Regenerative Medicine and Nanomedicine in the Fight against Aging

The birth of a new biomedical paradigm

 

Annulling the distinction between normal and pathological, regenerative medicine artificially reproduces the biological processes that enable the body to recover at a tissue, cellular and molecular level. It does not have the aim to preserve the equilibrium of the body while fighting against disease, as it is the case in clinical medicine, but rather to combat the degeneration itself.


Thus, the aim is not to heal, but to regenerate, which implies no limits in itself. Defined as a series of "special measures or biomedical interventions that are used to diagnose and treat disease or restore function to damaged tissues or organs", nanomedicine is the center of this new biomedical paradigm. Many international experts identify a major ethical issue in the development of nanomedicine and regenerative medicine which lies in the blurring of boundaries between healing and improvement. Thus, aging is a disease that must be fought and the elderly are levied only in terms of degeneration. Apart from clinical treatment of diseases, this new biomedical paradigm is targeted at improving the human capabilities through nanobots and controlling the molecular processes responsible for cellular senescence. The National Science Foundation published a report entitled Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance, which presents the potential of nanomedicine in terms of improved performance of the human body, especially in the fight against aging (NSF 2002).

Regenerative medicine and nanomedicine are based on the logical shaping and control of biological processes more akin to bio-engineering in clinics. The marketing, reproduction and manipulation of human tissue require a technical model of the body, so the surgeon's work resembles that of an engineer. The English biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey embodies a radical figure of a bio-engineer, stating bluntly that "aging is a medical condition" and that "medicine is a branch of engineering" (Grey, 2008). The project to control and manipulate the biological mechanisms of aging stems was initiated out of a desire to "redesign" the human body. Thus, this new biomedical paradigm is no longer based on the classic representation of the body machine, but on a molecular vision of the body composed of multiple cellular machines. An anti ageing cream can be used to keep your skin smooth.

When aging becomes a chronic disease

 

Affecting both the U.S. authorities and those of the European Commission, the shift toward an ameliorative type of medicine raises important ethical questions about possible changes of the human identity (The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies of The European Commission, 2007). Explicitly aimed at understanding and controlling the molecular and cellular processes at the origin of senescence and biological aging, regenerative medicine and nanomedicine carry representations of the aging process. Medical professionals have dedicated themselves exclusively to this phenomenon over the last century in an attempt to differentiate the aging process from disease. Created to prevent and treat diseases attributable to physical degeneration caused by age, gerontology and geriatrics have become the pillars of political control and monitoring of elderly populations. While allowing a growing number of people to live on, the medicalization of old age contributes to the assimilation of the latter with chronic illness. Far from being an isolated phenomenon, this tendency to see aging as a loss is increasingly common in the biomedical research community. Not only are regenerative medicine and nanomedicine part of this logical medicalization process of aging, but they also contribute to the development of a purely negative hypothesis related to degeneration.