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I suggested adding material about this topic to regenerative medicine, you might be interested in discussing it here. Paradoctor ( talk) 20:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
I have been notified that I should not remove text that I added and my change was reverted. My reading of the listed primary literature had led me to understand that the position of Aubrey deGrey had been softened based on the cited evidence, and after receiving an email stating that the paragraph was incorrect, and that I had read the wrong conclusion into the article, and was asked directly by Aubrey deGrey to remove the text which had misattributed his position, which (apparently) has not changed or softened. I don't know why this was reverted to readd text that I think might be incorrect, particularly since I added it in the first place. I don't know what rule of Wikipedia I am not following, as stated on my talk page- making bold edits and removing potentially incorrect or misleading information are the rules I am attempting to follow. MatthewEHarbowy ( talk) 00:48, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Turtles can live to be about 100 or more. That is because they do not experience cell loss and atrophy. Their organs do not break down as they age.
Anonymous 173.57.44.147 ( talk) 02:58, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
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Dr. Kverndokk has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:
As an economist, this subject was new to me, and I find the text a little bit hard to follow as it contains a lot of medical expressions.
There must be something wrong with the maths in the following text copied from "Social and economic implications":
"...the number of Americans stricken with AD will rise from 4 million today to as many as 16 million by midcentury. This means that more people in the United States will have AD by 2050 than the entire current population of the Netherlands. Globally, AD prevalence is expected to rise to 45 million by 2050, with three of every four patients with AD living in a developing nation."
We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.
We believe Dr. Kverndokk has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:
ExpertIdeasBot ( talk) 16:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
About the content added:
The source is not MEDRS and the formatting is invalid - we don't do embedded URLs. It also being added only to the lead and not in the body. Jytdog ( talk) 12:49, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
The "fantasy rather than science" sources aren't MEDRS either. But don't worry, I'll not write anymore in this bureaucratic unciclopedia nor link it from anywhere, so you can maintain its uninformative purity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.31.30.144 ( talk) 16:30, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Why is this so poorly weighted? It comes across as if SENS has almost no support, this isn't the case, and even if it was, a Wikipedia article should still be balanced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:7B3E:A700:C46F:8446:F050:4D24 ( talk) 19:23, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
User:David Gerard Mass reversion of content created by an honest user should not be occuring, even on a page that is under administrative sanctions. If you believe a particular addition uses an inappropriate source please start with discussion on the talk page, then escalate to a citation needed if no one engages, then finally escalate to targeted content deletion if you still do not receive engagement. The goal of Wikipedia is to aggregate content, and mass deletions of content that includes a variety of sources across a variety of sub-topics does not align with Wikipedia's policies. Reversion should be the last step, and it should be targeted at specifically bad material not bulk.
Micah71381 (
talk) 13:02, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Claims like "SENS agenda is fanciful and the highly complicated biomedical phenomena involved in the aging process contain too many unknowns for SENS to be fully implementable in the foreseeable future" that were made in 2005 are time dependent(even if they were true) and are no longer valid in 2020. Many things have changed and there were some important scientific progress in the field of treating aging. from rejuvenating human cells( https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/old-human-cells-rejuvenated-with-stem-cell-technology.html) to reversing Advanced Glycation end Products(AGEs) accumulation in the body( https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/67/Supplement_1/1229-P SENS helped to fund the study) which are one of the main reasons for skin aging and there is actually a new company that is working to commercialize those AGEs degrading enzymes called "Revel Pharmaceuticals".
The criticism also mentions "specific proposals" of SENS but that also was 15 years ago. The criticism in the article is made up from out dated opinions and is also quite subjective like "increased basic research, rather than the goal-directed approach of SENS, is presently the scientifically appropriate goal.", That claim also got refuted since it is a SENS funded research that actually made the first progress in clearing out the main AGEs cross-links in the body(Glucosepane) which have a major role in skin aging and also aging in general.
