A cure for ageing on its way

A cure for ageing is closer than it has ever been before, with predictions that it may be possible to live to 150 years old by repairing the molecular and cellular damage of the human body.

Biomedical gerontologist and scientist who is dedicated to longevity research, Aubrey de Grey, believes it will be during his lifetime that doctors find the means to cure ageing.
 
Along with having all the tools necessary to wipe out the ageing process, the cure for ageing will also work to banish diseases that come with old age, Dr de Grey claims.

Dr de Grey recently presented a lecture at Britain’s Royal Institution Academy of Science and spoke about his thoughts on the possible cure for ageing.

“I’d say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing ageing under what I’d call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so, and what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today,” Dr de Grey says.

He also painted a picture of what this might look like for people on a quest to stop the ageing process.

Keeping the killer diseases of old age at bay is the primary focus of Dr de Grey’s research.

“This is absolutely not a matter of keeping people alive in a bad state of health,” he says.

“This is about preventing people from getting sick as a result of old age. The particular therapies that we are working on will only deliver long life as a side effect of delivering better health.”
 
He says stem cell research is a major component of his research.

“Stem cell therapy is a big part of this. It’s designed to reverse one type of damage, namely the loss of cells when cells die and are not automatically replaced, and it’s already in clinical trials (in humans),” he says.

Dr de Grey holds onto hope that stem cell research of today, used to treat spinal cord injuries, will one day be used to treat damaged hearts and brains.

Dr de Grey says he envisions people going to their doctors for regular maintenance.

“This sounds similar to what we do with automobiles today. The maintenance for humans will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in a healthy state, as all part of the strategy to arrest the ageing process,” he says.
 
The cure for ageing would entail trips to the doctor periodically to repair damage done by ageing.

“The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic,” Dr de Grey explains.

Without this ageing cure, experts claim there could be one million centenarians across the globe in years to come.

An average of three months is also said to be added each year to the life expectancy of children born today.

Japan had 44,000 centenarians last year and the oldest living person on record is 122, which has been described as astronomical when comparing this number to what one would expect for longevity of life just 100 years ago.

Dr de Grey’s ideas may appear far-fetched to many, but in 2005, the Technology Review Journal offered $20,000 to any molecular biologist who could prove Dr de Grey’s theory was “so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate.”

Nine leading scientists discussed Dr de Grey’s work and initially called it ‘pseudoscience’, meaning it lacked scientific status.

The outcome from this debate concluded that the label of pseudoscience was unfair, opting to change their response, suggesting Dr de Grey’s work “exists in a middle ground of yet-to-be-tested ideas that some people may find intriguing but which others are free to doubt”.

Do you find Dr de Grey’s theory intriguing or do you doubt there could ever be a cure for ageing? Let us know what you think in the comment box below.