Secrets of Immortality

Secrets of immortality could be tantalisingly close

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor -www.telegraph.co.uk

The most extensive survey of anti ageing research ever conducted has concluded that a longevity pill to "cure" ageing remains a possibility.

Antiageing drug shows promise in first human test New target for longevity pills Scientists find elixir of eternal life - in a worm However, the current state of knowledge is inadequate to be sure.

The inevitability of ageing and death has fascinated humanity for millennia and is at the heart of the most ancient known mythology, the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, where a Sumerian king tells of his desire to escape death and his ultimate realisation that only through lasting works of culture can he achieve immortality.

Many scientists work on mechanisms that determine lifespan in "model organisms" such as worms, flies and mice but there have been persistent doubts about whether this work is really relevant to humans and whether we may yet manipulate lifespan with drugs, genetic knowledge or fine-tuning diet.

In a Review "Puzzles, promises and cure for aging" published in the journal Nature, Prof Jan Vijg at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Dr Judith Campisi of the Buck Institute, California for Age Research and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, say that "we cannot know, given the state of our current knowledge, whether an elixir of extremely long life is possible."

They argue that there is no question human lifespan will almost certainly increase modestly over the coming decades and that there is no known scientific reason why aging cannot be prevented, similar to the goal of preventing individual age-related diseases.

-http://www.telegraph.co.uk/