The part in the criticism that say that " such therapies, even if developed in the laboratory, would be practically unusable by the general public" is nothing but a personal baseless opinion and doesn't belong in an encyclopedic article if there is no explanation for why he thinks like that. It also worth to mention that in his criticism Kyriazis said about Glucosepane, the main AGE cross-link in the body: "there is little clinical information on this product, making it difficult to suggest concrete therapies that can deal with this particular compound" and today due to SENS funded research such therapies are close to be commercialized. It demonstrates how the "criticism" mentioned in the article can become completely irrelevant after few years of scientific progress.
Big part of this skepticism about rejuvenation(especially today) is just a result of cultural norms because most people got used to see aging as natural inevitable thing and to see the pursuit of preventing/reversing it as something that belongs to mad people. Even in movies everyone who wants to fight aging is usually a villain like an evil witch.
The "criticism" in the "Scientific controversy" section don't say much other than pointing out that it is difficult to achieve SENS's goals in the "foreseeable future"(which was 15 years ago) and nothing more than that. There are so many kinds of research ongoing on so many things that are even more difficult than SENS's goals yet we don't see this type of criticism, The reason for that is much more cultural than scientific, fighting aging itself is culturally deemed as "fighting nature" and "playing god" and not as something legitimate like fighting something that is seen as a disease by society unlike aging which is "natural". Cultural norms are the main reason behind the "Scientific controversy" section and the "criticism" inside of it. -- 5.22.135.25 ( talk) 03:37, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
There are also other scientific papers that imply that reversing aging is a possible goal that is being sought by other companies including SENS:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5161440/ "Newly armed with an idea of how humans age, numerous companies and government-funded programmes have sprung up to address human ageing as a problem in and of itself, rather than trying to address the diseases of ageing separately. High profile examples include the (formerly Google) Alphabet-funded ageing research venture, Calico (California Life Sciences Company); the interventions testing program (ITP) run by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), designed to test the longevity-enhancing potential of a variety of different drugs; and Human Longevity Inc., co-founded by J. Craig Venter, which aims to elucidate and treat the (epi)genetic causes of age-related diseases. Furthermore, the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Research Foundation performs its own research and helps fund the research of other institutes, and focuses on utilising combinations of regenerative medicine, gene therapy and pharmacology to reverse ageing."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6631383/ "Outside of affecting nutritional deficiencies or medical conditions that are due in part to gut pathogen dysbiosis, it seems unlikely that large gains in the human lifespan are going to be realized. However, the deleterious aspects of aging may be slowed or even partly reversed with these approaches if enough translational funding opportunities become available. We could certainly expect an improved quality of life and maybe a longer health-span from these technologies. In this regard, a few concepts should be mentioned starting with Caleb “Tuck” Finch’s idea of negligible senescence, which was further refined by Aubrey de Grey as Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), aimed at developing a better understanding or even “cure” for aging [72]. Perhaps the rate of achieving these strategies would be hastened though the microbiota and its tremendous potential for revolutionary transformation. This new approach will likely culminate in novel therapies and technologies capable of repairing the known and future forms of accumulated cellular and molecular age-related damage. "
I think it is clear that today the scientific community take anti aging treatments seriously and that many other organizations with similar goals as SENS have established as a result of the progress made in the field of treating the aging problem. And since there is an actual progress in that field that is recognized by others there is no sense in questioning the anti-aging goals of SENS and treating it as a "fantasy rather than science".-- ThunderheadX ( talk) 19:56, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
And for the part about the DNA damage theory of aging, new studies and experiments refute the DNA damage theory of aging( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6296020/), "However, wherever normal marine or terrestrial earth conditions prevail, cumulative DNA damage does not seem to play a relevant role in aging", "The growing evidence that reprogramming of somatic cells from aged individuals rejuvenates them to their embryonic stage is giving rise to the idea that the epigenome is the central driver of aging". and the article talk more about the problems with the DNA damage theory of aging. The article DNA damage theory of aging have a section named "Inherited defects that cause premature aging", that section mention the article DNA repair-deficiency disorder for further reading and in that article there is a section about "Debate concerning "accelerated aging"" in which it is said that "Some biogerontologists question that such a thing as "accelerated aging" actually exists, at least partly on the grounds that all of the so-called accelerated aging diseases are segmental progerias. Many disease conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, etc., are associated with increased mortality. Without reliable biomarkers of aging it is hard to support the claim that a disease condition represents more than accelerated mortality" so the term "accelerated aging" is subjective and if some disease that impair DNA repair cause symptoms that are called "accelerated aging" it doesn't prove that DNA damage is the main reason for aging.
