As mentioned earlier, Dr. W. Donner Denckla thinks he has discovered a death clock in the pituitary gland of the brain. If he removes this gland from mice and supplies them with the pituitary’s growth hormone and thyroid hormone (which would normally be produced and released in response
to pituitary hormonal messages), the animals live a somewhat longer average life span than intact animals. They appear young in all respects, sometimes up to only a few hours before their deaths. Denckla has isolated a hormone from cattle pituitaries which depresses the response of young rats (in which the pituitary has been removed) to thyroxine, a thyroid hor-
mone. He calls this hormone DECO for Decreasing Oxygen Consumption hormone. Denckla believes that the pituitary is the source of a killing hormone, perhaps DECO itself, which turns down an animal’s responsiveness to other hormones, especially to thyroxine and growth hormones, leading to its death.
It is believed at least some aging clocks monitor mutations, then improving DNA repair and inhibiting mutations with antioxidants and such enzymes as superoxide dismutase and peroxidases should slow down such clocks. This is an area where much more research is required.
It is interesting to note that three of the methods which increase a species’ maximum life span—that is, which slow age clocks—involve reducing free radical damage and mutations. Antioxidants directly control undesired free radicals. Under- feeding reduces the free radical production rate. Hypothermia (lowering body temperature) also reduces free radical
production. While there are purely hormonal aging clocks, monitoring free radical mutation and other damage seems to be the modus operandi of at least some clocks involving growth and sex-hormone output and sperm and egg production. From an evolutionary point of view, aging clocks involving reproduction are expected to play an important part in nature’s “planned obsolescence” of our bodies. We, however, have our own plans
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