Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality, Weiner. Non-fiction. Review is based on a publisher-provided pre-pub proof. This is a survey of the state of the science of life extension, with particular focus on the work of Aubrey de Gray, an optimistic (relatively) young man who believes that aging (more specifically, the problems that crop up as age advances) can be solved with a relatively simple, seven-pronged approach. It’s a pretty standard “science for the populace” work, in that there’s a lot of reprising of the various threads. As far as I can tell, Weiner does a creditable job of explaining what must be awfully complicated molecular biology, and I feel like I learned a lot that I will probably forget in another week or so. After the jump, various items that struck me one way or another while reading.
Weiner asserts that explaining aging is harder than explaining consciousness: “No one has managed to explain consciousness yet, either, but for some time we’ve had the source narrowed to a zone above the neck.” This strikes me as glib to the point of inaccuracy. Seat of consciousness, perhaps, but I strongly doubt that a brain separated from sensory—motor-sensory, even—apparatus could ever achieve consciousness. I expect it would be no less helpful (and perhaps no more accurate) to say we’ve narrowed the source of aging to a zone within the cell membrane (to be fair, Weiner does later present a more nuanced view of consciousness).
de Gray asserts that once we have achieved what he calls negligible senescence, people will stop reproducing; and while Weiner does present some evidence to support this view (as life expectancy is increasing, birth rate is decreasing), I suspect this may be the single craziest notion de Gray has. One thing I am completely certain of: nobody has any idea what the biggest societal change brought on by immortality would be.
I found disappointing the frequent mentions of Crick and Watson (as in “Watson and Crick made the greatest breakthrough of the twentieth century”) with nary a nod to Rosalind Franklin, without whose work Crick and Watson would not have done what they did when they did it (and I must admit my shame that I had to look up her name).
Finally, toward the end of the book Weiner asserts that behavior matters more than genetics in an individual’s life span, apparently supporting this assertion with the statement “studies of identical twins suggest” twice as much influence from environment as genetics. Without reading the studies, I could not be certain, but in my current state of ignorance I find the equating of behavior and environment to be dubious.