On July 31, 2023, New York Magazine featured insights from AFAR Senior Scientific Director and Interim Board Chair Steven N. Austad, PhD, on biological aging, chronological aging, and the candidates in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
“At this point, there’s no reason to doubt [the competency of Biden or Trump] to fulfill the positions because of their age,” stated Steve Austad. “There are people that are running marathons at 80. And like I say, there are some people that can’t get out of a chair. And that’s what aging does. It’s a combination of genetics and lifetime experience and lifestyle habits and all those things.”
In addition to his leadership for AFAR, Dr. Austad is the Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging Research and a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the founding director of UAB’s Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging, and co-director of the UAB Integrative Center for Aging Research, as well as the Co-Principal Investigator of the Nathan Shock Centers Coordinating Center.
Read the full article in New York Magazine here.
The healthspan of recent presidential candidates was explored in the AFAR white paper, ‘Longevity and Health of U.S. Presidential Candidates for the 2020 Election’, authored by AFAR board member S. Jay Olshansky, PhD. Read the whitepaper here.
