Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime

Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
by Aubrey de Grey, Michael Rae

Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
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Book Summary Information

Author: Aubrey de Grey, Michael Rae
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-04
ISBN: 0312367066
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Book Reviews of Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime

Book Review: Important; probably exaggerates a bit
Summary: 5 Stars

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).

Summary of Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime

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.
?
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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