Cheating Time: Science, Sex, and Aging - Hardcover

Gosden, Roger G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0716730596 ISBN 13: 9780716730590

Publisher: W H Freeman & Co, 1996

Synopsis

The quest to prolong our youth has spurred numerous quack remedies and fraudulent claims, but it has also inspired serious scientific investigation, yielding important clues about the aging process and what might realistically be done to arrest it.
In Cheating Time, the acclaimed researcher Roger Gosden tells us what scientists have learned so far, particularly in the investigation of hormones and the paramount role they play in the aging process. As we discover, there may be a tradeoff between reproductive capacity and longevity; the hormones that govern our reproductive lives can turn on us in later years, when, paradoxically, we may suffer from a drop in hormone levels or from the cumulative effects of overexposure to these same hormones.
Drawing on his medical expertise, historical knowledge, and good humor, Gosden shares amusing anecdotes as he discusses fascinating theories and current research efforts that are giving us some good reasons to be optimistic. The trajectory of human life need not be one of inexorable decay and decline. While we cannot hope to attain eternal youth, we are in the process of discovering how to live longer lives in good health, how to extend our biological clocks a bit further, and how to cheat time.

About this title

About the Author

Roger Gosden is currently Professor of Reproductive Biology at the University of Leeds.

Reviews

Reading Gosden will refresh as well as enlighten those turned off by current media hype about "Forever Young" research and give them a new respect for the ways of nature and modern gerontology.

The bottom line still seems to be, ``You can't fool mother nature.'' But, as this fascinating book demonstrates, there have been plenty of attempts to do just that. Indeed, Gosden's report on past and present attempts to understand and delay aging is full of delicious accounts of the benighted scientists and clever charlatans who have purveyed one rejuvenating therapy after another--from injections, monkey gland operations, and urine-drinking to today's hormone cocktails and anticipated gene therapy. There is much here for students of medical fads and fallacies. Before focusing on spurious elixirs, Gosden (Reproductive Biology/Univ. of Leeds, England) provides a feast of facts and theories that have colored (and sometimes tainted) gerontology. Here the reader will learn about the wide variation in aging across species, the association of sex and death in some, and the many theories (from high basal metabolism rates to the presence of free radicals in cells) spun to explain senescence in humans. Gosden speculates on how aging may have come about as a side effect of natural selection and evolution, possibly as a result of multipurpose (pleiotropic) genes that may confer an advantage in youth but prove detrimental in age. Interestingly, Gosden's survey of aging among a number of species seems to suggest that being relatively large, having a big brain, and possessing the ability to fly all favor longevity! While Gosden provides evidence that estrogen replacement therapy may well protect against heart disease and osteoporosis in women, and opines that testosterone may find its way into the male pharmacopeia, there are enough caveats against assuming that an easy solution to aging is at hand. The net result of this prodigious assemblage of facts and fancy is to humble the reader: There's much we still don't know about aging. It's reassuring to discover from Gosden's lively overview of research that there are some able scientists out there who are giving gerontology a good name. (12 illustrations) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: W H Freeman & Co
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0716730596
• ISBN 13: 9780716730590
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 427