Science points to many possibilities for aging to be reversed. Within a few decades, medical therapies based on these possibilities could become widespread and affordable, allowing all of us, if we wish, to remain in a youthful state for much longer than is currently the norm – perhaps even indefinitely. Instead of healthcare systems continuing to consume huge financial resources in order to treat people with the extended chronic diseases that become increasingly common as patients’ bodies age, much smaller expenditure would keep all of us much healthier for the vast majority of the time.
Nevertheless, far too many people fail to take these possibilities seriously. They believe that aging is basically inevitable, and that people who say otherwise are deluded and/or irresponsible.
Public opinion matters. Investments made by governments and by businesses alike are heavily influenced by perceived public reaction. Without active public support for smart investments in support of the science and medicine that could systematically reverse aging, that outcome will be pushed backwards in time – perhaps even indefinitely.
What can change this public opinion? An important part of the answer is to take the time to explain the science of aging in an accessible, engaging way – including the many recent experimental breakthroughs that, collectively, show such promise.
That’s exactly what Dr Andrew Steele accomplishes in his excellent book Ageless: The new science of getting older without getting old.
The audio version of this book became available on Christmas Eve, narrated by Andrew himself. It has been a delight to listen to it over the intervening days.
Over the last few years, I’ve learned a great deal from a number of books that address the science of aging, and I’ve been happy to recommend these books to wider audiences. These include:
- Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To, by David Sinclair
- Age Later: Secrets of the Healthiest, Sharpest Centenarians, by Nir Barzilai
- Immortality, Inc.: Renegade Science, Silicon Valley Billions, and the Quest to Live Forever, by Walter Chip
- The Aging Gap Between Species, by Anca Ioviţă
- The Longevity Code: The New Science of Aging, by Kris Verburg
- The Switch: Ignite Your Metabolism with Intermittent Fasting, Protein Cycling, and Keto, by James Clement
But I hope that these esteemed authors won’t mind if I nominate Andrew Steele’s book as a better starting point into the whole subject. Here’s what’s special about it:
- It provides a systematic treatment of the science, showing clear relationships between the many different angles to what is undeniably a complex subject
- The way it explains the science seems just right for the general reader with a good basic education – neither over-simplified or over-dense
- There’s good material all the way through the book, to keep readers turning the pages
- The author is clearly passionate about his research, seeing it as important, but he avoids any in-your-face evangelism
- The book avoids excessive claims or hyperbole: the claims it makes are, in my view, always well based
- Where research results have been disappointing, there’s no attempt to hide these or gloss over them
- The book includes many interesting anecdotes, but the point of these stories is always the science, rather than the personalities or psychologies of the researchers involved, or clashing business interests, or whatever
- The information it contains is right up to date, as of late 2020.
Compared to other research, Ageless provides a slightly different decomposition of what is known as the hallmarks of aging, offering ten in total:
- DNA damage and mutations
- Trimmed telomeres
- Protein problems: autophagy, amyloids and adducts
- Epigenetic alterations
- Accumulation of senescent cells
- Malfunctioning mitochondria
- Signal failure
- Changes in the microbiome
- Cellular exhaustion
- Malfunction of the immune system
As the book points out, there are three criteria for something to be a useful “hallmark of aging”:
- It needs to increase with age
- Accelerating a hallmark’s progress should accelerate aging
- Reducing the hallmark should decrease aging
The core of the book is a fascinating survey of interventions that could reduce each of these hallmarks and thereby decrease aging – that is, decrease the probability of dying in the next year. These interventions are grouped into four categories:
- Remove
- Replace
- Repair
- Reprogram
Each category of intervention is in turn split into several subgroups. Yes, the treatment of aging is likely to be complicated. However, there are plenty of examples in which single interventions turned out to have multiple positive effects on different hallmarks of aging.
There are a couple of points where some readers might quibble with the content, for example regarding dietary supplements, or whether the concept of group selection can ever be useful within evolutionary theory.
However, my own presentations on the subject of the abolition of aging will almost certainly evolve in the light of the framework and examples in Ageless. I’m much the wiser from reading it.
