A World Where No One Ages

Review by Rick Docksai
Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime by Aubrey de Grey, with Michael Rae. St. Martin’s Press, www.stmartins.com . 2007. 389 pages. $26.95.

Is there really a Fountain of Youth? Soon, it could be more than an old folk tale, asserts Aubrey de Grey in Ending Aging. Within this century, the self-described antiaging activist argues, science could discover how to reverse the human aging process, enabling people to live for a thousand years or more — and to do so free of arthritis, cancer, dementia, and other ailments that people today associate with growing old.

“There will quite simply cease to be a proportion of the population that is frail and infirm as a result of their age,” he writes. De Grey identifies several types of accumulating human tissue damage that cause the symptoms of old age, and “rejuvenation therapies” that might undo each. One type of damage results from accumulations of waste compounds within cells. A2E buildup in retina cells, for example, ends in maculardegeneration. De Grey sees a solution in soil bacteria. Enzymes from these bacteria could be conveyed into human cells and spur the cells to more effectively flush out waste compounds.

Also, many of the body’s cells simply die without getting replaced. This contributes over time to heart attack damage, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and much of the general enfeeblement of the body that accompanies aging. Stem-cell research could generate healthy new replacement tissue.

De Grey sees many signs of hope in today’s breakthroughs, and he urges the public to take an active interest. Right now, he writes, that interest is lacking, and public officials hesitate to fund antiaging research, lest they get caught spending tax dollars on “pipe dreams.”

De Grey exhibits great optimism about defeating age—perhaps too much optimism. While lauding a youth-filled future, he ignores many likely complications. If people live a thousand years or more, would the earth become overpopulated? How much would rejuvenation treatments cost? What new disparities would emerge as an affluent few live healthily indefinitely while most other s around them wither and die? In a time of rising income inequalities, booming populations, and escalating health-care costs, these questions are worth asking. The closest that de Grey gets to answering them is a dismissive admonition that there are risks and that “we should work to preempt [them] by appropriately careful forward planning.”

Ending Aging is more of a how-to treatise than a vision for the future. But it is a how-to treatise for achieving one of humankind’s oldest dreams — eternal youth. If his argument is incomplete, it is intriguing nonetheless. And if the book leaves nagging questions unanswered, it also poses compelling new questions about what is possible, given time and sufficient imagination. —Rick Docksai