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Any attempt to stop aging is futile, according to University of Arizona researchers who say that it's mathematically impossible to do so in humans and other multicellular organisms. There’s a catch-22 of sorts: as you age, most of your cells lose function and stop growing, but if you try to get rid of these, that allows cancer cells to proliferate, and vice versa.
"You might be able to slow down aging, but you can't stop it," Masel said. "We have a mathematical demonstration of why it's impossible to fix both problems. You can fix one problem, but you're stuck with the other one. Things will get worse over time, in one of these two ways or both: either all of your cells will continue to get more sluggish, or you'll get cancer. And the basic reason is that things break. It doesn't matter how much you try and stop them from breaking, you can't."
"You might be able to slow down aging, but you can't stop it," Masel said. "We have a mathematical demonstration of why it's impossible to fix both problems. You can fix one problem, but you're stuck with the other one. Things will get worse over time, in one of these two ways or both: either all of your cells will continue to get more sluggish, or you'll get cancer. And the basic reason is that things break. It doesn't matter how much you try and stop them from breaking, you can't."