by Chip Walter
Art Levinson had neither developed cancer nor had his heart opened for inspection. But he was as lucky to be alive as either Craig Venter or Ray Kurzweil. Two different diseases had killed his mother in her 30s and father in his 60s, but so far he had managed to elude those particular genes.
More than once Levinson told me he didn’t spend a lot of time trying to improve his personal health span—or, for that matter, count on life everlasting at all, even though it was Calico’s stock-in-trade. No supplements. No MRIs. No genetic tests. Nor had he signed up for Alcor. A little tennis pretty much summed up his days burning calories, unless you wanted to count the pacing. Levinson was a world-class pacer. His Apple Watch routinely recorded walks of four miles a day: 10,000 steps, almost all of them as he walked Calico’s corridors and labs, peeking in on the Lily Pond or Middle Earth. He ate a lot of fish (but never orange roughy anymore), and loved his latest gadget, an app paired with a digital strip of sensors that told him whether or not he was getting in some good, quality sleep. So far, his efficiency was first-rate: a sleeping heart rate between 44 and 49 beats per minute, and a respiration of 11 per.
When I asked Levinson about the idea of growing older, his answer surprised me, mainly because I expected him to skirt the question. Among the ironies in his life was that he was both fascinated with death, and in complete denial about it. But that day he answered the question straight out. His biggest concern was the loss of the people he cared about, but he tried not to dwell on that. He preferred to focus on how lucky he was. People underestimated the importance of luck, good or bad. Never think you were better than anyone else, he said, because luck could lift you up or slam you down in a heartbeat. If anybody felt he had made it big solely because he was brilliant or creative, or somehow superior—well, that made him a fatuous ass. For him, denial of death was best. Never mind The End. Just keep feeling like an 11-year-old and have at it.
* * *
—
IT WASN’T LONG AFTER those conversations that I made one final journey: this one back to Ikaria, the place where old Stamatis Moraitis had returned with terminal cancer and then lived another 35 years. And the place where Icarus, or the myth of him, plunged to death on fluttering wings.
Ikarians kindly pointed out the exact location of their namesake’s death for me, and off I went to track it down. It took some work to get there. Even for Ikaria, it’s an out-of-the-way place, located at the base of a steep cliff on the west side of the island. An immense slab of flat granite marks it: a good acre of slanted rock that looked as if it had been tossed at the Aegean by an angry god.
I stood upon it, feeling tiny, and looked up at the perfect cobalt sky. I could imagine Icarus floating high, riding the trade winds, and then suddenly plummeting toward me—a boy frantically screaming and flapping, the bright orb of the hot sun above him and his great wings now melted and useless when just a moment ago they had been lifting him high above the sea, so free and powerful, attaining the impossible.
There was a metaphor here about death and science, desire and pride, and messing with Mother Nature. It was as old as humanity itself. The boy had thought he was invincible, above the laws of nature. And then he had flown too close to the sun. His father, Daedalus—the greatest scientist and inventor of his time—had warned him not to fly too high, but he couldn’t help himself. The impossible can be intoxicating that way.
Which path will humanity take? Will we fly too close to the sun? Or take the advice Daedalus gave Icarus: By all means, boy, fly, but not too high. It’s hard to say; humans are unpredictable that way. But maybe, I thought, gazing up at the wide and brilliant sky, these questions only begged the next, even larger, question: When forever comes, will we be able to survive it?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Not a word of thanks can be written on this page until it is written first for Cyndy, my wife, best friend, and the core of our family. Without her, none of this manuscript would have been possible. Cyn sometimes told me, “You know this book about immortality is going to kill you.” But I suspect it was harder on her than me. She had to put up with my insane travel, my antics, the incessant barrage of this idea or that problem or the latest finding tossed at her daily. And yet she always willingly peeled her eyelids when I asked her, once again, to read another version of the manuscript. Cyndy is one of the best reasons why living 300 or 400 years would be a good thing. She is positive proof that there is hope for the human race if we can just be like her—insightful, warm, intelligent, patient, and loving. The same goes for our children, Molly, Steven, Hannah, and Annie, all four of whom have supported me from the first kernel of this idea to its completion.
Many others, of course, helped bring Immortality, Inc. to fruition. My deepest thanks to the National Geographic Society and the Society’s director of expeditions, Rebecca Martin, whose grant supported this project from the start, even though it didn’t stack up as a “classic” National Geographic expedition. Without this backing, I would never have been able research this book as deeply as I did. To Rob McQuilkin, my agent, I am profoundly grateful. The word “calm” should be in Rob’s middle name, or maybe “intelligent” or “insightful.” His personal and editorial support have been invaluable, and this book would not exist if not for his help. I am also deeply indebted to the editors at National Geographic Partners who backed the idea for this book and its many tangled themes rather than forcing it to become a straight-out science or how-to book. Susan Hitchcock, Immortality’s editor, has been extraordinarily strong and dedicated. Throughout, she held fast to the book’s story and core goals, and never gave up helping to make the book better right up to the final manuscript. The same goes for Hilary Black, an insightful supporter from start to finish, and Bill Strachan, who helped advance the book’s overall arc.
I also want to thank Sanjana Bendi, University of Pittsburgh student and doctor-to-be, for managing to accurately transcribe hours upon hours of interviews. No matter how complex the material or how garbled the conversations, she always managed to deliver excellent transcriptions of my stumbling efforts. To my friends and trusted readers, I will always be grateful. Reading is incredibly time consuming. Reading more than one version of a manuscript is doubly so (or worse), yet Eric Ruben, Fran Johns, Cheryl Pierce, Wendy Roberts, and my daughters Molly and Hannah Walter all took the time to provide me honest and insightful feedback.
Finally, thank you to all of the people I harangued and pestered and tracked down for the interviews needed to write this book. These include many hours of meetings, phone calls, and emails with Ray Kurzweil, Arthur Levinson, Craig Venter, Aubrey de Grey, Robert Hariri, as well as long sessions with Bill Maris, David Botstein, Hal Barron, Cynthia Kenyon, Daphne Koller, Amalio Telenti, Riccardo Sabatini, Ken Bloom, Brad Perkins, Heather Kowalski, Max More, Natasha Vita-More, and many others. A special thanks to Aimee Markey at Calico Labs for arranging so many meetings. In the earliest days of this quest, Ray Kurzweil was especially helpful, not only in making himself available, but by providing initial access to Art Levinson and Craig Venter.
All of these people helped me create the book I set out to write. If anything good came of it, you have them to thank. But if you find any mistakes, that’s on me.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
1. UPMC is now in trials to use these procedures on humans suffering from massive blood loss caused by gunshot wounds, traumatic automobile accidents, or other lethal damage.
CHAPTER 2
2. Heaven’s Gate was an American UFO religious cult founded in 1974 and based in San Diego, California. On March 26, 1997, police discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group who had participated in a mass suicide to reach what they believed was an extraterrestrial spacecraft following comet Hale–Bopp.
CHAPTER 3
3. In 1899, cancer ranked as the nation’s seventh most lethal disease.
4. Additional details about this can be found at the American Cancer Institute here: https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/can
cer-statistics-report-death-rate-down-23-percent-in-21-years.html.
CHAPTER 4
5. For more information see: https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2012/dementia_20120411/en.
CHAPTER 8
6. Frank Rosenblatt created the famous perceptron algorithm in 1957, the first computer that could learn new skills by trial and error, using a type of neural network that simulated human thought processes. Among his many other insights, Marvin Minsky’s strong suit was artificial neural networks. Both scientists believed it was ultimately possible to create machines that acted human.
7. Kleiner later became Kurzweil’s longtime business partner, and the chief financial officer of many of his companies.
CHAPTER 10
8. The story of why Rosalind Franklin was not awarded the Nobel Prize is complicated. Her death in 1958 precluded her winning a Nobel Prize since the prizes are not awarded posthumously, and the Nobel committees had not completed their research nor made their final decisions before her death. Also, no more than three scientists could be awarded any one prize. But there are indications that Watson and Crick underplayed the importance of her role in revealing the first x-ray image of the DNA molecule that was so crucial to their work. In 1962, Watson suggested that he and Crick should have been awarded the Nobel in physiology or medicine (as they were), and Wilkins and Franklin should have been awarded the prize in chemistry. Later, much more information came out about the importance of Franklin’s work. And in 1982 Aaron Klug, Franklin’s colleague and the principal beneficiary in her will, was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the very research Franklin had initiated and that she introduced to Klug before her death. Had she survived, it’s very likely she would have won the prize in 1982.
CHAPTER 12
9. This has turned out not to be true. In fact, for the first time since the early part of the 20th century, life expectancy dropped in 2015, 2016, and 2017 in the United States. The major culprits: opioid overdoses and rising suicide rates. More recently, Kurzweil has predicted that by 2029 we will be increasing our life span by a year every year going into the future.
CHAPTER 15
10. There is some doubt as to whether Steve Jobs actually said “dent in the universe.” During a 1985 Playboy interview, Jobs did use a very similar phrase, but instead said “ding in the universe.” You can find the entire interview at reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-steve-jobs.
CHAPTER 17
11. You can read a description of Hariri’s original patent at: patents.justia.com/patent/7045148.
CHAPTER 18
12. Precisely speaking, this formula is known as the Gompertz-Makeham Law of Mortality. Gompertz’s original formula did not include “λ” or gamma. William Makeham, another English actuary and mathematician, added it in the mid-1800s. For more details on Gompertz’s law, explore “A Simple Derivation of the Gompertz Law for Human Mortality” by B. I. Shklovskii. A PDF is available at arxiv.org/PS_cache/q-bio/pdf/0411/0411019v3.pdf.
13. The “e” or epsilon in the formula is a variable commonly used in mathematics that has negligible effect, but is often included.
