UK research on the biology of aging

Only a few years ago, it could fairly be said that biogerontology research in the UK was in a sorry state. With the exception of the evolutionary biology of aging, which was revolutionized by Britons in the 1950s and in which the UK has remained paramount ever since, the number of research groups whose main focus was biogerontology had waned to single digits, and even those groups were generally very small. This situation has been transformed during the past decade, with the result that the UK arguably leads Europe in this field, in terms of both the quality and the quantity of its output. Moreover, the health of UK biogerontology research seems secure for the foreseeable future. Its one potential Achilles heel is the overemphasis on compression of morbidity as a goal, since further compression is highly unlikely to occur and is anyway inconsistent with the public's demonstrated desires.