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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

There are seven distinct mechanisms for cellular and intracellular damage resulting from aging. Improving the regulation of mitochondria could completely fix one and slow down the rate of accumulation of a few other types of damage, but that's it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negli...

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Please note that Aubrey de Grey's theories are highly controversial and while some of these mechanisms are indeed big topics in the field, many biogerontologists have been publicly skeptical of his claims. In fact, some of these are even mentioned in your link.

The way you worded it, it seems you're implying SENS is a widely accepted theory, while in fact it's anything but (although I'd say it certainly is interesting and worthy of investigation).

SENS is controversial, but the cited 7 damage mechanisms are not. The way you worded it, it seems you're implying the 7 mechanisms are not widely accepted, while in fact, they are. (I only used the citation for the list of the 7 damage mechanisms. I can't easily find other lists that are as concise. I too am skeptical of his proposed fixes.)

If by "highly controversial" you mean "supported by many leading names in the research community" then sure. See this, and note the presence of George Church, Judith Campisi, Maria Blasco, etc:

http://sens.org/about/leadership/research-advisory-board

The SENS Research Foundation has a yearly budget about a tenth of that of one of the largest aging research labs, the Buck Institute. The Foundation funds work in a range of laboratories around in the US and Europe, and has collaborations with Oxford, Wake Forest, and so forth.

Insofar as controversy exists, you might look on it as a facet of the present dispute over modern theories of aging: camps for aging as accumulated damage versus aging as evolved programming. The accumulated damage side is much bigger but split into several factions, one of which is centered around SENS.

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