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Interactive graphic: a human cell's ticking clock
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Noel Thomas Patton was 50 when he decided that he would not go gently into that good night. He was born in December, 1945, on the eve of the baby boom, and sees it as his birthright not to follow in the orthopedic footsteps of his father's generation — "when you sat in your rocking chair, played checkers, watched TV and then you died."
Mr. Patton, now 63, wants to keep his mind sharp and play tennis, ski and disco dance for at least another decade. "I do like discoing," he says.
90 year old Barbara Roberts puts groceries away at her home in Vancouver. Roberts lives independently in a small arts and craft house on the East Vancouver. (Lyle Stafford/Special to the Globe and Mail)
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He believes a long, robust life is entirely possible if you can keep all your parts running smoothly. Mr. Patton knows parts — mostly mechanical ones: blowers, motors, belts and blades. The American entrepreneur made his fortune in electric fans and heating supplies. But since selling that business in 1995, the same year he first "started to feel a little stiffness here and there," he has applied his acumen to body parts — specifically the human cell.
Mr. Patton believes that he has found a way to keep cells hustling well past their prime. For the past 18 months, he has been dosing himself with an extract of the astragalus plant, an ancient Chinese herb said to protect cells against the wear of time. He has also been selling the treatment — to the tune of $25,000 a year — and says many of his clients are doctors and scientists themselves.
There is not yet any real proof that it works, but if it does, it would be a big deal: Extend the lifespan of a healthy cell and, perhaps, you extend the span of a healthy life.
Through history, legions have hunted that prize in the waters of Babylon, in the beds of young virgins and in the fabled powers of monkey testicles. Walt Disney and baseball great Ted Williams hoped it would be found while they waited on ice. Ponce de Léon thought he'd find it bubbling up from the ground in Florida. And now Mr. Patton, a multimillionaire hungry for science to back up his hopes, has joined the age-old quest to extend the vigour of youth.
His timing couldn't be better. Once considered a fringe field littered with charlatans and quacks, anti-aging research has entered its prime. Respected scientists are pursuing regenerative medicine through stem cells, searching for clues to longevity in the genes of fruit flies, flat worms and really old men and women. Dozens of legitimate companies are developing anti-aging drugs. Bruce Ames, one of the world's most-cited researchers and a winner of the U.S. National Medal of Science, has launched a company called Juvenon.
None of it has yielded any proven clock-stopping treatments so far. But just as baby boomers brought the rise of disposable diapers, draft dodging, miniskirts, minivans and stock options, their march toward mortality is now making aging research a global priority.
In part, it's because scientists are aging themselves. But governments too are anxious about the burden of caring for a degenerating generation. The number of people aged 80 and older is projected to quadruple to almost 400 million worldwide by 2050. The research boom is "something of an apocalyptic response to the demographic realities," says Anne Martin-Matthews, scientific director of the Institute of Aging, part of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). "The goal is to identify the factors that will enhance the good health of the population so that we don't exhaust our health resources."
Aging research has gained such prominence that it has begun to spawn its own language — as "geroscience" strives to understand the "wellderly" and increase human "health span."
In Europe, a massive, five-year effort is under way to study the genes of nearly 2,700 siblings older than the age of 90 from 11 countries. The U.S. has a Well Elderly study to investigate the links between physical activity and a healthy aging population.
