Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T12:49:42.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Science and imagery in the ‘war on old age’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2007

JOHN A. VINCENT
JOHN A. VINCENT*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Exeter, UK.
*
Address for correspondence: John Vincent, Department of Sociology, Amory Building, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RU, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Several professional groups present themselves as ‘waging war’ on old age. They construct old age as a naturalised, self-evidently negative, biological phenomenon, which must be attacked and defeated. These groups make different claims to technical expertise and their ability to control natural phenomena, and use different weapons to defeat ageing. There are those who focus on cosmetic interventions, that is, the control of the body and the removal or masking of the signs of ageing. There are those who equate old age with ill-health and identify themselves as warriors in a battle with disease, and others whose objective is to understand the fundamental intra-cellular processes of ageing and what controls the human life span, and then to extend its limits. A fourth group aims to make human immortality possible. Examination of the language and symbolic practices of these groups reveals that they share a dominant cultural view that devalues old age and older people. The use of military metaphors to describe the importance and difficulties of their task is most prolific among the first and fourth of these groups. The second and third groups disguise a contradiction in their aim of understanding the diseases and disorders of old age by advocating the goal of an extended ‘healthy life span’, which avoids having to confront the moral dilemmas of extending the lifespan for its own sake.

Keywords

anti-ageingbiogerontologycosmeticshealthy ageingimmortalitylifespanmilitary metaphorssenescence
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 27 , Issue 6 , November 2007 , pp. 941 - 961
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achenbaum, W. A. 1978. Old Age in a New Land: The American Experience since 1790. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alcor Inc. 2005. Exploring Life Extension. DVD produced and distributed by the Immortality Institute for Infinite Lifespans, North Bethesda, Maryland.Google Scholar
Alliance or Aging Research 2004. Q&A with Dr Aubrey de Grey. Webzine Living Longer and Loving it! Issue 19, Winter 2004. Available online at http://www.agingresearch.org/living_longer/winter_04/index.cfm/ [Accessed 13 April 2006].Google Scholar
Arking, D., Krebsova, A., Macek, M. Sr., Macek, M. Jr, Arking, A., Saira Mian, I., Fried, L., Hamosh, A., Dey, S., McIntosh, I. and Dietz, H. 2002. Association of human aging with a functional variant of klotho. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 2, 856–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benecke, M. 2002. The Dream of Eternal Life: Biomedicine, Aging, and Immortality. (Translator R. Rubenstein), Columbia University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Binstock, R. H. 2003. The war on ‘anti-aging medicine’. The Gerontologist, 43, 1, 4–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Binstock, R. H. 2004. Anti-aging medicine and research: a realm of conflict and profound societal implications. Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, 59, B523–33.Google ScholarPubMed
Butler, R. N., Warner, H. R., Williams, T. F., Austad, S. N., Brody, J. A., Campisi, J., Cerami, A., Cohen, G., Cristofalo, V. J., Drachman, D. A., Finch, C. E., Fridovich, I., Harley, C. B., Havlik, R. J., Martin, G. M., Miller, R. A., Olshansky, S. J., Pereira-Smith, O. M., Smith, J. R., Sprott, R. L., West, M. D., Wilmoth, J. R. and Wright, W. E. 2004. The aging factor in health and disease: the promise of basic research on aging. Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, 16, 2, 104–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cole, T. R. 1992. The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Comfort, A. 1979. The Biology of Senescence. Third edition, Elsevier, New York.Google Scholar
