There is a mature literature on evolution and aging intended to explain how, despite selection for the morphological, metabolic, physiological, and behavioral prerequisites for survival and procreation, with the passage of time bodies deteriorate ultimately resulting...
Andrii I. Rozhok and James DeGregori July 21, 2015, doi:10.1073/pnas.1501713112 Full Text PDF PNAS July 21, 2015 vol. 112 no. 298914-8921 Abstract Our understanding of cancer has greatly advanced since Nordling [Nordling CO (1953) Br J Cancer7(1):68–72] and Armitage...
In an 1858 humorous poem The Deacon’s Masterpiece, or the Wondeful One Hoss Shay, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. described a carriage so artfully constructed as to have no weakest link. The carriage ran smoothly for exactly a hundred years, and then one day it went...
Death is one of the most mysterious and inexorable problems in biology. How does life end? What is the true nature of death? Is it absolute—a fundamental state? Or is it relative and a matter of degree? Can it be defined as part of some basic reality, a detail of an...