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Einstein
said something to the effect that "If we had all the answers,
we wouldn’t call what we  do research, would we?" So we don’t have all
the answers yet, but researchers are chipping away at what
we don’t know about aging.
Three recent findings may portend finding that SF fairly soon.
The work on telomeres – the end sections of our chromosomes
that get shorter each time a cell divides -- by Drs. Calvin
Harley of the Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, CA, and Jerry
Shay of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
in Dallas, TX, is exciting. They have found that a product
called telomerase can lengthen the telomeres, thus
allowing a cell to divide more than the usual 50 times.
Dr. David Snowdon, from the University of Kentucky,
directs the Nun Study at a convent in Mankato, MN.
He has shown that the memory loss and dementia so feared  among people with Alzheimer’s disease may not be due to the
Alzheimer’s alone, but to tiny strokes, which may be
preventable by something as simple as taking an aspirin a
day. And, in an article in Nature, Ronald L.
Davis and his associates at the Huffington Center on Aging
in Houston, have just cloned a gene they named Volado.
This gene may play an important role in the way we learn,
especially in preventing short-term memory loss, which is
a common complaint expressed by older people and their caregivers.
These findings augur well for 1999 being a banner year for
aging research, which is altogether fitting as the United
Nations has designated 1999 as the International Year of
Older Persons.
Chapter
1: The Enigma of Aging
Chapter
2: Processes of Aging
Chapter
3: Social & Psychological Aspects of Aging
Chapter
4: Research
Summary
References
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