Announcing a series of posts on Andrew Steele's book "Ageless"

A personal summary of Andrew Steele's book "Ageless: the New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old"

This first series of posts is meant to gather some notes about

Andrew Steele

's 2020 book "Ageless: the New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old". Before going any further, let’s consider the working definition of aging as provided by the author in his introduction:

From a biological perspective, perhaps the best (and certainly the simplest) definition of aging is the exponential increase in death and suffering with time.

The overall stance of the A. Steele is that we should unashamedly try to cure aging because of its huge human cost, and because we live at a time when science is making it a possibility. According to him, it is the most consequential thing our generation could offer to the next.

I found it to be a really nice introduction to the topic of aging, mostly because it spans many societal and biological aspects of it. These aspects are discussed in a didactic and accessible fashion, while serious references are rigorously provided for all important claims. Still, the book is quite dense, so I figured it would be convenient to have its main ideas gathered all in one place. The posts will be arranged as follows:

1. Part I | The origin of aging. It will summarize the evolutionary basis of aging, and how it explains the wide variety of lifespans and aging phenotypes observed in living species.

2. Part II | The biology of aging and the field of biogerontology. This part is intended to cover the known biological mechanisms of aging, like the Hallmarks of aging, and the current promising options to treat aging.

3. Part III | The moral, social and philosophical implications of curing aging. The first two parts will have laid down the definitions and mechanisms of aging. Part 3 will discuss the reasons why we should cure aging to reduce human suffering.

In these posts, I may emphasize certain parts and chapters more than others according to personal preferences and desire to share them.

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Related content

• All the sources for A. Steele's scientific claims are catalogued in a shareable format on the book’s website.

• The code supporting some statistics used in the book is available online, a nice touch of reproducibility and transparency.

• A. Steele gave a talk at the Royal Institution that covers a lot of his book's content: Getting older without getting old - with Andrew Steele.

I owe a significant part of my motivation to professionally contribute to aging research to this talk and this book.