October 4, 2003: Anti-Aging Medicine - Dr. Ronald Klatz

Art Bell covers a string of current events including a deadly bombing in Israel, the California recall election, Roy Horn's tiger attack in Las Vegas, and Rush Limbaugh's public admission of prescription painkiller addiction. Art shares his own experience with severe back pain and defends Limbaugh against what he sees as a media feeding frenzy, drawing from his personal understanding of how intractable pain leads to dependency.

Dr. Ronald Klatz, founder and president of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, joins to discuss why humans age and what can be done about it. He explains how DNA deterioration, telomere shortening, and free radical damage drive the aging process, and describes current therapies including hormone replacement, nutritional supplementation, and emerging drugs like an ACE inhibitor being tested as a potential anti-death compound. Klatz reports that 50 percent of baby boomers alive today may reach their 100th birthday.

The discussion ventures into speculative territory as Klatz describes head transplant technology tested in monkeys, the possibility of growing headless clone bodies for organ harvesting, and spinal cord repair research that could help Christopher Reeve walk again. He estimates that within 30 years, science may halt aging at around age 55, making practical immortality a theoretical possibility.