X-Message-Number: 3187
From: 
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 94 20:21:30 EDT
Subject: SCI. CRYONICS more Hayflick


A litle more on Leonard Hayflick's book, "How and Why We Age":

Hayflick says that "Aging Is Not a Disease." In fact, that is the title of a
chapter.

Calls to mind the old saw: "Good health is having the same diseases as your
neighbors." (And mental health is having the same delusions as your neighbors.)

And of course, if aging is not a disease, then people who die of old age die
healthy.

Hayflick speaks of "normal" aging. Of course, the word "normal" is commonly
used in two different ways. It can mean "usual" or "ordinary," and in this
sense aging is indeed "normal" in these primitive times. But it is also
used to mean right or correct or healthy, as the etymology suggests.
And not everyone will agree that something that kills you is right or
healthy, even if everyone has it.

In fact, Nobel laureate biologist Joshua Lederberg has given us a different
and refreshingly sensible definition of disease--namely "any deficit
relative to a desired norm." He didn't say so, but this means that not
only is (say) pneumonia a disease, but also the susceptibility to it;
not only is schizophrenia a disease, but also stupidity. And as for
aging...enough said.

Hayflick also says there is no such thing as "abnormal aging." Guess he
forgot about progeria, early onset (even in childhood) of symptoms of
senescence (also called Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome.) Maybe he needs
some piracetam. 
 
Robert Ettinger

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