Young men build empires and old men lose them.
Posted: October 31st, 2006 at 1:29 pm
- by Dan A. Baker www.foreverandeverthebook.com
The Bay Area is home to some of the youngest and wealthiest people in the world. The recent Buffalo hunts in the computer, high tech, biotech, and internet arenas have deposited unheard of private fortunes on a group that is mostly younger than forty. Both in history, and throughout the world this is unprecedented.
Just what do these young, too bright, imaginative people do with money? The usual path for the super rich is to buy jets, politicians, houses, and then settle into the high life circuit. But many of these nuevo super-rich are nerds. Gulf Streams, and drug lord houses don’t cut it with this group. Then what does?
Paul Allen, Larry Ellison, and other mega tech moguls have demonstrated a welcome departure from the standard pig-outs of the rich. They’ve funded a host of really interesting lost causes, including an America’s Cup challenge, building a Rock and Roll museum, making political movies in Hollywood (Syriana) taking tourists to outer space, saving African children, that kind of stuff. Fun stuff. Safe stuff. Harmless stuff.
What if? What if one of these hombres decided to turbo charge the age of biology? Goose the future? Change the human race forever? Mess with Mother Nature? Accelerate what will be the most earth-shattering change in the entire human history? Not safe. Not harmless. But, ooh so much fun!
Peter Thiel, PayPal’s CEO and co-founder provided 3.5 million dollars to Aubrey de Grey, a wild-eyed visionary from Cambridge University to pursue the most coveted prize in all human imagination. Human immortality in a youthful state, and gene-based aging reversal. Now that’s a mouthful. Human immortality in a youthful state? Gene-based aging reversal? What does that mean? It means selecting a body age you like, and living long enough to bury the last conservatives.
Oddly enough, one of the most fascinating stories of all the big Bay Area tech sectors was obscure when it was happening and is almost totally ignored by the media now. The Bay Area Immortality industry of the late 1990’s. Really. It happened right here, attracted way over a billion in market cap, spawned 18 non-fiction books, (Merchants of Immortality; Stephen Hall, Rapture; Brian Alexander, Fantastic Voyage; Ray Kurzweil, etc) and one really good, new novel. Forever and Ever by yours truly.
Peter Thiel’s recent press coverage in the Chronicle (9-18-06) detailing his interest in engineered human immortality briefly illuminated this little known sector, which still flourishes here and elsewhere. Geron, of Menlo Park was the first biotech company founded to purse gene-based therapeutics to prevent, or reverse human aging. The company holds several important patents and is headed by an important and eminent molecular biologist. Hmmm. Does that mean that this could really happen? Could these gene-jockeys actually hit a home run? Could people actually live forever? Could aging actually be reversed?
After being on the engineered human immortality/gene-based aging reversal story for five years as a researcher and writer I can tell you the answer. The answer is yes. The questions are when and how, and how much hell will this technology raise?
When? Well, that’s not as tough as it sounds. Using basic dead-reckoning methods, I started with the example of the human genome sequencing effort, stretched it out a little, corrected for off-course time, estimated current sweep, and prevailing winds. Answer: 25 years. Give or take a decade. The Genome project was first projected to take 20 years, then ten, then five, then three. Whammo. The moral of that story was :Don’t bet against American scientists. You’ll lose every time. Just ask George Bush.
How? Most big medical breakthroughs come via a coalescing of technologies. It just so happens that several technologies that would be vital to aging reversal or human immortality are romping down the bunny trail, including embryonic stem cells, tissue engineering, synthetic genes, regenerative medicine, and organ printing, to name a few. Somewhere, someday, the pieces will come together, probably in phases, probably starting with a dramatic extension of health-spans, but they will come together, and when they do, the party will start, for some.
How much hell will the existence of gene-based aging reversal and engineered human immortality precipitate?
A lot. That particular moment, the first few weeks and months when this technology arrives fascinated me, and propels a lot of the action in my new novel Forever and Ever. There are a lot, and I mean a lot of mega rich, mega powerful, mega tuned-in people floating around this much-maligned human race, who just happen to be dying of a terminal illness. Aging. And what would those people do to get their mostly blood stained hands on another thousand years of life in a youthful body? To, let us say, exploit and oppress their little countries again? To, let us say, prance around the globe in a beautiful body and suck up the good life for a very long, long time? To, let us say, gleefully outlive their antagonists, dysfunctional families and undeserving heirs? A. Anything at all.
The almost unimaginable impact of human immortality on population, social justice, and the entire structure of human life is a vast buffet for futurists and writers. What could be more fun? Trying to figure out what the very first immortal people would go through? What they would think and experience? How would they feel, and what would they do with unlimited life? Who would be treated and who wouldn?t? What would happen when you were the same age as your children? Now that’s fun.
Stay tuned. I’ll be speaking in the Bay Area on this issue in the coming months. Forever and Ever will be published in March, and will be available for review November 30. Keep you eye on this little-known tech sector in the Bay Area, and send me a clean Mason jar. I’ll do what I can when I go see the Gene Jockeys in Menlo Park.