It is also important to remember that even if DNA damage is a cause for Cellular senescence(according to the reference in the criticism) you can reverse this damage with SENS's 'ApoptoSENS' program for removing problematic cells like senescent cells and the body even ends up with less cells with DNA damage. So when you consider this fact or other kinds of rejuvenation therapies developed by SENS you can't say that they are wrong when they say that DNA damage is only matter for cancer.
It is also worth to mention that in most cases DNA damage can be repaired and there is actually a clinical trial for a drug that was found to fix age-related DNA damage in mice https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170323150518.htm So even if SENS is wrong about DNA damage that doesn't give any scientific backing for the "criticism" mentioned in the article. -- ThunderheadX ( talk) 19:21, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
For the statement "SENS agenda is fanciful and the highly complicated biomedical phenomena involved in the aging process contain too many unknowns for SENS to be fully implementable". according to this article: https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/504845 , the belief that the aging process is extremely complex and unknown for us is wrong and isn't accepted anymore, "For much of the 20th century the ageing process was thought to be the result of the interplay of many different biological processes, each with relatively small effects on organismal lifespan. However, this model is no longer tenable. Rather it seems a few biological mechanisms, including nutrient sensing, telomere attrition and cellular senescence, mediate large effects on health and longevity". The article adds that it is still premature to claim that we know everything about the aging process, but it is obvious that scientists know enough to research and develop therapies for aging. The statement from the "criticism" is just part of the "initial delusions of complexity" the article is talking about and this is the problem with using "scientific opinions" that were made around 15 years ago, it isn't a scientific fact but an opinion that gets outdated after several years even if it was true/accepted when it was made. -- ThunderheadX ( talk) 16:53, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. Citing 13 year old research as "controversy" is now so outdated as to be misleading
Simul ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 08:06, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
The table in the article is from 17 years ago and is different from The table in the SENS website that describe their strategies for fighting aging.-- ThunderheadX ( talk) 14:03, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
...those that flatly contradict established policy, those based on personal opinion only, those that are logically fallacious, and those that show no understanding of the matter of issue...the arguments for removing it are couched mainly in terms of the the manual of style or the related WP:CRITS essay and the WP:DUE policy. The arguments to retain this section are couched mostly in terms of the WP:FRINGE content guideline. To take these arguments in order from the most important to least: The arguments for removal on WP:DUE grounds are, upon closer investigation, arguments that particular sources used to support the criticism of the SENS hypothesis are unduly prominent. There are other editors that argue that criticism is actually covered in due proportion so at most, this can at most taken as an argument that the controversy section is weighted to the wrong sources, not that it is non-policy-compliant as a whole. The arguments in favor of retention which reference the WP:FRINGE guideline carry greater weight than those that refer to MOS or essay grounds. It has also recently been confirmed that the Wikipedia community considers SENS to be a fringe theory, further supporting retention on those grounds. In summary, both the number and strength of arguments below demonstrate that there is a consensus to retain a controversy section at this time. ( non-admin closure) Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 22:21, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Should the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence article contain a controversy section? — Wingedserif ( talk) 04:33, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
There is a lot of double standards from the supporters of the "criticism" section. One article with nothing but someone who claim that SENS goals are "fantasy rather than science" is considered reliable source but when I provide studies about reversing aging in the lab(there are even in-vivo studies like this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5679279/ ) some editors bring up WP:MEDRS despite the fact that the sources in the criticism aren't based on any kind of research on humans and aren't considered as either primary or secondary sources according to the article. Some editors confuse between criticism on SENS's goals and criticism on SENS's strategy of achieving those goals and the criticism is clearly focused on SENS's goals and even made an exception for SENS's research that is focused on "diseases" like curing cancer and alzheimer and calls it "broadly supported by the medical research community" despite the fact that we have virtually zero progress in alzheimer research and according to our current knowledge we can't consider curing alzheimer as more plausible than SENS's goals of curing aging. The article have no source that prove that SENS research is ineffective, and this is without even mentioning the fact that SENS also focus on funding and supporting other research groups in the field of curing aging. -- ThunderheadX ( talk) 14:04, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Wingedserif, respectfully, Alzheimer's research is entirely relevant to aging research. Alzheimer's disease is arguably just a manifestation of aging itself.
