Thesis 14

Thesis 14
Aging hypotheses based solely on supposed universal imperfections of molecular, cell, or organismal physiology are wholly falsified by the existence of biological species that do not exhibit falling average rates of survival and reproduction among large cohorts maintained under good conditions, a pattern exhibited by some fissile coelenterates, for example.
But there is no need for a Darwinian biologist to be particularly eloquent about the falsity of conventional gerontological theories. The images of the round Earth supplied by the NASA Apollo missions that reached the Moon obviously annihilate Flat Earth theory. Likewise, evolution has supplied devastating refutations of the cumulative damage theories of mainstream aging research.
Those refutations are the animal species that don't show aging. At all. It is now a well-demonstrated fact of aging research that there are some animals which do not show a detectable increase in rates of dying with time, even after decades of maintenance. Under the best conditions, when extremes of temperature and predation are entirely prevented, along with provision of good nutrition, some of these animal species can apparently be kept alive indefinitely. There is nothing whatsoever in the basic cellular or organismal biology of animals that requires aging. Evolution by natural selection can entirely eliminate aging, regardless of each and every feature of cumulative biochemical or other damage that animals and their cells might be subject to.
It is not trivial which animal species evolve to be free from aging. These are all species in which the Forces of Natural Selection do not decline, as is to be expected by the evolutionary theory of aging.
Under what conditions is such decline prevented? In species which reproduce by splitting into similar offspring, only. Sea anemones are species that grow as circular tubes with fringe tentacles. Some of these species reproduce by longitudinally splitting their fully grown tubes to make two smaller tubes growing side-by-side. Then the smaller tubes grow as large as their mother, and split again themselves. Animals like these have been kept alive in aquaria, without a single one dying, over many decades. Sea anemones are species of the coelenterate group. Coelenterates the reproduce in this fissile manner only do not usually show aging. Other coelenterates that do not have any type of fissile reproduction do undergo aging.
This contrast is shown by other animal groups, such as some aquatic worms. Plants with extensive fissile reproduction, like trembling aspen trees, also do not show aging. But plants that have no fissile reproduction do exhibit aging when they are studied with enough care. Likewise unicellular organisms with asymmetrical reproduction, like brewer's yeast, show aging.
The fundamental determinant of aging is whether the Forces of Natural Selection decline with adult age or not, rather than the biological details. If an organism develops to the point of reproduction, and then reproduction leads to two symmetrical "newborns," there is no opportunity for the Forces of Natural Selection to fall, because there is no adult organism at all. There are only juveniles.
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