Medicine: Adding Life to Years

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What causes the slowdown in replace ment? Gerontologists cannot be sure, but their highest-powered laboratory tech niques are now concentrated on enzymes, those little-understood "organic catalysts" that regulate all the functions of metabo lism—both breakdown (catabolism) and buildup (anabolism). With age, a digestive change definitely involving an enzyme occurs in the salivary glands : they secrete less ptyalin, an enzyme that converts starch into sugars. Researchers believe that there may be many such changes.

The cliche that became fashionable ear ly in the 20th century — "A man is as old as his arteries" — may have to be revised to "A man is as old as his enzymes." Then, as researchers unravel the mys teries of enzyme chemistry, enzyme supplements for mature men and women may adorn the breakfast table, instead of the currently popular but cruder vitamins.

Bismarck's Diktat. Until that day comes, society as a whole and millions of individuals and their families will be faced with problems of aging at a grosser, more practical level. The trouble may begin at 65, when (thanks to a chance decision by Bismarck in the 1880s) most pension plans and many compulsory retirement plans begin to operate. For business, this cutoff point may be sound up to a point. Says G.M.'s Sloan, who kept administrative control until he was 71: "The rule is probably sound, because, while some men can stay in administrative posts beyond 65, most may not be aggressive and vigorous enough to do so. But many of these same men can then be useful in policy-making positions, where their accumulated experience counts." Sloan concedes that not all businesses have enough work at the policy level to absorb these men. For them, he advocates public service—not necessarily in politics, but in social and community efforts. There is, he insists, plenty of useful work that a man can begin at age 65 or even later.

But with the age 65 rule still operating blindly in most areas of the U.S. economy, practically every family can tell of a kinsman who was forcibly retired, then simply shriveled and died within months because he could find no useful niche for himself. To avert this, several big corporations now subsidize counseling services that may become available at any age after a man has qualified for a vested interest (usually after at least twelve years' employment) in its pension plan. Some companies actively urge employees to invoke this service at 55, then again perhaps at 60, and certainly at 64, to make sure that their plans for growing old usefully as well as gracefully are made well in advance.