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%)

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