Sinclair was scheduled to discuss his ideas with Norman Swan, host of Radio Nationals Health Report, at Ageing is a Disease at Sydney Town Hall on April 4 as part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, which was cancelled last week.
David Sinclair says ageing fulfils every criteria for what medical textbooks define as a disease.Credit:Nic Walker
Sinclair says the coronavirus pandemic, which is causing a higher fatality rate among the elderly, gives urgency to his research into the ageing process. "Our research is aimed at delaying or reversing age-related diseases and providing the elderly with resilience," he says. "Other labs have shown in human clinical trials that immune responses in the elderly can be boosted by molecules that target ageing, such as low dose rapamycin."
But Sinclairs argument that ageing is a disease may cause some unease. He says ageing causes frailty, sickness and eventually death, fulfilling every criteria for what medical textbooks define as a disease. The only difference is that ageing happens to everyone, whereas cancer and heart disease do not. Were very good at preventing heart disease but we havent been successful at delaying ageing of the brain, he says. So weve ended up with the worst nightmare - were increasing lifespan but not healthspan as much.
"Its also not recognised that age is what causes those diseases in the first place," he adds.
Describing ageing as a disease also sounds to some ears like it is stigmatising older people. I find that people over 50 tend to get upset when you call ageing a disease, he says. But people under 50, particularly people in their 20s and 30s, they totally embrace this idea. They don't want to get sick. They think technology can solve everything.
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Sinclairs book Lifespan, subtitled Why We Age, and Why We Don't Have To, outlines his 25 years of research into ageing, which he likens to corrupted software.
Getting older amounts to a loss of what he calls epigenetic information. Essentially its the information that tells the cells how to read the genes in the right way and stay young, he says. In the same way that a genome is the computer, the epigenome is the software. And so I'm proposing that ageing is corrupted software.
Sinclair says his research has also revealed there is a back-up copy of our software. If its corrupted, weve figured out a way to reboot the cell and be young again.
In Lifespan, he describes experiments in which old mice have been given gene therapy that restores their eyesight to that of young mice. The idea is we still have all the information to be young again in our bodies if we can just flip the switch, he says.
Sinclairs effort to reboot cells is undergoing pre-clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of the procedure. Within the next three years, he aims to treat patients who have lost their vision as a result of glaucoma - a disease that can be controlled but cannot be cured.
Do I know if its going to work in people? he says. Of course not. Nobody knows until you do the clinical trials.
Sinclairs research into ageing is slowly gaining acceptance among scientists and medical professionals. British scientists Robert Faragher and Stuart Calimport said last year on academic website The Conversation that the World Health Organisations International Classification of Disease should be amended to classify ageing as a disease.
However, Sinclair says it is hard to change regulations and the habits of doctors who have been taught that ageing is inevitable and not something we can treat.
It takes radical thinking to overcome what youve taken for granted your whole life, he says.
Sinclair traces his interest in ageing to childhood and a conversation with his grandmother Vera. I remember very clearly that my grandmother told me everything is going to die, he says. The cat was going to die, she was going to die and my parents and I would.
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Sinclair describes his grandmother as a huge rebel who taught him to question dogma and authority. He recalls with pride how she was ejected from Bondi Beach in 1957 for wearing a bikini one year after she fled Hungary following the Soviet invasion. She taught me that humans can do evil and can do amazing good, he says. And she said: David that's what you should do with your life is leave the world better than you found it.
Sinclair says his aim is not to cheat death, but to allow older people to stay healthier for longer. There are plenty of people who look at what its like to be 100 and say Heaven forbid, I don't want to get old, he says. But thats missing the point, which is you could be 80 or 90 and still play tennis and hang out with your grandkids and be productive like my father is at 80.
Sinclair says preventing illness is the key to improving quality of life and reducing the burden on family and society. Its what we see in our animal studies, he says. They live longer because theyre healthy. Thats the only way I know to keep something living longer is to prevent them getting sick.
However, Sinclair cautions that his research will not deliver the magic bullet that allows people to eat, drink and be merry without consequence. If you live a healthy lifestyle and eat all the right foods are you going to live beyond 120? Probably not, he says. On the other hand, the average lifespan for humans used to be about 40 years. And weve used technology to improve our health - thats what we do as human beings."
Andrew Taylor is a Senior Reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.
Read more from the original source:
Flipping the switch on the ageing process - The Age
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