Fountains of Youth (Or Just Spending?): A Positive Take on “Anti-Aging” Industries

Every day I fight with my email in-box, trying to delete the stuff that just isn’t necessary to open, much less read.  For example, I know more or less which emails — no matter how tempting the regarding line — are what I call “junk science” emails that claw their way past my spam filter.  A lot of them involve “anti-aging” theories that promote foods, exercises, vitamins or minerals that “May” prevent cognitive or physical decline.  “May” with a capital “M.”  

But United States District Judge Roslyn Silver, from Arizona, recently shared an article she’s using with a class she is teaching at Arizona State’s law school. In the June 2017 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, the subtitle for the article explains: “Backed by digital fortunes of Silicon Valley, biotech companies are brazenly setting out to ‘cure’ aging.”  The author profiles the work of controversial author Aubrey de Grey and “Chief Science Officer” from SENS, a biotech research enterprise in California.  The author summarizes:  

The basic vision behind SENS is that aging isn’t an inevitable process by which your body just happens to wear out over time. Rather, it’s the result of specific biological mechanisms that damage molecules or cells. Some elements of this idea date back to 1972, when the biogerontologist Denham Harman noted that free radicals (atoms or molecules with a single unpaired electron) cause chemical reactions, and that these reactions can damage the mitochondria, the powerhouses within cells. Since then, studies have linked free radicals to all sorts of age-related ailments, from heart disease to Alzheimer’s.

 

De Grey takes this concept further than most scientists are willing to go. His 1999 book argued that there could be a way to obviate mitochondrial damage, slowing the process of aging itself. Now SENS is working to prove this. Its scientists are also studying other potential aging culprits, such as the cross-links that form between proteins and cause problems like arteriosclerosis. They’re looking at damage to chromosomal DNA, and at “junk” materials that accumulate inside and outside cells (such as the plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients).

Despite the controversies associated with the work of de Grey and other anti-aging proponents, the article points to a “mini-boom of private investment in Silicon Valley, where a handful of labs have sprung up in SENS’ shadow, funded most notably by tech magnates.”

One of the early critics of de Gray concedes that anti-aging theorists have attracted needed money and energy into age-related research beyond “just” the 1,000-year-old human goal:

More than a decade later, [University of Massachusetts Medical School Professor] Tissenbaum now sees SENS in a more positive light. “Kudos to Aubrey,” she says diplomatically. “The more people talking about aging research, the better. I give him a lot of credit for bringing attention and money to the field. When we wrote that paper, it was just him and his ideas, no research, nothing. But now they are doing a lot of basic, fundamental research, like any other lab.”

I can definitely see how this article would be useful in a law school class on aging, elder law, or estate planning.  It raises fundamental questions in governance, economics and human rights, including implications from disparities in life expectancy that already exist and are increasing,  associated with comparative wealth.  

For the full article, see Can Human Mortality Really be Hacked? by Elmo Keep.