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 | Aubrey de Grey, Michael Rae | Wake up - Aging Kills!

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Ending Aging: The ...

	Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime Aubrey de Grey, Michael Rae St. Martin's Press, 2007 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Just Undo the Damage!

This book might be a steep read for most lay-people who aren't all that interested in cell biology or molecular chemistry, even as a passing fancy. But, the flipside of the author's depth of detail is that it allows you a glimpse into the kinds of complexities and even paradoxes that occur in the human metabolism (and how different those reactions can be even from those taking place in mice and monkeys).

DeGrey's major beef, in a nutshell, with the R&D community is that they are spending waaay too much time and energy trying to "understand" the complexities of why aging, cell damage, dysfunction, and diseases arise over time as bi-products of simply living life. He argues that we need a more targeted engineering approach -- simply FIND the damage after it has occurred, define what that damage is, and then GO FIX IT. These are much simpler problems to solve. As an analogy, look at what we do to preserve any machine or system. You can see a 100-year old house has holes in the roof; go patch them. While you're at it some new caulking around the windows, maybe some more insulation in the attic, some anti-termite spray, and there you go, good for another 100 years.

DeGrey envisions periodic therapies, say once per decade or so (similar to immunization schedules, for example) where individuals would receive viral injections and/or gene therapy to kill cancer cells, untangle proteins that cause alzheimers and the like, and remove calcification and stiffening from arteries and veins, generally restoring the body to a state of youthful vitality.

It is not nearly as "crazy as it sounds", but the fact remains that the large amounts of govt. and even private funding of such activities are not directed at "aging" per se, but rather at specific foundations devoted to one disease or another -- in other words, massive investment into cryptic treatments directed at helping a very very small percentage of the population. A paradigm shift is needed.

To his credit, and despite wild claims if 1,000-year "potential lifespans" and the like, DeGrey and Rae do not balk at frank discussions of the complexity that some of these treatments entail, or the failures that have plagued researchers along the way. The point is that progress IS being made now, and much more will come in the future, but at a pace that will be determined by focus, funding, and technological progress.

This book ties in well with books on nanotechnology and futurism. As others have said, we are about to enter a golden age of engineering *applications* that were undreamed of a century ago. We discovered quantum physics 100 years ago, but people are now building quantum computers. We first described the human DNA double-helix in 1953, have already sequenced many entire human genomes, and are well on the way to engineering with genetics, even building machines made from DNA.

We can now touch each individual molecule and cell in the body, so why can't we repair enough of them to keep the body functional indefinitely as a whole? It really isn't crazy at all.

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Wake up - Aging Kills!

I will start by saying that I have a vested interest in Aubrey de Grey's brainchild "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" (SENS), the idea underlying "Ending Aging", as indeed does the whole of humanity, whether or not they choose to acknowledge it, but my interest is also a personal one. It is not just that I have attended SENS conferences 2 and 3 at Queens' College, Cambridge, UK, and have had the chance to meet and befriend Dr de Grey, but also that I have had an interest in life extension for over fifteen years; an interest that started in my late twenties. I hasten to add that, like Aubrey, I am a scientist and an engineer, but unlike Aubrey, I have no formal training in gerontology, physiology, biochemistry, genomics, or any of the other fields that form the foundations of the SENS initiative and of "Ending Aging".

Doctor de Grey is unusual in that he is both scientist and engineer and combines the scepticism and rigour of the scientific method with the joyous (and infectious) playfulness evinced by engineering students at those - too few - university campuses run along the principle that the acquisition of knowledge is best when imbued with an open mind and a sense of fun. (For an example of this, see Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch's amazing lecture "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=362421849901825950&hl=en). The playful engineer's approach to life is: "Hey, what if we combined this theory with that approach... it might just have the effect we want. Let's set up an experiment and see what happens." Once the experiment done, the scientist then insists on validation, reproducibility, and the elimination of alternative explanations. The point is: To get truly valuable new insights that take us forward quickly in defeating the ravages of aging, in addition to being scrupulously scientific, you have to do two things: (1) be interdisciplinary, and (2) be ready to try new - sometimes radically new - things. In setting out to just exactly that, Aubrey de Grey has instituted an approach to biogerontology that is truly groundbreaking. Moreover, it is already yielding tangible results faster that any traditional single-discipline lab research could have achieved. Some of the video footage of actual rejuvenation I have seen at the SENS conferences has been mind-blowing. Most people have no idea of what is already being achieved in terms of actual aging reversal in laboratory animals, albeit specific rather than systemic, or in such areas as tissue engineering, where stem cell therapy meets structural engineering, nanotechnology and chemistry.

Now to the book. They key premise is that the biomedical technology to not only slow, but actually reverse aging, is within reach now. If applied periodically, this will enable us to stay biologically young long enough for further breakthroughs to occur, achieving even better rejuvenation, and so on, ... so that we could stay biologically young into an indefinite future. This idea is typically referred to as longevity escape velocity. The book is divided into three main parts. Part one is an introduction to SENS, including the personal voyage that led the author to develop this anti-aging paradigm. Part two is a detailed scientifically-rigorous-yet-accessible treatment of each of the seven types of damage that leads to aging, and the engineer's response to them. They are: (1) Cell loss/atrophy; (2) Extra-cellular junk; (3) Extra-cellular crosslinks; (4) Death-resistant cells; (5) Mitochondrial mutations; (6) Intracellular junk, and (7) Nuclear [epi]mutations. All types of aging-related damage fall into one of these seven categories. Finally, part 3 covers some of the practical aspects of getting from here to there: Political, societal, and financial.

