In 1996 a team at Seattle Veterans Affairs Medical Center and local biotech firm Darwin Molecular Corporation made international news by revealing that they had discovered a gene that causes premature aging. Their discovery is another step on the road toward the eventual understanding and control of the aging process. That achievement will easily be the most important development in history.

Right now nobody knows exactly what aging is. One theory holds that the cells that make up our body gradually decay because of the accumulation of errors in the genetic blueprint, our chromosomes. As new cells replace older cells, the copy is invariably less perfect than the original, like a Xerox of a Xerox. Eventually, the copy is so bad that it is no longer able to do its job, and the organism, the person, dies. However, scientists have observed certain human cells, such as Helen Lane cells used in research, reproduce for many generations beyond the death of the person from whom the cells were taken. Outside the body, cells often seem to show no signs of deterioration from generation to generation. Something in the body seems to be telling our cells to age.

Humans, and all other multi-celled creatures, have a set life span that is a characteristic of their species. Among birds, a pigeon may live for just a few years, while a parrot will commonly live almost as long as a human. They each carry a self-destruct mechanism set to go off at a specific time.

Death by aging is obviously catastrophic for the individual, but it has been good for the species. Birth and death are necessary for evolution, which is how species survive. In terms of evolution, the survival of the individual is nothing. The survival of the species, or the genetic line, is the only thing that counts. In order for a species to survive over a long period of time it has to evolve, or change, to meet changing conditions. These changes might be a climatic change or the arrival of some new predator or prey. Species that can't evolve, or can't evolve quickly enough, will perish if their environment changes.

For evolution to function, therefore, the population has to be able to change. Since there is no mechanism for individuals to change - that is to say, an adult giraffe cannot grow a longer neck - old individuals must be removed from the population to make room for a new generation, some of whom just might be better equipped to survive.

So without death there is no evolution. Without evolution, there are no higher forms of life, including humans. But evolution, and aging, has now served its purpose. Evolution is irrelevant for humanity since we now have the capability to change our own environment so quickly and so drastically that we could never evolve quickly enough to adapt. In the meantime, the natural process of aging places a terrible burden on society. Compare the insurance rates of a young person to those of a senior citizen and you will begin to get an idea of the costs of growing old. Defeat aging and you instantly solve the health care crisis.

With the continuing advance of medical technology, someday people will live to a really ripe old age. I hope I can hold out that long.

Copyright 1998 by Patrick Inniss.  All rights reserved.