Science & Society

Science and Society and how they get along.

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Location: Santa Barbara, California, United States

I'm a physicist and science consultant specialized in optics, lasers and optical engineering. This blog, StarkFX, looks at what applications physics is finding today. Or, if you are looking at my StarkEffects blog, it displays my views about and interest in the interface between society and science.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

I've got to block my NF Kappa B Gene

I've got to block my NF-Kappa B Gene because, according to a paper in Genes & Development by a team at Stanford University School of Medicne in Californa, it seeems that there really is a genetic program that causes aging. It has long been thought that such a genetic program would have evolved under natural selection and that aging is not just a process of wearing out -since we know we have mechanisms that mitigate that to some extent - but aging is also genetically programmed and now Howard Chang and colleagues have shown that aging of the skin of mice can be reversed (nobody knows yet for how long) by turning off, or rather blocking, a master regulator gene "NF-Kappa B." That is exciting news. I now expect some rhetoric from someone telling me why it is morally wrong to block that gene and reverse aging and I'm taking bets on who will be the first to denounce this new scientific breakthrough.

Why am I so cynical?

- Troy
troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com