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November 2008: Extracts include:

The politics of living longer

During a meeting of the American Association for Politics and the Life Sciences in 2006, all the panelists agreed that in the very near future we will experience a dramatic increase in human lifespan. This is inevitable and will be achieved through ongoing developments in biotechnology and bioengineering.

Tom Mackey from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC, writing for the ‘Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine’ asserts that artificial prolongation of lifespan is moral, ethical, achievable and desirable. Slowing down the ageing process would reduce the risk of all common causes of death in developed societies, and would increase lifespan to unprecedented levels.

British scientist Aubrey de Grey from the University of Cambridge has developed the concept of SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) which holds that reversing the ageing process is not science fiction but a real possibility. The extension of human lifespan will be possible through advancements in several areas of the biological sciences. Well known examples include therapies with stem cells, cloning, and hormonal manipulation. These may be combined with less familiar approaches involving cell and nerve growth factors, nanotechnology, telomerase reverse transcriptase gene guns, calorie restriction mimetics and others. These developments make it inescapable that humans will have the opportunity to live healthily well beyond the age of 100 and, if the predictions are correct, this may begin to happen as early as during the next 20 years.

See the complete story here: The politics of living longer

Progeria syndromes- learning from accelerated ageing

We can study progeria syndromes (syndromes of accelerated ageing) in order to better understand the different ageing mechanisms. Research in this field gives an insight into the nature of the genes that play a role in ageing and helps make a distinction between the ageing process itself and age-related degenerative diseases.

Also, the association of various cancers and vascular diseases in progeria patients has helped us understanding the genetic mechanisms that underlie these causes of premature death.

There are several types of progeria, diseases that exhibit certain characteristics associated with senescence. The most widely studied are Hutchinson-Gilford progeria, Werner's syndrome and Cockayne's syndrome, but the group also includes Bloom's syndrome, ataxia telangiectasia and Down's syndrome. Studies of these syndromes have focused on the analysis of DNA and examination of tissue and organ changes.

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