Aging is a "pathological consequence." From a philosophical point of view "man could be a potentially immortal animal."*
* C. F. von Weizsacker, an internationally known biochemist, observed: "I see no biochemical reason why individuals should not be possible who would stay alive indefinitely, if not killed by force." [Relevance of Science, London, Collins, 1964, p.134].
'Natural' Death:
A Medical Fact Or Legal Fiction?
Chapter 1 of The Seed of the Woman
by Arthur C. Custance
Quote: What we are increasingly finding out from biological and medical research is that both senescence and even death itself almost certainly form no essential part of the process of being alive, that natural death is unknown to vast numbers of living things, that functioning protoplasm per se is in no way naturally subject to death. For animals below man, death seems to be a statistical probability rather than a biological necessity.
Physical immortality now emerges as a perfectly valid concept, and the phenomenon of death appears rather as an intrusion, something foreign to life even for man himself. It is true that man now dies inevitably.* Yet the evidence increasingly supports the view that death is no more "natural" for him than it is for millions of lower forms of life which simply go on living for ever if they are not killed. In man, death is more like a disease than a consequence of having lived.
http://www.custance.org/Library/SOTW/Part_I/chap1.html