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Age as Disease: Anti-Aging Technologies, Sites and Practices 1st Edition David-Jack Fletcher full chapter instant download
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Age as Disease
Anti-Aging Technologies,
Sites and Practices
David-Jack Fletcher
Age as Disease
David-Jack Fletcher
Age as Disease
Anti-Aging Technologies, Sites
and Practices
David-Jack Fletcher
Online Education Services – Western Sydney Online
Aberglasslyn, NSW, Australia
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore
Pte Ltd. 2021
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Acknowledgments
There are so many people who supported me through this process; not
least of all my PhD supervisor Joseph Pugliese, who patiently assisted and
guided me in the development of my thesis, upon which this book is
largely based. His dedication to my work, and to me, has been tireless,
relentless and perpetually inspiring. In my (several) moments of doubt
and shaky confidence, Joseph inevitably provided some sort of mind-
bending feedback that set me right back on track. I cannot sufficiently
express my gratitude. Thank you, as well, to my associate supervisor,
Nicole Anderson, who was always ready to read drafts and provide con-
siderate and critical feedback at short notice. I do count myself lucky to
have had two extremely supportive colleagues support me.
I am also grateful for a husband whose endless emotional support also
manifested as, at times, housekeeper, personal chef, shoulder to cry on
and a firm hand telling me to believe in myself. His love and support, in
general, spurred me to push myself. Thank you, Paul, for listening to my
endless cultural theory-inspired monologues, helping me relax with ran-
dom renovation shows and, of course, for everything else.
A handful of friends also enabled me through this journey, particularly
my incredible friends Tahnee and Chris, who were there every step of the
way, whether to share a success or pull me out of an abyss of self-pity. My
sister Allisha perhaps spent the most time asking me questions so that she
might understand my topic. These Q&A sessions enabled me to
v
vi Acknowledgments
1 Introduction 1
References317
vii
1
Introduction
Old age is a point of reflection for many of us, though often through a
lens of pathology or medicalization. I say this precisely because of the
ways in which frameworks for elderly1 individuals are established and
deployed. As such, I have often reflected on the ways old age is con-
structed not only as a sort of deficit, but critically, as is argued throughout
this book, as a form of disease-state. Living in an intergenerational rela-
tionship, I am always interested and sometimes perplexed at the reactions
my husband and I receive when it is discovered that we are, in fact, not
father and son. The gasps and double-takes are not borne from the fact
that we are both men. They are instead driven by the fact that we are
clearly of different generations. The categories imposed upon us through
a priori assumptions about age, and romance, sparked within me a curi-
osity. Why, in a society that seemingly seeks to empower older individu-
als, are people still so shocked to hear—and to see—that this man and I,
with an age difference of twenty-four years, live in a monogamous
relationship?
Forms of empowerment that are readily recognizable without the need
for research include the marketing of anti-wrinkle creams, reinvigorated
vibrancy, cosmetic surgery and discursive regimes that insist forty is the
new thirty. Further, ‘by the end of the twentieth century, mid-life
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 1
D.-J. Fletcher, Age as Disease, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0013-5_1
2 D.-J. Fletcher
lifestyles had become late-life lifestyles where 60 was hailed as the new 40
and 80 the new 60’ (Jagger 2005 in Gilleard and Higgs 2013). My curi-
osity was peaked when I began to do further investigation into ways of
seeing old age. Community programs have emerged across Australia, the
United States and the UK designed to keep elderly individuals active;
however, these are often increasingly reliant upon medico-scientific dis-
courses of the inevitability of frailty, decrepitude and illness. Investigations
and experimentations into ‘beating’ or ‘curing’ old age have become com-
monplace within scientific and medical circles, particularly in the field of
biogerontology. Outside the spheres of medicine and science old age has
been increasingly visibilized through various types of media and my ini-
tial research into this project was overwhelmed by frequent news broad-
casts and articles concerned with ‘overcoming’ age. These
spheres—medicine, science, media—converge to present aging itself as a
medical problem. I wondered, then, if there was a connection between
informal gasps of shock when I introduced my visibly older partner and
a broader discourse that positioned old age as a medical issue.
The obvious implication here is the increased value of youth, which of
course is not a new phenomenon. However, with the increased develop-
ment of technology, this anti-aging phenomenon has become a move-
ment, as this book will expose. The question therefore arose: were
anti-wrinkle creams and ‘success’ stories of extending the lifespan of crea-
tures such as mice designed simply to celebrate youth, or was there some-
thing else at stake here? This book will demonstrate that discourses
surrounding age are intertwined in a complex nexus comprised of biopo-
litical, governmental, neoliberal, somatechnological and ethical ideolo-
gies that seek to remove old age in favor of an idealized youthful form. I
contend that old age, and aging more broadly, is currently under
attempted abolition. Through governmental, institutional and medico-
scientific frameworks, there is an attempt to abolish age and aging because
it has been framed as a pathology that needs to be ‘cured’. As such, the
central concern of this book is to expose and critique the myriad ways in
which old age has become pathologized as a disease-state.
This book has four key aims, described below in brief to provide con-
text for the book as it unfolds. The pathologization of old age has been
enabled and legitimized by several scientific and medical discourses and,
1 Introduction 3
What Is Aging?
The aging process is generally recognized as a simple fact of life; we are
born, we live, we get old and we die. It has never been that simple, of
course, for age itself is a social and cultural construct. As Estes and
Phillipson (2002, p. 280) state:
As such, aging has never been solely concerned with reaching a certain
number; rather, it has been centrally preoccupied with a series of entitle-
ments during certain periods of one’s life. For instance, in western societ-
ies, an individual aged five years old is entitled to enter the education
system, an eighteen-year-old is entitled to vote, which in Australia, is a
legal requirement. At age sixty-five, an individual is entitled to retire.