CHAPTER 20
14. You can also see examples of the Face Project’s results in Sabatini’s 2016 TED Talk here: ted.com/talks/riccardo_sabatini_how_to_read_the_genome_and_build_a_human_being.
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15. Stamatis passed away February 3, 2013, 35 years after he was diagnosed with cancer. He was either 98 or 102. He was never sure of his exact birth date. For more, read pappaspost.com/remembering-stamatis-moraitis-man-almost-forgot-die.
CHAPTER 24
16. For more details on findings from Health Nucleus, see Human Longevity, Inc.’s paper, “Precision Medicine Screening Using Whole-Genome Sequencing and Advanced Imaging to Identify Disease Risk in Adults,” biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/03/133538, also subsequently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), doi: 10.1073/pnas.1706096114. Also, see Ryan Cross’s article “This $25,000 Physical Has Found Some ‘Serious’ Health Problems. Others Say It Has Serious Problems,” Science magazine, sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/25000-physical-has-found-some-serious-health-problems-others-say-it-has-serious.
CHAPTER 25
17. Martine Rothblatt was also former president of Geostar and the world’s highest paid transgender person. In 2013, she made $38 million. washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/martine-rothblatt-she-founded-siriusxm-a-religion-and-a-biotech-for-starters/2014/12/11/5a8a4866-71ab-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html.
18. For more about this remarkable event, read Pam Belluck, “Chinese Scientist Who Says He Edited Babies’ Genes Defends His Work,” New York Times, November 28, 2018; and Rob Stein, “Chinese Scientist Says He’s First to Create Genetically Modified Babies Using Crispr,” National Public Radio (Morning Edition), November 26, 2018, npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/26/670752865/chinese-scientist-says-hes-first-to-genetically-edit-babies.
19. Two studies link aging and reduced muscle mass. This study showed that an increase in muscle mass and exercise seemed to reduce the likelihood of cancer. See J. R. Ruiz, X. Sui, F. Lobelo, et al., “Muscular Strength and Adiposity as Predictors of Adulthood Cancer Mortality in Men,” Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention 18, no. 5 (2009): 1468–76, doi:10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-08-1075, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2885882. For another study that indicates a correlation between increased muscular strength and longer life, see Jonatan R. Ruiz, Xuemei Sui, Felipe Lobelo, James R. Morrow, Allen W. Jackson, Michael Sjöström, et al., “Association Between Muscular Strength and Mortality in Men: Prospective Cohort Study,” BMJ 337 (2008): doi.org/10.1136/bmj.a439.
CHAPTER 26
20. Though foreshadowed in earlier short stories, Isaac Asimov originally introduced his elegant Three Laws of Robots in his 1942 short story “Runaround,” which was later included in his 1950 landmark collection of short stories I, Robot. The laws read: “One, a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm…Two, a robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law…And law three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”
CHAPTER 27
21. Ironically, Illumina, Inc., the DNA sequencing company used by Craig Venter and HLI, agreed to buy Pacific Biosciences in 2018 for $1.2 billion.
CHAPTER 28
22. From Nicholas Wade, “Thrown Aside, Genome Pioneer Plots a Rebound,” New York Times, April 30, 2002, nytimes.com/2002/04/30/health/thrown-aside-genome-pioneer-plots-a-rebound.html.
CHAPTER 29
23. Calico’s scientific paper published in Mammalian Genome can be viewed at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4935753.
CHAPTER 30
24. This marks one of the first clinical applications of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. See Katarina Zimmer’s “First iPS Cell Trial for Heart Disease Raises Excitement, Concern” at the-scientist.com/news-opinion/first-ips-cell-trial-for-heart-disease-raises-excitement-concern-64743.
25. So far it seems there is little evidence that patients suffering from Alzheimer’s can be treated effectively with blood plasma from young donors. See Jocelyn Kaiser’s “Blood From Young People Does Little to Reverse Alzheimer’s in First Test” at sciencemag.org/news/2017/11/blood-young-people-does-little-reverse-alzheimer-s-first-test. However, scientists aren’t giving up, and studies are ongoing: sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/11/06/could-blood-plasma-be-the-fountain-of-youth.
26. In spring 2018, Tony Robbins posted on Facebook that he had just completed a stem cell procedure that “saved my shoulder after struggling with excruciating pain from spinal stenosis and, more recently, a torn rotator cuff” (facebook.com/TonyRobbins/posts/10156548872894060). This was at the Stem Cell Institute in Panama City, Panama.
27. Gates made two announcements in November 2017: He donated $50 million to the Dementia Discovery Fund in the Unite
d Kingdom, and $50 million more for start-ups focused on Alzheimer’s research. See Deniz Cam’s “Bill Gates Is Investing $100 Million in Alzheimer’s Research, Citing Family History,” forbes.com/sites/denizcam/2017/11/13/microsoft-billionaire-bill-gates-is-investing-100-million-in-alzheimers-research/#145c8c57328f.
SELECTED SOURCES AND SUGGESTED READING
The great bulk of the research for this book was conducted over more than three years during long face-to-face interviews with many of the people featured herein.
