Tom Kirkwood Professor of Biological Gerontology University of Manchester's Books

Time of Our Lives : The Science of Human Aging

The Science of Human Aging

By: Tom Kirkwood Professor of Biological Gerontology University of Manchester

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Time of Our Lives : The Science of Human Aging

The Science of Human Aging

By: Tom Kirkwood Professor of Biological Gerontology University of Manchester

As recent articles about "the graying of America" suggest, a demographic revolution is well underway. The number of people living into extreme old age is increasing dramatically. By the year 2050 one in five of the world's population, including the developing countries, will be 65 or older, a fact which presages profound medical, biological, philosophical, and political changes in the coming century. In Time of Our Lives, Tom Kirkwood unfolds some of the deepest mysteries of medical science while demolishing some of the most persistent misconceptions. He overturns the almost universally held belief that aging is either necessary or inevitable--it isn't--and debunks the idea that there exists a "death gene" that evolved to inhibit population growth. Instead, Kirkwood shows that we age because our genes, evolving at a time when life was "nasty, brutish, and short," placed little priority on the long-term maintenance of our bodies. With such knowledge, along with new insights from genome research, we can devise ways to target the root causes of aging and of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and osteoporosis. Expanding his thesis of the "disposable soma," developed over twenty years of research, Kirkwood makes sense of the evolution of aging, explains how aging occurs, and answers fundamental questions like why women live longer than men. He even considers the possibility that human beings will someday have greatly extended life spans or even be free from senescence altogether. Beautifully written by one of the world's pioneering researchers into the science of aging, Time of Our Lives is a clear, original and, above all, inspiring investigation of a process all of us experience but few of us understand.

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Page Count

290

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

019802939X

ISBN 13

9780198029397

Time of Our Lives

The Science of Human Aging

By: Tom Kirkwood

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Time of Our Lives

The Science of Human Aging

By: Tom Kirkwood

By the year 2050 one in five of the world's population will be 65 or older, a fact which presages profound medical, biological, philosophical, and political changes in the coming century. In Time of Our Lives, Tom Kirkwood draws on more than twenty years of research to make sense of the evolution of aging, to explain how aging occurs, and to answer fundamental questions like why women live longer than men. He shows that we age because our genes, evolving at a time when life was "nasty, brutish, and short," placed little priority on the long-term maintenance of our bodies. With such knowledge, along with new insights from genome research, we can devise ways to target the root causes of aging and of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and osteoporosis. He even considers the possibility that human beings will someday have greatly extended life spans or even be free from senescence altogether. Beautifully written by one of the world's pioneering researchers into the science of aging, Time of Our Lives is a clear, original and, above all, inspiring investigation of a process all of us experience but few of us understand.

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Page Count

288

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195350006

ISBN 13

9780195350005

Time of Our Lives

The Science of Human Ageing

By: Tom Kirkwood

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Time of Our Lives

The Science of Human Ageing

By: Tom Kirkwood

In this text, Thomas Kirkwood examines closely why we age, how human ageing compares to that of other animal species, what the menopause is for, why our memories fail as we get older and whether cancer is inevitable. Looking at the subject from a variety of perspectives, the book also projects us hundreds of years into a future where most of the symptoms of ageing have been conquered - and shows us what society could be like.

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Page Count

277

Published Date

ISBN 10

0753809206

ISBN 13

9780753809204

Book's by Tom Kirkwood Professor of Biological Gerontology University of Manchester

Time of Our Lives : The Science of Human Aging

Time of Our Lives : The Science of Human Aging

Time of Our Lives

Time of Our Lives

Time of Our Lives

Time of Our Lives

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