Is Aging a Disease? David Sinclair & Aubrey de Grey WHO Reaction
Channel: Lifespan News
Date: 2022-01-30

The debate about whether or not aging is or should be considered a disease has been taking place for years, and recent developments with ICD-11, which has now formally been adopted, are raising the issue again.

The International Classification of Diseases, or ICD, is a tool maintained by the World Health Organization to standardize the process of capturing and sharing data about “Diseases and Related Health Problems”. Early forms of this can be traced back centuries, but today it is interwoven into policy making, funding decisions, insurance, and more. So, it’s very important.

In ICD-11, a new category of codes, called extension codes, have been added. One of these new extension codes, XT9T, means “Ageing-related”, or more specifically, it means “caused by pathological processes which persistently lead to the loss of organism's adaptation and progress in older ages”.

Another change has caused even more controversy. ICD-10 had a code for what can be called “senile debility”. ICD-11 replaces this with code MG2A, originally meaning “old age”. Here “old age” is categorized as a “general symptom”, rather than a specific disease.

Defining aging as a disease has long been a goal of many members of the longevity community, and they welcomed these changes in ICD-11. However, this spurred quite a bit of debate.

In October of 2021, an international group of psychiatrists published a comment titled “Not a disease: a global call for action urging revision of the ICD-11 classification of old age”. This argument was focused on the idea that the MG2A code was pathologizing chronological age, potentially leading to an increase in ageism and discrimination. It seems that their argument had some impact. The definition of MG2A has been changed from “Old Age” to “Ageing associated decline in intrinsic capacity” in the ICD-11.

Reacting to the news, David Sinclair Tweeted “The exciting move by the @WHO to define AGING as a treatable MEDICAL CONDITION has, sadly, reverted.” 

Ultimately David Sinclair, Daria Khoultarina, Aubrey de Grey, Nir Barzilai, and others all jumped into the discussion. What does this all mean? Well, almost no one can agree. This topic gets deep into the weeds of semantics and meaning and everyone seems to define and interpret things differently. The one thing that can be agreed upon is that, whatever decision is made, it will be hugely consequential.


SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
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ICD - https://icd.who.int/en

Debate Rages on the Inclusion of Old Age in the ICD-11 - https://www.lifespan.io/news/debate-rages-on-the-inclusion-of-old-age-in-the-icd-11/

Not a disease: a global call for action urging revision of the ICD-11 classification of old age - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(21)00201-4/fulltext

Advanced pathological ageing should be represented in the ICD (Sinclair) - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(21)00303-2/fulltext

Advanced pathological ageing should be represented in the ICD (Khaltourina) - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(21)00305-6/fulltext

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-WHO-change-MG2A-from-Old-age-to-Ageing-associated-decline-in-intrinsic-capacity-And-how-might-the-last-one-impact-the-way-medicine-is-practiced

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