Conn, H. W. 1903. The Story of the Living Machine: A Review of the Conclusions of Modern Biology in Regard to the Mechanism which Controls the Phenomena of Living Activity. Appleton, New York. Available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16487/16487-h/16487-h.htm#THE_STORY_OF_THE_LIVING_MACHINE [Accessed 16 April 2007].Google Scholar
de Grey, A. 2003. The foreseeability of real anti-aging medicine: focusing the debate. Experimental Gerontology, 38, 9, 927–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Grey, A. 2004a. Biogerontologists' duty to discuss timescales publicly. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1019, 542–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Grey, A. 2004b. The war on aging. In Klein, B. J. (ed.) The Scientific Conquest of Death: Essays on Infinite Lifespans. LibrosEnRed, Buenos Areas. Available online at http://www.imminst.org/SCOD.pdf [Accessed 5 July 2007].Google Scholar
de Grey, A. D. N. J., Ames, B. N., Andersen, J. K., Bartke, A., Campisi, J., Heward, C. B., McCarter, R. J. M. and Stock, G. 2002. Time to talk SENS: critiquing the immutability of human aging. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 959, 452–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duerden Comeau, T. and Kemp, C. L. 2007. Intersections of age and masculinities in the information technology industry. Ageing & Society, 27, 2, 215–32.Google Scholar
Doyle, R. 1997. On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1973. The Birth of the Clinic. (Translator A. M. Sheridan), Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, F. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.Google Scholar
Gerontological Research Group 2002. A Brief Word about Charlatans. Gerontological Research Group, Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC and Atlanta. Available online at http://www.grg.org/charter/charlata.html [Accessed 14 December 2002].Google Scholar
Hall, S. 2003. Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Haseltine, W. 2001. The emergence of regenerative medicine: a new field and a new society. Journal of Regenerative Medicine, 2, 4, 17–23.Google Scholar
Hopkin, K. 1999. Making Methuselah. In Your Bionic Future, Scientific American, special edition, October 1999, 32–7. Reprinted 2004, Scientific American, 14, 3, 12–7 (special edition).Google Scholar
Immortality Institute 2002. Constitution and Bylaws. Immortality Institute, San Francisco, California. Available online at http://imminst.org/about/constitution.php#art2 [Accessed 4 July 2007].Google Scholar
Katz, S. 1996. Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.Google Scholar
Katz, S. 2005. Cultural Aging: Life Course, Lifestyle, and Senior Worlds. Broadview, Toronto.Google Scholar
Kenyon, G. M., Birren, J. E. and Schroots, J. J. F. (eds) 1991. Metaphors of Aging in Science and the Humanities. Springer Publishing Company, New York.Google Scholar
Kirkwood, T. 1999. Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Ageing. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.Google Scholar
Lupton, D. 1994. Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies. Sage, London.Google Scholar
Lupton, D. 2000. The social construction of medicine and the body. In Albrecht, G. L., Fitzpatrick, R. and Scrimshaw, S. (eds) Handbook of Social Studies in Health and Medicine. Sage, London, 50–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magalhaes, J. P. 2003. Winning the war against aging. Futurist, 37, 2, 48–50.Google Scholar
Magalhaes, J. P. 2006. A Vision for Senescence. Senescence.info, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Available online at http://www.senescence.info/vision.html [Accessed 3 April 2007].Google Scholar
Moody, H. 2002. Who's afraid of life extension? Generations, 25, 4, 33–7.Google Scholar
Moody, H. and Hayflick, L. 2003. Has Anyone Ever Died of Old Age? Occasional Paper, International Longevity Centre – USA, New York.Google Scholar
Mykytyn, C. E. 2006. Anti-aging medicine: a patient/practitioner movement to redefine aging. Social Science and Medicine, 62, 3, 643–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nuland, S. 2005. Do you want to live forever? Aubrey de Grey thinks he knows how to defeat aging. He's brilliant, but is he nuts? Technological Review, 108, 2, 37–45. Available online at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/02/issue/feature_aging.asp?trk=nl [Accessed 14 February 2005].Google Scholar
