
David Stipp's new book The Youth Pill traces this meteoritic rise and other events in the history of antiaging research, detailing how the science and personalities came together at just the right moment to create the successful company. In the mid to late 1990s, Stipp explains, what had been considered a fringe field began evolving into a focused attempt to uncover the biochemistry of aging. Scientists including Cynthia Kenyon at the University of California, San Francisco, and Leonard Guarente at MIT began to find genes linked to longevity in lower organisms such as yeast and worms, prompting a conceptual shift in our understanding of aging. Rather than inevitable decay, their work suggested, aging was a genetically controlled process--and thus one that could be manipulated.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Technology Review: The Argument over Aging
Author: Karen Weintraub