A Conceptual Shift to (Finally) Seeing Aging as the Cause of Age-Related Disease

The mainstream of the scientific community has for decade after decade followed an entirely incorrect strategy in the matter of aging, and it was only comparatively recently that this state of affairs was changed for the better by the advocacy of groups like the SENS Research Foundation, Methuselah Foundation, and their allies, alongside advances in the science of slowing and reversing aging that couldn't be easily dismissed, much of that funded by philanthropy rather than established institutions. Given a poor strategy, in which age-related diseases were studied separately from aging, and in their end stages, and without considering their root causes, it isn't all that surprising to find that treating age-related disease progressed poorly and incrementally. The only way to effectively treat age-related conditions is to address their deeper causes, which is to say the mechanisms of damage that lie at the root of aging, such as accumulation of senescent cells. The commentary I'll point out today has its origin in the National Institute on Aging hierarchy. While reading, it is worth bearing in mind that there is often a great deal of hindsight and positioning in any one individual's explanations for why aging was largely ignored as a cause of disease, and why efforts to treat aging as a medical condition were actively discouraged for decades. The existence of the anti-aging marketplace - a noisy pit of fraud, lies, and false hope - had as much to do with the reluctance o...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs