S. Jay Olshansky

The last thing you ever want to do is extend the period of frailty and disability and make people unhealthy for a longer time period. So lifespan extension in and of itself should not be the goal of medicine, nor should it be the goal of public health, nor should it be the goal of aging science.

Once you avoid the things that accelerate aging like smoking, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, and excessive sun exposure, you've done about as much as you can to influence your aging process.

We have grown accustomed to the wonders of clean water, indoor plumbing, laser surgery, genetic engineering, artificial joints, replacement body parts, and the much longer lives that accompany them. Yet we should remember that the vast majority of humans ever born died before the age of 10 from an infectious disease.

Ageing is very rare. We only see it in humans and laboratory animals and in zoo animals and in our pets. Basically, organisms that are protected from the external world. Once you create that protection, you live long enough to see ageing.

In Genesis 6:3, it says man can live to be 120, but there is no scientific basis for it.

People pushing the idea that everyone can live to be 100 are perpetuating a myth that goes all the way back to the Bible.

The field of ageing research is full of characters. We have hucksters claiming that cures for ageing can be bought and sold; prophetic seers, their hands extended for money, warning that immortality is nigh; and would-be Nobelists working methodically in laboratories in search of a pill to slow ageing.

Fixing obesity is going to require a change in our modern relationship with food. I'm hopeful that we begin to see a turnaround in this childhood obesity epidemic.

The evolutionary theory of senescence can be stated as follows: while bodies are not designed to fail, neither are they designed for extended operation.

When you hit your 40s, you begin to take notice of the effects of aging because people that you know begin to die of heart attacks and tumors, so we take notice of the effects of aging.

You can open up a centenarian's brain, and you'll see some areas that look like that of a 50-year-old or of a 110-year-old. You can have variation in the basic process of aging, called senescence, in different parts of the same body.

We know in the field of aging that some people tend to senesce, or grow older, more rapidly than others, and some more slowly.