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IMPLICATIONS
The Institute created this website to make its case that the current aging paradigm is fatally defective and should be replaced by the Institute’s proposed New Paradigm. The natural reaction of a layperson who has read these materials is likely to be – “That’s all very interesting. But I’ll reserve judgment until I hear from the experts.” But there is the problem with waiting for the scientific establishment to embrace or critique the New Paradigm. It won’t. As Thomas Kuhn wrote, challenging a predominant paradigm is extremely difficult. The practitioners within that field of science have always accepted the preconceptions that are embodied within that paradigm as representing objective reality. So, to an expert, proposing a new paradigm amounts to questioning reality itself. Why would an expert even entertain a notion that is contrary to reality?
As discussed in the essay entitled Paradigmatic Norms and Paradigm Paralysis, that natural skepticism is compounded by practical considerations. For any scientist that has achieved success or notoriety under the current paradigm, suggesting that the paradigm is not reality is a very hard pill to swallow. For example, if an aging scientist’s reputation is based on studies that demonstrate precisely how much longer a rat is expected to live under various caloric restriction regimens, a New Paradigm that rejects the notion that rat longevity has any relevance for human health or longevity is unappealing.
The academic and medical establishments are quite content with the status quo. Thus, they are heavily incentivized to resist any efforts to displace the current aging paradigm. As discussed in the essay entitled “Pharmaceutical Interventions for Age-Associated Diseases,” the pharmaceutical industry makes enormous profits by marketing drugs that treat, as opposed to cure, chronic age-associated diseases. Accepting a New Paradigm that could eventually lead to the prevention or cure of all age-associated degenerative diseases would render dozens of highly profitable drugs obsolete. Since the pharmaceutical industry funds (directly or indirectly) most life sciences research, it’s no surprise that life sciences experts are not eager to weigh in on a New Paradigm that their major funding source views as anathema.
To date, the establishment’s opposition to the notion that the current aging paradigm is hopelessly flawed has been simple. It ignores the fact that there has been, for over 160 years, a compelling reason to reject the current paradigm. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection establishes, as a scientific fact, that biological aging cannot be a genetically inherited trait. The Institute has been beating that drum for over ten years now. No one in the scientific establishment has ever suggested that any of the facts, concepts or conclusions advanced by the Institute or discussed on this website aren’t correct. Because they can’t. The only premise necessary to establish the superiority of the New Paradigm is an acceptance of the notion that humans actually do have maintenance systems. How could anyone argue that the human organism can remove and replace over 50 billion specialized cells per day without conceding that we must have a physiological process that accomplishes that feat? So rather than engage in any discussion of the merits of the New Paradigm, the establishment simply hides its head in the sand and refuses to engage. Their response to anyone that questions them about anything that the Institute has written is that they’ve never read it.
There is nothing particularly unusual or insidious about this. Paradigm shift is difficult. It took hundreds of years for the Catholic Church to accept the Copernican paradigm. The germ theory of disease was not fully embraced until decades after it was first proposed. As the Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Max Planck once said, “A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
If the New Paradigm were merely a new way of looking at the world – a sterile academic exercise with no practical implications — then patiently waiting for a new generation of scientists that might be more open-minded would not be objectionable.
But patience is not an option. Continuing to ignore the New Paradigm has urgent and deadly real world consequences. Tomorrow, 100,00 people will die from one of the age-associated degenerative diseases that is a symptom of FDS. Once the New Paradigm is acknowledged as being superior to the current aging paradigm, we can start down the road that will lead us to the eradication of age-associated degenerative diseases. The diseases won’t be eradicated any time soon. But every day of delay in starting down that path will result in an additional 100,000 deaths in the future – to repeat, that’s 100,000 deaths per day for each day of delay. And since the establishment is wedded to the current paradigm, it will never start down that road unless it is forced to do so by outside influences.
Accepting the New Paradigm
The first essay in this section is entitled “Accepting the New Paradigm.” It discusses the ramifications that would necessarily result from the scientific establishment acknowledging that the New Paradigm creates a better conceptual framework for explaining FDS than does the current aging paradigm.
The first set of ramifications result from the fact that accepting the New Paradigm means fully embracing the theory of evolution by natural selection. One of the principles of natural selection is that evolution can’t make a mistake. There can be no physiological processes that are inefficient or counterproductive. Accepting the New Paradigm means rejecting the proposition that the pharmaceutical companies can create drugs that do a better job of regulating our natural processes than a billion years of evolution
A second ramification arises from the interplay theory and experiment. Scientific theory attempts to create a conceptual framework that describes and explains objective reality. The experimental branch uses experimental tools to probe individual phenomenon within that framework. The advancement of science generally depends on the interplay between the two branches. Because it’s proven to be impossible to reconcile the current aging paradigm with the principles of natural selection, life sciences tend to reject theory and focus almost solely on experiment, thus retarding the advancement of the science of aging. Accepting the New Paradigm and thereby fully embracing natural selection will pave the way for a scientific revolution.
