Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum

Confronted with her parents' dementia and teenagers' climate anxiety, one woman considers how our baselines shift in the face of personal — and global — loss. By Heidi Lasher

All things must die, according to the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, but that could be about to change. A growing number of tech billionaires have decided they want to use their enormous wealth to try to help humans "cheat death."

There's a new field of research taking Silicon Valley by storm: the quest for eternal life. Depending on who you ask, the "life extension" industry is about to change the world forever, or is all just nonsense.

What we are only now beginning to understand is that the diseases that ultimately kill us are inseparable from the aging process itself. Aging is the root cause. This means that studying these diseases without taking aging into account could be dangerously misleading… and worst of all, impede real progress.

A landmark report on the state of ageing in Britain has warned that a significant proportion of people are at risk of spending later life in poverty, ill-health and hardship. Britain is undergoing a radical demographic shift, with the number of people aged 65 and over set to grow by more than 40% in two decades, reaching more than 17 million by 2036. The number of households where the oldest person is 85 or over is increasing faster than any other age group.

A drug that can reverse aspects of ageing has been successfully trialled in animals, say scientists. They have rejuvenated old mice to restore their stamina, coat of fur and even some organ function. The team at Erasmus University Medical Center, in the Netherlands, are planning human trials for what they hope is a treatment for old age. A UK scientist said the findings were "impossible to dismiss", but that unanswered questions remained.