Scott Veggeberg | May 24, 1992 | 5 min read
The study of aging has had a long reputation of quackery and wild speculative theories. Francis Bacon took note of this problem in 1645 in his Historia Vitae et Mortis: "With regard to the length and shortness of life in animals, the information to be had is small, observation careless, and tradition fabulous." But by applying the tools of molecular biology to the question of the causes of aging and death, researchers have lately been pulling the field into mainstream respectability and potenti