Advances in the molecular genetics of cellular aging raise the prospect of intervening in the human aging process to dramatically extend the human life span. The development of such interventions would confront society with the challenge of interpreting, using and regulating the ultimate genetic enhancement technology: a technology that could allow us to change a basic constant of human life at the cellular level. This project is designed to combine the work of two ongoing research programs to begin to address these challenges. The first is the research that Eric Juengst, Maxwell Mehlman and Thomas Murray have been conducting on the ethical and public policy challenges that are posed generically by genetic enhancement technologies. The framework for ethical analysis and public policy development generated by that research would be applied here to the case of anti-aging interventions, both as a test of the framework and to see what it yields in this case. The second resource is the work of the other co-investigators, Stephen Post, Peter Whitehouse and Robert Binstock, on the clinical and social meanings of the human aging process. That research will be used to identify the issues to analyze in this project, by providing the landscape of contemporary social practices, values and beliefs that radical life extensions could challenge. Collaboratively, we will seek to anticipate the issues that anti-aging interventions could raise for three constituencies: the individuals and families that might use them, the health professionals that might provide them, and the public-policy makers that will shape the context in which they might become available. The project's methods will be analytic and discursive: we will be critiquing, constructing and proposing arguments on the basis of existing information and our previous work, through a regimen of regular research meetings and collaborative writing. This work will be overseen by an expert group of advisors; Carol Donley, Co-director, Center for Literature, Medicine and the Health Profession at Hiram College; Michael Fossel, Editor, Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine; Linda George, Associate Director, Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, Duke University; and Thomas Murray, President, The Hastings Center.
| Fishman, Jennifer R; Flatt, Michael A; Settersten Jr, Richard A (2015) Bioidentical hormones, menopausal women, and the lure of the ""natural"" in U.S. anti-aging medicine. Soc Sci Med 132:79-87 |
| Flatt, Michael A; Settersten Jr, Richard A; Ponsaran, Roselle et al. (2013) Are ""anti-aging medicine"" and ""successful aging"" two sides of the same coin? Views of anti-aging practitioners. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 68:944-55 |
| Fishman, Jennifer R; Settersten Jr, Richard A; Flatt, Michael A (2010) In the vanguard of biomedicine? The curious and contradictory case of anti-ageing medicine. Sociol Health Illn 32:197-210 |
| Settersten Jr, Richard A; Fishman, Jennifer R; Lambrix, Marcie A et al. (2009) The salience of language in probing public attitudes about life extension. Am J Bioeth 9:81-2 |
| Settersten, Richard A; Flatt, Michael A; Ponsaran, Roselle S (2008) From the Lab to the Front Line: How Individual Biogerontologists Navigate their Contested Field. J Aging Stud 22:304-312 |
| Binstock, Robert H; Fishman, Jennifer R; Juengst, Eric T (2006) Boundaries and labels: anti-aging medicine and science. Rejuvenation Res 9:433-5 |
| Whitehouse, Peter J; Juengst, Eric T (2005) Antiaging medicine and mild cognitive impairment: practice and policy issues for geriatrics. J Am Geriatr Soc 53:1417-22 |
| Whitehouse, Peter J; Gaines, Atwood D; Lindstrom, Heather et al. (2005) Anthropological contributions to the understanding of age-related cognitive impairment. Lancet Neurol 4:320-6 |
| Binstock, Robert H (2004) Anti-aging medicine and research: a realm of conflict and profound societal implications. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 59:B523-33 |
| Mehlman, Maxwell J; Binstock, Robert H; Juengst, Eric T et al. (2004) Anti-aging medicine: can consumers be better protected? Gerontologist 44:304-10 |
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