ERADICATING FDS
“Science is not limited to laboratories and equations; it is a way of seeing and understanding the world, and its wonders are accessible to all.”
Rachel Carson
The Institute created this website to present its case that the current aging paradigm should be replaced by the New Paradigm. As discussed in the essay entitled “Accepting the New Paradigm,” accepting the reality created by the New Paradigm results in the recognition that FDS is a disorder with horrific symptoms. Moreover, the FDS pandemic is by far the biggest pandemic in history. Accordingly, the medical establishment should devote whatever resources are necessary to address the FDS pandemic as a pandemic.
This essay will discuss two issues. The first is based on the assumption that the New Paradigm is correct in concluding that FDS is a degenerative disease that is caused by an environmental factor interfering with the optimal functioning of the human maintenance system. If that environmental factor could be identified, how could the scientific/medical establishment develop interventions that would neutralize/eliminate that environmental factor, thus eradicating FDS? The second subject addressed in this essay introduces the reader to the extraordinary ramifications that would occur if we were able to eradicate FDS.
Developing Interventions that Would Eradicate FDS
FDS is a degenerative disorder caused by an environmental agent interfering with the effective functioning of the human maintenance system. Other essays on this website discuss how particular environmental factors (or the absence thereof) disrupt particular maintenance processes, thus compromising particular organs, processes or systems. Since FDS is characterized by the progressive deterioration of the function and structure of the entire human organism, it would appear that the environmental factor that causes FDS impacts the entire human maintenance system.
Identifying the environmental factor that is disrupting the effective functioning of the maintenance system of practically every human on the planet is beyond the scope of this essay. However, given the magnitude of the problem, and, as discussed below, the enormous benefits that would accrue to the vanquishing of FDS, it would be well worthwhile for the medical establishment to invest whatever it takes to identify and neutralize that factor.
Once the environmental factor is identified, there are two possible types of interventions – environmental and pharmaceutical. The most direct approach would be to correct the environmental factor itself. For example, for a deficiency disease like rickets, the environmental factor is lack of exposure to sunlight. That environmental factor can be neutralized either by exposure to sunlight or by exposure to artificial light of the appropriate wavelength. A second type of intervention for rickets – akin to a pharmaceutical intervention – is to provide the subject with vitamin D supplements. Vitamin D is the substance that the body synthesizes when exposed to the right type of light. The Institute is of the opinion that such a pharmaceutical intervention should also be available for FDS.
In either case, the intervention doesn’t repair anything on its own. The purpose of the intervention is to allow the body’s own maintenance processes to resume their customary function of removing and replacing damaged components, thus restoring full functionality and “curing” FDS.
Either type of intervention would be much less harmful than the pharmaceutical interventions that have been employed to date. As discussed in the essays entitled “The Current Paradigm and Age-Associated Disorders” and “Pharmaceutical Interventions for Age-Associated Disorders” most pharmaceutical interventions for age-associated degenerative diseases are designed to impede or disrupt one or more of the body’s natural processes. All such processes are the result of eons of natural selection and serve some necessary physiological purpose. Accordingly, disrupting any such process inevitably has adverse side effects.
By contrast, neutralizing an environmental condition that is disrupting the maintenance system should have no adverse side effects. Under the direct approach mentioned above, it’s the environment rather than the body’s functions that is being altered. Exposure to sunlight or returning an astronaut to an environment where she is subject to gravity or having a bedridden patient engage in some level of physical activity have no direct adverse side effects. If the environmental cause of FDS is a nutritional issue, then correcting that nutritional deficiency should be no more harmful than correcting a vitamin C deficiency.
The second means of neutralizing the environmental condition would be through a pharmaceutical intervention. As discussed above, it is likely that the pertinent environmental agent causes the body to synthesize some substance (or prevents it from being synthesized) that is critical for the proper functioning of the maintenance system. In that case, a deficiency of that substance would be what disrupts the maintenance system. If so, introducing a pharmaceutical intervention that simply replicates a substance that the body typically synthesizes on its own, like a vitamin D supplement, should have no adverse side effects. The only effect of a successful intervention (whether environmental or pharmaceutical) should be the restoration of whatever the dysfunctioning maintenance processes are.
