A Research Agenda for Aging in China

Today's review paper is a look at views on aging on the other side of the world, a counterpoint to commentaries from US and European sources. It is interesting to compare the intersection between science and policy in different regions of the world, when it comes to perspectives on degenerative aging, the enormous costs of age-related disease, and what is to be done about it. It is only comparatively recently that scientific advances have offered the potential for aging to become anything other than an inevitable, enormous cost to be suffered. Governments with entrenched and growing entitlement programs (such as the US Social Security) or command and control health systems (such as the UK NHS) - both transfers of wealth to the old - face insolvency and collapse as the fraction of the population that is old and expecting not to work expands over time. Regardless of entitlement programs, everyone in every country faces a future of personal decline, pain, loss, and death. While much of the literature is focused on funding and the collapse of government programs, the real reason to make progress is this point about individual suffering. A world in which people did not decline with age would be a world in which people can support themselves through multiple careers and a life worth living. It is a goal to aim for, step by step, via the development of new medical technologies. Still, few government bodies have waded in to talk in earnest about funding research to prev...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Politics and Legislation Source Type: blogs