AMMG - Dr. Leonard-Hayflick on The etiology of Aging is now Understood

The Etiology of Aging is Now Understood
Leonard Hayflick, Ph.D.
Professor of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco, CA



KEYNOTE PRESENTATION AT THE NOVEMBER 2017 AMMG CONFERENCE

The belief that aging is still an unsolved problem in biology is no longer true. To understand this belief it is necessary to define the four phenomena that characterize the finitude of life: aging, the determinants of longevity, age-associated diseases, and death. Age changes can occur in only two fundamental ways: either as the result of a purposeful program driven by genes or by stochastic or random, accidental molecular events. The weight of evidence indicates that a gene-driven program does not govern the aging process; the stochastic or random loss of molecular fidelity does. Potential longevity is determined by the energetics of molecules present after reproductive maturation including those that compose the repair machinery involved in turnover, synthesis, and maintenance. The repair and synthesis processes that exceed the appearance of dysfunctional molecules prior to reproductive maturity then shifts so the spread of energy described in The Second Law of Thermodynamics that creates an excess of dysfunctional molecules, begins to exceed repair capacity and the thermodynamic instability characteristic of the aging process begins. The maintenance, repair and synthetic pathways that maintain the fidelity of molecules produced before and after reproductive maturity determine longevity. Unlike the stochastically driven aging process, longevity determination is governed by the genome. Furthermore, the aging process is fundamentally distinct from age associated diseases. Unlike any disease, age changes (a) occur in every multi-cellular animal that reaches a fixed size in adulthood, (b) cross virtually all species barriers, (c) occur in all members of a species only after the age of reproductive maturation, (d) occur in all animals removed from the wild and protected by humans even when that species probably has not experienced aging for thousands or even millions of years, (e) occur in virtually all animate and inanimate matter, and (f) have the same universal molecular etiology, that is, thermodynamic instability. Unlike aging, there is no disease or pathology that shares these six qualities. Because this critical distinction is rarely understood, the enormous imbalance of resources spent more on studying age associated disease than doing research on the fundamental biology of aging cannot be expected to increase our knowledge of aging.THE AGE MANAGEMENT MEDICINE DIFFERENCE
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