Free Republic

The World Won't Be Aging Gracefully. Just the Opposite. By Neil Howe and Richard JacksonSunday, January 4, 2009 The world is in crisis. A financial crash and a deepening recession are afflicting rich and poor countries alike. The threat of weapons of mass destruction looms ever larger. A bipartisan congressional panel announced last month that the odds of a nuclear or biological terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the year 2014 are better than 50-50. It looks as though we'll be grappling with these economic and geopolitical challenges well into the 2010s. But if you think that things couldn't...

The German government on Friday said it was working on a bill aimed at battling a growing tide of complaints against noisy children in what is a rapidly ageing society. Regulations on noise fall under Germany's emissions laws, and a bill tweaking these is due to go before Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet in February, a spokesman for the environment ministry said. "Noise made by childcare centres, playgrounds and places where ball games are played do not generally constitute a harmful environmental effect," the Passauer Neue Presse daily cited the bill as saying. The government is also working on an amendment...

Harvard scientists were surprised that they saw a dramatic reversal, not just a slowing down, of the ageing in mice. Now they believe they might be able to regenerate human organs Scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the ageing process after rejuvenating worn out organs in elderly mice. The experimental treatment developed by researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, turned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies. The surprise recovery of the animals has raised hopes among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat...

For decades, scientists have been searching for the fundamental biological secrets of how eating less extends lifespan. It has been well documented in species ranging from spiders to monkeys that a diet with consistently fewer calories can dramatically slow the process of aging and improve health in old age. But how a reduced diet acts at the most basic level to influence metabolism and physiology to blunt the age-related decline of tissues and cells has remained, for the most part, a mystery. Now, writing in the current online issue (Nov. 18) of the journal Cell, a team of scientists from...

“The fact that you are reading this indicates you escaped the abortion holocaust. But don’t relax yet. We are all candidates for the growing euthanasia movement.” These oft-repeated words of Msgr. William B. Smith, one of the Church’s best moral theologians until his death last year, came to mind as my father lay in the emergency room and a grave-faced doctor called me, my brother and our mother aside for a consultation. Since this was a top-rated yet secular hospital, I was already reviewing in my mind all I knew about Church teaching regarding “ordinary” and extraordinary” care. But I...

My friends all wait. They wait to make use of their degrees. They wait for a job to open. They wait to finish graduate school. Again. They all wait. The economy stinks. It stunk before we started earning salaries. The job market is nonexistent. Even small colleges are filled up. The technology we mastered as curious children is sitting there, but we can't do anything with it. No, it's too busy. It's being used by you people. And the jobs? You people. The schools? Again, you people. You baby boomers. You're why we're waiting. Like every generation before us, my...

SACHIRE, Georgia – Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Georgia claim a woman from a remote mountain village turned 130 on Thursday, making her the oldest person on Earth. Antisa Khvichava from western Georgia was born on July 8, 1880, said Georgiy Meurnishvili, spokesman for the civil registry at the Justice Ministry. The woman, who lives with her 40-year-old grandson in an idyllic vine-covered country house in the mountains, retired from her job as a tea and corn picker in 1965, when she was 85, records say. "I've always been healthy, and I've worked all my life — at...

Life looks a little rosier after 50, a new study finds. Older people in their mid- to late-50s are generally happier, and experience less stress and worry than young adults in their 20s, the researchers say. The results, based on a Gallup phone survey from 2008 of more than 340,000 Americans, held even after the researchers accounted for factors that could have contributed to differences in well-being with age, such as whether the participants were married, had children at home or were employed. So if having a partner and getting rid of the kids aren't responsible for the uptick in...

In the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, conducted last spring, only 18 percent of Japanese said they expected economic conditions in their country to improve over the next year. Remarkably, that represented a 13-percentage-point increase from 2008, when just 5 percent of Japanese said they expected improvement. The corresponding 2009 figures in China, India, and the United States were 82 percent, 75 percent, and 59 percent, respectively. Fewer than one-fifth (19 percent) of Japanese told the 2009 Pew interviewers that children in their country would grow up to be “better off” than people are today, compared with 89 percent of...

VIENNA (AFP) – A new vaccine against Alzheimer's, developed by the Austrian biotechnology firm Affiris, will soon be tested in six European countries, the company announced Friday.

