The Telomerase Revolution: The Enzyme That Holds the Key to Human Aging…and Will Soon Lead to Longer, Healthier Lives 1st Edition

As an aging physician(ophthalmologist) who has been interested in aging, that is, how to delay it, and if possible reverse it, I have studied every claim to these ends and indulged in the few which seemed reasonable. Dr. Fossel, who has written the only medical textbook on cellular aging in existence, explains how telomere loss leads to increasing cellular senescence and eventual death,with the subsequent death of the organism. He cites some lower organisms which never die until eaten because telomeres are maintained. Most significantly, he explains how activation of the dormant gene in our cells for the enzyme which builds telomeres will reverse cellular aging, and therefore prevent a host of degenerate diseases. It has already been done in the lab on tissues and even in some artificially aged lower animals.

This book is written for educated laymen as well as physicians. It is to the point, logical, and In my opinion compelling. Very well written. The explanation on how telomere loss leads to specific diseases alone is worth the read. There is even a reasonable speculation of why evolution would 'select' death for all of us individual organisms.

This is something to get excited about! It looks like the 'real McCoy' of age reversal! Read it and gain hope!

Interesting read

fair

Excellent book, but it should have been bubble wrapped instead of just dropped in the box with the other items.

Today aging is interpreted in two very different ways with many opposing assumptions and implications. The old paradigm defines aging as the cumulative effect of various inevitable degenerative processes that can be mitigated but never completely controlled. The new paradigm considers aging as a physiological phenomenon with specific mechanisms genetically determined and regulated. This, in principle, allows to consider methods that might control aging even completely.
The book by Michael Fossel, The Telomerase Revolution (BenBella Books, 2015), is clearly on the side of the new paradigm. The book traces, in a simplified way but with many enrichments, the concepts expounded in the well-known authoritative and documented textbook by the same author [1]. It describes, in a popular way, how we age through mechanisms based on the telomere-telomerase system and the consequent progressive decrease both of cell turnover and of cell efficiency.
In the arguments of the book, there is also a net distinction between aging and the common diseases caused by wrong lifestyles whose effects increase in proportion to age. While these diseases can be prevented by avoiding incorrect lifestyles, the same measures are totally ineffective to slow down aging. It is also true, however, that erroneous lifestyles both cause distinct diseases and accelerate and complicate aging effects, a common cause of confusion between aging and age-related diseases.
Fossel's description of aging mechanisms is linear and consistent and should allow the understanding of complex concepts – some of them in contrast with widespread and accepted ideas - even to those who are not biology scholars or are unfamiliar with the medical or scientific world.
Also, and this is the aspect that will be the most attractive for a much wider audience of readers, it opens the discussion – not in charlatan but in real terms! - on how it would be possible to stop or reverse the process of aging.
Since 1998, it is well known how to reverse completely aging at the cellular level by well-known experiments of telomerase activation [2-4]. Similar experiments in the whole animal are few but extremely promising [5, 6]. The author highlights how a factor that thwarts further progress on this way is an unreasonable or at least exaggerated fear that telomerase activation procedures are carcinogenic. This fear arises from the consideration that, for the old paradigm, mechanisms genetically regulated that determine aging are impossible. Consequently, the sophisticated mechanism, based on the telomere-telomerase system, which regulates and limits progressively cell replication and efficiency, must have some justification. The only explanation that has been proposed is that such a mechanism is a general defense against cancer and so the reactivation of telomerase would alter an essential defense. This erroneous and untenable explanation [7] is openly opposed by the author who, instead, to counter aging, proposes drugs or genetic interventions for the stimulation or reactivation of telomerase.
The book, is challenging and breaks old patterns built on paradigms that appear more and more inconsistent and wrong. To define the author a heretic is a compliment addressed to him, who, besides, is fully aware of this, as it is showed by a dedication formulated in his main work: "Great ideas Janus'd pivot on the cusp of history: they are looking forward obviously foolish, looking backwards they appear foolishly obvious. We are doubly blind." [1]
In this positive critique of the book, however, it is necessary to specify what I consider its main limit.
The text does not expound or explore a series of experimental evidence and theoretical arguments that are against the old paradigm and in support of the new [8]. The author understands and explains beautifully aging mechanisms, but the evolutionary roots of the phenomenon and its necessary framework in the broad category of phenoptosis (sacrifice of an individual on the basis of supra-individual selective mechanisms) [9] are not within its investigation or familiarity. Maybe this would have increased the difficulty of reading for a non-specialist reader and increased the opposition and the criticisms of those who are anchored to the old paradigm.
Other minor criticisms are possible but they are of little importance for the meaning and the overall value of the book that is to disseminate and support disruptive ideas supported by known empirical data: another step in a scientific revolution in action, with wide consequences for our future.
In short, this is a book that should be read and meditated.
Giacinto Libertini (MD, Independent Researcher, Member of the Italian Society of Evolutionary Biology)

[1] Fossel M. Cells, Aging an Human Disease, Oxford University Press, 2004.
[2] Bodnar AG, Ouellette M, Frolkis M, et al. Extension of Life-Span by Introduction of Telomerase into Normal Human Cells. Science 1998; 279:349-52.
[3] Counter CM, Hahn WC, Wei W, et al. Dissociation among in vitro telomerase activity, telomere maintenance, and cellular immortalization. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1998; 95:14723-8.
[4] Vaziri H, Benchimol S. Reconstitution of telomerase activity in normal cells leads to elongation of telomeres and extended replicative life span. Curr Biol 1998; 8:279-82.
[5] Jaskelioff M, Muller FL, Paik JH, et al. Telomerase reactivation reverses tissue degeneration in aged telomerase-deficient mice. Nature 2011; 469:102-6.
[6] de Jesus BB, Vera E, Schneeberger K, et al. Telomerase gene therapy in adult and old mice delays aging and increases longevity without increasing cancer. EMBO Mol Med 2012; 4:1-14.
[7] Libertini G. Evidence for aging theories from the study of a hunter-gatherer people (Ache of Paraguay). Biochem (Mosc) 2013; 78(9):1306-17.
[8] Libertini G. Non-programmed Versus Programmed Aging Paradigm. Curr Aging Sci 2015; 8:55-68.
[9] Libertini G. Classification of Phenoptotic Phenomena. Biochem (Mosc) 2012; 77(7):847-57.

Let me preface my remarks by saying I have a Ph.D. in physics and have been working in research for 25 years. I am skeptical of most things and objective to the point where it bugs my family. Now.... I was lucky enough to grab one of the first copies of this book. I have already read it and loaned it to my uncle. Dr. Fossel has been working in this area for 30 years and knows it forward and backward. What he covers in here is outstanding and surprising! Surprising because the science is straightforward, the implications staggering and the media, governments and society in general aren't going nuts over it. The problem is that we have all heard the snake oil claims for herbs, suppliments, ... that will cure us of everything and make us kids again. Those claims have jaded us. Then comes this book on the basic science of what is happening and no sales pitch. This is the book to read to understand why we age and what it means. Someday maybe this will turn into a fountain of youth drug but for now this book is real, objective information on aging and how it affects us all. If you have an interest in why we age but aren't up for technical journal articles then this is the book for you.