Long for This World: The Strange Science of ImmortalityJonathan Weiner
Ecco, June 2010
ISBN: 978-0060765361
Long For This World, Jonathan Weiner's latest excursion into popular science writing, should be on readers' radar screens right now for two reasons. First, his previous effort about evolution, "The Beak of the Finch," won a Pulitzer Prize. Second, Newsweek just ran an excerpt from "Long for This World" in a recent issue. Newsweek chose its excerpt well: it reprinted part of Weiner's extended musings about what it would mean for human society if we could all live forever. Weiner is a fantastic writer and he waxes quite lyrical on the subject of the practical effect of longevity on ordinary human beings. His thoughts on this subject in the final chapters are worth the price of the book.
Most of the book is devoted to a quite readable study of the science of longevity and aging. With the exception of some poorly-edited portions near the end (which may be a reflection of the uncorrected proof I read for the Amazon Vine program), I found this book to be the most readable on the subject I have encountered so far. Weiner's historical survey gives a large place to Roger Bacon, a medieval Dominican scholar described as the first modern scientist, whose contributions to science in the Thirteenth Century have unjustly been neglected. Bacon wrote a whole treatise about longevity, a remarkable feat for his time. But the major emphasis of Weiner's historical study is on the lack of respect accorded to the science of longevity even into recent times, and how that is beginning to change.
After the history, we are treated to a magnificent study of what aging means on the cellular level, really a tour de force. Weiner explains how "trash" builds up inside our cells until the cellular "garbagemen" can no longer remove it, and how this breaks down the intricate machines of which we are composed.
From there, Long for This World acquires an eccentric emphasis by following the life and work of Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey, an eccentric, boozy British scientist who hopes to "cure" aging by solving seven seemingly intractable problems. The scope of his ambition is revealed by the fact that the solution to one of these problems (cancer) involves re-engineering the entire mechanism of cellular reproduction in humans. De Grey seems to be way out on the edge of this science, and a little of him went a long way for me. I wish Weiner had spent a little less time hanging around in pubs with De Grey and a little more time following up on some of the fascinating ideas he relates, like a ghoulish proposal to dig up medieval plague victims and study the aging process using their remaining degenerated cells. In the course of mentioning the graveyard study, Weiner discusses the odd fact that the waste product in human cells is photoluminescent. So graveyards should be suffused with an eerie glow...but for some reason (other than in horror films, of course) they are not. I wanted more of this fascinating stuff, but aside from that the book was well worth reading.
