Do You Have Questions About Immortality, Inc.?
This post was originally published on January 2, 2020 on a previous version of ChipWalter.com.
You Can Learn More Here with These Questions and Answers About the Book
Why did you write Immortality, Inc.? How did it happen?
I suppose I have always been fascinated with the idea of long life, going back to the myths I used to read as a kid. But as a journalist interested in science I wondered if we might be arriving at a time in human history where we could really, truly solve this problem, remarkable as that might sound. And so I kept my eye out, and when I saw that some very big players had begun to get involved in the idea of solving aging, I decided to look into it. And what I found told me that there was a fascinating, important story to be told: a sea change was coming that would have profound, long-term implications for all of us.
How long did you research the book?
I worked on the book — developing it, researching it, writing it — for four years on and off, and almost three exclusively. Once I discovered that some large, well funded companies were taking on aging as a disease, I thought I had better track down the players behind it. I wanted to see if this work was legitimate or the same old snake oil. It turned out it was an illustrious group that included inventor Ray Kurzweil, Craig Venter, the world’s foremost expert on genomics and Arthur Levinson, former CEO of Genentech and the chairman of Apple. All three have been awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation or the National Medal of Science. The nation’s most prestigious scientific prizes. Big money was involved too. Google for example. We’re talking billions of dollars.
What surprised you the most about what you learned in the process of writing the book?
When I first began to explore the ideas behind the book and the science and people and money driving it, I was still skeptical. But by the end of the book, I decided the central players in the book — and an increasing number of other scientists now entering the field — are really going to pull this off. And not in the far future but beginning within the next five years. Healthy lifespans will last, not decades, but centuries!
Talk a little bit more about the exclusive nature of the access you had into some of the behind the scenes aspects of the executives and companies you covered.
Luckily, all of the scientists that I approached agreed to speak with me, and give me access to their companies, as well as enormous amounts of their personal time. In Art Levinson’s case this was particularly interesting because Levinson rarely gives interviews. But he provided me the exclusive story behind why Google decided to fund Calico and how the business and science unfolded. (I also corroborated these stories with others.) Calico’s emergence, I felt, was crucial because of the level of Google’s funding, together with Levinson’s background as Apple chairman and the former CEO and chairman of Genentech. It made this a watershed event on a lot of levels. All of this information is revealed in the book for the first time.
I was also given unprecedented time to spend with Ray Kurzweil (Google), Robert Hariri (Celularity, Inc.) and Craig Venter and his top executives and scientists at Human Longevity, Inc.
You’ve said you don’t see this as a straight science book or how-to book, but as something a little different.
Yeah. I actually see this book as more like The Big Short by Michael Lewis. The Big Short was about more than Wall Street finance. It was about the characters behind it, the society that allows it, the complexity and unbelievable nature of a social/financial system that crumbles. There are similarities with Immortality. Like The Big Short it deals with a complex subject (but, if I’ve done my job right, I hope it’s not difficult to read) because it explores so many threads — not just the science, but the personal histories of the book’s major characters (what motivates them?), the science behind why we die in the first place, how medicine has evolved and the forces that have shaped this thinking and the (mostly Silicon Valley) money behind it. How did that happen? Why? And where will it lead? The book’s about all of that.
Do you believe it is really possible to “cure” aging?
The simple answer is, “I do now.” But the curing represents an incredibly difficult challenge, which is one reason it has taken this long for science to tackle it. That and the fact that until recently most scientists believed it was impossible to change what causes us to age. (The FDA still does not consider aging a “disease.”) The idea that we naturally grow old and die is so deeply woven into our psyches that it seems insane to even contemplate it.
We have now learned enough about the science to see that aging is like any other disease: a degenerative series of biological events that damage and eventually kill us. One hundred and fifty thousand people a day die of age related diseases in the world. Over a million a week. That makes aging the world’s most lethal serial killer, by far. Can we stand by and simply let this happen?
There are some people who perceive the process of scientifically extending life far beyond what is currently deemed “natural” as wrong, on religious or moral grounds. How have the companies working on this process addressed these concerns, or have they?
I don’t think that companies like Human Longevity, Inc or Calico or Celularity (all explored in the book), or any of the others that are emerging, are directly addressing that issue. Their mission is to pretty much apply science to extend healthy life spans, and that’s it. Obviously, though, accomplishing that has profound implications. Can the planet handle it? Will we be overpopulated? Can marriages survive hundreds of years when they struggle now to last even decades?
In the end, though, I’m not sure that what we want or don’t want ultimately matters anymore than the invention of the wheel, cars or the Internet have mattered. When a new technological advance like this comes, history shows we embrace it no matter the consequences.
The truth is, since the invention of the first flint knife two million years ago, new technology is always double-edged. It’s up to us, as a society, to decide whether we want to use these technologies intelligently or belligerently and selfishly. The same is true of the medical advances we are going to see in radical longevity. Very few people are going to say no to living a longer healthier life. The bigger question is how are we going to handle the intended and unintended consequences.
What about cost? Will this be an expensive medical treatment that only a select few can afford or will this technology be available to anyone? How can we democratize a long and healthy life?
Well, the business of medicine in the United States is a train wreck, but that’s another issue. We do know this: very few new technologies are cheap at the outset (and, by the way, at the outset they often don’t work very well), yet wealthy people will buy them or use them. In this sense, the wealthy subsidize the creation of better ideas, and in time the rest of us benefit from it. So I believe that the cost of living longer, access to stem cell therapy and tailored pharmaceuticals, will be costly at first, and thus largely available mostly to the wealthy. But I also believe that history shows that pretty quickly those prices will drop and become increasingly available to just about everyone. I always tell people, take good care of yourself for the next 15 to 20 years, and if you do, you’ll be able to live a very, very long and healthy life because those advances will become available to you more quickly than you think.
How does the quest to prolong life indefinitely intersect with the pursuit of curing other deadly diseases such as cancer? Ultimately, how will this change the way we approach healthcare and medicine?
The purpose of Medicine with a capital “M” is to prolong life, relieve pain and, when possible, cure disease. We’ve been attempting to do this for as long as the human race has existed. And we’ve come a long way since the days of the first shamans, poultices and herbal teas, mostly thanks to the improved technologies we’ve developed over time.
The fastest growing disease in the United States is Alzheimer’s, and the main reason it is increasing so rapidly is because we are living long enough to be afflicted by it. Put another way, most people now die from these diseases and the reason they do is because they are growing old. That makes aging the world’s most lethal serial killer.
The point is, if we can solve the underlying cause of aging, these killer diseases would largely disappear. We’ll basically grow younger. And, as a rule, most people do not die when they are young unless it’s from an accident, murder or a severe genetic problem.
This means that by curing aging, we will, in one fell swoop, cure much of the cancer, heart disease and other aging diseases that eventually do the vast majority of us in. This arguably makes solving aging THE best way to eliminate a whole group of diseases, rather than try to track each one down individually like we’re playing some game of whack-a-mole. In fact you could argue that these diseases will never be eliminated unless aging is eliminated first. We’ll just create a series of bandaids, but eventually something will get us.
An additional bonus is that in developing the science that repeals aging, we may well develop cures for many diseases that that kill people in their youth. Genetic diseases, viruses, childhood cancer. Is there really anyone who would say no to any of these advances?
Talk about how the possibility of extending our lives indefinitely impacts our conversation on climate change. Will the possibility of living much longer lives in an overheating and potentially overcrowded world suddenly inspire a sense of urgency in dealing with this issue among Boomers and Gen Xrs, Millenials and GenZers?
We should all be very afraid of the damage we are doing to the planet. We need Earth more than Earth needs us. That’s a given. But again, if we make strides in increasing healthy life span and curing aging, I don’t believe members of the human race will say no to living longer—no matter their age. So the bigger question is, given a future in which we will massively increase life span, how do we handle it?
Most people don’t realize it, but we are already slowing the rate of human growth and have been for a good 30 years. This doesn’t mean the population isn’t increasing, but the rate of increase is slowing. Eventually it will zero out. As cultures become better educated, as women gain more power, as nations become more urban and less agrarian, and as the cost of living increases, fewer children are born. Couples are marrying later, having babies later and in many cases not having them at all. Today many are wondering if having children makes sense at all.
In Japan the number of newborns has dropped so dramatically that the elderly in Japan use more diapers than infants and toddlers! The cost of living and raising children is also a factor that is reducing population growth.
