Re: If genetic science can slow down aging, can it also accelerate it?

What a wonderfully complex thought Corene! 

Aging is a very complex process hiding behind a simple definition.  Age is 
the number of years that have passed since ones birth.  But this is only 
useful since most people show particular symptoms of aging to a similar 
degree at about the same age.  I suspect that it is not the emperical, but 
the biological that interests you.  In order to increase clarity, I have 
chosen to refer to adults only and therefore ignore the developmental 
aspects of aging.

Biologically we can regard aging as a disease with symptoms that include 
wrinkled skin, lower metabolism, increased risk for other major diseases 
such as cancer and heart disease, and the eventual onset of dimentia.  
What other symptoms can you find?  How many of these symptoms vary based 
on the environment and lifestyle decisions?  Smoking is a very serious 
example of something that can accelerate aging in many aspects (although 
it certainly can not increase the number of years since birth!)

In every body, cells constantly die and are replaced.  However, the 
incredible machine can not currently sustain itself indefinately.  Every 
aging process I can think of has a biochemical explanation.  The elastic 
properties of skin are highly dependant on the collagen web produced and 
maintained by special cells (fibroblasts.)  As age increases, ones ability 
to replace damaged collagen diminishes and the collagen web begins to lose 
integrity.  The heart, immune system, and other organs are likewise of 
diminished capacity and have an increased time to accumulate problems.  
Cancer is more complicated, but is likewise explained by biochemistry.

Perhaps you have learned about teleomeres -- they are well compared to the 
rubber pieces at the ends of your shoelace that keep the lace from 
becoming frayed.  Teleomeres shorten with every cell division, and 
eventually the DNA in old-lineage cells  begins to unravel.  Teleomeres 
are certainly important in aging, but they are not the only players.  

Werner's syndrome is a recessive heritable disease that results in 
premature senility.  Symptoms include early graying and some hair loss, 
cataracts, skin keratinization, and early death -- apparently of old age.  
Werner's syndrome is caused by a mutation of a gene on chromosome 8 which 
appears to be a DNA helicase.  DNA helicases are involved in the repair, 
replication and expression of the genetic material.

It is a mutation that causes Werner's syndrome which results in premature 
old age.  It is currently possible to selectively mutate a gene at a 
single place and this technology is compatable with the cloning procedures 
used to create Dolly and other cloned animals.  So humans could be created 
to live shorter lives through the Werner mutation, but would still involve 
old-age.

What of the ethical view?

What of the religious view?

What of your view if now was two hundred years in the future and you were 
genetically modified to live a shorter life?

You mentioned support of the elderly.  If humans modified our own genes 
such that we lived much longer, it could only occur by inhibiting (or 
circumventing) some of the mechanisms through which we age.  Aging occurs 
on the biochemical level and we can only affect the whole by affecting the 
parts.  We can only affect the whole by affecting the parts!  The advances 
will likely come one step at a time.  Perhaps we will soon be able to 
modify the genome to allow our skin to maintain itself indefinetly.  This 
would probably not affect the average lifespan significantly, but it would 
certainly change my impression of aging.  It is interesting to note that 
people currently get collagen injections to appear younger.  How different 
is genetic engineering from surgical procedures?

For every solution, there exists new problems.  It is our decision which 
set of difficulties is least taxing.  If the new problems are worse, we 
can attempt to solve them and perhaps the new problems that arise will now 
be less taxing than the original set.  If not, science continues ...

Social order is another interesting concept.  I am sure you have many 
interesting thoughts and I am very sorry not to be able to discuss any 
more direct impacts of genomics on social order.  Here is an interesting 
question to add to the swirl:

Is there one way the world should be?


Werner's syndrome: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-
bin/SCIENCE96/gene?WRN