Internet Guide to Anti‐Aging and Longevity

Citation

Guha, M. (2006), "Internet Guide to Anti‐Aging and Longevity", Library Review, Vol. 55 No. 7, pp. 450-451. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530610682164

As the first faint foothills of middle age are beginning to emerge out of the haze on the far distant horizon, I am beginning to take a slightly more personal interest in anti‐aging and longevity. I had, in fact, consulted a passing professor of statistics because according to one newspaper article I read, half the people who have ever lived are alive today. As the human race has been around for two million years, this seemed to me to mean that I had a 50% chance of living for a million years. He assured me that I had miscalculated, however, and that I don't really have very much time left. Like so many people, I occasionally glance at the web for health information on my own account, as well as in the course of my professional duties, and do sometimes find it a bit frustrating. I would welcome clear guidance on the effectiveness and accuracy of different sites.

This book, unfortunately, does not really provide the sort of guidance I would like. I find Haworth Press output uneven: their publications seem to consist of either patched‐together reprints from special issues of very low‐ranking journals, or of bibliographies compiled, like this one, through obsessive assiduity rather than with any sort of editorial forethought. The author has cobbled this book together by listing absolutely everything that she has been able to find on the internet that has any relevance to longevity, and adding very brief editorial notes on range and content, all roughly the same length, so that www.watercress.co.uk/health/benefits.shtml – a UK site devoted to the health benefits of eating watercress, gets exactly as much space as the huge US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention web site at: www.cdc.gov

Some of the information given here is clearly very useful, but a guide which said “this is an important site” “this is an unimportant site” or, most especially, “this is a fraudulent or inaccurate site” would be so much more useful. Most librarians should be able to provide guidance of this sort for their customers without needing this book at all. A few individual users might, perhaps, find it useful as a guide, therefore, public libraries could consider acquiring it as a temporary paperback. Given the fluid nature of the internet, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to buy it in hardback on acid‐resistant paper etc. – any public library that does buy it ought to be prepared to throw it away in a couple of years at most.