Since 2003, I’ve been saying that long telomeres are a path to long life. The opposing view says that nature allows our telomeres to shorten to protect us against cancer. Up until this spring, there has been little evidentiary support for the cancer theory. Now, a major new study uses genetics to argue that longer telomeres increase risk of cancer as much as five-fold. The study contains many statistical checks, but I’m going out on a limb to say I think the experts have made a conceptual error.
Up until now, epidemiological studies in humans and lab studies in animals have
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