Does Aging Stop? reveals the most paradoxical finding of recent aging research: the cessation of demographic aging. The authors show that aging stops at the level of the individual organism, and explain why evolution allows this. The implications of this counter-intuitive conclusion are profound, and aging research now needs to accept three uncomfortable truths. First, aging is not a cumulative physiological process. Second, the fundamental theory that is required to explain, manipulate, and probe the phenomena of aging comes from evolutionary biology. Third, strong-inference experimental strategies for aging must be founded in evolutionary research, not cell or molecular biology.
The result of fifteen years of research bringing together new applications of evolutionary theory, new models for demography, and massive experimentation, Does Aging Stop? advances an entirely new foundation for the scientific study of aging.

Aging is one of those subjects that many biologists feel is largely unknown. Therefore, they often feel comfortable offering extremely facile generalizations that are either unsupported or directly refuted in the experimental literature. Despite this unfortunate precedent, aging is a very broad phenomenon that calls out for integration beyond the mere collecting together of results from disparate laboratory organisms. With this in mind, Part One offers several different synthetic perspectives. The editors, Rose and Finch, provide a verbal synthesis of the field that deliberately attempts to look at aging from both sides, the evolutionary and the molecular. The articles by Charlesworth and Clark both provide population genetic perspectives on aging, the former more mathematical, the latter more experimental. Bell takes a completely different approach, arguing that aging may not be the result of evolutionary forces. Bell's model instead proposes that aging could arise from the progressive deterioration of chronic host pathogen interactions. This is the first detailed publication of this model. It marks something of a return to the type of aging theories that predominated in the 1950's and 1960's, theories like the somatic mutation and error catastrophe theories. We hope that the reader will be interested by the contrast in views between the articles based on evolutionary theory and that of Bell. MR. Rose and C. E. Finch (eds. ), Genetics and Evolution of Aging, 5-12, 1994. (c) 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. The J aniform genetics of aging 2 Michael R. Rosel & Caleb E."

Conceptual Breakthroughs in the Evolutionary Biology of Aging continues the innovative Conceptual Breakthroughs series by providing a comprehensive outline of the major breakthroughs that built the evolutionary biology of aging as a leading scientific field. Following the evolutionary study of aging from its humble origins to the present, the book's chapters treat the field’s breakthroughs one at a time. Users will find a concise and accessible analysis of the science of aging viewed through an evolutionary lens. Building upon widely-cited studies conducted by author Michael Rose, this book covers 30 subsequent years of growth and development within the field. The book highlights key publications for those who are not experts in the field, providing an important resource for researchers. Given the prevailing interest in changing the aging process dramatically, it is a powerful tool for readers who have a vested interest in understanding its causes and future control measures.

This unique book looks at the biology of aging from a fundamentally new perspective, one based on evolutionary theory rather than traditional concepts which emphasize molecular and cellular processes. The basis for this approach lies in the fact that natural selection, as a powerful determining force, tends to decline in importance with age. Many of the characteristics we associate with aging, the author argues, are more the result of this decline than any mechanical imperative contained within organic structures. This theory in turn yields the most fruitful avenues for seeking answers to the problem of aging, and should be recognized as the intellectual core of gerontology and the foundation for future research. The author ably surveys the vast literature on aging, presenting mathematical, experimental, and comparative findings to illustrate and support the central thesis. The result is the first complete synthesis of this vital field. Evolutionary biologists, gerontologists, and all those concerned with the science of aging will find it a stimulating, strongly argued account.

Extending the human life-span past 120 years. The "green" revolution. Evolution and human psychology. These subjects make today's newspaper headlines. Yet much of the science underlying these topics stems from a book published nearly 140 years ago--Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." Far from an antique idea restricted to the nineteenth century, the theory of evolution is one of the most potent concepts in all of modern science.

In "Darwin's Spectre," Michael Rose provides the general reader with an introduction to the theory of evolution: its beginning with Darwin, its key concepts, and how it may affect us in the future. First comes a brief biographical sketch of Darwin. Next, Rose gives a primer on the three most important concepts in evolutionary theory--variation, selection, and adaptation. With a firm grasp of these concepts, the reader is ready to look at modern applications of evolutionary theory. Discussing agriculture, Rose shows how even before Darwin farmers and ranchers unknowingly experimented with evolution. Medical research, however, has ignored Darwin's lessons until recently, with potentially grave consequences. Finally, evolution supplies important new vantage points on human nature. If humans weren't created by deities, then our nature may be determined more by evolution than we have understood. Or it may not be. In this question, as in many others, the Darwinian perspective is one of the most important for understanding human affairs in the modern world.

"Darwin's Spectre" explains how evolutionary biology has been used to support both valuable applied research, particularly in agriculture, and truly frightening objectives, such as Nazi eugenics. Darwin's legacy has been a comfort and a scourge. But it has never been irrelevant.

The conquest of aging is now within our grasp. It hasn't arrived yet, writes Michael R. Rose, but a scientific juggernaut has started rolling and is picking up speed. A long tomorrow is coming.
In The Long Tomorrow, Rose offers us a delightfully written account of the modern science of aging, spiced with intriguing stories of his own career and leavened with the author's engaging sense of humor and rare ability to make contemporary research understandable to nonscientists. The book ranges from Rose's first experiments while a graduate student--counting a million fruit fly eggs, which took 3,000 hours over the course of a year--to some of his key scientific discoveries. We see how some of his earliest experiments helped demonstrate that "the force of natural selection" was key to understanding the aging process--a major breakthrough. Rose describes how he created the well-known Methuselah Flies, fruit flies that live far longer than average. Equally important, Rose surveys the entire field, offering colorful portraits of many leading scientists and shedding light on research findings from around the world. We learn that rodents given fifteen to forty percent fewer calories live about that much longer, and that volunteers in Biosphere II, who lived on reduced caloric intake for two years, all had improved vital signs. Perhaps most interesting, we discover that aging hits a plateau and stops.
Popular accounts of Rose's work have appeared in The New Yorker, Time magazine, and Scientific American, but The Long Tomorrow is the first full account of this exciting new science written for the general reader.
"Among his peers, Rose is considered a brilliantly innovative scientist, who has almost single-handedly brought the evolutionary theory of aging from an abstract notion to one of the most exciting topics in science."--Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

The study of evolutionary adaptation returns to the center stage of biology with this important volume. This innovative treatise discusses new developments in adaptation, with new methods, and new theoretical foundations, achievements, and prospects for a rich intellectual future. Once again adaptation is established as a fundamental cornerstone of evolution by means of natural selection. This is an insightful reintroduction to the themes that Darwin and his successors regarded as central to any profound understanding of biology.
Key Features
* Wide-ranging and comprehensive coverage of adaptation
* Thoroughly reviews adaptation in an up-to-date and advanced treatment
* Includes contributions by leading authorities
* Encourages various conflicting viewpoints

Experimental approaches to evolution provide indisputable evidence of evolution by directly observing the process at work. Experimental evolution deliberately duplicates evolutionary processes - forcing life histories to evolve, producing adaptations to stressful environmental conditions, and generating lineage splitting to create incipient species. This unique volume summarizes studies in experimental evolution, outlining current techniques and applications, and presenting the field's full range of research - from selection in the laboratory to the manipulation of populations in the wild. It provides work on such key biological problems as the evolution of Darwinian fitness, sexual reproduction, life history, athletic performance, and learning.