Aging and the Immune System I

… just as the pigment of the hair is destroyed by phagocytes, so also the atrophy of other organs of the body, in old age, is very frequently due to the action of devouring cells which I have called macrophages. —Elie Metchnikoff, The Prolongation of Life (1908) Instead of preventing diseases only by protecting the […]

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How Aging Kills II

The production of slightly different versions of enzymes and hormones might also lead to autoimmune disease, since the immune system might identify some of these versions as foreign proteins and subsequently launch a self-destructive attack on the body’s own cells which produce them. Dr. W. Donner Denckla thinks that part of the death genes’ process […]

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Prolonging Life in the Laboratory; or, Why Animal Experiments Are Relevant to Humans

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. —Albert Einstein Most biological experiments […]

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