In its way as short-sighted an attitude as that of a teenager who says "Old stuff is boring" but teenagers sometimes grow up.
Which book are you reading now? Volume XIV
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In its way as short-sighted an attitude as that of a teenager who says "Old stuff is boring" but teenagers sometimes grow up.
For @El_Machinae
Birthdays Without End
Immortality, Inc.
By Chip Walter
(National Geographic, 319 pages, $26)
Amid today’s technological wizardry, it’s easy to forget that several decades have passed since a single innovation has dramatically raised the quality of life for millions of people. Summoning a car with one’s phone is nifty, but it pales in comparison with discovering penicillin or electrifying cities. Artificial intelligence is being heralded as the next big thing, but a cluster of scientists, technologists and investors are aiming higher. In the vernacular of Silicon Valley, where many of them are based, their goal is nothing less than disrupting death, and their story is at the center of “Immortality, Inc.” by science journalist Chip Walter.
Seeking to slow the aging process—if not halt it altogether—is far from a novel quest. In the 16th century, the explorer Ponce de León supposedly sought a fountain of youth in Florida, and the search for magical elixirs didn’t end when he failed to find it. Even so, the medical establishment has traditionally assigned only limited resources to aging, perhaps because, as odd as it may seem, death from old age is a relatively recent phenomenon. At the end of the 19th century, life expectancy in the United States was 48 years for whites and 34 for blacks. Aging, as a cause of death, took a back seat to tuberculosis, pneumonia and much else. Americans began living longer in the 20th century, thanks to better sanitation and more effective vaccines and medicines. But growing old meant an increased vulnerability to other ailments, from heart disease to cancer. Progress in treating those conditions, in turn, has led to a higher incidence of Alzheimer’s. And while average life spans have been getting longer in much of the world—though declining in the United States in recent years—the outer limits of longevity haven’t changed much.
That is the backdrop to Mr. Walter’s absorbing story, which he begins with a visit to Alcor, the Arizona-based organization that says it preserves
corpses at minus 124 degrees Celsius “in an attempt to maintain brain viability after the heart stops.” (Current “patients” include baseball legend Ted Williams.) While this life-extending strategy, known as “cryonics,” is often ridiculed, the individuals profiled in “Immortality, Inc.” are high-status, highly regarded figures whose initiatives can’t be easily dismissed. What links them, writes Mr. Walter, is that “they are all troublemakers at heart.” They believe that the “conventional approaches” of most medical researchers and practitioners are, “at the very least, misguided.”
One key figure in the story is Bill Maris, a venture capitalist with a background in neuroscience. In 2012, dismayed by the lack of research into aging, he began meeting with some of his fellow Silicon Valley heavyweights, like Google co-founder Larry Page, who took an immediate interest. In short order, recounts Mr. Walter, they met with Arthur Levinson, an Apple board member who had spent 14 years as chief executive of the biotech trailblazer Genentech. Less than a year later, Mr. Levinson founded Calico, a company devoted to drug development and extending the human life span. Google kicked in $750 million, as did the pharmaceutical company AbbVie.
Mr. Levinson’s maverick mind-set shines through in a discussion he had a few years ago with several scientists and doctors. According to Mr. Walter, he asked them how much the average life span would increase if all cancer were eliminated. Most assumed about a decade. The answer, said Mr. Levinson, was just 2.8 years. The prospect of such a modest return helped inspire Mr. Levinson and his Calico colleagues to concentrate even more intensely on unraveling the mysteries of life-span biology. (One of their finds, so far, is a rodent native to Africa that shows “little to no signs of aging.”) Another maverick profiled in “Immortality, Inc.” is J. Craig Venter, best known for his pioneering work on sequencing the human genome. His research, as Mr. Walter notes, eventually turned to aging. He had lost a parent when he was young (like many of the individuals profiled in the book) and in 2014 co-founded Human Longevity Inc., a company that seeks to use the genome’s information to find new forms of preventive care and treatment. Mr. Walter documents the internal conflicts that have plagued the company. The episode underscores the challenges— corporate, financial, personal—that may delay the arrival of a longer life span.
The efforts of scientists and investors to defy the aging process—and extend the human life span—are still in their infancy.
The most provocative ideas in “Immortality, Inc.” come from Ray Kurzweil, “arguably the first mainstream thinker to make logical, scientific arguments for living radically long,” as Mr. Walter puts it. Mr. Kurzweil’s technology-driven life-extension proposals include merging nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to form substitute elements in our deficient biology—e.g., “programmable blood.”