I think we are already seeing an urgency to tackle climate change, improve cities and eliminate pollution because we are finally concluding that they require our common attention. Over the past 120 years we have nearly doubled our life span which is one reason we are facing the problems we face. A trend that radically increases life span should only motivate us to do better at taking care of the planet and one another. There really isn’t any other alternative.
Will there be laws to regulate access to aging more slowly? How will this affect our social safety net and medicare?
Living radically long won’t happen overnight any more than than living as long as we are now has happened overnight. But the change will accelerate and that acceleration will create a lot of complexity. That’s been true for sometime. Every day our society is struggling to deal with rapid technological advance. Thankfully, if we make real progress at improving health span as well as life span, then we will actually reduce the load on our aging safety net. People will live healthfully and keep working way past what we currently consider retirement age. This doesn’t mean they have to do work they hate. They’ll be able to take the money they have earned for retirement and explore work they enjoy. Maybe they’ll take time off for awhile, then get into a new field. Maybe they’ll learn new skills. Boomers are already living longer and many would rather not retire as long as they’re healthy. Eventually safety nets like Medicare will become far less necessary because our overall health will improve. This will create a huge longevity bonus. The hundreds of billions of dollars we pay as a society to treat the elderly will largely evaporate. The need for social security would too. Not all problems will be solved, but this could enable us as a society and species to assemble the knowledge and resources we need to address the other immense challenges we face — overpopulation, climate change, food redistribution, war, and poverty.
How will this change the nature of our families.
I’m not sure we know the answers yet because we have always assumed that millions will die every week as we age, essentially purging the planet. And the truth is, brutal as it sounds, that is the way evolution works. Life has evolved to allow most living creatures to wear out and be replaced with newer versions, rather than allowing each living thing to live forever without the need of replacements. We are the first species to change that equation, and if we cure aging, we will change it at the most profound level. It will upend economics, personal relationships, jobs and education, social mores, entertainment. With unlimited amounts of time, it’s difficult to say how we’ll deal with it. The possibilities are both daunting and exhilarating. One way or another, though, we had better begin thinking about it.
Will people be required to work forever if they dramatically slow their aging process? Retirement is already expensive. How will people afford this?
A shift like this will create transitions that will be enormous in the way that the invention of agriculture and the industrial revolution and the advance of digital technology have been. Repealing aging will create huge and, for many, painful transitions. To say otherwise would be dishonest.
Whatever happens, as a species we have to adapt with as much foresight as we can muster. My guess is the best way to adapt is to learn and educate. The good news is you’ll have plenty of time to do it. The bad news is that it seems to be in our DNA to react to trouble after it happens, rather than before. Just look at the situation we’re facing with climate change.
What did you learn, traveling to the world’s blue zones–those areas where people are currently living much longer and healthier lives than average-about what we can do now, without any special tech, to increase and improve the quality of our lives?
In a perfect world we would all live a Blue Zone’s style life: low stress, healthy, organic food, lots of exercise well into old age, and plenty of time with friends and family. That’s why these folks live into their 90s and past 100, 110 years in good health. But it’s also important to point out that these people didn’t choose to live this way. The Blue Zones aren’t a spa. It’s just the way they grew up because they lived in remote, low population areas, with little stress, no fast food and daily lives that required hard physical labor. In the 20th century, they also benefited from better sanitation and antibiotics, the source of many diseases that used to kill a lot of people earlier in life.
If you boil it all down, the greatest killer is probably stress. The stress to make money (often for things we don’t really need), to buy unhealthy food, to compete, to rush through our week and ultimately our lives often missing out on the time we could be spending with those we love and care about. A lot of what we do is a reaction to the stress we feel — quick entertainment, drinking and eating more than is good for us, drugs to reduce anxiety, lack of exercise (who has time for that?).
Living radically longer essentially provides us with a time machine. It buys time, the one thing we currently can’t buy. Maybe if we have more time, we’ll relax a little more and not feel we’re always fighting the clock. But that’s only part of the solution. We have to also clarify what’s important in our lives: is it about buying (and paying) for more stuff, or is it about living a richer mental and emotional life? If nothing else, maybe having more time will enable us to figure that all out.