Lifespan- Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To
An easy-to-read book that makes a case that aging is at the center of all humanity’s health issues. Before David Sinclair, there had never been a unified aging theory that stood up to scientific scrutiny. Sinclair argues that aging is a disease. Our body is constantly reproducing itself on the micro level. As we exist things cause damage to our bodies (UV radiation, Coca Cola, the mail man etc) these mini disasters cause cells to go into disaster recovery mode where they leave their domestic tasks to address the foreign catastrophe. While they are gone their grass at home gets long, their mailbox gets full and some never make it back home. Overtime these absences stack up like scratches on a DVD. All the sudden a cell that was making sure a certain other cell wasn’t reproducing, never makes it back and you get cancer. Like scratches on a DVD Sinclair is confident that we can and have made progress in interventions that would essentially expose the data underneath the scratches and be able reverse the effects. Sinclair looks at the current medical approach as an ineffectual game of whack a mole that address various symptoms of aging but has never worried about aging itself because it was assumed that aging was an inevitable process that should not/could not be messed with. Sinclair’s grandmother and mother both died in the typical modern way. That is their lifespan was extended, but their quality of life was ignored. Those two events are the cornerstone of his life’s work, which is to extend vitality not just lifespan. He makes some very optimistic predictions about life spans extending in the near future. For example, saying that the first person to live to 150 has already been born. The writing itself is pretty standard for this type of book, engaging but not unique in any way. To me, most of Sinclair’s metaphysics was a breath of fresh air. I am still a maladjusted pig boy that enjoys living, and would enjoy living longer than 80 years, maybe not forever but longer than 80 years. More than that I would like to still be kicking when I’m 80, because what is the point of living 1000 years if you are in an old folk’s home for 900 of those years. This is exactly what Sinclair is saying will happen in the near future. He doesn’t make any predictions for life spans longer than 150, but he does make the claim that there is no biological limit to lifespan, there are only biological entities that experience aging and those that don’t.