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Entropy Explains Aging, Genetic Determinism Explains Longevity, and Undefined Terminology Explains Misunderstanding Both

2007; Public Library of Science; Volume: 3; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1371/journal.pgen.0030220

1553-7404

Leonard Hayflick,

Spaceflight effects on biology

ommunication in the field of biogerontology is a minefield because all of the commonly used terms have no universally accepted definitions.In a series of five annual meetings that I chaired recently in an attempt to define common terms, the dozen or more experts who attended could not agree on the definition of almost all of them, including ''aging.''The committee was disbanded and the communications dilemma remains.''Aging, Bench to Bedside,'' the collection of mini reviews published as a series in this journal, is representative of this unsolved problem.Not only does the problem result in communication failures, it also produces erroneous interpretations of research results; illogical allocation of research funds; and misdirected scientific, economic, social, and political policy decisions [1-3].There is no other field of science in which a similarly bleak situation exists.As a consequence of the terminology dilemma, I will define for use in this editorial the four aspects of the finitude of life: aging, the determinants of longevity, age-associated diseases, and death.I will not discuss the latter, although even this word defies a universally accepted definition.