Making Senescence Negligible, Like Galapagos’s Tortoises

That observation that Galapagos’s geriatric tortoises
are able to make slow contortions caused by their negligible senescence,
contradicts what all our elders have erroneously taught us is
inevitable, as we, by old age obtunded, unlike tortoises, face obsolescence.
Sadly, though, I think that our senescence will take longer than a million
years to catch up with that of an elderly Galapagos reptilian.

In Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old, Andrew Steele, quoted in a review in the New York Times, offers the Galapagos tortoise as evidence that negligible senescence “doesn’t break any laws of biology,” while suggesting that maintaining ourselves in this negligible mode might constitute a plausible goal for humans.

Gershon Hepner

4/18/21

Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976.  Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.