Aging by Design How New Thinking on Aging Will Change Your Life

Why do we age? How do we age? These questions have baffled scientists for centuries and remain unresolved. The answer to the "how" question is critical to our ability to successfully prevent and treat age-related diseases like cancer and heart disease that now cause the majority of all deaths in the developed world. Because of major difficulties in directly experimentally determining causes of aging, the answer to the "why”" question is critical to guiding research efforts directed toward identifying and altering processes involved in age-related diseases.

Evolution theory plays a critical role in the “why” issue because it attempts to explain why each living organism has its particular design and therefore why different species display different aging characteristics and different life spans.

The book goes on to discuss observations and experiments that offer clues as to the nature of biological aging mechanisms. These include apparently non-aging animals, worm experiments, rat blood-exchange experiments, caloric restriction experiments, octopus experiments, and the discovery of genes that cause aging.