‘Stealing Time’ Looks at Advances in the Science of Human Aging

“Stealing Time: The New Science of Aging” is a documentary about an intoxicating promise that, sadly, science surely will never keep. That is the promise of a vigorous human life spanning 150 years or more.

This three-part PBS documentary, which premieres in its entirety tonight, is an often stunning exploration of the frontiers of research into human aging that focuses on the biochemistry of cellular and neural aging. It is especially adept at following scientists into the more peculiar corners of creation--the genome of the fruit fly, the exercise habits of houseflies or the foraging habits of possums--where they hope to find the secrets of cell repair or the genes that may stave off ravages of time.

This is the science of hope--in which the discovery of a new gene or a better diet or a prescription pill that will confer the ultimate blessing of a longer, more fulfilling, healthier life--is always just around the corner.

Focused tightly on fundamental research, however, the documentary sidesteps any consideration of more intractable social plagues, such as poverty, war and the hazards of the human spirit, that play such a powerful role in the untimely foreshortening of the human life span.

Surely one of the greatest triumphs of the 20th century is the doubling of the typical human life span since 1900. This is a miracle wrought of common sense public health axioms, of uncontaminated drinking water and adequate diet, of childhood vaccinations and antibiotics, and the benefits of extended peacetime prosperity.

Indeed, the immune system on which our public health depends is a collective one. We have an all too fragile grasp on the extra years of life it confers.

The average life span of those in the former Soviet Union, for example, has plummeted in the past decade as social chaos has ravaged community medical systems. In the United States, where medical advances help many with chronic diseases live longer, the divorce rate among the severely ill also is now increasing, as marriages succumb to the long-term stresses of disease. That leaves many of the most aged severely ill without the health insurance to pay for the care on which their extended life span depends.

Such matters, no doubt, are the raw material of a far different documentary. “Stealing Time” dwells on the bright side of that enriching rage against the dying of the light.

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* “Stealing Time: The New Science of Aging” airs tonight from 8 to 11 on KCET.