X-Message-Number: 3282 Subject: SCI.CRYONICS: More about Hayflick's book From: (Ben Best) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 1994 00:53:00 -0400 A few weeks ago Robert Ettinger posted a review of Leonard Hayflick's new book HOW AND WHY WE AGE. I don't have a copy of the review, but I seem to recall that he recommended that life extensionists not waste time or money on the book. Having just read the book myself, I want to give another opinion. HOW AND WHY WE AGE is chock-full of interesting up-to-date information about the aging process. Not only is it rich in facts, it offers some good theorizing about the evidence from research into the mechanisms of aging. I learned a great deal from this book -- and I am a person who has read quite a few modern life extension books & articles. I highly recommend the book. This recommendation is IN SPITE OF the IDEOLOGY of the author, which any mature reader can easily ignore. Hayflick says that most biogerontologists are motivated by intellectual interest rather than by a desire to "manipulate the process" of aging. Hayflick does not attempt to justify his claim that "Aging is Not a Disease" on scientific grounds. In fact, he says "If the prevention and cure of aging are desirable goals, then one might be justified in calling aging a disease." Nonetheless, when Hayflick confronts the issue of research financing, he bemoans the fact that only about $50 million of the $10.4 billion National Institute of Health (US Federal government) money is spent on his field of research ("the basic aging process"). His statement "no amount of money spent on the care of the elderly or the resolution of Alzheimer's disease or any other age-associated disease, will ever lead to an understanding and slowing of the aging process" stands in stark contrast to the parade of deathist sentiments he expresses in the name of avoiding overpopulation, the risk of missing a happy old age, the desirability of natural death as a humane way of eliminating social undesirables, etc. Hayflick's page on cryonics is also the same ignorant pap that is to be expected from an eminent scientist who wouldn't dare to carefully study material that might make him a pariah among his colleagues. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to dismiss Hayflick because of a few pages of crap. His book is really a bountiful harvest of theory and information for those who are willing to separate the wheat from the chaff. -- Ben Best (ben.best%) Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3282