Volume 1

Long-range program and research needs in aging and related fields : hearings before the Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, Ninetieth Congress, first session Washington, D.C. December 5 and 6, 1967.

  • United States Senate Special Committee on Aging
Date:
1968-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Long-range program and research needs in aging and related fields : hearings before the Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, Ninetieth Congress, first session Washington, D.C. December 5 and 6, 1967. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    418/500 (page 408)
    determine the way in which natural selection influences the aging processes of species within the natural ecological settings. yy a8 28. The evaluation of variation in aging relating to genetic constitution. Since within all natural (including human) population there are large familial dif- ferences in the inheritance of length of life, the accumulation of such data and the elucidation of the genetic characters, involved and their inheritance should be encouraged. In humans, study of twins is particularly important. 39. The production and correlation of mathematical models in life tables. Exuisir BE. Reprint From Scrence, Aveust 4, 1967 DECLINE AND SENESCENCE: A FIELD FOR Basic RESEARCH Topics in the Biology of Aging. A symposium, San Diego, California, November 1965, sponsored by the Salk Institute, PETER L. Kroun, Ed. Interscience (Wiley), New York, 1966. 191 pp., illus. $9.75. Radiation and Aging. Proceedings of a colloquium, Semmering, Austria, June 1966. Parricta J. LInpop and G. A. Sacuer, Eds. Taylor and Francis, London, 1966. 472 pp., illus. $6.50. The subject of aging has emerged as a biological subdiscipline largely as a con- sequence of the energetic dedication of outstanding persons such as Fritz Verzar, Alex Comfort, Peter Medawar, Peter Krohn, George Sacher, Patricia Lindop, Howard Curtis, Marrott Sinex, Zh. A. Medvedev, James Birren, and the late Leo Szilard. Impetus was given to the attack on the basic problem about ten years ago by the Gatlinburg Conference on the Biology of Aging, under the leader- ship of a committee of the American Institute of Biological Sciences made up of Szilard, James Ebert, Bentley Glass, Henry Mahler, K. C. Atwood, and others. The two volumes here reviewed, containing the proceedings of two independent symposiums on aging, are therefore useful and timely, and provide—the first, particularly—a logical context for an appraisal of the progress made during this decade both in research and in gaining support for a continued energetic effort. The papers reflect remarkably well the major areas of progress, and the dis- cussions following the papers reflect equally well the growing sophistication and the common language and concepts that have evolved during this decade. The clearest advances have been in the evaluation of genetic damage as a major source of senescence, a thesis which fascinated Szilard, and which re- sulted in the stimulating stochastic model he presented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [45, 30 (1959)]. Significantly, the exper- imental testing of his and similar theories has been achieved largely under the sponsorship of the Atomic Energy Commission. Of particular note are the pioneering Studies of Sacher, Lesher, and Bres, of Casarret, and of Curtis in this country, and of Rothfels, Lindop, and Alexander in ‘Great Britain Studies reported in Radiation and Aging do credit to the AEC sponsorship. The papers by Curtis, by Bucher and Swaffield, and by Fry, Tyler, and Lesher are particularly valuable. As J. Maynard Smith points out in a succinct paper in the Salk symposium volume, present evidence rules against a aaah ia t role for som | i i : 7 pee BORE Hon & eae Pa alee ites biology as it Sinipitiges oa 3 : ; ented in the Salk volume, particularly in the papers of Hayflick and of Puck, Waldren, and Tyio, which deal wi f SgHT senescence of the limited potential for division peer with the relation to at eee : 4 é in culture. The report bi eee ore tolerance and aging, notably studies by Walford, tangential umenthal (of the VA) and of Makinodi lated to the elegant series of studies carried gpg pe ail ce this volume by Krohn, on transplantatiy are out in England, and reported in ently survive for at least six host lifetin spk gue atts lene oe rodents; and ovaries undergo loss of viable m ‘serial transplantations among of female mice, although the loss in ieee egss quite early in the life-span hospitality of the aging uterine Briroanieie y 1s also ascribable to decreased » €ven prior to cessation of ovula- tion. Evi i ; Cen a, seria ae pigments are relics of lysosomes ate ’ € as “ some apparently contradictory evidence, is, in aio oe easy acceptance despite a conjectural status, ’ reviewer's opinion, still in The keynotes of the Salk conf ; e eee éntations of Maynard Smiths rence are set by the incisive analytical pres- nd of Walford. Both implicitly and explicitly