It is Entirely Reasonable to Consider That There Is No Limit to Human Life Span

The author of this commentary is entirely too enthusiastic about mTOR inhibitors as a tool to slow the aging process, but here he is largely focused on a different question. He argues (a) the sensible point that limits to aging and longevity are entirely determined by medical technology, and (b) the more debatable point that old people do not receive sufficient application of present forms of medical technology, and this is life-limiting. How much of the observed compression of morbidity of recent decades, meaning that people are living more healthy, functional years without an increase in overall life expectancy, is the rest of uneven application of incremental advances in medicine, where the younger old are treated but the older old are not? My view of the existence of compression of morbidity has long been that some processes of aging must be largely unaffected by everything achieved to date in the field of medicine, while also only contributing greatly to mortality in very late life. So a process that is of little influence up to age 70, say, but which becomes increasingly harmful after that age. Transthyretin amyloidosis might be a candidate for that process, given the findings that it is a major cause of death in supercentenarians. Equally, more recent data is implicating it in heart disease in younger demographics, so perhaps it isn't. As to the bigger picture: we are complex machines, and the more effort put into maintaining a machine, the longer it will...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs