Never Say Die

William Finch, 96, gets ready to play Badminton in Greenville, N.C. At right, 97-year-old June McCann enjoys a game of Bocce ball. Photos: Michael Edwards for Newsweek

From Newsweek:

Step aside, quacks. The search for longer life is a real science now.

By the time it reaches the age of 18 days, the average roundworm is old, flabby, sluggish and wrinkled. By 20 days, the creature will likely be dead—unless, that is, it's one of Cynthia Kenyon's worms. Kenyon, director of the Hillblom Center for the Biology of Aging at the University of California, San Francisco, has tinkered with two genes that turn simple worms into mini-Methuselahs, with life spans of up to 144 days. "You can beat them up in ways that would kill a normal worm—exposing them to high heat, radiation and infectious microbes—and still they don't die," she says. "Instead, they're moving and looking like young worms. It's like a miracle—except it's science."

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