Book Review: Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To (2019). David A. Sinclair, PhD, AO, with Matthew D. LaPlante.

The author of this book is one of the leading academic and medical experts on aging and life extension research in the world, with dual appointments as head of aging research labs at Harvard Medical School, and at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.  

The book makes a case for the fact of still-increasing lifespans around the world (at least for some of the population), and that our rapid acquisition of new science and information is opening the possibility of beginning to extend the possible outer limits of how long people can live a healthy and fulfilling life, way out beyond any previous possibilities.  

He discusses many facets of the topic of life extension, including concerns about overpopulation, the ethics of who can afford to get access to life-extension treatments, the roles of lifestyle, foods and diets, common supplements and treatments that can play a significant role in extending healthy life, but also the role that current scientific research is about to play in providing dramatic new biotech-based medical treatments to ward off “the disease of aging”.  

For Sinclair, aging should be viewed as a disease, indeed the primary human disease.  In his view, most of the other conditions and sicknesses of old age are simply symptoms of the breakdown in the body’s ability to repair cellular damage that accumulates over time.  

This book is very long, and has way too much advanced biology in it for me to thoroughly evaluate his every conclusion, but based on his international recognition as a scientist and his professional credentials, I take his writing on this topic seriously.  A very interesting treatise on the “state of the art” in an area of medical research that could cause revolutionary changes to our view of human lives and expectations in the near future.  Recommended.