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Senescence is an area where my father did a lot of work, at one
time. The photo on the two new books was taken during the Carter Presidency:
there was an NIH (or some such group) hosting a huge conference in Washington,
DC on aging and senescence. He said that it was all very promising at first, but
that within a couple years, it began going down the same wrong (simplistic)
roads and he lost interest in continuing in any official capacity with that
group-- it began to resemble a photo op and a circus more than useful science,
he felt. I remember him talking about the "Hayflick Experiments" (on limits to
number of times a cell can divide, etc) and a few other things around that time,
but I was a teenager at that point and not as interested in hanging
out with my Dad as I was earlier and would be again, a few years
later.
The problem Tim was describing ("global failure"
without obvious cause) is one where the relationships between the
parts begin to lose cohesion. Why this happens would be the interesting aspect
of it. The parts are seemingly in perfectly good shape, but the parts are not
all that is required for life. If it was, one could "re-animate" dead organisms
fairly easily. Frankenstein's monster could live again. What I am curious
to know is, how is it possible to cryogenically freeze a live organism, and
return it to its living state after thawing? What is the difference between
doing that vs other forms of "resussitation" and how do those kinds of things
differ from anaesthesia/surgically induced "death" which is reversible? The
tricky thing is that there are times when keeping certain parts within a narrow
set of parameters (such as putting a body on a heart/lung machine during open
heart surgery) is all that seems to be required to preserve life in the body. In
other words, medicine gets away with treating the body in a reductionistic
manner on occasion. Apparently, in keeping those particular parts going, they
manage to keep certain crucial relationships intact and so the complexity
doesn't collapse. The questions that come to me are ones like: Why do some types
of interference collapse the complex organisation and other types don't? The
answers to those kinds of questions would be illuminating, it seems to
me.
Judith
PS: My Dad loved all those early horror movies, by the way. Bela
Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, Jr. et al.... Except, he said "The
Mob" of villagers chasing the monster were always the real horror of the piece.
Watching all those old classics was part of my childhood education! Interesting
parental strategy, you might say. (There were old Danny Kaye movies to balance
out my brainwaves.... or attempt to.) But those movies were tame compared to the
bloodsoaked video games I see advertised in between violence-infused cartoons on
Saturday mornings now. I miss the Looney Toons a lot.
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