Journalistic Balance Run Amok in the Matter of Aging

The implementation of journalistic balance is a self-parodying genre of writing. In the case in which the scientific community is working towards saving countless lives, by implementing therapies targeting the underlying mechanisms of aging, the paint-by-numbers journalist and editor duo will dutifully find a curmudgeonly figure who thinks that everyone should just get on and die, and put in a few quotes in order to balance the article. The piece here is an example of exactly this phenomenon; it is left as an exercise for the reader to identify the other popular media checkboxes lazily checked in the course of its few pages. And one can still use this to say that the quality of articles on the development of therapies for aging is much better than it used to be! A low bar, but slowly rising. Still, it is hard to take the output of what passes for journalism these days at all seriously. Sadly all too many people do just that for every topic with which they have little familiarity. The quest for eternal youth may not be new, but it is now bankrolled by some of the wealthiest individuals and corporations on Earth. Anti-ageing science works at the level of gene therapy, cell hacking and reconstituting human blood; the medical treatments at its heart are based on "bleeding edge" science and aimed at the mass market. Some focus on biological reprogramming: adding proteins known as Yamanaka factors to cells, causing them to revert to a previous state. Others look at genomi...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs