Aging as a Disease: a Zoo Contains Animals, But is Not Itself an Animal

The author of today's open access commentary is quite prolifically opinionated on the topic of mTOR and its status as a central pillar of programmed aging, particularly the hyperfunction version of programmed aging theories. Nonetheless, he sometimes has interesting things to say, as is the case here on the topic of whether aging is a disease. A great deal of ink has been spilled of late on the question of whether or not aging is a disease. This is the case not because everyone suddenly developed an interest in semantics, but rather because it directly affects the regulation of medical development, and thus the flow of funding to research and the later translation of research results into potential therapies. Programmed aging is roughly the idea that aging is a process under direct natural selection, rather than the mainstream view of aging as a non-selected consequence of natural selection that operates most strongly in early life. In the latter view, early reproductive success near always wins out over a longer reproductive life span, and thus biological systems that offer early life advantage are selected regardless of whether or not they fall apart later in life. Theorists arguing for programmed aging might appeal to group selection, suggesting that aging helps to dampen population explosions, or suggest that aging allows species to outcompete non-aging rivals as the environment changes over long timescales. Theorizing on programmed aging has gained in popul...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs