An Interesting Theoretical Paper on the Nature of Aging

Today I'll point out an open acess theory of aging paper that I found intriguing, given that it represents a fairly different viewpoint on aging, seemingly assembled from portions of other mainstream views on theories of aging. Almost every faction within the aging research community would find parts to agree with, parts to reject, and parts that will make you think things through. If you have strong opinions on theories of aging, you'll probably get a lot out of it. The contents defy short summary, but the more important points seem to be the idea of aging as an absence of process, as a lack of maintenance systems, and a rejection of the idea that the fundamental mechanisms of aging are as universal as the present mainstream consider them to be. I've made the point in the past that lack of progress towards effective treatments on the part of the dominant paradigm in a field of medicine tends to lead to a lot of alternative, competing theorizing. It is much cheaper and easier to produce hypotheses than to undertake research programs and trials. Aging research has been stuck in this state for quite some time now, and, since the molecular biology associated with the progression of aging is immensely complex and poorly understood, there is a lot of room for theories to flourish without the possibility of effective contradiction. Cellular metabolism is in and of itself immensely complex and incompletely understood, and the effects of aging at the detail level are a large superse...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs