‘By the 1990s it was clear that antioxidants are not a panacea for ageing and disease, and only fringe medicine still peddles this notion.’ The free-radical theory of ageing is one of those beautiful ideas killed by ugly facts. And boy, are the facts ugly. Not one tenet of the theory, as it was originally formulated, has withstood the scrutiny of experimental testing. There are no systematic measurements of an increase in free-radical leak from the mitochondria as we age. There is a small increase in the number of mitochondrial mutations, but with the exception of limited regions of tissue,
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