A Call to Focus on Extension of Healthspan, Not Lifespan

S. Jay Olshansky is one of the researchers behind the Longevity Dividend initiative, a long-standing and fairly conservative academic initiative aimed at producing far greater funding for research to slow aging. It is one of a number of groups attempting to change the present academic and public research edifice from the inside. Olshansky recently issued a call to action, arguing for the research community to focus on increased healthspan rather than increased lifespan. From my perspective he makes this argument for all the wrong reasons, based on an expectation that it will prove impossible to produce large gains, say two decades or more, in either life span or health span in our lifetimes. This is actually a fairly common viewpoint among researchers, many of whom believe (a) that the only viable way forward is through incremental alteration of the processes of metabolism in later life, an enormously slow and expensive proposition with a limited potential to produce benefits, or (b) that biology is too complex for the existence of any simple strategy to produce sizable improvements in life span. For my part, I'm not sure that it much matters whether the focus is on healthy lifespan or overall lifespan, as a comparatively simple strategy that should produce large gains in life span does in fact exist, and is described in detail in the SENS rejuvenation research proposals. The strategy is to identify and repair the known forms of cell and tissue damage that cause aging,...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs