AUBREY DE GREY

MUST WE AGE? A long life in a healthy, vigorous, youthful body has always been one of humanitys greatest dreams. Recent progress in genetic manipulations and calorie-restricted diets in laboratory animals hold forth the promise that someday science will enable us to exert total control over our own biological aging. Nearly all scientists who study the biology of aging agree that we will someday be able to substantially slow down the aging process, extending our productive, youthful lives. Dr. Aubrey de Grey is perhaps the most bullish of all such researchers. As has been reported in media outlets ranging from 60 Minutes to The New York Times, Dr. de Grey believes that the key biomedical technology required to eliminate aging-derived debilitation and death entirelytechnology that would not only slow but periodically reverse age-related physiological decay, leaving us biologically young into an indefinite futureis now within reach. In Ending Aging, Dr. de Grey and his research assistant Michael Rae describe the details of this biotechnology. They explain that the aging of the human body, just like the aging of man-made machines, results from an accumulation of various types of damage. As with man-made machines, this damage can periodically be repaired, leading to indefinite extension of the machines fully functional lifetime, just as is routinely done with classic cars. We already know what types of damage accumulate in the human body, and we are moving rapidly toward the comprehensive development of technologies to remove that damage. By demystifying aging and its postponement for the nonspecialist reader, de Grey and Rae systematically dismantle the fatalist presumption that aging will forever defeat the efforts of medical science.

Mientras que la gerontología clásica se centra en la manipulación del metabolismo para combatir el envejecimiento, SENS (las estrategias para un envejecimiento nulo) se aparta de esa concepción y opta por desarrollar terapias para reparar el daño provocado por los procesos metabolicos responsables del envejecimiento. Primero el autor analiza los daños del envejecimiento. Su conclusion es que estos daños se reducen a siete. Despues aplica el punto de vista de la ingenieria SENS para combatirlos.