secretions are implicated in the aging process. Immune system: The immune system loses its ability to recognize host tissues, resulting in the rejection of the body's own tissues. Pollution accumulation: Though this has not yet been shown to impede functioning, pollutants like lipofuscin gather at a cellular level over time. Pollutants like this may lessen cellular efficiency. Cross-linking: Collagen proteins (cellular glue) in the shape of ladders connect with each other by forming linking "rungs". This makes tissues less pliable and may prevent normal cell metabolism, or damage DNA, eventually causing cell death.

An exact science of aging does not yet exist, but if and when it does it could mean an end to aging and the beginning of life-spans and expectancies far beyond those currently known today. Longevity is valued by many people because it allows us to see more of the future for which we have worked, live with one's offspring and their children, see progress continue. To continue to exist is something most people would choose over death. But without youthfulness, longevity would be a painful existence of worsening health in growing older and older. An increased life-span devoid of aging, ill-health and frailty, would give us more life in which we could be happy, vigourous, creative, and learned.

Since longer and improved life is the purpose of medicine and generally one of the aims of civilized culture, of scientific progress, and of ethical decision making, there is no reason why medical knowledge should not be used to try to solve the problem of aging. We do not have to accept Nature's Course with regards to aging, no more than we accept Nature's Course with regards to infertility, disease, wounds, pain or even biological sex. It is not necessarily the case that nature has a teleology - a purpose or aim - and if it does, the aim is not necessarily aging, pain, and death. Darwinian evolutionary theory does not posit any purpose because survival is a mechanistic process which arose naturally as the result of competitive pressures, of organismic expansiveness. If the organism did not try to survive by reflex or intention, if it did not try to expand, then it would not last long enough to contribute to evolution. Evolution is a process of improvement in the ability to survive within an ecology, and individuals of a species must survive to a reproductive age so as to ensure genetic continuity. Humans do more than this by living longer than reproductive maturity. We can live to an age beyond healthy reproductive years, giving us a greater chance of surviving long enough to reproduce. This redundancy of years in the average human life-span is a survival mechanism that has had beneficial side-effects. Knowledgeable adults can survive long enough to teach younger people. Thus longevity promotes survival by giving us a better chance to reproduce and to add more years of experience to culture, refining the resources that help future generations survive.

Regardless of reproduction or longevity, survival is the bottom line for every living thing. This means that if human beings do indeed have an ultimate evolved goal it is to continue to live; but only human beings and other animals set goals - biology does not. Partially as a result of our abilities to plan and predict, human beings have existed successfully so far. We live very long lives compared to other animals, and can manipulate our environment to the point that we can affect the course of evolution for other species (especially domesticated animals and plants since the advent of farming in 9,000 BCE and of animal husbandry in 7,000 BCE) as well as that of our own species. Today most of us intend to be living long and healthy lives into the future. If we are aiming to live longer, healthier lives then we should take progress in medicine and the possibilities open to us through science more seriously.

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