In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) released the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases — a global, standard-setting guideline for how institutions should understand and organize health information. In it was a new diagnostic category for symptoms and signs of disease: “old age.”
The new category sparked outrage and, in 2021, the WHO backed down. It replaced “old age” with the more cumbersome but less incendiary category of “ageing-associated declines in intrinsic capacities.”
The reversal dealt a blow to scientists who, for years, had fought to have institutions formally classify aging as a disease. Older age, after all, is a major predictor of hypertension, cancer and other chronic conditions. And if we delve into the biology behind this association, we’ll find that the changes making us visibly “age” also make us more susceptible to those chronic conditions over time. The same cellular changes that cause wrinkles, for example, are also involved in atherosclerosis — a chronic condition that can lead to stroke and heart attacks.
