Our Entire Theory of Aging Has Been Wrong. There's A Lot of Hope in That.
The epigenetic model of aging has transformative implications for how we treat disease, and how long we may be able to live. It may also mitigate the coming population collapse.
Don’t miss our Fourth of July essay on the intellectual underpinnings of the American Revolution. Most of what you’ve been taught is wrong.
NOTE: In an era of accelerating demographic collapse, particularly in China, robotics and AI cannot help but become essential technologies for extending increasingly scarce human productivity.
The problem is, robots don’t buy houses or athletic shoes. They assist with production, not consumption. And that could spark an economic free fall.
But what if we could extend human life (and health) spans? Even if birth rates don’t tick up, populations — and the benefits of the division of labor — could stabilize for a good while to come if people simply lived longer, and were able to utilize that time.
Life extension technology used to be a pipe dream and a vanity project. Suddenly, it’s neither. In fact, it may be vital. And it’s starting to look like it’s here. — RDM
by Patrick Cox
July 3, 2025
Just a few years ago, even talking about age reversal was considered crazy. It was common sense that aging was an inevitable process tied to the physical law of entropy.
Simply put, things tend to fall apart as time goes on, and scientists thought this was how aging functioned as well.
However, things are changing now. The theory of aging has undergone a tumultuous shift. Over the last seven years, success in cellular and animal rejuvenation experiments has started to wear down the consensus.
In respected journals, prominent scientists are now making the case for a mechanistic view of aging — a process that can be changed. For example, the authors of the paper “Rejuvenation by Cell Reprogramming: a New Horizon in Gerontology,” published in 2019 in Stem Cell Research & Therapy, make exactly this case.
The paper argues in favor of “the epigenetic model of aging,” which we will get to in a bit. It summarizes the findings of many studies showing that the aging process can be reversed not only in cells, but in animal studies.
The Cumulative DNA Damage Model of Aging
First off, we should clarify the word epigenetic. The dictionary defines it as “relating to or arising from nongenetic influences on gene expression.”
The old theory — which is now referred to as “the cumulative DNA damage theory of aging” — states that aging is a matter of entropy, the gradual and inevitable decay of our biological systems.
The purported cause, as the paper describes it: