From: Brett Paatsch (bpaatsch@bigpond.net.au)
Date: Sun Jul 20 2003 - 04:17:11 MDT
Spike writes:
>
> From: Brett Paatsch
>
> ... part way through Stephen Hall's Merchants of Immortality...
>
>
> I saw MoI in Border's the other day and it surprised
> me that I had seen no discussion of it on extropians.
> Perhaps it was discussed during the time I was losing
> a lotta my email? Brett, has Stephen Hall any insight?
Yeah, I got something out of it. And I agree with Mez's
comments.
Just a few things that come to mind include the extent to
which characters like Michael West founder of Geron
and more recently of ACT have actually been walking the
extropian talk. He's the closest thing to a full blown
"Extropian" entrepreneur I've seen, in terms of the scale of
his vision, the people and resources he was able to put
together his political and media savvy, obvious ego and
frankly sometimes what seemed to be a reckless even
manic personality.
I liked the guy as he was portrayed in the book as a sort of
exemplar of extropic moving and shaking. But also saw
in the book warnings of having such egos pushing their
own personal applecart's and timetables could put the
general "cause" backwards.
Other significant insights for me. If either the Clinton-Lewinsky
affair had not occurred (undermining Clinton's moral standing)
or Bush had not "won" the election against Gore then it is very
likely that the stem cell legislation in the US today could be far
more liberal than it actually is. The book warns of the
irresponsibility of talking of certain cures. But it is undeniable
that if cures do result later rather than sooner because the
machine gets moving later rather than sooner than the cost in
human lives (real human lives not potential ones) will be
enormous.
As Mez said this is not really a book about life extension,
genetics and anti-agings techs. Indeed it covers the period
up until early 2003 before Clonaid claim to have produced
a clone and after september 11. It looks at stem cell
politics particularly in the US but also harkens back to the
right to life politics and suggests a continuum.
I would heartily recommend it as a good read to those who
wonder as I do to what extent such non-direct technical
aspects as intellectual property regimes and politics can
resist what many folks with a transhuman mindset seem
to see as the irresistible march of technologies whose time
has come.
To me the book showed that science is a social enterprise.
The new dispensations around Intellectual property where
discovery rather than innovation is driving biotech patents
probably has slowed down the rates of progress in stem
cells. Also the book makes clear how politics can close
down progress in a field substantially.
Robert Bradbury and I have on occasion wondered to
what extent progress being stopped in one country like
the states simply causes good technologies with strong
drivers (like people wanting cures and to live better lives)
to simply work around. To me, how well, the drive to
provide what markets want and technology may be
able to supply on the one hand with the desire to effectively
close down research that is not well understood in society
is an open question. But it is a critically important question.
I'd happily recommend to all extropes interested in how
IP and politics might impact the role out times of certain
technologies to take a look at this book.
One thing I recall is a comment by Pederson an embryologist
that developmental biologists (embryologists) have been all
dressed up with not place to go now in terms of being able
to study human embryology for almost 20 years. Mouse
embryological development is sufficiently different to human
embryological development that not being able to do study
in humans is really seeming to be a serious problem for
us developing basic understanding.
On the other hand, the book is in a time period. 6 months
have passed. Britain can create embryos for research so it
looks like the basic fundamental knowledge of developmental
biology will get a chance to be explored anyway.
I have no doubt personally that politics in the US has slowed
down embryonic stem cell understanding perhaps as much
as two years. I feel it would be prudent for extropes and
transhumanists to be as aware as possible of the social
and political ramifications of technologies. It really seems
possible (though not definite) to me that mankind may not do
sufficient research on human subjects to get the benefits for
curing diseases let along radically extending life for another
couple of generations. I'd like to call extropes and
transhumanists not to the technological battlements but to
deeper political and media savvy. The technology is going
to be the *relatively* easy part imo. The real fronts are
the political and intellectual property fronts. The speed limits
on change on these two fronts are quite separate (and slower)
to those on the technological front.
Another point made in the book is that there are a number
of gerontologists and respected scientists like Steve Austad
and Leonard Hayflick (and around 49 others) who seriously
doubt that immortality will ever be achieved.
I would agree I think with Robert Bradbury here (but Robert
can speak for himself) that Austad and probably Hayflick are
worth listening too, AND that aging is a very complex
series of phenomena. I do not think immortality as opposed to
life extension of more than say 15 years or more will be
achieved by fixing individual genes and addressing individual
diseases like cancer, Parkinsons, Alzheimer's, stroke, diabetes
etc, although these are definitely things worth fixing. But and
this is the point, a better approach to attacking the anti-aging,
problem has been suggested by Aubrey de Grey and this better
(in my view approach) has not been addressed by Hayflick
or Austad.
Aubrey would take an engineering approach to the whole problem
rather than a fix the series of things that appear to be broken.
I'd really love to see Aubrey discuss the ideas in his paper
"An engineer's approach to the development of real anti-aging
medicine ( http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/manu16.pdf)
with the likes of Hayflick and perhaps especially Steve Austad.
I think Hall's point backed by the paper by Hayflick which
Austad supported is solid. The conventional approaches to
anti-aging are NOT going to lead to immortality or even
serious extension of life-spans soon, but Aubrey's approach
is more daring. Alas it is probably also a harder sell.
From a PR standpoint I am a big fan of Aubrey's Methuselah
Mouse project to change the popular mindset that aging is
immutable. But there is a comment in the back of MoI where
Hall quotes Ali Brivanilou of the Rockefeller "the difference
between mouse embryological development at the molecular
level and human development was "night and day". "Everything
that we know about the mouse, (embryologically), we already
know is not true for humans".
This gets me thinking we are learning a lot, but we are not
learning a lot about human embryology particularly quickly
and without the capacity to do some basic research radical
life extension may remain a pipedream for the present
generation. Sure there is the Chinese. Sure there are possible
work arounds and political climates can change. But it
would be a huge mistake in my opinion to think that anything
like radical lifespan extensions are going to fall automatically
into the laps of either this generation or the next one or even
the one after that. Fact is the future is still very much up for
grabs.
Regards,
Brett Paatsch
[Sorry about the length of this. As anothor extrope,
maybe Mike Butler, said once, unfortunately I haven't
got the time to shorten it at present]
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