Aging is not damage accumulation—it is loss of information, and partial reprogramming proves it

We treat aging like wear and tear. But cells have repair mechanisms that work perfectly well in youth. The problem isn't that damage happens—it's that the information to repair it degrades.

Yamanaka factors (OSKM) can reset aged cells to youthful states without fixing individual lesions. This shouldn't work if aging were purely damage. But it does—suggesting aging is epigenetic information loss, not molecular damage.

The implication: we don't need to repair every broken protein. We need to restore the cellular program that knew how to be young.