Too Long for this World: The Strange Science of Immortality
Vadim Veterkov, information site "Current comments"
Sometimes journalists cheat. This is not a common practice, but sometimes it happens. Some may call such an approach "hacky" (too harsh) or "ideological" (too hypocritical), but very often a journalist neglects a detached and comprehensive study of the problem, focusing only on the most colorful moments of the subject of research that will be most favorably accepted by the reader.
This never prevents you from writing a good text, but it narrows the subject somewhat, makes it one-sided. Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Weiner's book "Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality" (HarperCollins, 2010) is just an example of this kind of work.
The fact is that the author is lying when he designates the problem of immortality as the subject of research. In fact, most of the book is devoted to research in this area by the most charismatic and famous gerontologist of the planet – Aubrey de Grey. Fifty-year-old de Gray over the years of his research has become something of an icon for the fighters for immortality, as Jobs is for the fighters with Microsoft. It is convenient to paint an icon with de Grey: he has a beard (very thick) and a completely insane look. And at the same time, despite all his eccentricity and the complete absence of a "profile" education, it was de Grey who created the most fundamental and popular theory of human immortality.
De Grey's optimism is best described by his concept of SENS. According to this concept, therapeutic technologies capable of combating the main causes of aging (cell mutations, "garbage" in cells, accumulation of "errors") are developing faster than a person is aging. I.e. today technologies allow to postpone death for some time, then for some more and so on until that moment when a person does not live to be 1000 years old. At the same time, the problem remains (literally) the price of this kind of longevity. Although, theoretically, it is achievable, but it is too expensive. All this is not to mention the hypothetical ethical problems that accompany immortality.
To be fair, Weiner allows a somewhat broader view of the subject here than in the rest of the book. Which in turn "morally" justifies the author.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru28.06.2010