X-Message-Number: 13366
From: 
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 21:28:09 EST
Subject: de Grey's book

THE MITOCHONDRIAL FREE RADICAL THEORY OF AGING is a recent book by Aubrey 
D.N.J. de Grey, Dept. of Genetics, University of Cambridge. Publisher is R. 
G. Landes, Austin TX. About 200 pages, hard cover, $99 from Amazon. We will 
have a review in the next issue of THE IMMORTALIST, but herewith a few notes, 
beginning with what will be for some a key quotation:


"   we have a realistic chance of achieving, in only a few decades, a degree of
control over the rate of human aging which far exceeds anything that has 
hitherto seemed feasible."

Nothing startling here to our readers, but relatively daring for someone 
directly involved at a major university. He indicates elsewhere that by major 
interventive life extension he has in mind a factor of two (roughly two 
centuries tops instead of one century), and that's just for starters. He 
mentions the word "immortality" only once, to explain why he doesn't use it, 
but he does mention "negligible senescence" and "indefinite" life extension.

The author's "bare bones" summary of his theory is in four statements near 
the end of the book:

1. SOS [Survival Of the Slowest; see below] is the main cause of the 
accumulation of non-dividing cells with no OXPHOS [oxydative phosphorylation] 
function.

2. That is the main cause of the progressive increase of oxidative stress 
throughout the body.

3. That is the main cause of the decline of cellular and extracellular 
maintenance.

4. That is the main determinant of the rates of all currently immutable 
aspects of human aging.

"Survival Of the Slowest," if I understood it correctly at a quick glance, 
means roughly that mitochondria with a certain kind of damage die less easily 
than undamaged ones; we get an accumulation of respiration-deficient 
mitochondria.

Before arbitrarily stopping for now, I should probably mention a warning de 
Grey gives about anti-oxidants, even though his theory emphasizes oxidative 
stress as a major culprit in senescence. Dietary anti-oxidants, he says, have 
not been shown to increase life span, although they may increase life 
expectancy. Further, in some circumstances, anti-oxidants can become 
pro-oxidants. (He says only one supplement--deprenyl--has been shown to 
increase a mammal's maximum life span without restricting caloric intake.) 

While I am in no position to judge the merits of de Grey's assessments, I can 
say very definitely that he provides a wonderful exposition of some aspects 
of the biology of aging. He may even turn out to be one of the key figures of 
the century.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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