With science, aging is dead

Imagine what the world would be if Robert Mugabe, Josh uMdalawethu Nkomo, Adolf Hitler, Iddi Amin, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi hanged around for more than two centuries.
Or, to make it sound better and more personal, imagine living with the knowledge that the earliest you could die of natural causes is at the age 200 years! 
Well, if recent scientific progress is anything to go by, the prospect of enjoying a prolonged and healthy life span might soon shift from the ideal to the real. That, however, won't come as a surprise since, from time immemorial, man has tried to crack the code of eternal youth and immortality. 
From Cleopatra's donkey milk baths to the alchemists' labours for the age-healing elixir and Juan Ponce de Leon's search for the 'Fountain of Youth', mankind's quest to find the cure for mortality has been relentless. 
But, as expected, death has always emerged the winner; the Egyptian queen died long before she could verify her therapy, the alchemists failed and de Leon ended up discovering Florida before he could find the coveted waters of youth. 
"Morbid preoccupation with past youth in order to avoid the anxiety of old age is a great hindrance to the growth of personality. Youth and old age, like pleasure and pain, birth and death, light and darkness, are inseparable companions. To have one without the other is infantile and absurd," observes Swami Adiswarananda, a New York-based monk of the Ramakrishna order. 
Such pious views, or even the promise of a blissful hereafter, have done little to halt the search to cure the vagaries of old age, with the matter being as urgent today as it was in the days of Cleopatra and the Spanish conquistadors. 
Advances in science have opened new frontiers in the quest for immortality and agelessness, with new discoveries in molecular biology presenting researchers with the latest platform. 
Biogerontolgy has emerged as the branch of science involved with the study of complex causes of old-age physiological failure and the means to slow down, arrest or reverse degenerative processes in living organisms. 
Among the many remedies that science has presented to the world as a possible solution include numerous skin care products, plastic surgery, injections, dieting, exercise and exotic creams.
However, in this clamour to live long, many forget the social, economic and political consequences of a prolonged life span. Besides economic power being a decisive determiner of how long one will live ' since the remedy would be expensive ' experts say governments would be hugely strained since they will be compelled to spend more on social security and health care. 
But extended longevity would have its brighter side too, because exceptionally gifted people in different fields would be around longer to invest their talents in the advancement of society.
The prospect of Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton or Barack Obama being alive for hundreds of years would make any progressive-minded person cringe with excitement. 
In the forefront of this scientific march towards the door to eternal youth is the controversial British biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey. Apart from being the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research, de Grey is also the co-founder and chief scientist of the Methuselah Foundation, a non-profit organisation based in Springfield, Virginia, USA, aptly named after the oldest character in the Bible. 
Extend life span of miceOne of the major activities of this charitable organisation is coordinating the Methuselah Mouse Prize, an award that seeks to award monetary prizes to researchers who scientifically manage to extend the life span of mice to unprecedented lengths. 
"If we are to bring about real regenerative therapies that will benefit not just future generations, but also those of us who are alive today, we must encourage scientists to work on the problem of aging," Dr Grey explained the motive of the award, whose price money stood at a staggering $4.2 million (approximately Sh350 million) as at February 2007. 
In his book, Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging In Our Lifetime, Dr Grey and his research assistant Michael Rae delve in the details of biotechnology research on the concept of aging. 
Following the general consensus by experts that aging does not serve any evolutionary purpose, the outspoken scientist insists that "we have plenty of in-built, automatic anti-aging machinery, but perfect anti-aging machinery would be infinitely elaborate, so in practice it's only as good as was needed in the Stone Age to keep us from dying of old age before we died of other hazards like predation and starvation". 
With his work centred on a detailed plan he calls Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), Dr Aubrey explains in his book that aging is not caused by active gene programming, but by evolved limitations in bodily maintenance, which results in a build-up of damage. 
Ecological factors like hazard rates and food availability and variability explain the varying life spans among individuals, and why the aging rate can sometimes be altered through dietary restrictions. 
Grey also insists that understanding the cell and molecular basis of aging entails unravelling the multiplicity of mechanisms causing damage to accumulate, and the complex array of systems working to keep the consequent damage at bay. 