Eradicating Age-Associated Degenerative Diseases
All age-associated degenerative diseases are symptoms of FDS. FDS is characterized by the progressive deterioration of the function and structure of every organ and system in the human body. Under the current paradigm, the age-associated degenerative diseases are not recognized as being diseases until there is an acute disruption of the affected organ or system. Which organ or system fails first is typically a matter of genetic makeup and lifestyle choices. In any event, eradicating FDS would eradicate all of the early symptoms of the age-associated degenerative diseases decades before any organ or system is at risk of failing.
Every person who dies of an age-associated degenerative disease is killed by FDS. Every person who dies of “old age” or “natural causes” dies as the result of FDS. That’s estimated to be about 100,000 people per day (worldwide). All killed by the FDS epidemic. We think that’s OK because that’s what’s been happening for as long as human civilization has been around. But it’s not OK because it’s not natural. It’s not what evolution intended. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, rickets became quite common among children in England. Like FDS, it was an epidemic resulting from changes to the evolutionary environment that were wrought by human civilization. That doesn’t make it OK or any less of an epidemic.
The symptoms of FDS (which include all of the symptoms of all of the age-associated degenerative diseases) are horrific. FDS causes the deterioration of every organ and system in the human body. Our cognitive abilities and the functionality of all of our bodily functions disintegrate. The medical establishment expends enormous resources keeping people who suffer from acute FDS alive – even those patients whose cognitive abilities are so compromised that they are not even aware of what’s going on. One can legitimately debate whether devoting enormous resources to keeping a patient who has late stage FDS alive is even a moral course of action.
In addition to the toll FDS takes on the persons suffering from FDS, there is an enormous toll taken on the families, friends and other informal caregivers of FDS patients, especially those suffering from late-stage dementia. This issue is briefly addressed in the essay entitled “Pharmaceutical Interventions for Age-Associated Diseases.”
All of these deaths and all of the suffering would be eliminated if we were able to eradicate FDS.
Financial Impact of Eradicating FDS
In addition to the 100,000 lives lost per day, there are enormous financial costs that are directly attributable to FDS. According to the government, the United States spent $4.3 trillion on healthcare in 2021, and is expected to spend $7.2 trillion in 2031. Rough estimates are that approximately two thirds of overall healthcare costs are spent on age-associated diseases.
The Institute acknowledges that the term “age-associated diseases” includes diseases that do not fit within the definition of age-associated degenerative diseases that are symptoms of FDS. For example, cancer is not a degenerative disease. Eradicating FDS will not prevent or cure cancer. So the savings in direct healthcare costs resulting from eradicating the age-associated degenerative diseases that are symptoms of FDS would not be the full $2.8 trillion in 2021 or the full $4.8 trillion in 2031. But eradicating FDS would provide additional benefits to our overburdened healthcare symptoms. Eradicating FDS would improve the functioning of the immune systems of all humans, not just the elderly, thus reducing the societal costs of addressing infectious diseases. As was graphically demonstrated by the COVID pandemic, infectious diseases have a much greater impact on persons who have compromised immune systems or are suffering from other symptoms of FDS.
Moreover, eradicating FDS would have a number of other financial ramifications that are not directly related to healthcare costs. For example, the Milken Institute has done a number of studies on the economic burden of chronic diseases. One of the major economic costs that the Milken Institute has identified is the loss of productivity resulting from chronically ill workers:
“Chronically ill workers take sick days, reducing the supply of labor—and, in the process, the GDP. When they do show up for work to avoid losing wages, they perform far below par—a circumstance known as “presenteeism,” in contrast to absenteeism. Output loss (indirect impacts) due to presenteeism (lower productivity) is immense—several times greater than losses associated with absenteeism. Last (but hardly a footnote), avoidable illness diverts the productive capacity of caregivers, adding to the reduction in labor supply for other uses.”
And there are healthcare costs beyond those associated with the recognized age-associated degenerative diseases that would be substantially reduced if FDS were eradicated. Eradicate FDS, and all human systems – skeletal muscle, digestive, respiratory, urinary, cardiovascular, reproductive, etc., will work better. Billions of dollars are spent on medical attention, drugs and supplements in an effort to treat systemic disorders that are not even recognized as diseases. In addition, these disorders also lead to the absenteeism and presenteeism lack of productivity described in the Milken studies. All of these problems would be greatly ameliorated if FDS could be eradicated.
