Contentious terminology and complicated cartography of anti-aging medicine

Mykytyn, Courtney Everts

doi:10.1007/s10522-006-9016-z

Cited by 21 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…Kirkwood (1999) has stated that ''geneticists who tout their advances as heralding 200-year human life coming soon … are contemptible not only for their disregard of scientific veracity, but also for duping the public who pay for their work''. By contrast, de Grey (2004b) and Mykytyn (2006b) point to the importance of making predictions to obtain research funding.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Professional and personal attitudes of researchers in ageing towards life extension

2008

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It is often assumed that there is broad public support for strong life extension research (i.e. research aimed at the dramatic extension of human life beyond the current maximum), and that there would be a near universal interest in using any life extending technologies that this research may produce. In this paper we report the opinions of researchers in ageing on the controversial promise of life extension, and compare these views. This paper describes the professional attitudes, personal interest and concerns expressed by Australian and international researchers in ageing (n = 14) as expressed during semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Researchers held varying opinions about the possibility of significantly extending human life. Some saw a limit to the extension of human life, while others did not. Some felt that research into the fundamental ageing process was a priority; others did not. Researchers tended to weigh up the potential risks and benefits of life extension with most expressing a personal interest in life extension that was contingent on the technology providing a good quality of life. Some participants were not interested in the prospect of life extension for personal reasons, because they felt the potential risks outweighed the potential benefits, or because life extension raised issues of justice and equity.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Professional and personal attitudes of researchers in ageing towards life extension

2008

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“…What has been described as an 'anti-aging medical movement' arose in Europe and the US in the nineteen sixties and seventies, spearheaded by groups opposed to mainstream biogerontological and clinical medical conceptions of aging (Mykytyn 2006). The institutionalisation of anti-aging medicine during recent decades can be seen in the rise of academies and centres, along with a burgeoning anti-aging literature, new treatments, and specialist expertise.…”

Section: The Institutionalisation and Globalisation Of Anti-aging Medmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Search of Immortality: The Political Economy of Anti-aging Medicine

Petersen

Seear

2009

Medicine Studies

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Anti-aging medicine is characterised by significant 'hype', hope and promise. This article examines the conditions giving rise to and sustaining this field. It questions its key premises, highlights the politico-economic 'drivers' of its innovations, and identifies the key actor networks sustaining its practices. As the article argues, it is highly questionable whether the viability of anti-aging medicine can be sustained as a discrete field of practice in the longer term. The instability of this field stems from its reliance on a faulty epistemological premise: that aging is a disease requiring technological intervention. In addition, anti-aging medicine is dependent on a series of fragile links and destabilising tendencies that threaten its long-term future. As sweeping promises regarding the 'revolutionary' potential of anti-aging medicine are made, financial, industry, government and public support becomes ever more contingent upon those utopian promises being realised. For reasons we discuss, this may not be possible. The article concludes by exploring the future of anti-aging medicine, highlighting a number of potential alternative scenarios.

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“…The use of the term ''anti-aging'' has been challenged with some arguing that it links research with the charlatanry that is seen under the mantle of ''anti-aging'' (Arking et al 2003;de Grey et al 2002b;Gavrilov 2002; see also Mykytyn 2006a) and others suggesting that it smacks of ageism. Whether anti-aging should or should not be discussed publicly so early in its evolution has also sparked discussion (de Grey 2000(de Grey , 2004le Bourg 2000a, b).…”

Section: The Anti-aging Medicine Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anti-Aging is not Necessarily Anti-Death: Bioethics and the Front Lines of Practice

Mykytyn

2009

Medicine Studies

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Anti-aging medicine has emerged in the past two decades as both a medical practice and scientific objective largely aimed at intervening into the process of aging itself rather than its ''associated'' diseases. This has provoked a both excitement and concern in bioethical deliberations on the meaning and potential impact of an effective intervention. In this article, I examine the different ways in which bioethicists, other social scientists, and anti-aging proponents frame anti-aging goals, in particular, the construction of immortality as its implicit and explicit aim. This research is based upon over 9 years of anthropological, ethnographic interview-and observation-based research in the field and draws substantially from the US President's Council on Bioethics' deliberations on this topic as well as from interview data and other publications/discussion on anti-aging medicine. I argue that while the framework of life and death provide the primary structure for many bioethical and social science critiques of anti-aging medicine, many if not most anti-aging practitioners, researchers, and advocates employ the alternative structure of health and pain to orient their work. These divergent orientations of life/death and health/ pain beget competing conversations around antiaging medicine; including voices from the front lines of anti-aging practice complicate bioethical critiques and ultimately beg different questions. Positioning the painful, physiological decline of aging as the ultimate adversary rather than death challenges traditional models of biomedical intervention based on ''nature'' and ''disease'' constructions.

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Contentious terminology and complicated cartography of anti-aging medicine

Cited by 21 publications

References 19 publications

Professional and personal attitudes of researchers in ageing towards life extension

Professional and personal attitudes of researchers in ageing towards life extension

In Search of Immortality: The Political Economy of Anti-aging Medicine

Anti-Aging is not Necessarily Anti-Death: Bioethics and the Front Lines of Practice

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