Forever young.

This Sky News feature surveys attempts to resist the ageing process by pharmacology, genetics and exercise. Dr. Mitchell Harman (Baltimore) is engaged in a 40-year study of ageing using a group of volunteers. In Britain, at Manchester University, Dr. Gordon Lithgow's team have located a gene for ageing on the nematode worm. The human equivalent has yet to be found. At the National Institutes for Health (US) monkeys are being used in a restricted diet trial to see if results from rats - in which a restricted diet resulted in a healthier, longer life - are borne out in primates. The Royal Free Hospital, London runs aerobics classes for pensioners. The psychological factors which favour a long life are also considered. For those determined to defy death, cryonics offers the opportunity to have one's head or whole body frozen at death in the hope that scientists will discover the means of reviving them.