Programmed for survival

PEOPLE are living longer than at any time in history. New scientific understanding means that we can never again think of ageing as we have in the past. We are at the end of the old concept of 'old age.'

This is the view of Professor Tom Kirkwood, a world authority on ageing, whose new book "The End of Age" is out today.

The Professor, now at Newcastle University, was formerly at Manchester University. Much of his research was done in this part of the country.

He believes that increases in life expectancy are shaking the structure of societies around the world and profoundly altering our perceptions of life and death. Life expectancy for a man is 75 and for a woman, 80, and the over 85s make up the fastest growing population group.

Professor Kirkwood is not a doom and gloom merchant. He sees the progress being made on age issues as a triumph. He writes with a positive, hopeful, practical approach that leaves the reader in a certain amount of awe at the direction research is taking and at the same time, with an inspired confidence that the future is looking bright.

"We are not programmed to die", states the Professor. "Ageing is neither inevitable nor necessary. The more we learn about how we age, the more we come to realise that we are programmed for survival."

As a member of the Human Genome Project, Professor Kirkwood is able to explain the implications of the cracking of the human genome code, which happened last year.

He gives us an understanding of what our new knowledge of DNA now means. "We can expect tens or even hundreds of genes to be involved in the networks of maintenance systems that keep us alive. Working them out is going to require the very newest gene technolgies and some highly sophisticated computation," he says.

Human genome research is expected to tell us how the machinery of human ageing works. Science is on track to discover the deep secrets of ageing.

In the meantime, he reminds us of the importance of what we already know, and the need for making the right choices. There is much that we can do to help ourselves. Ageing comes partly from an accumulation of faults in cells and organs - something the Professor himself discovered as part of his research. Some cells are permanent, and pass on genes to the next generation, and others are disposable, and are damaged with age. We can alter the ageing of our bodies by how well, or badly, we take care of them.

Professor Kirkwood re-iterates that we are what we eat, quite literally. "The material that forms the flesh and bones of our bodies is material that we have consumed," he says.

A simple way of looking at this is to see that excess sugar, saturated fats, smoking and toxins create damage. Fruit, vegetables, fish and olive oil do a repair job. The need is for the gap between damage and repair to be narrowed.

There is evidence that exercise can retard or even reverse some of the molecular deterioration that accumulates with age. "Sedendary lifestyles are unnatural and we adopt them at our peril", he says. Keeping the brain active also comes in for praise.

Professor Kirkwood has lectured at Berryhill Retirement Village, on which Warrington's Ryfield village is based, and he states that Berryhill does a great deal to preserve the dynamic range of health.

A quarter of what determines the length of our lives comes from genes but the other three quarters includes the choices we make about how we treat our bodies. Lifestyle has a great impact.

How we live will become increasingly important as lifespan extends. "We need to ask hard questions", says Professor Kirkwood.

Should we we-think the age of retirement?

Should we have the internet in every home?

How should we weigh the cost of research and treatment for Alzheimer's disease against, say, the costs of research and treatment for infertility?

"We know that we will all die one day, but this day is being pushed back further and further. Our longer lives are carrying us into new territory for which we need to plan and prepare ourselves. We cannot afford complacency. If we ignore the implications of the longevity revolution and fail to plan for the radically different world that will soon surround us, crisis will be upon us and our bright dreams of a brave old world will surely fade and die," says the Professor.

Part of the book features Reith Lectures, as heard on Radio 4.

"The End of Age" is published by Profile Books, price £6 99p. To order a copy for the special price of £5 99p, including postage and packing, call the Profile Direct bookshop on 020 8324 5518.