LONDON (Reuters) – British scientists studying the genetics of aging said on Thursday that experiments on laboratory worms showed that a specific gene is strongly linked to lifespan, immunity and disease resistance. Since the gene, called DAF-16 in worms, is found in many animals and in humans, the finding could open up new ways to affect aging, immunity and resistance in humans, the scientists said. "We wanted to find out how normal aging is being governed by genes and what effect these genes have on other traits, such as immunity," said Robin May of the University of Birmingham, who led...

By Andy Xie 03.15.2010 18:20 Our Next Economic Plague: Japan Disease Growing old is hard, but watching formerly vibrant economies choke on debt and wither away is downright ugly Japan's nominal GDP fell 6 percent to 475 trillion yen last year, while its real GDP declined 5 percent. Meanwhile, nominal GDP in the United States decreased 1.3 percent to US$ 14.2 trillion and real GDP fell 2.4 percent. If you travel across Japan and the United States, you get the impression that America is in much worse shape: Americans cannot stop screaming about their woes, while the Japanese face economic...

February 28, 2010 Fighting Alzheimer's With A Touch of Beauty A pioneering care project demonstates how literature, music, art and love can improve the lives of dementia sufferers Rita Hayworth [Pic in URL] Margarette Driscoll In her heyday, Rita Hayworth was known as the “Love Goddess”: so explosive was her appeal that her image was placed on the first nuclear bomb to be tested on Bikini Atoll after the second world war. As befits one of the world’s most glamorous women, she danced her way through 61 movies and five husbands. She was a pin-up for American servicemen and is...

Those who live in industrialized countries have easy access to healthy food and nutritional supplements, but magnesium deficiencies are still common. That's a problem because new research from Tel Aviv University suggests that magnesium, a key nutrient for the functioning of memory, may be even more critical than previously thought for the neurons of children and healthy brain cells in adults. Dr. Inna Slutsky of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine published results of a 5-year probe which has significant implications for the use of over-the-counter magnesium supplements.

Jane Fonda Goes Back Under The Knife Despite Her Vow To Grow Old Gracefully SIMON CABLE 19th February 2010 New face: Jane Fonda admitted that she had surgery on her neck, chin and eyes. [Pic in URL] She once vowed to stop her fellow actresses turning to surgery. But having already undergone multiple cosmetic procedures herself, not many were willing to take her too seriously. And now Jane Fonda seems to have completely abandoned her crusade after admitting to yet more operations. Despite having a lucrative six-figure contract to promote L'Oreal anti-ageing cream, the 72-year-old revealed she visited doctors just...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Despite studies suggesting that erectile dysfunction drugs promote irresponsible sexual behavior, men who receive prescriptions for them are no more likely to engage in risky sex acts than men who do not receive prescriptions for the medications, according to a University of Florida study. “For this study we took the perspective of a doctor who may worry that prescribing erectile dysfunction drugs to patients could contribute to the spread of HIV,” said lead researcher Dr. Robert Cook. “The findings from this study should provide some reassurance to health-care providers that erectile dysfunction drugs appear to be prescribed...

Age Studies, Part Two Bethany Stotts, January 12, 2010 As reported earlier, one professor discussing age studies at the 2009 Modern Language Association Convention focused her talk on Ghost World’s messages about adolescence and other items of a more prurient nature. The other three speakers, however, drew a parallel between ageism and “neoliberal” economic policies. Age as Class Conflict Speaking on a panel entitled “Age and Affect: Fear, Denial, Fantasy,” Ph.D. candidate Andrea Charise discussed elder abuse as it is depicted in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit and Anthony Trollope’s The Fixed Period. “In this paper I argue…that disgust is a...

Someone once wrote: "After thirty-five usually something in your body hurts at all times, and after sixty-five it's just patch, patch, patch!"

Worries about the economy and healthcare are pushing people into middle age earlier, making 35 the new 40, according to a new report. While 40 was once widely considered the milestone that defined middle age, this has been lowered to 35, according to research by the Philips Center for Health and Well-Being. "Thirty five is the new 40 as Americans feel the pressures of middle age earlier than ever," the Amsterdam-based centre said in a statement. Katy Hartley, the director of the centre, which aims to improve quality of life, said stress about the economy and healthcare that you would...

Women who have plump full lips look younger than their years, scientists have said. Devotees of collagen injections and silicone implants have long believed it and now research has backed their theory that a bee stung pout can belie their true age. Even if the woman in question has wrinkles, eye bags, sagging jowels and greying hair, a rosy and firm set of lips will make them appear younger