Report from the front lines

Broader Perspective has a review of this year's conference of the American Aging Association:

That aging is understandable and solvable, not necessarily immediately but ultimately, was one topic not seeing a lot of opposition.....Aging is a key contemporary concern, on the order of climate change, as all countries worldwide have populations increasingly stratified towards aging. Aging is not just a medical condition but a key challenge to be resolved for advanced socie-ties to be successful in the long-term. Productivity, healthcare costs and happiness and comfort could all be improved with advances in the remedy of aging. Aging has advanced from a nebulous concept to concrete mechanisms that can be under-stood and managed.

She also provides an impressive roundup of research from the conference, with links. The American Aging Association, founded in 1970, lists its first objective as "To promote biomedical aging studies directed towards increasing the functional life span of humans with one goal being to slow the aging process." No area of human endeavor is more important than the struggle to defeat the most terrible disease of all.