ABSTRACT
The topic of combating aging is an emotive one, on which it seems that everybody has an opinion. By and large, although there is no objection to modest postponement of age-related ill-health, the prospect of more dramatic intervention elicits a wide variety of negative reactions, often arrived at with undue haste. Those who concern themselves with the religious and philosophical implications of such a prospect and its relationship to traditional religious claims are a key group of opinionformers, whose pronouncements are likely to influence many in the wider world. It is thus essential that such scholars address these issues in the context of an accurate, albeit necessarily lay, understanding of the biomedical realities of aging – today’s reality, that of the near future, and the range of possibilities for the longer term. To that end, in this introductory essay I outline what is and is not known about the biology of aging and its biomedical malleability, with emphasis on certain points that non-biologists are particularly prone to misunderstand.
