Towards the Recognition of Aging as a Treatable Medical Condition

In recent years numerous groups have made a start on the long road of changing the public view of aging, from considering it a normal state to considering it a pathological state. To have it recognized as a harmful medical condition that can in principle be treated - that medical technologies can be developed for this purpose soon enough to matter. This is a process of unofficial advocacy and persuasion on the one hand, to change minds and educate people, but on the other there is also a strong component of formalism, of working with regulatory definitions. Medical research and development is, sadly, heavily regulated. The structure of regulation shapes the ability to raise funding and carry out meaningful work on the creation of means to treat aging. The US FDA, for example, doesn't recognize aging as a condition that can or should be treated, though the first cracks in that position are taking shape in the form of the TAME metformin trial. Yet the current position still means that efforts to treat aging struggle to find the necessary resources to proceed. Since most agencies base their regulation on the World Health Organization's (WHO's) International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, with ICD-11 being the latest edition in the process of being finalized, some initiatives have focused on placing aging into that document as a formally defined disease. This would be in a definitive way, unlike the one or two present entries that might...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs