Originally Posted by
Jonathon Sullivan
The link to the Harvard page mostly shows us (unpublished, non-peer-reviewed) work focused on slowing, not reversing senescence. The big exception is the ICE mouse, which is a model of aging based on epigenetic changes, which they liken to scratches on a CD. So they have the scratched CD model of epigenetic aging, sure. An important initial step. And they say they are "looking for the polish."
Good luck to them. They'll need it. I have no doubt that molecular and mitochondrial medicine can slow aging processes, perhaps quite dramatically, and turn us all into Methuselah ("where are we gonna park?")*, but on the actual reversal of aging you have to color me skeptical. Per QM, information is never destroyed, but it can be effectively lost, to the extent that the work and increase in entropy involved in restoring a disordered information-rich system makes such restoration by information retrieval physically impossible. And this all assumes that the restoration of a hard drive will reverse all the practical consequences of original failure--and I think we all know that is not the case. The Arrow of Time is a real bastard.
But hey. If we are going to conquer the Second Law--which I doubt--I wish those Harvard guys would hurry up about it. I'm gonna be 62, for fuck's sake.
*Don Henley, "Building the Perfect Beast."