An Evolutionary Understanding of Aging.

Abstract

The art of intervention for rejuvenation is a major area in cosmetic surgery, and as Korea moves rapidly into an aging society, this area will gain more momentum. Human beings recognize the inevitability of their deaths; nevertheless, they still yearn for immortality and will not cease to strive to transform their aging appearance into youthful looks. However, we are not capable of the art of making faces look younger until we comprehend not only the anatomy of the face but also, more importantly, the aging process of the face. This is likewise true of the rest of the anatomy. It is natural to pose questions about what the fundamental reason is for aging and why it occurs in the first place. In addressing the causes of aging, human beings have been seeking ways of increasing longevity, and preventing or delaying the aging process, even if immortality cannot be achieved. Therefore, since the inception of civilization, evidence of human efforts to reach those goals has been found in every human society. These efforts have been sustained from the recent past up to the present era. However, despite the long history of human aspirations for perpetual youth, not a few scientific studies have shown that increasing longevity and the prevention of aging remains terra incognita. From the mythical secrets of ancient figures such as King David, Alexander the Great, and Shih Hwang Ti of the Chin Dynasty, to the Philosopher's Stone and alchemy in the Middle Ages, the stories of Prester John in the eleventh and twelfth century, to the search for the fountain of youth that motivated the voyages to the Caribbean in the sixteenth century, to hormonal treatments and the transplantation of animal testicles and ovaries into humans, a wide variety of methods of rejuvenation have been attempted in conjunction with corresponding medical developments. Hope is always directed toward the future, and giving up on finding a treatment method is tantamount to renouncing our future. Furthermore, the scientific mindset, which essentially casts fundamental into the shadows of doubt, has seen a transformation from a world governed by determinism designed by Newton, to a world based on principles of uncertainty provoked by Heisenberg. Despite the paradigm shift in the understanding of some physical phenomena, some fundamental laws governing the physical world, such as the law of conservation of mass and energy, are not presumed to be subject to change. It is possible for modern science to lengthen the lifespan of fruit flies by intervening in the fruit fly genome. But even launching research on the lengthening of the lifespan or the prevention of aging of human beings is a herculean task. Although we may eventually solve every mystery of the mechanisms of the human body at some point in the future, at the moment, the physicality of a human being is a complex system, which stubbornly refuses to be unraveled.