Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
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Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Written By: Aubrey de Grey, Michael Rae
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.68
EAN: 9780312367060
ISBN: 0312367066
Label: St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2007-09-04
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Release Date: 2007-09-04
Studio: St. Martin's Press
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Editorial Reviews for Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
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MUST WE AGE?
     A long life in a healthy, vigorous, youthful body has always been one of humanity’s greatest dreams. Recent progress in genetic manipulations and calorie-restricted diets in laboratory animals hold forth the promise that someday science will enable us to exert total control over our own biological aging.
     Nearly all scientists who study the biology of aging agree that we will someday be able to substantially slow down the aging process, extending our productive, youthful lives. Dr. Aubrey de Grey is perhaps the most bullish of all such researchers. As has been reported in media outlets ranging from 60 Minutes to The New York Times, Dr. de Grey believes that the key biomedical technology required to eliminate aging-derived debilitation and death entirely—technology that would not only slow but periodically reverse age-related physiological decay, leaving us biologically young into an indefinite future—is now within reach.
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In Ending Aging, Dr. de Grey and his research assistant Michael Rae describe the details of this biotechnology. They explain that the aging of the human body, just like the aging of man-made machines, results from an accumulation of various types of damage. As with man-made machines, this damage can periodically be repaired, leading to indefinite extension of the machine’s fully functional lifetime, just as is routinely done with classic cars. We already know what types of damage accumulate in the human body, and we are moving rapidly toward the comprehensive development of technologies to remove that damage. By demystifying aging and its postponement for the nonspecialist reader, de Grey and Rae systematically dismantle the fatalist presumption that aging will forever defeat the efforts of medical science.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Important; probably exaggerates a bit
Comment: This book makes a strong argument that the most important medical need in developed countries is to cure the damage associated with aging, rather than to combat the diseases which become serious as a result of that damage. It outlines a set of solutions which, if they can be implemented, look like they would add at least a decade or two to healthy lifespans.
All of the solutions look like they have a reasonable chance of being implemented within 20 years. But the probability of all of them working within that time is a good deal lower than the probability of any one solution working, and there's no obvious way to analyze whether we can get significant health benefits without implementing all of the solutions.
The authors seem somewhat overconfident about most aspects of their proposed solutions, but that doesn't affect the substance if their arguments very much. Even a small chance of postponing death and disability is worth a good deal of effort.
The parts of the solutions that appear hardest are the ones that rely on techniques similar to what are already being attempted by mainstream scientists (genetic engineering to add and delete genes from most cells in the body, massive use of stem cells, and moving enzymes across the blood-brain barrier). My impressions about the effort that has been put into these techniques and the results that have been produced so far suggest that at least one of these is likely to take much longer than the book asks us to hope for. The book gives one clear example of important research not living up to the hype surrounding it when it gives arguments that most cancer research is directed toward modestly postponing cancer rather than providing a full solution to cancer. I see no obvious way for a layman to tell whether the authors are relying on similarly overhyped research.
So even though the book gives convincing arguments that the goals of medical research ought to be reframed to focus on aging as the primary threat to be solved, it's far from conclusive about whether that should imply a large change in actual research. It may be that the hardest and most valuable tasks are the ones that are already being worked on. Or it may be that one of the critical tasks is sufficiently hard that the most important need is to invent tools that are substantially more sophisticated than what's used in existing research (i.e. that we most need something more radical that what's proposed in the book, such as nanomedicine).
Customer Rating:
Summary: A very important view for current generations
Comment: This book contains very important points which should be considered by everyone who cares for himself and others.
Research in healthy life extension, which means curing diseases and fixing aging, is THE most important thing for humanity to do for itself, as what are life if they end?
In the book very realistic scientific views which show us how to move towards fixing aging and other important diseases, stay alive, healthy and young forever.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Clear and detailed road-map towards finding a cure for aging.
Comment: Clear and detailed road-map towards finding a cure for aging.
Aubrey De Grey has writen a fascinating analysis of the specific problems and challanges that we need to overcome in order to win the "war on aging". This is neither science fiction nor a vision for a distant future. Humans can obtain the ability to stay young forever within the next 20-30 years. This book explains how.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A future landmark?
Comment: Ending Aging may one day be regarded as having made history. And it is fun, provoking, and informative.
Its starting point itself is eye-opening: aging isn't built into our bodies, it only results from a gradual breakdown that evolution hasn't found efficient to equip us against, picking reproduction as the preferred path for gene survival. De Grey adds that this breakdown can be fixed. Science will soon be able to engineer eternal youth, he asserts - yes, not just slow aging down but actually set back the clock. This would apparently require fixing decay in seven broad areas, for which he details the solutions. To me, a complete layman, four of the proposed solutions seem in the process of advanced medical research, two look farther off, and one, dealing with cancer, sounds somewhat unpalatable if perhaps credible (requiring regular cell transplants to a multiplicity of organs).
De Grey is not originally a biologist, but a computer programmer. He says his outsider status is an advantage. Sounds suspicious? Perhaps, but he published revolutionary research on the DNA of mitochondria (the part of the cell that generates the energy on which we live) and their role in aging; this was peer-reviewed and acclaimed by the scientific establishment. He was awarded a PhD for it at Cambridge, where he works.
Ending Aging says its goals can be achieved in 25 years. Considering the impotence of big pharma and the propensity to blunders of public government (viz. the stem cell controversy, which is detailed in the book), this sounds doubtful. But incredibly, one big hurdle to pursuing the requisite research seems to be that a number of people don't actually want to end aging. This is where De Grey turns from scientist to advocate. Apparently, the fear is that ending aging would cause grave disruption to the environment and existing social structures. So what?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Living 1000 years.
Comment: Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
This is a fascinating book and a must read for every scientist and engineer. The thesis is reasonable and well reasoned by a very capable author and scientist. Every ancient culture reports a golden age before the flood in which humans lived as long as 1000 years. In my computer architecture course I ask the students to estimate the number of bits the human brain can store, evalutating the neuron as an analog element representing many bits, and also including chemical synapses. The answers range from 10**17 to 10**19 bits. Then assuming that color vision of motion is the most challenging brain function I have them estimate how many teraflops it would take a supercomputer to equal that function. Now, if the brain functions at that level 16 hours a day and rests (sleeps) 8 hours a day how long will it take to fill it. The answer is about 1000 years! But what about the motivation? Naturally, almost everyone wants to live a little longer (in good health, of course), but 1000 years? Remember the Ancient Sybil at Locarno who asked the gods for immortality and got it. Her cry after only 500 years was: "I want to die." Of course, with Dr. Aubrey's theraputic strategy one could simply discontinue the anit-aging therapy and then die gracefully in about 50 years.
Peter C. Patton
Professor of Engineering
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