Mouse Farm

A reality check on“healthy aging.”  The real troubles - and opportunities - of a gero-nation go unheeded.The numbers are increasingly disturbing: By 2050, some 88 million Americans will be over 65, with more than 20 million over 85. That such huge demographic shifts portend a challenge to the medical system goes without saying. The traditional American response holds that such needs will be filled by an innovative business culture responsive to market demand.

“Is it schadenfreude, or is it something else?”It is a question Harvard professor David Sinclair asks himself a lot of late.No wonder.Just about everyone doing cell biology has something—and usually critical—to say of him these days. There are loudmouth bloggers calling fraud and normally circumspect colleagues spouting uncomfortable questions about his work.

Green jobs—great. But gray jobs, maybe an even better bet.If there is a single graphic that everyone concerned with the nation’s future should have tattooed on their eyeballs, my vote goes to this one:Here is its central message: Forty years from now, one out of four Americans will be 65 or older.Twenty million will be over 85.One million will be over 100.

There is a new article out in today’s Molecular System Biology, which has the media saying the typical baloney-filled things like “The Key to Aging Discovered,” “Breakthrough to Immortality,” and “Live Forever?”

For type 2 diabetics, the choices are invariably slim: take medications and hew to a strict diet, or don’t take medications and hew to an impossibly strict—and largely unpalatable—diet. Such are the current options for maintaining the strict control of blood sugar needed to fight off the worst effects of the disease and its almost inevitable consequences of hypertension and heart disease.

The burgeoning demographics of aging, which is transforming cites and suburbia alike, recently prompted me to attend the UCLA Conference on Technology and Aging, held at the lovely Skirball Center, cultural hub of LA’s older Jewish community. The following are unedited excerpts from my diary:9:00 am: Arrive, following hour on freeway. Write down number of parking lot space on back of hand. Will be accused of being 13-year-old girl.

I recently attended the International Developmental Biological Congress in sunny Edinburgh, Scotland. Here is my diary.Day OneSaturday, 8:15 AM: Arrive Edinburgh hotel, early. Wait for room in hotel bar.   Soccer, a hateful game, blares at 8:30 in the morning. Bourbon appropriate? Saturday, 5:15 PM: Take walking tour of city. Discover no one in Scotland speaks English.Day TwoSunday, 1:00 PM: Pick up press credentials.  Easy because no other sane journalists here.

Thirteen percent of pregnant women in the United States have no health insurance.The president, when not worrying about the gun nuts, wants to cover them.One would think these facts alone might encourage some sanity,­even unity, ­in the ever-childish debate about healthcare reform. It’s a natural for the family values cult. Ditto for the meshugga anti-abortion crowd. Why, you can even imagine those terrible death panelists advocating for mommy Obammy care­, even if what they really want is to ensure a steady stream of future Soylent Green.

With Big Pharma allegedly “cooperating” with President Obama’s health care reforms, and Congress wanting to limit drug advertising, might it pay to refresh our memories about how we got here in the first place? It's time for a quiz.   The first to get all answers correct - via posted response - will receive a free copy of my book, Generation Rx, and a free sample of Adderall (*).

Last week, scientists announced the interim results of one of modern physiology’s most closely watched experiments: the effects of caloric restriction on the lifespan of non-human primates. The report was maddeningly mixed.Caloric restriction seemed to reduce the incidence of several diseases, but when it came to mortality—a somewhat important factor when it comes  to longevity— the data were  statistically not significant. We still do not know if caloric restriction works in primates, which, of course, we are.

The president wants to transform healthcare with new laws and new technology, but once upon a time, a moral bond ruled between patient and physician.Recently, I experienced something so rare in American medicine that it often catches people up short when I relate the story. A doctor actually apologized to me. Not only that, but he admitted that he caused harm, hurt feelings and inconvenience.