Thanks! That makes the debate appear more complex and nuanced. It would take me a while to go through the discussion and links there and I don’t have that time today. There seems to be a real question to be answered in “why do almost all animals age?” and accumulated damage theories are not obviously a complete explanation.
That’s true. However the antagonistic pleiotropy and disposable soma theories have senescence as the product of selection. Basically, all the theories are bad news for anyone hoping that aging and death will somehow go away. Fighting aging is fighting against the natural tendencies of systems to age and die.
Thanks! That makes the debate appear more complex and nuanced. It would take me a while to go through the discussion and links there and I don’t have that time today. There seems to be a real question to be answered in “why do almost all animals age?” and accumulated damage theories are not obviously a complete explanation.
A fairly complete explanation of most aging:
Disposable soma theory
Antagonistic pleiotropy
Damage accumulation
Reliability theory
And none of these argues that evolution selects for mortality or aging.
That’s true. However the antagonistic pleiotropy and disposable soma theories have senescence as the product of selection. Basically, all the theories are bad news for anyone hoping that aging and death will somehow go away. Fighting aging is fighting against the natural tendencies of systems to age and die.