The Price of Immortality
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
In the tradition of Jon Ronson and Tim Wu, an absorbing and revelatory journey into the American Way of Defying Death . . .
As longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people, the quest to take the next step—to live as long as we choose—has spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley.
Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal is becoming increasingly credible as the pace of technological progress quickens. It has also empowered a wild-eyed fringe of pseudo-scientists, tech visionaries, scam-artists, and religious fanatics who have given their lives over to the pursuit of immortality.
Starting off at the Church of Perpetual Life in Florida and exploring the feuding subcultures around the cryonics industry, Peter Ward immerses himself into an eccentric world of startups, scam artists, scientific institutions, and tech billionaires to deliver this deeply reported, nuanced, and sometimes very funny exploration of the race for immortality — and the potentially devastating consequences should humanity realize its ultimate dream.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Ward (The Consequential Frontier) explores in this primer the idea that there is a time in the not-too-distant future when biotechnology will be able to keep people alive indefinitely. Obsession with longevity is nothing new, Ward notes, but as science has advanced, "immortalists were faced with a scenario most thought would never happen: they might be proved correct." He interviews Neal VanDeRee, pastor of the Church of Perpetual Life, a religious organization that promotes the concept of immortality—VanDeRee plans to live until he's 300—and offers an abbreviated history of the field of cryonics, or the freezing of newly dead individuals with the belief that they can be unfrozen and reanimated once medical technology to do so exists. He also touches on the possibility that stem-cell and gene therapy might reverse aging, that nanotechnology could defeat diseases, and the prospect of being able to upload human consciousness to computers. In the end though, Ward concludes that "suffering is so much worse than dying," and that there are prevailing quality-of-life healthcare issues that must be addressed before immortality is made a prevailing concern. The writing is vivid and the author favors breadth over depth, making this a great intro to the topic, though it likely won't be as satisfying for those with some familiarity with the ideas and players. Those looking to get started on living forever would do well to begin here.
