At some point along life’s trajectory, growing becomes aging. Gerotherapeutics—biologically-based approaches to health that target processes of aging—seem poised to respond. This theme issue investigates ethical valences of what gerotherapeutics suggest about our socially, culturally, and historically entrenched patterns of pathologizing and medicalizing aging. Advancement in our understanding of physiological mechanisms of aging has prompted some to reconceive lifespans as health spans. Geroscience also suggests the need to critically evaluate whether and to what extent we should think of anti-aging ventures as legitimate enterprises of health care. Normative roles played by aging in our personal and relational narratives, in our expectations about how duration and quality of life confer value to life, and in how life extension promotes or undermines our notions of wisdom and a good life are all at stake.

Background image by Sara Gironi Carnevale.