leave today I feel. And not as a woman, a good friend or good of all spirits. Much worse. I feel abandoned by most of evolution itself, now that I am 30 years old, I am of the primal forces of natural selection that have produced this amazing diversity of living things become really care. As of now, my health and my physical well-being as it were put on automatic pilot - and when I die in five or fifty years, Nature is the same. It was 5 years ago, very different. The aging of an organism is not so obvious. There are creatures who - really - are immortal. Easy it is for individual learning, sharing only yes, but never die . Thus, if environmental conditions are favorable, it is conceivable that a specific microbe has survived the last Ice Age to the present day. Also interesting is the life of this colleagues here - the polyp undergoing regularly just built a makeover and will return to teenagers. We humans are built but a bit more complicated - and therefore mortal (although recently known cases be, in which the aging does not seem to progress).
If we ask ourselves why we age, the question is wrongly put. It would be correct to ask why the body created by evolution should make the effort to prevent aging. Genes, which not only blind separation as the single-genes, so basically two ways to survive a long time - by forcing their bodies to live forever, or by the body to produce offspring with these same genes. You can use the body that is the one to a survival machine with protective mechanisms against harmful external factors (predators, starvation, disease, weather changes) and provide a perfect metabolism without toxic side effects. So quite a few investments. Or they can replace quality with quantity and focus on the motto "If my body just in time produce enough viable offspring that in turn pass on the genes, I do not care his future survival." Exactly for this second possibility have the genes "decided" in the higher organisms. Our body is thus used as quickly as possible to produce offspring and to make them viable. After that, he is our genes do not care. The biological theory is appropriate for even less flattering "disposable soma theory " (to German as: theory of expendable body). However, as is observed in the natural environment among primitive tribes average life span due to external factors in about 30 years ago, the human body has probably been shot this out - sexual maturity at 14-15 years, then possible get fast kids, feed them, so the transfer back of the genes, and then your body is just a classic car: The successor generation is there, it goes even still, but how far and how long he creates is his thing. He has a nostalgic value nurmehr, repaired it is a makeshift, there are better things to do.
The sexual drive is hence the stronger than about the impulse to eat a healthy diet. Not for nothing men cause traffic accidents when they see a mini-skirt , but not when they drive past a poster with organic food. Old age is to reach, the genes simply do not care. And since I am now come to this age of genetic importance, I am overcome by the forces of natural selection that bring a living being, so a proper fitness for survival left. Sadly, a vintage to be.
What to do? I want to grow old or die at least not immediately, so you look around for solution strategies. So far the only proven approach to calorie restriction To extend the life proven. For a small portion of extra years, it is also sufficient, happily married to his or (or both, what should happen occasionally), or self younger present. The micro-cellular and biological causes of aging are, moreover, now also known . It is mainly wear (intra-and extra-cellular waste, mutations in the mitochondria, shorter telomeres with each cell division) - so basically nothing Irreversible, a rather technical problem. Some serious scientists, including futurist Ray Kurzweil and biogerontologists Aubrey de Grey have announced the aging why the fight. De Grey believes that with proper effort, you can stop in a few decades, aging and eventually will turn around. For him, the aging of a disease, an evil, which leaves die every day about 100,000 people. Another question is whether immortality is a good thing. But de Grey is right when he says that we do research first and then if we have the technologies, people should have to decide whether to take it to complete. Healthier and more vital, this research would make the people in any case. Perhaps it is enough so, if, as Luis Bunuel once joked, once in ten years just waking up, reading the paper and be amazed.
Too good to be true? In the journal "Technology Review" a competition was created in order to refute de Grey's arguments. Until now no one has done. On the other hand, was assigned by his "Methuselah Foundation" a award to a research group from Illionis , who had managed to make mice live longer than half as long as usual In humans, this would have been 180 years old.
