Evolvability and programmed aging: a reply to de Grey.

The ethical status of efforts to postpone aging: a reply to Hurlbut.

Rationale for Complex Programmed Life Span Regulation in Mammals

Arguments are presented suggesting that aging in mammals is the result of a complex life span regulation system that evolved because life span limitation produces direct evolutionary benefit. This concept, if valid and pursued, could have a significant effect on efforts to combat aging processes by providing additional targets for potential intervention. A complex life span regulation system im...

Programmed life span in the context of evolvability.

Population turnover is necessary for progressive evolution. In the context of a niche with fixed carrying capacity, aging contributes to the rate of population turnover. Theoretically, a population in which death is programmed on a fixed schedule can evolve more rapidly than one in which population turnover is left to a random death rate. Could aging evolve on this basis? Quantitative realizati...

Aging, Evolvability, and the Individual Benefit Requirement

There is a class of theories of aging (variously termed adaptive aging, aging by design, aging selected for its own sake, or programmed death theories) that hold that an organism design that limits life span conveys benefits and was selected specifically because it limits life span. These theories have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity because of the discovery of genes that promote aging in va...

The Case for Programmed Mammal Aging

Are the deteriorative processes associated with mammal aging purposely and actively programmed by the organism’s design or are they merely a passive result of the organism’s inability to better resist damage from fundamental deteriorative processes? This question has now persisted for 150 years. Historically, observational evidence generally favors active aging. However, the nature of the evolu...