AGING AND MORTALITY - MANIFESTATIONS OF NATURAL NONSELECTION

Aging and mortality have long been a source of concern, fascination and investigation. The ultimate question being, why do we age and die? The method of longitudinal Gompertzian analysis demonstrates that aging and mortality are deterministically linked. Moreover, this method of analysis reveals that with enhanced human survival, mortality patterns have changed primarily as the result of the unmasking of latent susceptibilities to other Gompertzian diseases rather than altered environmental etiopathogenic influences. That is, the Gompertzian model of human aging and mortality suggests that redundant programmed failure is the primary reason for ultimate and inevitable mortality. A process by which redundant deterministic disease susceptibilities could accumulate within the genome is natural 'non-selection'. Random genetic mutations which enhance survival until reproduction facilitate the processes of natural selection and evolution. However, random genetic mutations that program for late failure or disease susceptibility would not be eliminated from the gene pool. Thus, random genetic mutations which have programmed for late susceptibility to Gompertzian diseases, and their cumulative non-selection, may be the basis for the deterministic relationship between aging and mortality.