0426，Ageing：Cheating death

天天用英语365天第116天

张海霞

1、Science is getting to grips with ways to slow ageing. Rejoice, as long as the side-effects can be managed.

2、IMAGINE a world in which getting fitted with a new heart, liver or set of kidneys, all grown from your own body cells, was as commonplace as knee and hip replacements are now.

3、Senescence, the general dwindling of prowess experienced by all as time takes its toll, is coming under scrutiny from doctors and biologists (see article).

4、This, optimists claim, will extend life for many people to today’s ceiling of 120 or so.

5、Longevity is known to run in families, which suggests that particular varieties of genes prolong life.

6、. Mid-life crises might be not so much about recapturing lost youth as wondering how to make the most of the next half-century.

7、Such speculation is fun, and mostly optimistic. The promise of a longer life, well lived, would round a person out. But this vision of the future depends on one thing—that a long existence is also a healthy one. Humanity must avoid the trap fallen into by Tithonus, a mythical Trojan who was granted eternal life by the gods, but forgot to ask also for eternal youth. Eventually, he withered into a cicada.