Hayflick L
Department of Anatomy, School of Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, 95497, USA.
Nature. 2000 Nov 9;408(6809):267-9. doi: 10.1038/35041709.
Advances in our knowledge of age-associated diseases have far outpaced advances in our understanding of the fundamental ageing processes that underlie the vulnerability to these pathologies. If we are to increase human life expectancy beyond the fifteen-year limit that would result if today's leading causes of death were resolved, more attention must be paid to basic research on ageing. Determination of longevity must be distinguished from ageing to take us from the common question of why we age to a more revealing question that is rarely posed: why do we live as long as we do? But if the ability to intervene in ageing ever becomes a reality, it will be rife with unintended and undesirable consequences.
我们对与年龄相关疾病的认识进展，远远超过了我们对构成这些病理易感性基础的基本衰老过程的理解进展。如果我们要将人类预期寿命提高到超过解决当今主要死因后所能达到的15年极限，就必须更加关注衰老的基础研究。必须将寿命的确定与衰老区分开来，以便将我们从关于为何衰老的常见问题，引向一个很少被提出但更具启发性的问题：我们为何能活到现在这么长的寿命？但是，如果干预衰老的能力最终成为现实，它将充满意想不到的不良后果。
