Toward a unified theory of disease: understanding the aging process.

Medicine is complex and multi-disciplined with each speciality trying to cure specific illness in their fields of interest. Research would be more productive if there was a common denominator applicable to all medical specialties--i.e., a unified theory of disease. Of the seventy-two leading causes of death in the United States in 1980, there was a direct relationship with age, after age four, for virtually all causes of death per 100,000 population. Understanding the genetics of the aging process and developing capacities to manipulate such factors could revolutionize medicine by giving it a working unified theory applicable to all its disciplines.