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in order to provide positive results this needs to be incorporated into practice, whereas, currently, most
[59]
efforts are centred round directly translating animal research into human treatments, and have failed .
[60]
Professionals in social sciences and behavioural medicine need to be working along biomedical technicians
and this is something that is not happening at present, with regards to aging.

An issue worthy of consideration, is the situation whereby a patient may just decline to undergo genetic
testing in order to establish genomic status via genomic sequencing technologies. It was found that the
[61]
decline rate for undergoing such studies may range from 12% to 64% . This depended on age and type of
disease as well as on administrative logistics (i.e., how easy was for someone to access a clinic and enroll,
privacy issues), and psychological barriers. Therefore, even if a genetic therapy was made available in
principle, this does not mean that the patient will necessarily agree to receive it.

Another possible obstacle to the deliverability of genetic testing and genetic therapy is ethical considerations.
[62]
Wolf et al. have identified 15 different ethical areas that needed to be considered before a genetic therapy
can be applied. These range from ethics of human subjects research and the ethics of biobanks and data
archives, ethics of human subjects research, the ethics of professional clinical care, and ethics relating to
organization, public health, outcome assessments and disparities among others. Therefore, this adds another
layer of obstacles needed to be overcome before a genetic therapy against age-related damage can be applied
to the public at large.

CONCLUSION
This review has highlighted evidence pointing at a situation whereby any physical therapy against aging is
essentially not forthcoming. Such physical therapies may include medication, therapies based on genomics,
interventions (such as stem cell manipulation) and other rejuvenation biotechnologies. An inescapable
conclusion is that we need to re-think the bulk of our efforts which are based on mechanistic reductionism
(the “one-tablet-fits-all” paradigm) and, instead, escalate onto a more “systems thinking-oriented” approach.
Such an approach must take into account the environment and its influence on our genome, the inter-subject
variability of the public at large, and translational and ethical obstacles. We need to consider more carefully
new and emerging principles, such as that of precision medicine, and the unique disease principle, as well
as emerging disciplines such as social genomics and MPE. The scientific quest for eliminating the impact of
aging must continue, but not along the lines of the existing paradigm.

DECLARATIONS
Authors’ contributions
The author contributed solely to the paper.

Availability of data and materials
Not applicable.

Financial support and sponsorship
None.

Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest with an institution or product that is mentioned and no conflicts of interest
with products that compete with those mentioned in the manuscript.

Ethical approval and consent to participate
Not applicable.