Academicians seeking additional funding for aging research have coined the term “Longevity Dividend” to describe the sum of health, social and economic benefits of “delaying aging” and eliminating the associated health care costs.¹ A 2021 study that estimated all of the economic benefits associated with “slowing aging” concluded that “a slowdown in aging that increases life expectancy by 1 year is worth US $38 trillion, and by 10 years, US $367 trillion.”² One can quibble with the methodology used in these types of studies. But one cannot disagree with the overall conclusion that eradicating FDS (which is the functional equivalent of “delaying aging” under the current paradigm) would have an enormous economic impact. Assuming that the natural lifespan of the human species is at least 70 years, it should be possible to delay the onset of FDS by not just a single decade, but rather by multiple decades. Under the methodology used in the published study cited above, the economic benefit of eradicating FDS would be some multiple of $367 trillion.
Economic Disruption
Eradicating FDS would cause economic disruption. As discussed in the essay entitled “Pharmaceutical Interventions for Age-Associated Diseases,” If FDS were eradicated, there would no longer be any need for the hundreds of expensive drugs that are designed to treat various symptoms of age-associated degenerative diseases (and the side effects of those drugs). But the net savings to society from having a single, relatively inexpensive, pharmaceutical intervention that actually prevents/cures the age-associated degenerative diseases, as opposed to having most older adults taking dozens of extremely expensive drugs that, at best, ameliorate some of the symptoms of those disorders, would be immense.³
The eradication of the chronic degenerative diseases would likely lead to a substantial increase in life expectancy. An obvious concern is whether that increase in longevity would lead to increased stress on the healthcare system. After all, under the current paradigm, older people tend to have higher medical expenses. A significant increase in the number of people who survive into their second century would appear to be highly problematic. That concern is misplaced. Under the New Paradigm, the reason that eradicating FDS would extend lifespan is because eradicating FDS would restore complete functionality To the extent that lifespans are extended, it would be because we would not be suffering any of the infirmities that are currently associated with aging. Thus the medical expenses of a 90 year-old who is not afflicted with FDS should be no more than her expenses were as a 30-year old.
Intellectual Capital
Another human system that would work dramatically better were FDS to be eradicated is the central nervous system/brain. The brain’s hardware, just like every other organ and system in the human organism, starts to progressively deteriorate while we are in our twenties. We compensate through education, experience and specialization, so the decline is not generally noticed until we are much older. But, the loss of brain productivity with age exacts an immense financial toll on society, long before that deterioration is recognized as dementia. Eradicating FDS would result in improved brain function across all age groups. Smarter workers are more productive workers.
An Efficient and Effective Healthcare System?
The United States healthcare system is in dire straits. According to the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (part of the CDC) the United States spends $4.1 trillion per year for health care, of which 90% is spent on treating chronic disease. Not all chronic disorders are age-associated degenerative diseases, but the bulk of healthcare spending is devoted to treating those diseases. And the problem is growing with the aging of the “boomer” generation. “Chronic” disorders, by definition, are ones that cannot be prevented or cured, so the term is “treat” not cure. When it comes to age-associated degenerative diseases, all that the current healthcare regime can do is ameliorate symptoms and utilize expensive technology to drag out the inevitable result.
Eradicating FDS would have an enormous impact on the healthcare system. It would free up the trillions of dollars per year that are currently spent on treating the symptoms of FDS. Healthcare providers would be able to focus on doing what they do well – achieving actual positive results by treating traumatic injuries and preventing and curing infectious diseases.
In a world where FDS and all of its symptoms are assumed to be inevitable, a single payer medical system (Medicare for everyone) has proven to be politically unworkable in the United States. The perception (at least for political purposes) is that such a system would be too expensive. As a result, under the current system in the United States, an enormous amount of money is spent on bureaucracy and administration, frustrating both patients and service providers. Even persons who have medical insurance face potential bankruptcy in the event of a serious medical condition. Eradicate FDS and it becomes possible to have a serious discussion about implementing a single payer medical system akin to the ones that have proven to be workable in other countries.
Immortality?
Evolutionary principles dictate that the maintenance systems of mammalian species have chronological limitations on their effectiveness. Any enhancement to an organism’s maintenance system that would improve functionality during the natural lifespan of its species would be selected and passed down to succeeding generations. But enhancements that would improve effectiveness beyond the organism’s natural lifespan would provide no evolutionary advantage and would be rejected. Thus, the chronological limitation on the effectiveness of any mammalian species is a function of the natural lifespan of the species. The New Paradigm uses the term Natural Progressive Decline (NPD) to refer to the relatively rapid decline in functionality suffered by domesticated animals once they outlive the natural lifespans of their species. See “Aging in Other Species.”