Oberg, P. 2003. Images versus experience of the aging body. In Fairclough, C. A. (ed.) Aging Bodies: Images and Everyday Experience. AltaMira, Oxford, 78–102.Google Scholar
Olshansky, S. J. and Carnes, B. A. 2001. The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging. Norton, New York.Google Scholar
Olshansky, S. J., Hayflick, L. and Carnes, B. A. 2002a. Position statement on human aging. Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, 57, 8, B292–7.Google ScholarPubMed
Olshansky, S. J., Hayflick, L. and Carnes, B. A. 2002b. No truth to the fountain of youth. Scientific American, 286, 92–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olshansky, S. J., Hayflick, L. and Perls, L. 2004. Anti-aging medicine: the hype and the reality – Part I. Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, 59A, 6, B513–4.Google Scholar
Post, S. G. and Binstock, R. H. (eds) 2004. The Fountain of Youth: Cultural, Scientific, and Ethical Perspectives on a Biomedical Goal. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
President's Council on Bioethics 2003. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. President's Council on Bioethics, Washington DC. Available online at http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/beyondtherapy/index.html [Accessed 5 July 2007].Google Scholar
Reason 2002. Defining Anti-aging: The Longevity Meme. Organisation website at http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/what_is_anti-aging.cfm [Accessed 13 November 2006].Google Scholar
Rennie, J. (ed.)2004. The Science of Staying Young. Scientific American, special edition 14. Available online at http://www.sciam.com/special/toc.cfm?issueid=23&sc=I100390 [Accessed 9 July 2007].Google Scholar
Rousseau, J.-J. 1755. A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Liberty Fund, Washington DC. Available on line at http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0350 [Accessed 9 July 2007].Google Scholar
Rummel, F. 2007. Report from Trenches of War on Aging. Internet Blog at http://anti-ageing.us/2005/09/frank-rummel-report-from-trenches-of.html [Accessed 9 July 2007].Google Scholar
Shilling, C. 1993. The Body and Social Theory. Sage, London.Google Scholar
Shostak, S. 2002. Becoming Immortal: Combining Cloning and Stem-cell Therapy. State University of New York Press, Albany, New York.Google Scholar
Taubes, G. 2000. The battle against aging/the famine of youth. In Stix, G. (ed.) The Quest to Beat Aging. Scientific American, special edition, 11, 2, 44–9. Available on line at http://www.princeton.edu/~paideia/aging.pdf [Accessed 17 April 2007].Google Scholar
Thane, P. 2000. Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Van Tassel, D. and Stearns, P. N. 1986. Old Age in a Bureaucratic Society: The Elderly, the Experts, and the State in American History. Greenwood, Westport, Connecticut.Google Scholar
Vincent, J. A. 2003. What is at stake in the ‘war’ on anti-ageing medicine? Ageing & Society, 23, 4, 675–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vincent, J. A. 2006a. Ageing contested: anti-ageing science and the cultural construction of old age. Sociology, 40, 4, 681–98.Google Scholar
Vincent, J. A. 2006b. The language and symbolism of death and old age in bio-gerontology. Paper presented to 2006 Conference of the British Society of Gerontology, The Ageing Jigsaw: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding Old Age, 7–9 September, University of Bangor, Bangor, Gwynnedd, Wales.Google Scholar
Warner, H., Anderson, J., Austad, S., Bergamini, E., Bredesen, D., Butler, R., Carnes, B. A., Clark, B. F. C., Cristofalo, V., Faulkner, J., Guarente, L., Harrison, D. E., Kirkwood, T., Lithgow, G., Martin, G., Masoro, E., Melov, S., Miller, R. A., Olshansky, S. J., Partridge, L., Pereira-Smith, O., Perls, T., Richardson, A., Smith, J., von Zglinicki, T., Wang, E., Wei, J. Y. and Williams, F. T. 2005. Science fact and the SENS agenda: what can we reasonably expect from ageing research? EMBO Reports (European Molecular Biology Organization, Heidelberg, Germany), 6, 11, 1006–8.Google Scholar
Yesavage, J. A., Mumenthaler, M. S., Taylor, J. L., Friedman, L., O'Hara, R., Sheikh, J., Tinklenberg, J. and Whitehouse, P. J. 2002. Donepezil and flight simulator performance: effects on retention of complex skills. Neurology, 59, 1, 123–5.Google Scholar