Health and Fitness.--- New Anti-Aging Drug

Skulachev's Ions: New Anti-Aging Drug Raises Moral Issues

Sep 25, 2010 Irene Woodhead
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Skulachev's Ions: New Russian Anti Aging Drug - Cheryl vanStane

As the work on the first anti-aging antioxidant drug enters the final stage after forty years of meticulous research and animal trials, its Russian inventor Professor Vladimir Skulachev (pronounced, Skoo-lah-'chOHv) and his team face a lot of questions regarding its future effects on the world's population.

One would think, what could be more welcome than the news of a drug that can defeat cancer, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease and possibly, death itself? Still, journalists and the public already confront the "world's best bio-chemist and bio-energetic scientist", as Nobel Prize winner Dr. Gunter Blobel of Rockefeller University described his Russian fellow researcher.

New Anti Aging Drug Targets Mitochondrial Oxidation

Professor Skulachev admits he wasn't the first one to develop the drug's anti-aging properties whose antioxidant action prevents oxygen from penetrating deep inside the cell. Professor Skulachev ascribes the main role in the discovery to Dr. Michael Murphy of Cambridge who, according to Skulachev, "succeeded in creating antioxidants that carry a positive charge, thus allowing mitochondria, which are often called cellular power plants, to accumulate a negative charge a thousand times stronger."

Still, it was Russian biochemists led by Skulachev who synthesized an even more complex compound than Dr. Murphy's. Originally, only one gram of the substance was created: more than enough, because experiments called for negligible amounts. Dubbed "Skulachev's Ions", the new anti-aging substance was diluted to the point when only the most sensitive of the world's chemical equipment was able to detect its presence in the drug.

Similar Anti-Aging Antioxidant Mechanisms Already Exist in Nature

According to Professor Skulachev, he and his researchers are simply reinventing the wheel. He argues that in the wild, there are certain species that behave as if they were already taking his anti-aging drug. Crocodiles, the bowhead whale and especially the naked mole rat whose lifespan is ten times that of other rodents, all show similar patterns of having no recognisable aging processes.

"Take naked mole rats: the way they die, it's unbelievable," Professor Skulachev admitted in an interview with his ex college mate and now a leading Russian journalist, Vladimir Pozner. "Right until their very last day they run around active and happy, their hair doesn't fall out, it doesn't turn gray, they don't show any signs of muscular dystrophy neither immune problems, they have virtually no osteoporosis. I've no idea why they die at all. I personally think that aging is Mother Nature's clever way of accelerating evolution."

Professor Skulachev: the New Anti-Aging Antioxidant is a New Step in Medical Science

Still, the new anti-aging drug throws up many ethical questions, overpopulation being just one of them. But Professor Skulachev believes the problem of overpopulation can be solved successfully, the way it is being dealt with now in China.

"If I worked on some kind of super weapon -- now that would have been an ethical question indeed. I believe that old age is a disease which can be treated and cured, the way we cure cancer and cardiac arrest, which are mainly aging conditions. We're not talking immortality here, because we'll still have accidents and catastrophes to take into account, and only a hundred years ago these two had far worse mortality statistics than natural death causes. Remember Tolkien's elves who were immortal but could be slain in battle?"
Humans, says professor Skulachev, also seem to have had a record of unprecedented longevity, as shown in the Bible. "One explanation of Methuselah's 900-year life span could be in the fact that they had a different calendar and age system in those days. But then again, they could know of a herb or a root that had properties similar to our anti-aging drug. By simply munching on that root, they could abort their own aging."
Professor Skulachev is positive that his and his colleagues' anti-aging drug is simply a new step in medical science, just like Aspirin and antibiotics were before him.
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