{"id":33634,"date":"2015-11-19T05:00:32","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T10:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33634"},"modified":"2015-11-18T21:56:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T02:56:15","slug":"is-a-possible-cure-for-old-age-now-in-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/11\/19\/is-a-possible-cure-for-old-age-now-in-sight\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a possible cure for old age now in sight?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Ridley<\/a> on recent developments in the search for ways to ameliorate the effects of aging:<\/p>\n

Squeezed between falling birth rates and better healthcare, the world population is getting rapidly older. Learning how to deal with that is one of the great challenges of this century. The World Health Organisation has just produced a report<\/a> on the implications of an ageing population, which \u2014 inadvertently \u2014 reveals a dismal fatalism we share about the illnesses of old age: that they will always be inevitable.<\/p>\n

This could soon be wrong. A new book, The Telomerase Revolution<\/em>, published in America this week by the doctor and medical researcher Michael Fossel, argues that we now understand enough about the fundamental cause of ageing to be confident that we will eventually be able to reverse it. This would mean curing diseases such as Alzheimer\u2019s, heart disease and osteoporosis, rather than coping with them or treating their symptoms.<\/p>\n

Let me show you what I mean about fatalism. The WHO report on ageing and health, for all its talk of the need for \u201cprofound changes\u201d to health care for the elderly, actually urges us to stop trying to cure the afflictions of old age and learn to live with them: \u201cThe societal response to population ageing will require a transformation of health systems that moves away from disease-based curative models and towards the provision of older-person-centred and integrated care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet it also subscribes to the somewhat magical hope that illnesses of old age can be \u201cprevented or delayed by engaging in healthy behaviours\u201d and that \u201cphysical activity and good nutrition can have powerful benefits for health and wellbeing.\u201d This is largely wishful thinking. There is no evidence that, say, Alzheimer\u2019s can be prevented by a certain diet or activity. A lack of activity and poor nutrition can worsen health at any age, but the underlying chronic diseases of old age are caused by age itself.<\/p>\n

When I asked Dr Fossel what he thought of the WHO report, he replied: \u201cIn 1950 we could have talked (and did) about \u2018active polio\u2019 in the sense of keeping polio victims active rather than giving up, but the very phrase itself implies that one has already given up. I would prefer that we cure the fundamental problem. Why talk about \u2018active ageing\u2019, \u2018successful ageing\u2019, and \u2018healthy ageing\u2019 when we could talk about not ageing?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Ridley on recent developments in the search for ways to ameliorate the effects of aging: Squeezed between falling birth rates and better healthcare, the world population is getting rapidly older. Learning how to deal with that is one of the great challenges of this century. The World Health Organisation has just produced a report […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,16],"tags":[598,827,513,537],"class_list":["post-33634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-science","tag-aging","tag-genetics","tag-research","tag-who"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Ku","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33635,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33634\/revisions\/33635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}