Here’s my advice to anyone who, like me, believes the subject of reversing aging is important, and who wishes to accelerate progress in this field:
- Read Ageless with some care, all the way through
- Digest its contents and explore the implications, for example via discussion in online groups
- Recommend others to read it too.
Ideally, a sizeable proportion of the book’s readers will alter their own research or other activity, in order to assist the projects covered in Ageless.
Finally, a brief comparison between Ageless and the remarkable grandfather book of this whole field: Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime, authored by Aubrey de Grey and Michael Rae. Ending Aging was published in 2007 and remains highly relevant, even though numerous experimental findings and new ideas have emerged since its publication. There’s a deep overlap in the basic approach advocated in the two books. Both books are written by polymaths who are evidently very bright – people who, incidentally, did their first research in fields outside biology, and who brought valuable external perspectives to the field.
So I see Ageless as a worthy successor to Ending Aging. Indeed, it’s probably a better starting point for people less familiar with this field, in view of its coverage of important developments since 2007, and some readers may find Andrew’s writing style more accessible.
dw2 
I know that many authors are reluctant to promote their own books, and also that science books age fast, but I would have included your 2016 book The Abolition of Ageing, which I found – and still recommend as – one of the best books on the topic. True, it will probably need updating because of the revolutionary things happening in AI – e g 1/ Machine learning, not that apparent in 2015, and e g 2/ AI tackling protein folding – but over all, as an introduction to the idea that ageing is a problem that we can solve with the aid of rapidly progressing science it is the best book so far and one I sent my nephews for Xmas, together with Aubrey’s book and Jim Mellon’s book on Juvenescence (because one nephew is a Business graduate and is interested in investments)
Comment by Catarina Lamm — 29 December 2020 @ 11:01 am
Thanks for your kind words Catarina. Your nephews are lucky to have you as an aunt!
There’s quite a lot of science in my own book “The Abolition of Aging”, but there’s more science in Andrew’s book, and it’s more up-to-date.
In contrast, my book addresses many broader topics – philosophical arguments, the possibilities for scientists to collaborate at scale, the social and psychological impediments to faster progress, and more radical ideas on how to live longer.
Rewriting “The Abolition of Aging” remains a possible task for me in 2021, but for the time being, I’m working on broader topics.
Comment by David Wood — 29 December 2020 @ 11:12 am
A brief note on the coverage of Machine Learning in my 2016 book “The Abolition of Aging”: I included two subsections entitled “The unreasonable effectiveness of big data” and “The further growth of deep learning” in my chapter “Collaborative rejuveneering”. I remember one person who reviewed the draft content told me I had written too much on that topic. In retrospect I believe my emphasis was right 🙂 https://theabolitionofaging.com/contents/
Comment by David Wood — 29 December 2020 @ 11:22 am
Many thanks for your erudite review David. It sounds like a pivotal moment and I’ll enjoy immersing myself in its content. An interesting start to the New Year, methinks!
Comment by Phil Shepherd — 29 December 2020 @ 11:12 am
Interesting posting but we don’t want people living longer! Planet Earth barely sustains 7.9 Billion people consuming dwindling natural resources, like we need more women birthing later into life and both sexes living healthily until age 150!
Comment by A. Shepherdson — 22 February 2021 @ 7:06 pm
Hi Andrew – This is a question which comes up a great deal, and there are many good answers to it.
For example, you can see Andrew Steele’s own answer to it from around 27:26 in the video recording of his recent presentation to London Futurists, https://youtu.be/cM6pxf9cmXI?t=1646
Comment by David Wood — 22 February 2021 @ 8:45 pm
The problem surely isn’t the number of people alive on Earth, but our total impact on it. In many ways, our impact has been *declining* in recent years. I strongly recommend the book by Andrew McAfee, “More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43822733-more-from-less
McAfee in my view gets the balance exactly right: a lot of progress has been made, since around 1970, but we need to accelerate that progress, using the methods he covers in the final chapters of his book.
The answer is *not* to try to get people to die sooner.
Comment by David Wood — 22 February 2021 @ 8:49 pm
🙂
Comment by A. Shepherdson — 22 February 2021 @ 9:02 pm