Horizon - man and science today.

It is one of the most unpleasant discoveries that we all grow old and that there are heavy odds on our dying between the ages of sixty-five and eighty.
Dr. Alex Comfort one of the most distinguished research workers dealing with the biology of ageing, looks into the age-old quest to prolong human life and investigates the latest scientific theories.

What is the process taking place in our body that makes us age? Is ageing a kind of clock-mechanism that could be slowed down and how? Is ageing due to a loss of biological 'information' from the cells due to some kind of random damage? Does the cell, like a worn computer, run out of evolutionary programme? The scene of the drama may only be the tiny, invisible cell-nucleus-but we are the real protagonists; the outcome of the story concerns the lives of all of us.

Do many of us dislike the idea of growing old? Can the social scientist do something to change this attitude which leads to our frightening negligence towards old people? Can the biologist - and the British biologist in particular - do something to make our lives longer?
(Colour)