Coming from the position of someone with a degree in this field, I can maybe describe this a bit more succinctly than Thunderhead. Yes, SENS is preclinical. All preclinical research comes with the heavy caveat of not having yet gone through human trials - but all medicine goes along this stage, and highlighting that as a controversy is misleading. Before they finished their trials, did the covid vaccine pages have a 'controversy' section? Didn't think so. That would be harmful.
SENS has had a long history, but its position has mostly been adopted by the wider community, though under a different name. The Hallmarks of Aging, writen by Lopez-Otin et al in 2012, describes the same position as SENS - plus a few other additons - and is by far the most highly cited paper in the field (7296 - an incredibly impressive number). It is not established fact, but it now a very well-grounded theory on the causes of aging, with a number of different branches of thought (such as those which highlight chronic inflammation as a result of hallmark accumulation - suggesting that this inflammation is a pacemaker for the whole process).
I would suggest the following: Add a note that SENS focuses on preclinical research that has not yet finished human trials, and that it is one of multiple competing theories. Highlight its similarity to the respected 'Hallmarks of Aging' paper, but note that it focuses on the early stage of research and thus the validity of its approach has not yet been conclusively proven. And rename the 'criticism' section to 'validity', to maintain a more neutral stance. Alyarin9000 ( talk) 21:09, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Wingedserif You should point out the fact that nobody had anything meaningful to say against SENS in the fringe theories noticeboard: /info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence and nobody had anything to say against the fact that there is a scientific consensus behind SENS strategy and agenda in general. The secondary and primary sources I provided here(both in the fringe board and this RfC) prove that SENS target known and significant causes of aging, and they don't need to specifically mention SENS, we don't need a source to prove that when SENS talk about "senescent cells" they actually talk about senescent cells and asking for such source is simply ridiculous. My secondary sources are much more meaningful than a letter that was written by some gerontologists to Aubrey de Grey 16 years ago. This letter isn't even considered as neither secondary or primary source according to WP:MEDRS, so even if we ignore the fact that it is 16 years old and should've been replaced by a more recent source more than a decade ago according to [ [10]], this letter to Aubrey de Grey shouldn't be considered as a source to begin with and obviously not as something more reliable than the secondary sources I provided here. -- ThunderheadX ( talk) 22:21, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
To reflect some of the RfC consensus that a section title should not contain "controversy", I changed that section to "Scientific reception". However, the more research into the the 2005 MIT Technology Review contest I do, the more skeptical I become that it meets that description. First, the contest was partially funded by de Grey's Methuselah Foundation. Second, obviously, a popular, judged contest is not consistent with the academic standard of peer review. Finally, of the judges panel, several were computer scientists or entrepreneurs—not exactly qualified for judging biomedical claims. I'm thinking of splitting that subsection off into something else. What do others think? — Wingedserif ( talk) 17:08, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
References
Thanks for your explanation. What are your thoughts on Mendelspod with Kennedy? I also thought perhaps the interviews would still be acceptable since the issue revolves around stated opinions rather than traditional peer-reviewed scientific research; and that their statements in the interviews would be treated similarly to statements made on a personal website as mentioned on WP:Interviews. The 2005 criticisms (and the other 2013 writing from Olshanksy you mentioned) are after all a contest submission and opinion articles, albeit in notable publications. 65.50.153.6 ( talk) 03:29, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
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I suggested adding material about this topic to regenerative medicine, you might be interested in discussing it here. Paradoctor ( talk) 20:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
I have been notified that I should not remove text that I added and my change was reverted. My reading of the listed primary literature had led me to understand that the position of Aubrey deGrey had been softened based on the cited evidence, and after receiving an email stating that the paragraph was incorrect, and that I had read the wrong conclusion into the article, and was asked directly by Aubrey deGrey to remove the text which had misattributed his position, which (apparently) has not changed or softened. I don't know why this was reverted to readd text that I think might be incorrect, particularly since I added it in the first place. I don't know what rule of Wikipedia I am not following, as stated on my talk page- making bold edits and removing potentially incorrect or misleading information are the rules I am attempting to follow. MatthewEHarbowy ( talk) 00:48, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Turtles can live to be about 100 or more. That is because they do not experience cell loss and atrophy. Their organs do not break down as they age.
