The biology of death: origins of mortality
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Originally published in French, this book begins with a historical overview of the study of aging and death. Subsequent chapters examine the definitions of aging and mortality, species' differences in longevity, evolutionary theories of senescence and death, fundamental mechanisms of aging, programmed cell death, loss of control of programmed cell death, delaying death, and the reasons that death occurs. Klarsfeld (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and Revah (Cerep) follow the story of Alexis Carrel, who, in the first half of the 20th century, made a convincing case that cells grown in culture do not age, and the discovery by Leonard Hayflick in the early 1960s of a simple error by Carrel that made this "accepted fact" suddenly ridiculous. The book defines aging relative to mortality, noting that many early ideas about the causes of aging were based on teleology, circular reasoning, and value judgments. Once these questionable bases of "scientific" thought are eliminated, the phenomena of aging and eventual death become more easily understandable. A couple of caveats: (1) the authors do not specifically differentiate between aging and senescence; (2) many of the general references are published in French (though most of the specialized references are in English). ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General readers; two-year technical program students; undergraduate and graduate students. L. A. Meserve Bowling Green State University