Assuming that the same is true of humans, it would follow that once a human has exceeded the natural lifespan of the human species, the subject will suffer from NPD. There is compelling evidence that the natural lifespan of the human species is far greater than 20 years, which means that FDS (which begins to effect the typical human early in the third decade of life) and NPD are not the same phenomenon. The fact that the healing process, which is a feature of the maintenance system, continues to function in the typical human for seven or eight decades is evidence that the natural lifespan of the human species is quite long.
How long? At some point in our evolutionary history, which may have been as long as one million hears ago, hominids began to cooperate. Cooperation disrupted the evolutionary environment as the members of hominid tribes protected one another from predators and shared food, even outside of one’s immediate family. Hominids continued to evolve through natural selection. Cooperation allowed members of the species to survive longer before dying from non-aging related cause, thus extending the period of time before all members of the species would necessarily die from non age-associated causes . Longer lifespans would have resulted in the selection of mutations that extended the effective life of the human maintenance system.
With increasing cooperation among hominids, death as the result of predators or starvation was no longer inevitable. The New Paradigm defines the natural lifespan of a species to be the period of time before substantially all members of the species would necessarily die from non-ageing-related causes. Thus the natural lifespan of the human species would appear to be open-ended. The New Paradigm further posits that all organisms have maintenance systems that are designed to remain fully effective throughout the natural lifespan of the species. Significantly, one of the functions performed by the human maintenance system is to maintain the functionality of the maintenance system itself. Accordingly, it’s conceivable that effectiveness of the human maintenance system has no chronological limitations.
Even if we do succeed in eradicating FDS by ensuring that the maintenance system functions with full effectiveness indefinitely, humans will continue to die from other causes, such as accidents and traumatic injuries, cancers and infectious diseases. The default state of all matter is to be inanimate. However, medical science and medical technology have made great strides in the battles against infectious diseases and the various forms of cancer. And accidents (and other forms of death as the result of trauma) are, by their nature, not inevitable. Eradicating FDS won’t make us immortal. But eradicating FDS and the related age-associated degenerative diseases (i.e., substantially all forms of “death from natural causes”) would to a great extent mitigate the inevitability and predictability of death.
Fountain of Youth?
All of the predicted ramifications of accepting the New Paradigm follow directly from applying the principles of natural selection. Enhancements to the hominid maintenance system that prevent deterioration of physiological functionality are beneficial. Beneficial traits are genetically inherited by succeeding generations and become part of the genome. As a result, like other mammals, humans are genetically designed to maintain optimal physiological functionality throughout the organism’s natural lifespan.
Every adult human on the planet suffers from FDS. All humans believe that unless they suffer a premature death from a non aging-related cause, they will inevitably suffer from decades of progressively worsening loss of functionality until they die. The New Paradigm raises a new possibility. The New Paradigm posits that FDS is a degenerative disorder and the age-associated degenerative diseases are simply manifestations or symptoms of that disorder. FDS results from an environmental agent preventing the human maintenance system from performing up to its capabilities. Identify and neutralize that environmental agent, and the human maintenance system will prevent and/or reverse FDS.
The concepts discussed in this website offer more than a path to eradicating age-associated degenerative disease. These concepts offer a path to eradicating FDS itself. If we can identify and correct for the environmental agent or agents that cause FDS, there is no reason why the physiological and cognitive capabilities of a 70-year old should be any less than that person’s capabilities were as a healthy young adult. Eradicating FDS may not lead us to the fountain of youth (we’ll still be subject to the cosmetic changes that are not symptoms of FDS), but it will bring us to a place that is very close to it.
- See Olshansky, J., et al., In pursuit of the longevity dividend (2006). The Institute rejects the notion of “slowing aging.” Nonetheless, for purposes of calculating the longevity dividend, slowing “aging” and slowing FDS are the same thing.
- Scott, A.J., Ellison, M. & Sinclair, D.A., The economic value of targeting aging. Nat Aging (2021).
- One of the reasons that the current aging paradigm has survived for so long despite its obvious flaws is that the pharmaceutical industry, which funds (directly or indirectly) the vast majority of all life sciences research in the United States, is quite comfortable with the current paradigm. A New Paradigm that advocates an approach that would render hundreds of the most profitable drugs on the market obsolete is anathema to the pharmaceutical industry.