These and other examples demonstrate that aging is not simply a biologi-
cal process, but one that occurs within a nexus of biopolitical and govern-
mental regimes surrounding presupposed aged abilities.
However, ‘age-related demarcations (50+, 55+ or 65+), that are con-
structed in society to distinguish “the aged” from other, seemingly “age-
less” adults, are quite arbitrary’ (Baars and Phillipson 2014, p. 12) and
have shifted over time. Further, what is of interest for me is how individu-
als in later life are constructed as somehow waiting to die. Moreover, how
often these individuals are framed as entitled to die. At the very least, it is
expected that older individuals will die sooner rather than later and as
such, protocols are put in place to alleviate the economic burden they
represent. The manner in which this alleviation takes place has shifted
over time from regimes of care, to regimes of self-care, which, as Nadesan
(2010, p. 15) argues, operate as forms of the ‘neoliberal state relinquish[ing]
paternalistic responsibility for its subjects but, simultaneously, hold[ing]
its subjects responsible for self-governance’. As such, a neoliberal under-
standing of old age has framed a decline in health as not only a personal
6 D.-J. Fletcher
For the above cited authors there are nine hallmarks of aging that need
to be overcome: ‘genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic altera-
tions, loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient-sensing, mitochondrial
dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, and altered inter-
cellular communication’ (López-Otín et al. 2013, p. 1). In this way, aging
is inseparable from medical understandings of health. The short passage
above provides a clear understanding of the biomedical approach as
underpinned by the assumption that aging is—or at least can be—a
disease-state. Importantly, the biomedical approach can be fragmented
further, specifically based on assumptions of causes for aging. That is,
some biogerontologists (Barja 2008; de Grey 1999, 2004a, b, 2005,
2007; de Grey and Rae 2007; Johnson et al. 1999; Rattan 2010, 2012;
Sinclair and Guarente 1997) argue that aging is caused by oxidative stress,
while others (Gilchrest and Bohr 2001) advocate for the gradual
10 D.-J. Fletcher
Pikari oli täytetty viinalla. Kun häneltä kysyin, miten hänellä oli niin
väkevää juomaa, vaikka viinanpoltto oli Lapissa kielletty, vastasi hän:
"Kielto kyllä koskee kaikkia, paitsi pappia ja nimismiestä, mutta aina
sitä sentään tipahtaa syrjäänkin. Sitä paitsi suuri voitto houkuttelee
muitakin luvattomaan viinanpolttoon. Siihen käytetään
hallanpanemaa viljaa ja se vaihdetaan jauhoihin, joista sitten pettuja
lisäämällä valmistetaan leipää. Lappalaisilta saadaan poro
muutamilla korttelilla viinaa, kun hän ensin on saatu päihtymään.
Olisi tosin hyvä", sanoi hän, "jos esivalta joka meille antaa hyviä
asetuksia, myös pitäisi huolta niiden noudattamisesta." Itse hän
kielsi polttaneensa viinaa, eikä sanonut vastakaan polttavansa.
Täällä, kuten Inarissakin, oli kovat ajat. Nälkä ja puute nyt rasitti
surkeasti paikkakuntaa. Samoin kuin vuonna 1829, oli nytkin lohen
kalastus Tenossa ollut sangen huono. Riekkojakaan, tavallista
hätävaraa, ei nyt ollut saatavissa. Kalastajalappalaisten ainoana,
elatuskeinona oli susien raatelemien porojen kerääminen ja lihan
kerjääminen porolappalaisilta, jotka ovatkin varsin anteliaat köyhille
kalastajille. Onpa porolappalaisia, jotka, kun heidän laumansa on
hyvin menestynyt, ovat vuosittain antaneet köyhille kalastajille
toistakymmentä teurastusporoa melkein lahjaksi, tai velaksi. Norjan
lappalaiset ovat rikkaampia, ja meillä ollessaan vieläkin
anteliaampia. Inarilaisen ravinto on kyllä pääasiallisesti pettu, mutta
siihen hän tarvitsee 1/6 tahi ainakin 1/12 lihaa, kalaa tai rasvaa, joka
on voimana hänen pettuvellissään. Pelkästä petusta hän ajettuu,
maha joutuu epäkuntoon, ja ellei semmoinen onneton saa apua,
kuolee hän pian.
Porohoidolle ovat sudet aina suurimpana vaarana, mutta tänä
vuonna (1831) oli niitä tavattoman runsaasti. Niiden aikaansaama
vahinko ei toki riipu yksistään niiden lukuisuudesta, vaan myös
lappalaisen valppaudesta laumansa kaitsemisessa. Tätä nykyä
vilisee porolappalaisten luona viinanmyyjiä, osaksi oman maan
kalastajalappalaisia, joiden kalansaalis on ollut huono, osaksi
suomalaisia, jotka viinalla houkuttelevat porolappalaisilta
suunnattoman joukon teurastusporoja. Kun sitten lappalainen häärii
juomingeissa, laiminlyö hän karjansa. Kun susijoukon onnistuu
pelottaa pois porolauma vartijansa luota, saattaa se yhtenä yönä
tappaa 50, jopa 100 poroa. Jotkut lappalaiset ovat tänä talvena
susien tappamina menettäneet yli 200 poroa. Arviolaskun mukaan
ovat porolappalaiset Utsjoella menettäneet kaikkiaan noin 1,200
poroa.
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