Anti-Aging Medicine: Predictions, Moral Obligations, and Biomedical Intervention

The emergence and proliferation of anti-aging medicine since the 1990s situates the process of aging—rather than "age-associated" disease—as a target for biomedical intervention. Bypassing the notion of disease entirely, anti-aging proponents argue that biological aging is the problem. The shift tendered by anti-aging proponents proceeds largely upon predictions for the future. A compelling prediction must have built into it a sense of feasibility and a sense of moral purpose. Feasibility is principally predicated upon a particular history and a map for the endeavors' imagined success. The notion that aging is painful and costly both for the individual and for society links with the powerful ethic of scientific progress to ground anti-aging predictions in the here and now of scientific funding, research and practice. Imagining this kind of future demands, in this sense, its pursuit. And its pursuit then refashions our relationship to our past by reifying the particular history in which it is embedded.