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oapen-20.500.12657-494252021-06-08T01:02:28Z Chapter 2 Aging Janac, Sarah Clarke, Brian Gems, David aging; disease bic Book Industry Communication::M Medicine::MB Medicine: general issues::MBG Medical equipment & techniques::MBGR Medical research According to medical tradition, aging coincides with illnesses such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and cardiovascular disease, yet is itself a ‘normal’, ‘natural’ and non-pathological process. From this perspective, anti-aging drugs are more akin to cosmetics and mind-altering drugs than to treatments in the medical sense. Yet, arguably, this traditional view of aging is incorrect. Senescence manifests as a broad spectrum of deteriorative changes, leading to debilitating and ultimately fatal pathologies. It makes little sense to speak of healthy or normal senescence: the entire process is characterized by pathology. Anti-aging drugs as a preventative approach to delay senescence fall very much within the medical remit. In this chapter we ask: Do doctors really think that aging is not a disease? And if so, why do they think this? To address the latter, we ask: What are medical students taught about the relationship between aging and disease? To this end, we analyze the contents of 14 widely used, standard textbooks of general medicine. The results suggest a general neglect of the question of what aging is, unease about the somewhat arbitrary classification of different manifestations of senescence as normal or pathological, and the absence of any rationalization of the concept of normal aging. Our findings findings findings suggest that medicine remains in the dark about aging. 2021-06-07T12:10:36Z 2021-06-07T12:10:36Z 2017 chapter 9781782626602 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/49425 eng application/pdf Attribution 4.0 International Bookshelf_NBK561517.pdf Royal Society of Chemistry Anti-aging Drugs 8be1c3e6-3dde-40b7-be3b-df25b7061828 b142cc3e-32a9-4a96-b9ba-9dd7715ca927 d859fbd3-d884-4090-a0ec-baf821c9abfd 9781782626602 Wellcome 19 Cambridge Wellcome Trust Wellcome open access
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According to medical tradition, aging coincides with illnesses such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and cardiovascular disease, yet is itself a ‘normal’, ‘natural’ and non-pathological process. From this perspective, anti-aging drugs are more akin to cosmetics and mind-altering drugs than to treatments in the medical sense. Yet, arguably, this traditional view of aging is incorrect. Senescence manifests as a broad spectrum of deteriorative changes, leading to debilitating and ultimately fatal pathologies. It makes little sense to speak of healthy or normal senescence: the entire process is characterized by pathology. Anti-aging drugs as a preventative approach to delay senescence fall very much within the medical remit. In this chapter we ask: Do doctors really think that aging is not a disease? And if so, why do they think this? To address the latter, we ask: What are medical students taught about the relationship between aging and disease? To this end, we analyze the contents of 14 widely used, standard textbooks of general medicine. The results suggest a general neglect of the question of what aging is, unease about the somewhat arbitrary classification of different manifestations of senescence as normal or pathological, and the absence of any rationalization of the concept of normal aging. Our findings findings findings suggest that medicine remains in the dark about aging.
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