Although Ending Aging is about science and uses a lot of scientific terminology, it is eminently accessible for the lay person with an interest in the subject. If you are not familiar with, say, mitochondria (the intracellular furnaces that provide the energy our bodies need to survive) or epigenetics (heritable changes in function that occur without changes to the DNA itself), you will find the science explained to you in a lucid, engaging way.

"Ending Aging" is a profoundly engaging, stimulating, and thought-provoking book. As I lost my dearly beloved father two years ago as a result of the accumulated damage from type-2 diabetes (the result of which is an acceleration of certain aging phenomena), I am all too aware of the truth of Aubrey's exhortation "Wake Up - Aging Kills!" I hope that this book may help you and your loved ones understand that defeating the decrepitude that comes with aging is something we can actually do something about.

It us not surprising that Ending Aging and its author Aubrey de Grey have received a fair amount of criticism, even derision, often of the ad hominem kind. But like Randy Pausch says in his lecture, "If you are going to do anything that is pioneering, you will get those arrows in the back." It seems to me that Aubrey and his co-author Michael Rae are in good company. Buy this book. It may well change your life.

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One of the Most Important Books You'll Ever Read!

In his new book Aubrey de Grey points out a fact so obvious that many people actually overlook it--that aging is the leading cause of death and disease. Subsequently, he presents a very compelling argument for the notion that aging is in actuality a series of accumulating problems, that we can learn to solve in just a few decades--with biotechnological tools that we already possess--provided we put our minds to it.

Approaching the aging body like a dysfunctional machine, de Grey believes that the accumulated damage can be periodically repaired, leading to an indefinite extension of life. The strength of de Grey's ideas lies in his engineering approach--which is goal-directed to find practical solutions--and his interdisciplinary perspective. According to de Grey, it doesn't matter that we don't fully understand every biochemical detail of how all of our biological processes work, as long as we know enough to clear away the age-related damage. In this fascinating book, de Grey summarizes dozens of thought-provoking, cutting-edge medical studies that support his approach, and give us good reason to suspect that it really may be possible to halt and reverse the aging process in the near future.

de Grey is keenly aware of what's happening on the frontiers of numerous scientific disciplines and he is an eloquent writer. I was somewhat surprised at how entertaining this book was. de Grey has a special talent for communicating complex ideas in a way that is not only easy to understand, but--because of his imaginative use of metaphor--also fun to read. In fact, I don't think I've ever had so much fun reading a book on biochemistry before. de Grey's obvious sense of excitement about this most important subject can be quite contagious, and by the time one finishes reading his book, I think, it's difficult not to be seriously contemplating the possibility of living for hundreds of years or more.

I think that everyone interested in living longer should read this book--but especially biologists and medical researchers. Considering what is at stake here, it seems reasonable to me that we should follow de Grey's lead, and strongly consider the possibility of making a substantial effort toward this most noble endeavor.

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Eye opening and inspiring

At the pace science is advancing, it indeed may be possible
to dramatically increase our life span well beyond what we've
ever imagined. The authors clearly and scientifically explain
the current science and where it is leading us in our quest to
live long productive lives without disease and aging.

Great Book

As a funeral director, i see the life ending results of aging on a near daily basis. I don't want to go into the disturbing details here, but toll of years taken on the human body it high. Don't let the peaceful illusion people of my profession create fool you, death does not look pretty before the embalmer's magic is invoked. Another aspect of our job is transporting people to the funeral home from their place of death. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be hospitalized or in the care of a nursing home before they die. By far the saddest things i have ever seen are the hovels that some elderly people that have nobody to take care of them spend their final days. Infirmity prevents them from being able to take care of themselves as they should and the conditions these sorry souls endured is appalling. Ending Aging is unquestionably a noble goal, which brings me to the book. I often find technical book about as dry as a fart in a mitt, not so this book. Dr. DeGrey and Michael Rae do as well as any people could to make it interesting. I could almost feel the excitement the scientists had as waited for the results, when i was reading about alagebrium I actually had to skip to the end of the chapter before re-reading it.This is not the type of book that i (or most people) read for entertainment, however, it is more for the layman to see the state science is in, to get an understanding of the coming biomedical revolution. This aspect of the book greatly expanded my understanding of what is going on in our bodies before they end up on my stretcher or embalming table. I look forward to see what progress is made in the areas Aubrey has highlighted in the coming years. His explanation about embryonic stem cells was one of the best i have read. As someone with conservative leanings, i could see how it could be done in ways I could morally feel comfortable with. He also points out some of the failings of the current funding system for scientific research, correctly identifies the culprits and offers solutions, This book is well worth reading and shows how it is at least posible that some of its readers to be around for a LONG time.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6

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