Does Aging Need an Own Program or the Existing Development Program is More Than Enough?

According to author's concept, the aging process is caused by cell proliferation restriction-induced accumulation of various macromolecular defects (mainly DNA damage) in cells of an organism or cell population. In case of cell cultures, this proliferation restriction is related to either so-called contact inhibition or Hayflick's limit, and in case of multicellular organisms, to the appearance, in the process of differentiation, of organs and tissues consisting of postmitotic or very slowly dividing cells. Cell proliferation is absolutely incompatible with normal functioning of a macroorganism. Thus, the development program automatically leads to a situation inducing the aging process (martaliry rates increase with age). Therefore, any special program of aging simply becomes senseless. This, however, does not reject for some organisms the reasonability of programmed death, which makes possible the elimination of harmful, from the species's point of view, individuals. It is also very important to understand that increase or decrease of organism's life span under the action of various factors are not necessarily related to a modification of the aging process, even though the experimental results in this field are interpreted just in this way.