Synopses & Reviews
An award-winning writer explores science's boldest frontier - extension of the human life span - with the researchers and entrepreneurs who are racing to create medicines that will allow us to live longer and better.
Aging, cancer, stem cells, cloning - the themes of Merchants of Immortality are the stuff of today's headlines, yet they reflect some of humankind's most ancient hopes and fears. Stephen S. Hall delves behind the headlines to reveal just how close scientists are to fulfilling hopes of longer, healthier lives. Merchants of Immortality tackles profound social questions: How close are we to cloning humans? Can stem cell therapies tame illnesses such as heart attacks, Parkinson's disease, and diabetes? How long might our children live?
Hall's account of life-extension research is as dramatic as it is authoritative. The story follows a close-knit but fractious band of scientists and entrepreneurs who work in the shadowy area between profit and the public good. Hall tracks the science of aging back to its father figure, the iconoclastic Leonard Hayflick, who was the first to show that cells age and whose epic legal battles with the federal government cleared the path for today's biotech visionaries. Chief among those is the charismatic Michael West, a former creationist who founded the first biotech company devoted to aging research. West has won both ardent admirers and committed foes in his relentless quest to promote stem cells, therapeutic cloning, and other technologies of "practical immortality." Merchants of Immortality breathes scintillating life into the most momentous science of our day, assesses the political and bioethical controversies it has spawned, and explores its potentially dramatic effect on the length and quality of our lives.
Review
"A timely and engrossing account of the high-stakes science of life extension....This is top-drawer journalism." Publishers Weekly, Starred
"A carefully documented examination of how society deals with life-and-death matters." Kirkus Reviews, Starred
"An important survey of the entire landscape of the science aimed at extending human life....we all owe [Hall] a vote of thanks." --JoAnn C. Gutin Newsday
"A fascinating, accurate and accessible account of some of [the] contemporary efforts to combat aging." --Robert H. Binstock The New York Times
"[C]ompelling . . . Merchants of Immortality is a highly readable and important book." --Shannon Brownlee The Washington Post
Synopsis
Regenerative medicine and human life extension are among the most cutting-edge pursuits in science, and potentially among the most profitable. In Merchants of Immortality, Stephen S. Hall offers both an expose<acute accent> of this fascinating science and a case study of the billion-dollar industry that has grown up around it. At the center of the field are stem cell research and cloning -- topics of continuous ethical debate -- and the stem cell legislation that has unintentionally created a strange and thriving private-sector business niche.
Merchants of Immortality is a captivating, incisive account of a new frontier at the intersection of biology and business.
Synopsis
Regenerative medicine and human life extension are among the most cutting-edge pursuits in science, and potentially among the most profitable. In Merchants of Immortality, Stephen S. Hall offers both an expose<acute accent> of this fascinating science and a case study of the billion-dollar industry that has grown up around it. At the center of the field are stem cell research and cloning -- topics of continuous ethical debate -- and the stem cell legislation that has unintentionally created a strange and thriving private-sector business niche.
Merchants of Immortality is a captivating, incisive account of a new frontier at the intersection of biology and business.
Synopsis
Merchants of Immortality is a captivating, incisive account of a new frontier at the intersection of biology and business.
About the Author
STEPHEN S. HALL is the author of Merchants of Immortality and three other acclaimed works of science reportage. He writes frequently for the New York Times Magazine, Discover, and other magazines. He is 5'53⁄4" and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his 5'9" wife and their two average-size children.
Table of Contents
Contents Prologue:The Never-Ending Life 1 1 The Hayflick Limit 14 2 A Circle Has No Ends” 42 3 The Born-Again Darwinian 60 4 Money for Jam” 78 5 Controlling the Headwaters 92 6 The White House Was Nervous . . .” 105 7 Cloning in Silico 127 8 Hay?ick Unlimited 146 9 Mamas, Dont Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys . . .” 158 10 Dead in the Water 174 11 Elixir 189 12 Unk! 206 13 Street-Fightin Man 225 14 The Snowflake Intervention 245 15 The Breath of Life 272 16 Free the Bush 64! 294 17 Beatitude 314 Epilogue:Finitude 338 Notes 361 Bibliography 414 Acknowledgments 417 Index 421