Anonymous 173.57.44.147 ( talk) 02:58, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
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Dr. Kverndokk has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:
As an economist, this subject was new to me, and I find the text a little bit hard to follow as it contains a lot of medical expressions.
There must be something wrong with the maths in the following text copied from "Social and economic implications":
"...the number of Americans stricken with AD will rise from 4 million today to as many as 16 million by midcentury. This means that more people in the United States will have AD by 2050 than the entire current population of the Netherlands. Globally, AD prevalence is expected to rise to 45 million by 2050, with three of every four patients with AD living in a developing nation."
We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.
We believe Dr. Kverndokk has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:
ExpertIdeasBot ( talk) 16:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
About the content added:
The source is not MEDRS and the formatting is invalid - we don't do embedded URLs. It also being added only to the lead and not in the body. Jytdog ( talk) 12:49, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
The "fantasy rather than science" sources aren't MEDRS either. But don't worry, I'll not write anymore in this bureaucratic unciclopedia nor link it from anywhere, so you can maintain its uninformative purity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.31.30.144 ( talk) 16:30, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
Why is this so poorly weighted? It comes across as if SENS has almost no support, this isn't the case, and even if it was, a Wikipedia article should still be balanced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:7B3E:A700:C46F:8446:F050:4D24 ( talk) 19:23, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
User:David Gerard Mass reversion of content created by an honest user should not be occuring, even on a page that is under administrative sanctions. If you believe a particular addition uses an inappropriate source please start with discussion on the talk page, then escalate to a citation needed if no one engages, then finally escalate to targeted content deletion if you still do not receive engagement. The goal of Wikipedia is to aggregate content, and mass deletions of content that includes a variety of sources across a variety of sub-topics does not align with Wikipedia's policies. Reversion should be the last step, and it should be targeted at specifically bad material not bulk.
Micah71381 (
talk) 13:02, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Claims like "SENS agenda is fanciful and the highly complicated biomedical phenomena involved in the aging process contain too many unknowns for SENS to be fully implementable in the foreseeable future" that were made in 2005 are time dependent(even if they were true) and are no longer valid in 2020. Many things have changed and there were some important scientific progress in the field of treating aging. from rejuvenating human cells( https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/03/old-human-cells-rejuvenated-with-stem-cell-technology.html) to reversing Advanced Glycation end Products(AGEs) accumulation in the body( https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/67/Supplement_1/1229-P SENS helped to fund the study) which are one of the main reasons for skin aging and there is actually a new company that is working to commercialize those AGEs degrading enzymes called "Revel Pharmaceuticals".
The criticism also mentions "specific proposals" of SENS but that also was 15 years ago. The criticism in the article is made up from out dated opinions and is also quite subjective like "increased basic research, rather than the goal-directed approach of SENS, is presently the scientifically appropriate goal.", That claim also got refuted since it is a SENS funded research that actually made the first progress in clearing out the main AGEs cross-links in the body(Glucosepane) which have a major role in skin aging and also aging in general.
The part in the criticism that say that " such therapies, even if developed in the laboratory, would be practically unusable by the general public" is nothing but a personal baseless opinion and doesn't belong in an encyclopedic article if there is no explanation for why he thinks like that. It also worth to mention that in his criticism Kyriazis said about Glucosepane, the main AGE cross-link in the body: "there is little clinical information on this product, making it difficult to suggest concrete therapies that can deal with this particular compound" and today due to SENS funded research such therapies are close to be commercialized. It demonstrates how the "criticism" mentioned in the article can become completely irrelevant after few years of scientific progress.
Big part of this skepticism about rejuvenation(especially today) is just a result of cultural norms because most people got used to see aging as natural inevitable thing and to see the pursuit of preventing/reversing it as something that belongs to mad people. Even in movies everyone who wants to fight aging is usually a villain like an evil witch.
The "criticism" in the "Scientific controversy" section don't say much other than pointing out that it is difficult to achieve SENS's goals in the "foreseeable future"(which was 15 years ago) and nothing more than that. There are so many kinds of research ongoing on so many things that are even more difficult than SENS's goals yet we don't see this type of criticism, The reason for that is much more cultural than scientific, fighting aging itself is culturally deemed as "fighting nature" and "playing god" and not as something legitimate like fighting something that is seen as a disease by society unlike aging which is "natural". Cultural norms are the main reason behind the "Scientific controversy" section and the "criticism" inside of it. -- 5.22.135.25 ( talk) 03:37, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
There are also other scientific papers that imply that reversing aging is a possible goal that is being sought by other companies including SENS:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5161440/ "Newly armed with an idea of how humans age, numerous companies and government-funded programmes have sprung up to address human ageing as a problem in and of itself, rather than trying to address the diseases of ageing separately. High profile examples include the (formerly Google) Alphabet-funded ageing research venture, Calico (California Life Sciences Company); the interventions testing program (ITP) run by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), designed to test the longevity-enhancing potential of a variety of different drugs; and Human Longevity Inc., co-founded by J. Craig Venter, which aims to elucidate and treat the (epi)genetic causes of age-related diseases. Furthermore, the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Research Foundation performs its own research and helps fund the research of other institutes, and focuses on utilising combinations of regenerative medicine, gene therapy and pharmacology to reverse ageing."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6631383/ "Outside of affecting nutritional deficiencies or medical conditions that are due in part to gut pathogen dysbiosis, it seems unlikely that large gains in the human lifespan are going to be realized. However, the deleterious aspects of aging may be slowed or even partly reversed with these approaches if enough translational funding opportunities become available. We could certainly expect an improved quality of life and maybe a longer health-span from these technologies. In this regard, a few concepts should be mentioned starting with Caleb “Tuck” Finch’s idea of negligible senescence, which was further refined by Aubrey de Grey as Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS), aimed at developing a better understanding or even “cure” for aging [72]. Perhaps the rate of achieving these strategies would be hastened though the microbiota and its tremendous potential for revolutionary transformation. This new approach will likely culminate in novel therapies and technologies capable of repairing the known and future forms of accumulated cellular and molecular age-related damage. "
I think it is clear that today the scientific community take anti aging treatments seriously and that many other organizations with similar goals as SENS have established as a result of the progress made in the field of treating the aging problem. And since there is an actual progress in that field that is recognized by others there is no sense in questioning the anti-aging goals of SENS and treating it as a "fantasy rather than science".-- ThunderheadX ( talk) 19:56, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
And for the part about the DNA damage theory of aging, new studies and experiments refute the DNA damage theory of aging( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6296020/), "However, wherever normal marine or terrestrial earth conditions prevail, cumulative DNA damage does not seem to play a relevant role in aging", "The growing evidence that reprogramming of somatic cells from aged individuals rejuvenates them to their embryonic stage is giving rise to the idea that the epigenome is the central driver of aging". and the article talk more about the problems with the DNA damage theory of aging. The article DNA damage theory of aging have a section named "Inherited defects that cause premature aging", that section mention the article DNA repair-deficiency disorder for further reading and in that article there is a section about "Debate concerning "accelerated aging"" in which it is said that "Some biogerontologists question that such a thing as "accelerated aging" actually exists, at least partly on the grounds that all of the so-called accelerated aging diseases are segmental progerias. Many disease conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, etc., are associated with increased mortality. Without reliable biomarkers of aging it is hard to support the claim that a disease condition represents more than accelerated mortality" so the term "accelerated aging" is subjective and if some disease that impair DNA repair cause symptoms that are called "accelerated aging" it doesn't prove that DNA damage is the main reason for aging.
