For an example of how tantalizingly close researchers are to making real progress in engineering away aspects of aging, you might look at the MitoSENS project a

For an example of how tantalizingly close researchers are to making real progress in engineering away aspects of aging, you might look at the MitoSENS project at the SENS Foundation. Firstly: mitochondrial DNA damage is convincingly very important in aging. There's a lot of research to support this, and a great deal more research to show how greatly the composition and function of mitochondria determines lifespan differences between species: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/10/how-age-damaged-mitochondria-cause-your-cells-to-damage-you.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/10/how-age-damaged-m... Secondly, we can move that DNA into the nucleus where it will continue to work to produce the necessary components of mitochondrial machinery long after the DNA in the mitochondria themselves is ragged: http://www.sens.org/index.php?pagename=mitosens http://www.sens.org/index.php?pagename=mitosens And lastly the work of Marisol Corral-Debrinski is basically demonstrating how to do this in practice. Here's a video presentation from SENS3 - she's much further along now: http://richardjschueler.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=57170 http://richardjschueler.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=5717... As an alternative approach, researchers back in 2005 demonstrated an approach to replace all mitochondrial DNA in an organism, doing so in mice. Out with the old, in with the new: http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/07/slightly-inside-1.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2005/07/slightly-inside-1... One last item: the FDA doesn't permit the development of therapies to treat aging. Period. So there's little venture money for it, and all promising research is then shoehorned into becoming sub-par treatments for specific age-related disease or just abandoned. All meaningful progress will occur in regions of the world where regulation is less horrid. http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id=3237 http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/view_news_item.cfm?news_id... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/the-portions-of-government-focused-on-preventing-new-medicine.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2009/05/the-portions-of-g... http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-world-without-the-fda.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2008/05/envisaging-a-worl...