While “Immortality, Inc.” is focused on aging and the efforts to defy it, the book is also a gripping chronicle of private-sector experimentation and ingenuity in the face of inertia in Washington. “As recently as five years ago,” Mr. Walter writes, “the great pashas at [the National Institutes of Health] . . . looked upon aging research as largely crackpot.” He faults the Food and Drug Administration for refusing to classify aging as a disease. As a result, clinical trials—the foundation of medical research—can’t be conducted.
It’s too early to tell whether the new wave of research is going to deliver on the promise of longer, healthier lives. Mr. Walter doesn’t really address the question of success-probability until the book’s close, where he declares that “the first breakthroughs are already in front of us.” And in 5 to 10 years, he says, those breakthroughs will be followed by “a series of profound advancements.” After that, “further discoveries will arrest, and even reverse, the aging that evolution long ago foisted upon us.” An end to aging? Ponce de León would have been impressed.
Mr. Rees is a senior fellow at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and, with Dr. Lloyd Minor, has written “Discovering Precision Health: Predict, Prevent, and Cure to Advance Health and Well-Being,” to be published in March.
Must be an author thing - there were more than a few notable authors who disliked what was their own contemporary/near contemporary period's literature. I don't expect you casuals to agree with us
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With notes in contemporary French related to the semantic shifts, i.e. clarifications which render the text readable for a layman.
Right now I'm about halfway through An American Marriage. The last book I read was All The Light We Cannot See, which was amazing. I cried for about two hours after finishing it.
Another night I couldn't sleep so I've finished The Secret Commonwealth, vol. 2 of The Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman.
Entertaining as always, the way he weaves real world issues into his novels without being preachy is quite skilful.
Entertaining as always, the way he weaves real world issues into his novels without being preachy is quite skilful.
Josu
Emperor
Ended with Sidi. Good book if considered adventures book, not so good if considered as historical novel
Starting third volume of The Wheel of Time
Starting third volume of The Wheel of Time
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Finished Cibola Burn, somewhat underwhelmed compared to the previous 3. Hope Babylon's Ashes Nemesis Games will be better...
EDITED after seeing @EgonSpengler's post. Now I feel dumb for not checking the correct title of Book 5 before posting
EDITED after seeing @EgonSpengler's post. Now I feel dumb for not checking the correct title of Book 5 before posting
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EgonSpengler
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fwiw, I thought Cibola Burn was the least absorbing of the books. It took me 4 years to get back around to reading Nemesis Games, and season 4 of The Expanse was much better than I expected, in part because I thought Cibola Burn was kind of dull.
May I recommend Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, which I've recently reread. Also Faulks' Charlotte Gray and Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (not to be confused with Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale - completely different).
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hobbsyoyo
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I third the opinion the Cibola Burn was the low point of the series to date. The last book should drop soon I think. I wonder if they planned for their planet-side jaunt to be only one book or if they took the negative feedback in stride and went back to a predominantly in-space setting? It was a neat experiment but it didn't quite work. Our thoughts are pretty common in the Reddit discussions I've seen on the books.
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Started Babylon's Ashes on the train home from Freiburg yesterday. It's a ~6 hour journey, so I'm roughly halfway through it already...
EgonSpengler
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I just started Station Eleven, but Emily St. John Mandel. Topically, it begins with a lethal flu pandemic.
Picked up next 2 volumes of ASOIAF and Stonemouth by Iain Banks in Oxfam yesterday 
hobbsyoyo
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Sounds like a rave-worthy day!Started Babylon's Ashes on the train home from Freiburg yesterday. It's a ~6 hour journey, so I'm roughly halfway through it already...
I'm moving through Black Leopard Red Wolf I haven't read anything like it in a long time. The writing is just superb. The story is a mix of African folk tale and fantasy with a really creative spin on it all. I'm only a third of the way through so I haven't a clue how it will end or even get there. Not for the faint of heart.
Stonemouth is so good!Picked up next 2 volumes of ASOIAF and Stonemouth by Iain Banks in Oxfam yesterday
hobbsyoyo
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By the time I finished Collapsing Empire, I realized I had listened to the complete audiobook years ago. I had forgotten all the details so I didn't mind and overall it was a good book. It has good pacing, if a bit less frantic and kinetic than The Expanse. I will be reading the rest of the trilogy.
The tl;dr: version of the story is
Spoiler :
I am almost finished with my biography of Sergei Korolev, who held a position in the Soviet space program that was as if you combined Von Braun, James Webb and a dozen other major CEOs and government administrators in one.
I just got pinged by my library that the books are due back in 2 days. I'm so busy with work I may have to renew them online.
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