Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging
by Tom Kirkwood
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tom KirkwoodEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-01-11
ISBN: 0195139267
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
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Book Reviews of Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging
Book Review: Breezy anecdotal style punctuated by dagger-thrusts
Summary: 5 Stars
Don't be misled by the first few chapters. The style is relaxed, discursive, and laced with entertaining anecdotes which sometimes seem a little off-subject.The "disposable soma" theory of aging emerges in Chapter 6. The author first proposed this theory in a paper published in Nature in 1977, and he argues a convincing case. It is a simple but highly plausible theory, like Darwin's theory of evolution, and it defines a framework within which other theories of aging can be understood.
DNA and cells are constantly under attack. They are under attack from such things as ultraviolet radiation, viruses, free oxygen released by normal mitochondrial metabolism, and the odd hiccup during DNA-copying. We have defences against these attacks: the immune-system, anti-oxidants, and a form of DNA proof-reading under which "cells could in principle be as accurate as they liked". BUT all these defences come at a cost. The germ cells are indeed protected at any cost: that is why life goes on forever. But it would be a waste of energy to protect the somatic cells in a way that would prolong life beyond the point at which accidental death would claim almost every individual. The maximum length of time that a member of a species would normally survive in the wild determines the degree of protection which the genes of the species are prepared to pay for.
The irony is that we might be shortening our lives by drowning our bodies with oxidants generated by burning far more calories than we evolved to handle. If only those excess calories could be diverted into improving our internal "repairs & maintenance" and so lengthen our lives instead!
An excellent book, as iconoclastic in its way as Richard Dawkin's "Selfish Gene", though not as melodramatic.
Summary of Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging
By the year 2050 one in five of the world's population will be 65 or older, a fact which presages profound medical, biological, philosophical, and political changes in the coming century. In Time of Our Lives, Tom Kirkwood draws on more than twenty years of research to make sense of the evolution of aging, to explain how aging occurs, and to answer fundamental questions like why women live longer than men. He shows that we age because our genes, evolving at a time when life was "nasty, brutish, and short," placed little priority on the long-term maintenance of our bodies. With such knowledge, along with new insights from genome research, we can devise ways to target the root causes of aging and of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and osteoporosis. He even considers the possibility that human beings will someday have greatly extended life spans or even be free from senescence altogether.Beautifully written by one of the world's pioneering researchers into the science of aging, Time of Our Lives is a clear, original and, above all, inspiring investigation of a process all of us experience but few of us understand.
The blurb on the cover of this book may be slightly misleading: "A world authority shows why aging is neither inevitable nor necessary." This is true, for he does show theoretically why there is no need for us to age, i.e. that there is no "death gene" that determines, more or less precisely, our longevity. Just don't expect any miracle cures. From a layman's viewpoint, the evolutionary argument he constructs for the development of aging in species is well elucidated and highly convincing. Aging is not, according to the disposable soma theory expounded here, anything to do with population control or some such crudely deterministic mechanism, but rather the genes making the best of what are, after all, limited energy resources. Our soma cells (anything but the all-important and immortal germ-line cells by which we reproduce) are constantly being replicated, a process that, carried out in any sort of energy-efficient manner, leaves room for error. And these errors are cumulative in effect; though the process is generally remarkably accurate, a faultily constructed cell cannot produce a perfect cell, and eventually our bodies will go wrong with fatal consequences. This mattered less when the conditions of life were such that reaching a state of senescence was relatively rare. But with the change in these conditions found in modern industrialized countries, the effects of this process have taken on a far greater significance. As well as the science (all very accessible to the nonscientist), Tom Kirkwood also engages the reader in an interesting and important discussion of the social and cultural implications of these changed conditions. For the time being, though, as far as any of us are concerned, aging is still inevitable. This book doesn't offer the hope of evading death or even delaying it that significantly, but it does offer up some hope: understanding a process can help to demystify it and dispel fear, and, as Kirkwood illustrates, it can help us to try and intelligently influence the processes at work in our favor. Time of Our Lives is an excellently written popular-science book for anyone who is concerned with the onslaught of the years. --Alisdair Bowles, Amazon.co.uk
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