IS MORE LIFE ALWAYS BETTER ?

BY DAVID GEMS

Presented BySidar Tekdemir

Ahmet Ozan Oğuz

OUTLINE

The New Biology of Aging

Why Biologist Are Cagey

Worrying About Living Longer

The Political value of Aging

Pessimisim and the Repeatibility of Experience

Aging and Rigidity of Identify

Life Plans and Expectation of Future

The social consequences of extending the human life span might be quite bad; perhaps the worst

outcome is that power could be concentrated into every few hands, as those who wield it gave way

more slowly to death and disease. But the worry that more life would damage individuals' quality of life

is not persuasive. Depending on what the science of aging makes possible, and on how people plan

their lives, longer life might even facilitate a richer and deeper life.

THE NEW BIOLOGY OF AGING

Andrzej Bartke (American Biologist)

He showed that a genetic combination of genetic alteration and nutritional restruction can increase

lifespan of laborotary mouse around 70 percent.

Specific genses control the lifespan.(daf-2, nematode)

Elie Metchnikoff (Russian Immunologist)

Aging resulted from toxins relased by bacteria.

Yoghut diet may extend human life about 200 years.

Reduction in the level of secretions from the testicles.(testicles implantation from a goat or monkey)

J.B.S. Haldane (British Geneticist)

Huntington Disease which attacks nervous system and cause insanity and death

Strike later in life

Genetic disseases caused by genetic mutations that naturel selection has been unable to purge from the

population.(Heart of the evolutionary theory of aging)

The Writer Argument

C. Elegans worms

If we can control aging gene in the C. Elegans we can identify the gene controlling in human aging.

Thomas Johnson (University of Colorado)

Specific mutationed gene age-1, increased avarage lifepan in C.elegans by 65 percent.

More lifepan genes not only in worms but also in fruit flies and mice.

WHY BIOLOGIST ARE CAGEY

Biologist are strangely reluctant to advocate the extention of human life.

Health care costs are increasing with old population

BBSRC

Understanding of basic biology of of healthy ageing.

Experimental Research of Ageing (ERA)

New treatments that could reduce age related decline and thus increase ‘healthspan’ and improve

quality of life for the elderly.

All the effords and investments are spended for solving advanced age problems such as cancer or

heart disseases.

WORRYING ABOUT LIVING LONGER

Huge overpopulation

Noone against decreasing infant mortality

Morbid phase of of ourlives

Psycological problems because of more lifespan

Myth of Tithonus of Troy

Solutions with medicine and drugs

Distributive Justice

Rich people can acces the treatments what would other do?

Life extension technology might be considered a fundemental human right, like

education right.

Such technology should be made available to all- even murderers?

Myth of Tithonus of Troy

THE POLITICAL VALUE OF AGING

Historically, a great benefit of aging has been

deliverance from tyranny.

Consider the possibility of a global dictatorship with

a non-aging president.

PESSIMISIM AND THE REPEATIBILITY OF

EXPERIENCE

Once the goal is reached, however, after the first flush of

triumph has passed away, there follows inevitably a

mood of desolation

What is immortality to Sisyphus but the cruelest element

of his punishment? Yet really this is an unrealistically

gloomy assessment of the character of goals and desires

and their place among the things that make life engaging.

AGING AND RIGIDITY OF IDENTIFY

If a prerequisite for enjoying a greatly extended life

is the capacity to change and develop oneself, find

new interests, and develop new ambitions and

desires, then the loss of flexibility with age limits the

value of life extension

LIFE PLANS AND EXPECTATION OF FUTURE

They would then die suddenly, typically in their eighth or ninth decade. Furthermore, death would be painless, not involving illness or disease—a sudden loss of consciousness, preceded optionally for a few days or weeks by some form of painless, unambiguous indicator of impending death to allow time for goodbyes.

If life plans involve a framework within which our actions have meaning and are of a traditional length, then life extension might appear superfluous.

Is More Life Always Better?: The New Biology of

Aging and the Meaning of Life

David Gems

Article first published online: 6 MAR 2012

DOI: 10.2307/3528378

2012- Professor of Biogerontology, Institute of Healthy Ageing, UCL

2005-2011 Reader in the Biology of Ageing, Department of Biology, UCL

1997-2004 Royal Society University Research Fellow, Department of Biology, University College London, U.K. Genetics of aging in C. elegans and other model organisms

1993-1996 Postdoctoral fellow, Molecular Biology Program, University of Missouri, with Prof. Don Riddle. Genetics of aging inCaenorhabditis elegans

1991-1993 Postdoc, Department of Biology, Imperial College, London, with Prof. Rick Maizels. Biology of infective larvae of the ascarid nematode parasite Toxocara canis

1987-1990 Ph.D., Institute of Genetics, University of Glasgow, U.K. Aspergillus nidulans genetics. With A.J. Clutterbuck

1984-1986 Various work in Costa Rica, Nicaragua (Sandinistaregime), Mexico, USA

1980-1983 School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, U.K. B.Sc. Biochemistry

1974-1978 Dartington Hall School