SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN FRONTIERS "Never Say Die" explores the progress being made in understanding aging and dying. As scientists unravel the biological mysteries of aging, they're coming up with dramatic ideas for halting or - even reversing - the aging process. At the same time, scientists are already making tremendous advances in tissue engineering. The possibility that people could soon be living healthy lives for 150 years or beyond is very real. The program airs on PBS Tuesday, January 25, 2000, 8:00 p.m. ET (check local listings). Alan Alda hosts.
Dr. Roy Walford - a physician at the UCLA School of Medicine and doctor on the Biosphere 2 project - was one of the first scientists to consider whether caloric restriction might extend human lives. Walford has been living on a low-calorie but nutritious" diet for the past two decades. To find out more about Walford's diet, Alda visits him in Venice, California, to make a turkey sandwich. The sandwich, it turns out, is far from ideal.
At the Geron Corporation near San Francisco, scientists are working on a breakthrough in biotechnology that may make it possible for the body's cells to divide indefinitely and remain healthy well beyond their programmed life spans. Behind this discovery is the telomere, discovered in the 1980s by Cal Harley, Geron's chief scientist. These short,
identical sequences of DNA on the ends of all chromosomes are repeated hundreds of times and get shorter each time a cell divides. Harley identified the direct relationship between an individual's age and the length of his telomeres.
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