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Vincent, John A. Ageing Contested: Anti-ageing Science and the Cultural Construction of Old Age. Sociology, Aug 2006; vol. 40: pp. 681-698

Recent developments in the fundamental science of biological ageing have raised the possibility of extending the human lifespan. This article examines contests within bio-gerontology as to the nature of ageing, identifies the methods through which old age is constructed by reference to particular kinds of knowledge and thus considers the impact of the culture of science on the contemporary meaning of old age. Definitions of ageing and death that focus on biological failure lead to a cultural construction of old age whereby diversity across the life course is devalued.
 

Hayflick, Leonard. When Does Aging Begin? Research on Aging, Mar 1984; vol. 6: pp. 99-103

The lack of a precise definition for biological aging precludes a definitive answer to when the phenomenon begins. Since longevity is a determinant process, aging begins when longevity assurance genes cease to be expressed.
 

Céline Lafontaine. (2009). Regenerative Medicine’s Immortal Body: From the Fight against Ageing to the Extension of Longevity. Body Society, 15(4), 53-71.

From organ transplants to genetic therapies by way of the manufacture of replacement tissue, regenerative medicine incarnates a biomedical reasoning that is unique to contemporary society. As a re-engineering of the body, regenerative medicine is the most accomplished manifestation of contemporary biopolitics: it concretely announces the emergence of what sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina calls the ‘culture of life’, in which individual existence is symbolically assimilated to biological conditions. This article will examine the symbolic and ethical issues of regenerative medicine, notably regarding representations of the ageing body. In doing so, it will place this new branch of biomedical research back into the context from which it emerged, with the goal of grasping the social and cultural suppositions on which regenerative medicine is based. The growing number of elderly people in Western societies is one such central element. This article therefore intends to demonstrate how regenerative medicine is rooted in the modern biomedical deconstruction of death, which underlies the contemporary technoscientific fantasy of indefinitely extending longevity.