It is also important to remember that even if DNA damage is a cause for Cellular senescence(according to the reference in the criticism) you can reverse this damage with SENS's 'ApoptoSENS' program for removing problematic cells like senescent cells and the body even ends up with less cells with DNA damage. So when you consider this fact or other kinds of rejuvenation therapies developed by SENS you can't say that they are wrong when they say that DNA damage is only matter for cancer.
It is also worth to mention that in most cases DNA damage can be repaired and there is actually a clinical trial for a drug that was found to fix age-related DNA damage in mice https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170323150518.htm So even if SENS is wrong about DNA damage that doesn't give any scientific backing for the "criticism" mentioned in the article. -- ThunderheadX ( talk) 19:21, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
For the statement "SENS agenda is fanciful and the highly complicated biomedical phenomena involved in the aging process contain too many unknowns for SENS to be fully implementable". according to this article: https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/504845 , the belief that the aging process is extremely complex and unknown for us is wrong and isn't accepted anymore, "For much of the 20th century the ageing process was thought to be the result of the interplay of many different biological processes, each with relatively small effects on organismal lifespan. However, this model is no longer tenable. Rather it seems a few biological mechanisms, including nutrient sensing, telomere attrition and cellular senescence, mediate large effects on health and longevity". The article adds that it is still premature to claim that we know everything about the aging process, but it is obvious that scientists know enough to research and develop therapies for aging. The statement from the "criticism" is just part of the "initial delusions of complexity" the article is talking about and this is the problem with using "scientific opinions" that were made around 15 years ago, it isn't a scientific fact but an opinion that gets outdated after several years even if it was true/accepted when it was made. -- ThunderheadX ( talk) 16:53, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. Citing 13 year old research as "controversy" is now so outdated as to be misleading
Simul ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 08:06, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
The table in the article is from 17 years ago and is different from The table in the SENS website that describe their strategies for fighting aging.-- ThunderheadX ( talk) 14:03, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
...those that flatly contradict established policy, those based on personal opinion only, those that are logically fallacious, and those that show no understanding of the matter of issue...the arguments for removing it are couched mainly in terms of the the manual of style or the related WP:CRITS essay and the WP:DUE policy. The arguments to retain this section are couched mostly in terms of the WP:FRINGE content guideline. To take these arguments in order from the most important to least: The arguments for removal on WP:DUE grounds are, upon closer investigation, arguments that particular sources used to support the criticism of the SENS hypothesis are unduly prominent. There are other editors that argue that criticism is actually covered in due proportion so at most, this can at most taken as an argument that the controversy section is weighted to the wrong sources, not that it is non-policy-compliant as a whole. The arguments in favor of retention which reference the WP:FRINGE guideline carry greater weight than those that refer to MOS or essay grounds. It has also recently been confirmed that the Wikipedia community considers SENS to be a fringe theory, further supporting retention on those grounds. In summary, both the number and strength of arguments below demonstrate that there is a consensus to retain a controversy section at this time. ( non-admin closure) Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 22:21, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Should the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence article contain a controversy section? — Wingedserif ( talk) 04:33, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
There is a lot of double standards from the supporters of the "criticism" section. One article with nothing but someone who claim that SENS goals are "fantasy rather than science" is considered reliable source but when I provide studies about reversing aging in the lab(there are even in-vivo studies like this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5679279/ ) some editors bring up WP:MEDRS despite the fact that the sources in the criticism aren't based on any kind of research on humans and aren't considered as either primary or secondary sources according to the article. Some editors confuse between criticism on SENS's goals and criticism on SENS's strategy of achieving those goals and the criticism is clearly focused on SENS's goals and even made an exception for SENS's research that is focused on "diseases" like curing cancer and alzheimer and calls it "broadly supported by the medical research community" despite the fact that we have virtually zero progress in alzheimer research and according to our current knowledge we can't consider curing alzheimer as more plausible than SENS's goals of curing aging. The article have no source that prove that SENS research is ineffective, and this is without even mentioning the fact that SENS also focus on funding and supporting other research groups in the field of curing aging. -- ThunderheadX ( talk) 14:04, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Wingedserif, respectfully, Alzheimer's research is entirely relevant to aging research. Alzheimer's disease is arguably just a manifestation of aging itself.
