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Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime |  | Authors: Aubrey de Grey, Michael Rae
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 300954
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 0312367066
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.68
EAN: 9780312367060
ASIN: 0312367066
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
2007 EDITION. 1ST EDITION. PUBLISHED BY ST. MARTIN PRESS. HARDCOVER. AUTHORED BY DR. AUBREY DE GREY AND MICHAEL RAE. GREAT BOOK. COULD HUMANS LIVE UP TO 1000 YEARS OR LONGER? MAYBE DR. GREY HAS FOUND A CURE AND A SOLUTION TO STOP AGING AND LIVE FOREVER?
Book Description
MUST WE AGE?
A long life in a healthy, vigorous, youthful body has always been one of humanitys 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 entirelytechnology that would not only slow but periodically reverse age-related physiological decay, leaving us biologically young into an indefinite futureis 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 machines 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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 31
 Some Good Ideas, With Problems, and Poor Writing... October 13, 2009
Amazonman
So many good reviews. And being positive about this subject is great. But the book does not warrant such high reviews.
Before I get into my opinion of this, let me summarize what this book is about:
De Grey and Rae tackle the problem of aging. They view aging, primarily, as a product of junk that accumulates in the body. The junk happens because of many things: diet, our environment, mutations in our DNA, etc. But primarily because of free radical damage: oxidation. The junk deforms our tissues, both inter and intra-cellularly. It's the hostile environment of oxidation that causes the twisting of proteins in our cells, and makes them deformed and non-funcitonal.
Through the process of oxidation, like a log burning up, we basically become less and less functional as time goes on because of free radical damage. Like the log burning, we don't really have a choice if we want to keep living. Just like the log takes in oxygen to fuel its fire, so too do we take in oxygen to fuel our mitochondria that provides energy to our cells. It's that energy that keeps the cell alive, and keeps us alive. But in the process we are burning up, and dying, just like the log. Mitochondria is the culprit: the energy furnaces which exist in every cell.
In order to thwart aging, we need to clear our bodies of this junk, and reduce mutations in our mitochondria that cause them to malfunction, as well as stop hydrogen peroxide - a free radical - from being systemically released to the rest of the body. Hydrogen peroxide is a byproduct spit out by mitochondria. That is the main cause of systemic oxidation.
The solution to stopping mitochondria from oxidizing the rest of the body is to transplant it into the nucleus of the cell, shielding it. Basically, fusing the separate mitochondria with the nucleus of the cell: playing an evolutionary god.
As for other diseases like Cancer and AIDS, we need to attack those problems through gene therapy. Delete, transform, etc. particular genes that will alter our response to these things (i.e. delete the gene responsible for producing telomerase in cancer, essentially shutting down tumour proliferation, in theory...).
That's about the jist of the book, but you won't find such a terse summary in there. The book is simply a mess of writing, and the above summary probably makes them look better than they are.
On that note, why 3 stars? The writing is very poor. There are paragraphs I have chopped out and reduced down to 1 sentence. It is very long-in-the-tooth at times. Like another reviewer said, the first portion is just a call for funding, and the last portion of the book is all speculation. And that speculation was very long-winded and lacked sophistication.
Now, onto the ideas in the book. Something positive first... I give credit to De Grey and Rae for taking on a seemingly fresh approach to the biggest medical scourge of life: aging. Aging kills us. They are right. If we can find ways to colonize space, living longer will not be a problem, and it will change our behaviour, particularly toward procreating.
But for everyone giving this such high reviews, you do need to further study physiology, biology, and biochemistry. What's clear is that De Grey certainly has an excellent grasp of these subjects. I was impressed with his overall view of the subject. In order to discuss this topic in such a macro/micro-scopic way that they have, they have expert knowledge of the relevant science.
But some of the ideas are fantastic compared to some of the other treatments being explored. For example, and I know I am not alone on this: his whole approach to curing cancer. Deleting all genes that code for telomerase? And how that basically kills people if you do. In order to thwart shrivelling up and dying, he proposes transplanting telomerase incompetent stem cells into the body, and topping us up with stem cells when we get low. This is both fantastic and unweildly in its application.
One promising treatment for cancer is a designer drug that starves, just tumour cells, of capillary formation. Blood supplies are then cut off, and just the tumour dies, leaving the rest of the healthy tissue alone. In fact, there is a drug, one of the only drugs available, that keeps people alive a little longer where cancer has metastasized in their bones. Basically a death sentence. But the drug works, and extends life sometimes up to 6 months and beyond.
No, that's not a cure, but what De Grey and Rae are proposing is something that will likely cause a lot more damage to the organism than anything else.
But aside from cancer, he skirts over problems with research associated with the ideas he advances. He uses words like "dramatic", etc. to describe things in research he interprets as positive. When, in fact, some of it is not that compelling if you do the research. But he plays it up.
What can we expect though? This is, at times, some hard science, and at other times, complete soft science full of fantastic ideas and arrogance.
Thanks De Grey and Rae for making people aware of the problems with aging, and trying to do something about it. But don't think that what you have proposed in this book is the ticket. It's not. It will be the continued, progressive evolution of multi-disiplinary science on a global scale, with shared ideas that will cure aging, because it is that complex.
But gene therapy, designer drugs, and nano-technology, all of which he mentions, are what is in store for us. These will give us powerful tools to fight disease, and to fight aging.
And what another reviewer said: one of the most important things about aging is diet. Eat healthy, and let your body, a magical thing, do the work for you by delivering all of that good stuff to your tissues.
 brilliant June 20, 2009
folderol50 (Tucson, AZ)
This book will change the way you live.
Not only is its thesis - that aging can be cured - breathtaking, but enough technical detail is provided to make it really believable. And beyond that, De Grey pulls off the feat of making it very entertaining and readable.
Great book - a lot of things to think about for open mind scientists April 6, 2009
E. Baranov (San Diego, CA)
Great book, I like it and would strongly recommended for all open mind scientists and knowledgeable audience. One thing I would make stronger is genetic point. It looks like author underestimates influence of genetic programming on human ageing and death - but this is the biggest problem compared to all other named causes.
How Many Tommorros? February 2, 2009
Llewellyn R. Drake (Saginaw, MI)
When you are given an opportunity to peak over the edge of the world, how do you explain what you saw? That is a problem that you too, will have if you are asked to review Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime by Dr. Aubrey de Grey.
Of course there are new concepts, new words and new ways of looking at the world; that is what is, when you surf the crest of immediate science. You may not be ready. My grandma, who was born and raised in an era when the horse was the fastest ride in town, excoriated me in beet faced rage "It is not true. Man cannot have landed on the Moon; God will never allow it!" A lot has happened since my grandmother's admonishment; if you want to know how much, in the field of aging, I would recommend that you read Dr. de Grey's book.
Dr. de Grey points out we pretty much know the causes of aging but we haven't yet resolved all the ways that lead to a long and healthy life, but our knowledge is growing so fast, taking one step in the healthy direction may lead to very long journey. Don't be left behind. Take that step, read the book.
Important; probably exaggerates a bit July 31, 2008
Peter McCluskey (San Bruno, CA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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).
Showing reviews 1-5 of 31
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