Dr.
Denham Harman was confused.
Harman
had become interested in aging as a student,
after reading a New York Times article
about the progress being made in aging research
by a Russian biogerontologist. He continued
to puzzle away over riddle of aging while completing
his medical education, and through fifteen years
of laboratory work - much of it involving the
chemistry of free radicals. Then, one morning
in November of 1954, while working at the
UC
Berkeley's Donner Laboratory of Medical Physics,
his three interests - medicine, aging, and free
radical chemistry - suddenly became fused in
his imagination.
Out
of nowhere, it dawned on Dr. Harman that aging
itself might be caused by the kind of
uncontrolled, damaging chemical reactions that
he had seen time and again in his laboratory
work. Looking at animals which had been subjected
to heavy X-ray treatment seemed to prove him
right: bombarding these animals with radiation
caused free radicals to rage through them, and
their young bodies suddenly seemed old in every
way that you could test.
And
most importantly, Dr. Harman's insight, first
published in 1956,
87
immediately suggested a way to escape the ravages
of old age. If aging was a disease caused by
free radicals, then antioxidants - substances
that fight free radicals - should be the cure.
So why didn't it work?
