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Review:
The 1966 movie by this name depicted a submarine miniaturized to the
size of a cell, traveling through a diplomat’s body and brain after an
assassination attempt. The book’s thesis is that we can radically extend
life, possibly indefinitely, as long as Methuselah in Genesis, with our
research in biotechnology and genetic therapy, and eventually with the
nanotechnology of the show Jake 2.0. We will soon reach a point where
expected lifespans on actuarial tables (as in LOMA) will be greater than
1 for many ages, which in theory means infinite life spans.
Life extension, however, also will require enormous lifestyle changes
and self-discipline beyond the habits of most people in the West. A lot
of this has been reported before in the media – undernutrition, reducing
refined carbohydrates to almost zero, and careful engineering of various
fats and proteins in the diet. Much of this takes expense, manual
effort, and social cooperation beyond what most people could live with
today. In short, you have to become a “health nut.” You have to do
without a lot of conveniences, ranging from processed foods to dry
cleaning. I recall a medical talk show in the mid 1990s hosted by Dr.
Gabe Mirkin (in suburban DC Maryland) and his first question when anyone
called in was always, “what are your numbers? .. I’m glad!” He was the
exponent of the extremely low-fat diet. (But this book advocates low
carbs!)
The authors provide a great deal of details in terms of chemistry.
The bonding angle in the water molecule even explains a lot, as do a lot
of obscure processes like methylation. Of course, he gives a lot of
details about how anti-oxidants work.
But it is the social implications that need examination. The authors
point out that evolution does not favor longevity for its own sake.
People need to live and be vital long enough to reproduce themselves.
After that, it might even be advantageous if the old died to make way
for the young (a kind of “Logan’s Run”) an idea that is morally
unacceptable in a society that is to value human life as sanctified.
Also, man did not evolve eating processed and contaminated foods.
A society committed to longevity would have to redefine many
priorities. People may not have as many children, but may work much
longer than today (otherwise social security and pensions really will
collapse). But the social cooperation would seem to demand much more
social loyalty from individuals to the family unit and to community than
is conceivable today in our individualistic culture. Maybe such a
culture actually favors gay marriage (for those so inclined), and
mandates various kinds of socialization. One byproduct of much healthier
lifestyles would be the slowing down of aging. That means that married
sexual partners may retain their attractiveness indefinitely, and the
whole paradigm of “in sickness and in health” that challenges the sexual
commitment of so many married couples is redefined. Not only
catastrophic diseases (breast cancer) could be eliminated, but the more
subtle effects of aging due to TMG, insulin overproduction and
intolerance, adult-onset diabetes, and similar degeneration or “cell
death” (even Dr. Phil calls it that) could be reversed. Some young men
today degenerate in appearance with shocking speed, becoming overweight,
with pot bellies (the pear shape), going bald in the legs. Their sense
of success comes from financial and sexual “performance” but even that
goes with degenerative disease. All of this, it seems, comes from
lifestyles that accept our lifespans as finite, and expendable after the
normal 3 score and ten. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Sir Martin Rees. Our Final Hour: A
Scientist's Warning: How terror, error, and environmental disaster
threaten humankind's future in this century-on earth and beyond.
Basic, 2003, ISBN 046506826, 228 pages, paper. Rees is a Royal Society
Professor at Cambridge University in London. If the previous view
on this page shows how technology can make things go very right and
extend life, this book shows how it could end things. The fourteen
chapters contain a lot of speculation of how things can go very wrong,
and there is probably not a point in trying to list all of them here.
The early part of the book is a history of the Manhattan Project and
Cold War nuclear arms race. Then he gets into how the nature of the
threat has changed with asymmetry, which means that a small non-state
actor or even one disgruntled individual can wreak enormous havoc with
an interdependent "civilized" world (with threats ranging from suitcase
nukes, dirty bombs, computer worms, to bio-weapons and maybe eventually
nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. He gives some analysis of
the Malthusian concerns over population, with mixed assessment of the
lower birth rates. He offers some bizarre speculations of how
well-intended physics experiments could start chain reactions that could
destroy the earth. His discussion of "infection" of matter by "strangelets"
sort of resembles the way prion diseases work in the brain, where
protein molecules. But it definitely sounds plausible that new kinds of
"micro nuclear weapons" could exist and be designed by terrorists or
"mad scientists."
Rees's thesis gives us reason to ponder what makes us tick.
Technology has given us the opportunity to go our own ways as
individuals, yet curiously makes us vulnerable to having everything that
makes modern life meaningful yanked away from us by forces beyond our
own individual control -- maybe by disgruntled individuals. Yet, some of
us shun conventional socialization (through religion and family,
especially -- all of which demands liking people "as people") because it
seems so susceptible to the power games of others, too.
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