Saturday, February 12, 2011

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

Rating: Author: Aubrey de Grey ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDF
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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.

Direct download links available for PRETITLE Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE
  • File Size: 1292 KB
  • Print Length: 448 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 Reprint edition (September 4, 2007)
  • Sold by: Macmillan
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B001ANSSKA
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray:
    Not Enabled
  • Lending: Not Enabled
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,820 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
    • #17 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Biotechnology
    • #17 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Biotechnology
    • #36 in Books > Medical Books > Basic Sciences > Biotechnology
  • #17 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Biotechnology
  • #17 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Biotechnology
  • #36 in Books > Medical Books > Basic Sciences > Biotechnology

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

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.
The basic strategy is to bootstrap: figure out how to repair the age-related damage that we know about today, and use the extra lifetime this gives us to learn how to repair the damage that will develop as we live longer and longer lives. So if you reach the age of 200, say, the damage that has to be repaired is the damage that occurs to get to 100, plus whatever becomes an additional problem between 100 and 200, and so on.

I think the basic strategy is quite sound, given the exponential progress in technology and especially bio-tech that we are seeing today. It is pretty common to hear researchers say that they can do more in a year today than they could do in 10 years previously, because the tools and our knowledge are both so much better. So once we can get to a point where we can extend current lives by 20+ years, there is a good chance that no one will die of old age ever again (except by choice).

When I talk about this, one of the immediate concerns I hear is for the planet and running out of resources. Personally, I am convinced that when this problem arrives we will solve it, and that there are a variety of ways that this could be done (much lower birth rates, higher density on this planet, moving into space and/or to other planets), so I am much more concerned with curing aging. I don't want to see any more of my friends or family die, and I would like to enjoy life as long as I want. So I am all in favor of this program!

The book is divided into three sections. One that talks about the problem of aging and treating it as an engineering problem to be solved; one that talks about the known issues that have to be solved and possible solutions; and one that talks about what each of us can do to contribute to solving the problem.

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