I doubt it, though I wish it were that easy! IMO, what is desperately needed is a "proof of concept". The Methuselah Mouse Prize is sort of a start here, but IMO it's not yet come up with anything quite impressive enough to spark a torrent of new, useful longevity research such as would be needed to address age-related health decline effectively sooner rather than later. My take is that virtually nobody actually LIKES getting sick and dying in old age, but that most people just end up "coming to terms with it" because they don't see any indication that something can be done about it. Which to me says that what is most needed is to actually come up with concrete results indicating something CAN be done about it, such as (for instance) full reversal of age-related decline in a four-year-old mouse.
That said, FYI, there actually IS something akin to "adult-onset progeria" -- Werner's Syndrome. Persons afflicted with this condition typically start showing signs of accelerated aging later than persons afflicted with childhood-onset progeria, but still die at ages considered well "below average" (such as their forties or fifties). What is interesting to me about this is that it is definitely considered a disease NOW, even though persons afflicted still live far longer than our ancestors only a few generations ago did. But nonetheless, I suspect any attempt to classify aging *in general* as a disease is going to fail on the basis that it is so universal. As in, when things are considered "normal" you're going to face a losing battle trying to get them "pathologized" and there are also good reasons in many cases NOT to pathologize. For one thing, a lot of people really resent being called "diseased" simply for being who/what they are, even if what they happen to be is "old" -- and for another, while yes there's some sympathy that comes about as a result of being considered "sick", there's also a tendency for discrimination against the "sick" demographic to increase. Which we definitely do not want!
So in short, while I suspect many fellow longevity advocates might disagree with me on this, I take the perspective that it makes much more sense to separate out age-associated *pathology* from aging itself, which for most is tantamount merely to "getting older" (which all of us will continue to do, regardless of how good health we're in as we do it!). Initially when I first got into this stuff I also thought trying to re-conceptualize "aging as disease" would help further research motivation but frankly I just haven't seen that, at least not on anything remotely near the scale needed to make a difference in time for many people alive today.
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archerships
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Date: 2009-12-28 01:46 am (UTC)That said, FYI, there actually IS something akin to "adult-onset progeria" -- Werner's Syndrome. Persons afflicted with this condition typically start showing signs of accelerated aging later than persons afflicted with childhood-onset progeria, but still die at ages considered well "below average" (such as their forties or fifties). What is interesting to me about this is that it is definitely considered a disease NOW, even though persons afflicted still live far longer than our ancestors only a few generations ago did. But nonetheless, I suspect any attempt to classify aging *in general* as a disease is going to fail on the basis that it is so universal. As in, when things are considered "normal" you're going to face a losing battle trying to get them "pathologized" and there are also good reasons in many cases NOT to pathologize. For one thing, a lot of people really resent being called "diseased" simply for being who/what they are, even if what they happen to be is "old" -- and for another, while yes there's some sympathy that comes about as a result of being considered "sick", there's also a tendency for discrimination against the "sick" demographic to increase. Which we definitely do not want!
So in short, while I suspect many fellow longevity advocates might disagree with me on this, I take the perspective that it makes much more sense to separate out age-associated *pathology* from aging itself, which for most is tantamount merely to "getting older" (which all of us will continue to do, regardless of how good health we're in as we do it!). Initially when I first got into this stuff I also thought trying to re-conceptualize "aging as disease" would help further research motivation but frankly I just haven't seen that, at least not on anything remotely near the scale needed to make a difference in time for many people alive today.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-30 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-30 01:25 pm (UTC)