Conclusion: The Role of the Gerontologist Today

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

Firstly: not just because I believe that what I have written is true—that would not have been sufficient. This is certainly not the first book ever published which suggests the signifi...

Prospective Impact on the Healthy Human Lifespan

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

The message of the previous two chapters is that we have a realistic chance of achieving, in only a few decades, a degree of control over the rate of human aging which far exceeds anything tha...

Transgenic Copies of mtDNA: Techniques and Hurdles

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

The conclusion of the previous chapter is somewhat ambivalent: I believe that selective ablation of affected cells is a concept worthy of consideration and research, but may in the end prov...

Ablation of Anaerobic Cells: Techniques and Hurdles

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

The death of cells is not always something that the body seeks to avoid. There are two major pathways involved in cell death, called necrosis and apoptosis; apoptosis is the one that will b...

Prospects for Intervention

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

The retardation or reversal of aging has been a desire of mankind for as long as we can trace, but biologists have not worked particularly hard to achieve it. One reason for this—a very p...

Some Testable Predictions of MiFRA

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

It has often been observed that gerontology is heavy on data but light on theory. A consequence of this is that, when a theory is propounded which fits the data already available, it may be un...

A Challenge from Textbook Bioenergetics and Free Radical Chemistry

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

This chapter might, logically, have been included as a section of the previous chapter, since it addresses a challenge to SOS. A thorough response to this particular challenge, however, is ...

Frequently - Asked Questions

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

The theory discussed in this book is a particularly easy topic on which to give seminars: not so much because it is easy to explain, but because it inspires so many lines of thought in the ...

The Search for How So Few Anaerobic Cells Cause So Much Oxidative Stress

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

The apparently low level of mutant mtDNA even in very elderly individuals was perhaps the most powerful argument, in 1995, against the idea that mtDNA decline is central to aging. This was str...

The Search for How Mutant mtDNA is Amplified

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

This gap in the mitochondrial free radical theory was a particularly inviting challenge to a newcomer in the field. Superficially, it seemed that all the information was available to lead rapi...

The Status of Gerontological Theory in 1995

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

The central motivation of this chapter is a fact that may surprise, if not appall, non–biologists: that theoretical biology has a bad name. Theoretical gerontology, moreover, has a partic...

History of the Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging, 1954-1995

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

This chapter, unlike the rest of the book, is structured explicitly as a narrative. Thetheoretical and experimental advances which have given rise to the mitochondrial free radical theory of a...

A Descriptive Introduction to Human Aging

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

It would be rather strange to present a theory of aging without saying (in more than just that one word) what the theory sets out to explain. Furthermore, a descriptive analysis of the deleter...

An Introduction to Metabolism

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

When the mitochondrial free radical theory was first conceived, researchers presumed that the process of steady mitochondrial decline was happening independently, and roughly equally, in all c...

An Introduction to Free Radicals

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

It is most unfortunate that the term "free radical" has become so firmly entrenched in the vocabulary of gerontology, especially in the popular press. The problem is that the meaning which ...

An Introduction to Mitochondria

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

Mitochondria have two main characteristics which, in combination, mark them out among subcellular structures as especially plausible mediators of cellular decline. The first is their absolu...

Introduction

Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey

It has been said that aging is a difficult thing to define, but in fact a relatively uncontentious definition is possible. Masoro's¹ is as good as any:

deteriorative ...