Zeno's paradox and the faith that technological game-changers are impossible

Which Is the Most Significant Cause of Aging?

It becomes clearer and clearer that aging is a result of a significant number of causes and it would seem that counteracting one or several of them should not make a significant difference. Taken at face value, this suggests, for example, that free radicals and reactive oxygen species do not play a significant role in aging and that the lifespan of organisms cannot be significantly extended. In this review, I point to the fact that the causes of aging synergize with each other and discuss the implications involved. One implication is that when two or more synergizing causes increase over time, the result of their action increases dramatically; I discuss a simple model demonstrating this. It is reasonable to conclude that this might explain the acceleration of aging and mortality with age. In this regard, the analysis of results and mortality patterns described in studies involving yeasts and Drosophila provides support for this view. Since the causes of aging are synergizing, it is also concluded that none of them is the major one but many including free radicals, etc. play significant roles. It follows that health/lifespan might be significantly extended if we eliminate or even attenuate the increase of a few or even just one of the causes of aging. While the synergism between the causes of aging is the main topic of this review, several related matters are briefly discussed as well.

Obsolete ideas and logical confusions can be obstacles for biogerontology research

Some misconceptions can be an obstacle for biogerontology research. These misconceptions can be classified in two categories: (1) obsolete ideas in biology, for example "aging has a universal cause" and "living beings are like machines", and (2) conceptual and logical confusions, such as "longevity is not dependent on other life-history traits", "between-groups variability allows to infer conclusions about individual variability", and "the burden of the proof lies with the opponents to the hypothesis". This opinion article describes these problems in the hope it will help to overcome them.