The story is essentially saying that "aging" might not be caused by incremental damage to cellular systems as we age, but is instead caused by systems that work properly when we are young but become unbalanced as we age. As examples, the author refers to some species of tortoises and whales which can live hundreds of years. All animal life on earth utilizes the same basic cellular machinery to function, so things like free radicals and environmental stressors should effect all. However, their preliminary experiments don't support that idea.