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永葆青春的秘诀Is there a secret to eternal youth?

作者:stephen    文章来源:方向标英语网    点击数:    更新时间:2009-9-9 【我来说两句

我们每个人都想永远年轻,保持青春的活力,那么有什么方法可以让我们永葆青春,活力四射呢?

In the past decade, the concept of not growing old has crept from the pages of fiction into the mission statements of some of the best research institutions in the world. The branding is different — they speak of “regenerative medicine” or “tissue engineering” or “biogerontology” rather than “the elixir of youth” — but the basic idea is the same: decrepitude is not inevitable; science will help us to stop the rot.

By the reckoning of some scientists, there is a real-life Dorian Gray among us. That person may not be a beautiful young man with a mysterious portrait in the attic: in Oscar Wilde’s dark tale, a new film of which comes out tomorrow, the portrait ages and withers in Dorian’s stead, allowing him to remain perpetually handsome despite a life of debauchery. Rather, it is someone who, through a mixture of good genes, healthy lifestyle and timely medical interventions, will give every illusion of staying young throughout an extraordinarily long life.


Dorian Gray achieved eternal youth; now science is moving towards the same goal. Will some people today live to 1,000?

While in the developed world every succeeding generation has enjoyed a longer life expectancy than the one before it — thanks primarily to modern sanitation, nutrition, disease control and a virtual end to infant mortality, which has stretched life expectancy from under 50 years to more than 75 in the past century — it is only this generation that has really dared to think of ageing as a “disease” that requires curing.

So, while the middle-aged of today can look forward to notching up about 80 or 90 years, some biologists have speculated that our children will routinely surpass the 120-year mark with their faculties intact. And although a double century still seems optimistic, some, such as Professor Steve Austad, of the University of Texas, think that the first person destined to reach 150 is already alive (in 2000 Austad made a $150 bet with Professor Jay Olshansky that by the year 2150 someone will have reached 150 years old in good mental shape; Professor Olshansky, at the University of Illinois, bet on 130). Austad’s optimism is based mostly on the incremental advances in life expectancy that accrue as society advances.

But the anti-ageing dream is further fuelled by the recent phenomenal advances in biology and biotechnology, which are giving us an insight into the processes that grind down our bodies and providing clues to how to combat them.

Ageing results from wear and tear on our cells; our bodies repair easily when young but their patching-up abilities become lacklustre or go awry as the years rack up. It is the relentless accumulation of cellular onslaughts that eventually overwhelms us, often in the form of age-related diseases such as cancers (which occur when faulty cells fail to self-destruct and gather to form tumours), arthritis and Alzheimer’s. Sometimes death just happens; it is the white flag of old age, the point of ultimate biological surrender.

There are armies of

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