Lathe, Richard
Description
"We answer that aging is an enigma. On first inspection everything eventually decays, but not in the biological world where growth and regeneration ar
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e inbuilt. Our book aims to strike a balance between the demands of the general and specialist reader, and by way of introduction we offer some descriptions of aging drawn from western verse and prose. The concept of maximum lifespan is raised, followed by the ethnology of aging. We draw attention to a recent change in public attitudes to aging and how aging has been medicalized. Is there good age to die? Aging has complex multifactorial origins and occurs across almost the whole of nature. There is no good way accurately to predict human lifespan. The remarkable and potentially transformational advances in biogerontology are outlined. We discuss two highly influential papers where the authors divide their proposed list of hallmarks of aging into distinct biological categories, and highlight a weakness in the omission of the relationship between the hallmarks and age-related disease. The field needs a new paradigm to bring unity to the field. Finally we outline the scope and contents of later chapters"-- Provided by publisher.
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