By far the most significant practical ramification of accepting the New Paradigm would be its profound effect on public perception of the age-associated degenerative diseases. That change in perception would necessitate a dramatic change in the approach to such diseases taken by the healthcare system. Everyone accepts that the medical establishment can and should do whatever it can to treat age-associated degenerative diseases and to address the risk factors that contribute to those diseases. But attacking the “aging process,” which is the root cause of these diseases, is a different proposition altogether. For thousands of years, aging and death have been considered outside the realm of science. There is significant opposition to attempts to interfere with these “natural” processes. The symptoms of FDS have always been assumed to be an inextricable aspect of a natural aging process that inevitably results in death. Thus there has never been any particular urgency about dealing with the underlying problem. Instead, the medical establishment has devoted enormous resources to ameliorating symptoms and keeping people alive.
Accepting the New Paradigm leads immediately to the inescapable conclusion that FDS is a degenerative disorder. FDS is by far the greatest epidemic in the history of the world. Every person who dies of “old age” or “natural causes” dies as the result of FDS. That’s been estimated to be about 100,000 people per day worldwide. With the understanding that FDS is a preventable disorder comes the realization that the symptoms of late stage FDS are horrific. Surveys frequently show that the typical human fears the infirmities of aging – the symptoms of FDS – more than dying itself.
The acknowledgement that FDS is a horrific disease that kills 100,000 people a day would force the scientific establishment to devote whatever resources are necessary to find a solution to the disorder. The Institute has provided a roadmap by explaining that FDS is a degenerative disorder that is caused by an environmental factor interfering with the proper functioning of the human maintenance system. Once scientists have identified what that environmental factor is, developing interventions that will restore the proper functioning of the maintenance system should be well within the capabilities of existing medical technology
Consequences of Eradicating FDS
The second essay in this section, entitled “Eradicating FDS” takes a jump forward in time. What would the world look like if the medical establishment (or some subset of researchers) were to accept the New Paradigm and actually attempt to find a cure for FDS? The New Paradigm tells us that FDS is a degenerative disorder caused by an environmental agent disrupting the effective functioning of the human maintenance system. The second essay discusses the ramifications of developing an environmental or pharmaceutical intervention that would neutralize that environmental factor, thus eradicating FDS.
Assuming that the environmental factor could be identified, there are two possible types of interventions. The most direct approach would be to neutralize the environmental factor by changing the environment. For example, if, as is the case for rickets, the environmental factor is an absence of sunlight, then the environmental factor can be neutralized directly by either exposure to sunlight or by exposure to artificial light of the appropriate wavelength. The second type of intervention would be a pharmaceutical intervention. In the rickets example, the pharmaceutical intervention would be vitamin D supplements. Vitamin D is the substance that the body synthesizes when exposed to the right type of light.
Either type of intervention will be much less harmful than the pharmaceutical interventions that have been employed to date in the age-associated degenerative disease arena. The only effect of a successful intervention would be to restore whatever the dysfunctioning maintenance processes are.
Eradicating FDS would save 100,000 lives per day. It would also relieve all of the suffering endured by the millions of persons who are afflicted with the symptoms of FDS (which, in addition to the recognized age-associated degenerative diseases, include dozens of other disorders resulting from organs or systems working at a less than optimal level). Further, were FDS to be eradicated, millions of persons who are informal caregivers (friends and family) of persons suffering from acute FDS would be relieved from the stresses associated with taking care of those persons.
The overall savings to society from the eradication of FDS would be enormous. One published study estimated that the economic benefit of delaying the onset of FDS by even a decade would be over $300 trillion. The benefit of actually eradicating FDS would be far greater than that.
Developing interventions that result in the eradication of FDS would lead to longer life expectancy for the same reason that eradicating smallpox did – people would not die prematurely as the result of a preventable or curable disease. If the only effect of correcting FDS were to dramatically extend life expectancy, the resulting economic consequences would be disastrous. But eradicating FDS would not merely extend longevity. When the environmental agent that causes a degenerative disorder is eliminated, so are all of the symptoms of that disorder. To the extent that lifespans are extended, it will be because people are not suffering the infirmities of aging.
One of the basic functions of the human maintenance system is to maintain itself. The principles of natural selection predict that the human maintenance system will be completely effective throughout the natural lifespan of the human species, which appears to be indefinite. The Institution isn’t suggesting that eradicating FDS will make humans immortal. But it is saying that eradicating FDS is likely to eliminate any age-associated limitation on human longevity.
Finally, eradicating FDS would not just result in the eradication of the age-associated degenerative disorders. FDS encompasses all of the age-associated diminutions in functionality across all modalities. A corollary of the New Paradigm is that we are all genetically designed not just to survive, but to maintain optimal functionality, throughout our natural lifespans. There is no genetic reason why a 70-year old cannot function as well or better than he or she could as a 25-year old. If we can figure out how to neutralize the environmental agent that is disrupting our maintenance systems, but for those cosmetic changes that our maintenance systems are not designed to correct, we will have discovered the fountain of youth.
This essay is a summary of the concepts discussed in the two essays that comprise this section of the website. Set forth below are links that will take you to both of the more detailed essays.