The essay starts with a brief history of medical attempts toward rejuvenation therapies and then turns into an all out debate between medical and lifestyle approaches to healthy aging.
Nuland writes:
Aging is not a disease. It is the condition upon which we have been given life. The aging and eventual death of each of us is as important to the ecosystem of our planet as the changing of the seasons.
This is a deeply mistaken belief and the record has to be set straight. Aging is a disease, and it is not, in any way, a genetic advantage. Claiming that aging is an essential part of a species survival conveniently, and mysteriously, overlooks the fact that evolution is a survival of the fittest and not the survival of the diseased. Species compete for scarce resources, that is how evolution works. Developed nations are developed because of sanitation, proper nutrition, and medicine all which extend lifespan. Who would argue that developed countries with longer lifespans are more strapped for resources than developing countries where people still die off at age 40?
Nuland also writes:
When William Haseltine, PDH, the brilliant biotechnology entrepreneur who is the CEO of Human Genome Sciences, says, "I believe our generation is the first to be able to map a possible route to individual immortality," we should cringe with distaste and even fear, not only at the hubris of such a statement but also at the danger it poses to the very concept of what it means to be human. The current biomedical campaign against the natural process of aging is but part of a much larger conception of humankind's future, in which it is thought by some that parents may one day order up the IQ, complexion, and stature of their intended offspring by manipulation their DNA.
Dr. Nuland goes on to argue that the solution to aging is not some biomedical therapy, but lifestyle changes, and what he is failing to grasp another great misconception about human aging: Lifestyle changes slow the disease of aging, but do not cure it. It is the same battle between focusing on treating the symptoms and not preventing the disease in the first place. The irony here is that it's the pills which provide the prevention, and it's the lifestyle changes which treat the symptoms.
Dr. Nuland seems to believe that rejuvenation therapies are going to extend our lives into decrepitude and destroy our ecosystem, and he overlooks that staying young would greatly free resources on our health care system, and allow people to live long enough to create very smart technologies, and maybe get around to solving some troubling mysteries like: What is consciousness? How did life begin? Why do we exist? And if it is just for DNA, why does DNA exist? It seems to me worthwhile to support rejuvenation therapies for that promise alone. People have plenty to live for besides passing on some genetic strand of DNA, and fulfilling nature's grand scheme.
Dr. Nuland's essay How to Grow Old is available in The Best American Science Writing 2004 at Amazon.com
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