Coming from the position of someone with a degree in this field, I can maybe describe this a bit more succinctly than Thunderhead. Yes, SENS is preclinical. All preclinical research comes with the heavy caveat of not having yet gone through human trials - but all medicine goes along this stage, and highlighting that as a controversy is misleading. Before they finished their trials, did the covid vaccine pages have a 'controversy' section? Didn't think so. That would be harmful.
SENS has had a long history, but its position has mostly been adopted by the wider community, though under a different name. The Hallmarks of Aging, writen by Lopez-Otin et al in 2012, describes the same position as SENS - plus a few other additons - and is by far the most highly cited paper in the field (7296 - an incredibly impressive number). It is not established fact, but it now a very well-grounded theory on the causes of aging, with a number of different branches of thought (such as those which highlight chronic inflammation as a result of hallmark accumulation - suggesting that this inflammation is a pacemaker for the whole process).
I would suggest the following: Add a note that SENS focuses on preclinical research that has not yet finished human trials, and that it is one of multiple competing theories. Highlight its similarity to the respected 'Hallmarks of Aging' paper, but note that it focuses on the early stage of research and thus the validity of its approach has not yet been conclusively proven. And rename the 'criticism' section to 'validity', to maintain a more neutral stance. Alyarin9000 ( talk) 21:09, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Wingedserif You should point out the fact that nobody had anything meaningful to say against SENS in the fringe theories noticeboard: /info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Strategies_for_Engineered_Negligible_Senescence and nobody had anything to say against the fact that there is a scientific consensus behind SENS strategy and agenda in general. The secondary and primary sources I provided here(both in the fringe board and this RfC) prove that SENS target known and significant causes of aging, and they don't need to specifically mention SENS, we don't need a source to prove that when SENS talk about "senescent cells" they actually talk about senescent cells and asking for such source is simply ridiculous. My secondary sources are much more meaningful than a letter that was written by some gerontologists to Aubrey de Grey 16 years ago. This letter isn't even considered as neither secondary or primary source according to WP:MEDRS, so even if we ignore the fact that it is 16 years old and should've been replaced by a more recent source more than a decade ago according to [ [10]], this letter to Aubrey de Grey shouldn't be considered as a source to begin with and obviously not as something more reliable than the secondary sources I provided here. -- ThunderheadX ( talk) 22:21, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
To reflect some of the RfC consensus that a section title should not contain "controversy", I changed that section to "Scientific reception". However, the more research into the the 2005 MIT Technology Review contest I do, the more skeptical I become that it meets that description. First, the contest was partially funded by de Grey's Methuselah Foundation. Second, obviously, a popular, judged contest is not consistent with the academic standard of peer review. Finally, of the judges panel, several were computer scientists or entrepreneurs—not exactly qualified for judging biomedical claims. I'm thinking of splitting that subsection off into something else. What do others think? — Wingedserif ( talk) 17:08, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
References
Thanks for your explanation. What are your thoughts on Mendelspod with Kennedy? I also thought perhaps the interviews would still be acceptable since the issue revolves around stated opinions rather than traditional peer-reviewed scientific research; and that their statements in the interviews would be treated similarly to statements made on a personal website as mentioned on WP:Interviews. The 2005 criticisms (and the other 2013 writing from Olshanksy you mentioned) are after all a contest submission and opinion articles, albeit in notable publications. 65.50.153.6 ( talk) 03:29, 20 July 2021 (UTC)