Seven-point planTo unravel the intricacies of these cellular aging mysteries, the futuristic scientist designed SENS, a seven-point plan for a comprehensive repair and maintenance of the body at the molecular and cellular levels. 
"Each point addresses one of the types of intrinsic 'damage'... the accumulating side-effects of our normal metabolism that contribute to eventual age-related pathology and disease," he explained during an interview with an American online scientific publication, machineslikeus.com. 
"The seven types of damage are cell loss, cell death-resistance, chromosomal mutations, mitochondrial mutations, indigestible molecules inside the cell, indigestible molecules outside the cell and cross-linking of long-lived extra-cellular proteins." 
Although scientists unanimously agree humanity is still decades, or even centuries, away from cracking the anti-aging code, they agree that the possibility to develop youth-sustaining therapies is still within the grasp of modern science.
A testimony to this proposition is the huge number of anti-aging remedies in the market today, and the equally large number of people that have used them to retain a youthful look long past their prime, especially in the fields of politics and showbiz. 
Besides gaining fame for holding cocktail parties graced by bevies of young beauties, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tops the list of prominent personalities who are said to embrace image-enhancing cosmetic plastic surgery and hair implants. 
"I am very happy to have subjected myself to such pain," Berlusconi told reporters after his first hair transplant in 2004. "It's a way of showing respect√¢‚Ǩ¬¶ to those who expect you to represent them on an international and national stage," he said, adding that he felt 25 years younger. 
There was a time when the septuagenarian's hair loss was so severe that he had to appear in public donning a bandana. The showy Italian politician has also confessed to having undergone cosmetic plastic surgery for a facelift, which explains his unnaturally wrinkleless countenance.
Across the pod in the image-savvy world of American politics and showbiz, the use of youth-enhancing scientific techniques is a norm among the rich and famous. 
Former California governor and former Hollywood heavyweight Arnold Schwarzenegger reportedly had a chin reduction, cheek implants and, according to New York Times, there is a possibility that the 63-year-old "Governator" also had an overall facelift. 
Botox injectionApart from surgical facelifts and hair implants, Botox injection is yet another popular option among the image-conscious American elite. Botox is a drug made from a toxin produced by the bacterium clostridium botulinum, which is the same toxin that causes a life-threatening type of food poisoning called botulism, often found in ill-prepared or mishandled meat products. 
Doctors use it in small doses to treat various health problems, which include severe underarm sweating, uncontrollable blinking, chronic migraine, misaligned eyes and temporary removal of facial wrinkles.
Side effects include pain at the injection site, flu-like symptoms, headache, drooping eyelids in the case of face injections, and stomach upsets. Breast-feeding and pregnant women are cautioned against using this highly toxic chemical agent.
Botox works by weakening or paralysing certain muscles by attaching it's toxic elements into the nerve endings, where it ultimately blocks the signals that would tell the muscles to contract, which eventually prevents wrinkling for a period of three to four months. 
Among those said to have sought the image-boosting qualities of this popular toxin include Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign, purportedly to erase facial worry lines; Vice President Joe Biden; and former speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. 
Image-oriented populationBut the apparent image worries among the American club of high and mighty is understandable, given that the country's population is so image-oriented that, in a borderline political situation, physical appearance can easily swing the votes.
This is underlined by the fact that the last time the country elected an obese man to the White House was in 1912, when the 300-pound William Taft won the elections; while the only bald-head to ever lord it over Washington was Dwight Eisenhower. 
The quest to retain indefinite youthfulness has led to the emergence and rapid growth of the anti-aging industry, with its surreal promises and fancy advertising. Owing its authenticity and success to an ambiguous and sometimes dubious affiliation to a branch of science which it skilfully uses to promote its products, the anti-aging market is awash with bliss-promising products. 
Recently, scientific critics have objected to this trend, terming it a commercialisation of science by emphasising the distinction between the business-minded anti-ageing industry and the scientific field of biogerontology. Whatever the means or approach or controversies, science seems hell bent on reverting the depressingly nihilistic statement that "life is a disease with death as its only cure".