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Recently in Salon Health & Body

Urge: Naked World
Cruisin' is confusin'
A British bereavement group called Cruse will change its name.
By Jack Boulware
[03/29/00]

Nobel dude
Kary Mullis revolutionized genetic research but thumbs his nose at the scientific establishment. It thumbs its nose right back.
By William Speed Weed
[03/29/00]

Urge
Stop raping my loved ones
Dating a victim of sexual assault means learning, awfully, how rape touches everyone.
By Andrew Strickman
[03/28/00]

Urge
The conversation
There comes a time in every relationship when I've got to talk about my rape.
By Jenn Shreve
[03/28/00]

Urge: Naked World
Battle of the bra barons
There's a cat fight brewing over who is the mother of the latest cleavage creator.
By Jack Boulware
[03/28/00]

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Can longevity extension go past combating diseases and address the very process of aging itself? If not, longevity will be less attractive. If, on the other hand, we can stay forever young, we may never want to leave the party. Should all of us be allowed to hang around as long as we want? Even creeps?

Research that may bear on the practical end of these matters is proceeding with startling speed.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH, told the Washington Post that within 30 years we'll know all the genes involved in the human aging process.

He cited an experiment in which manipulating one gene in a mouse extended the mouse life span by 30 percent. "Without manipulation, it seems that the maximum human life span is about 100 years. It is possible that could be extended if we understand the pathways of aging better," he said. He added that there are many ethical questions "that would have to be addressed before applying this on a broad scale." (I know people who already wish to sign up for the narrow scale.)

The elderly mice in question are Italian, and were engineered to be deficient in p66shc, a protein that tells a cell to self-destruct when it has sustained too much damage from free radicals (molecules produced throughout the body in the process of oxygen metabolism). This is thought to be a defense against the possibility that the damaged cells will become cancerous. But without p66shc, the mice live 30 percent longer. (Being mice, whose lives are brief, this means a few extra months of mousy joys.)

Dr. Huber Warner, director of the biology of aging program at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) is also optimistic about the Human Genome Project and the outlook for living longer. "The fruit-fly genome has just been sequenced. Now, if you look at genes known to be involved in diseases, two-thirds of those genes are found in the fruit fly, including some very important genes that are tumor-suppressor genes."

NIA is investing millions in research to find genes in animals like fruit flies or mice "which when mutated or expressed differently will alter the life span of those species," says Warner. "Now if you can identify those genes in model organisms, then the sequence of the human genome will give you the information you need to begin to extrapolate. We will figure out ways to manipulate the genes in the model organism and it'll suggest how those genes can be manipulated in humans."

Organizations like the NIA and the American Federation for Aging Research emphasize that they are not interested in increasing life span so much as increasing "health span," the years people can live with vitality, dignity and comfort.

Next page | If teenagers didn't drive cars like crazy people, that would probably have more effect on life expectancy than curing cancer