Cancer is not an inevitable outcome in the process of aging, but the older a person gets, the greater the odds for developing cancer. Aging have long been known as one of the greatest risks to developing cancer -- and not one that anyone has ever been able to alter.

In the Times Online Sunday edition Sue Armstrong writes the most compelling and engaging article about a gene that has the power to stop cancer -- but right now it comes wrapped in a conundrum of potential consequence in unknown disaster. She refers to the power of p53, a genetic miracle worker, a power discovered by sheer error on the part of researchers who created mice without the gene known to protect humans from cancer. As expected, these mice developed cancer early and often. In a different group of mice researchers created mice with the gene but in a more active form than is usually found. What came next surprised everyone.

While the mice were extremely well protected from cancer, they aged rapidly -- hunchback spines, ruffled fur, grey hair -- and lived only two-thirds of their normal lifespan. Researchers now believe that p53 influences both tumor suppression and the aging process. The implications and possibilities are profound and the questions large. Are cancer patients who are successfully treated for cancer, with cancer drugs that stimulate the activity of p53 in suppressing tumor growth, prompted into premature aging?

Is p53 responsible, in part, for the premature grey hair, change in skin texture, change in body shape, muscles that are not as tight or strong -- all the normal signs of aging but at an age when you would not expect it to happen -- that some cancer survivors experience between cancer diagnosis to shortly after treatment?

By understanding p53 and manipulating p53, will science one day be able to offer a fountain of youth in both cancer prevention and slowed aging? Armstrong examines these questions and more in her extensive explanation of both the function and history of p53, and why scientists are clamoring to work with this phenomenal gene.

Armstrong's article is a fascinating read.