Arnold Kling Reviews Ending Aging
Arnold Kling reviews "Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime" at TCS Daily: "Too often, academics use their credentials to spit out biased polemics dressed up as science. Ending Aging is the opposite. It is a crash course in state-of-the-art science dressed up as a polemic. De Grey wears his passion for undertaking a war on aging on his sleeve, yet most of the book consists of scientific analysis that, although simplified to enable a layman to follow, is conscientious in reporting doubts and objections to the author's point of view. ... It gives a sense of the possibilities, drama, and frustration of scientific inquiry. Also, it might inspire some young geniuses to undertake the sort of investigations and experiments that de Grey thinks will help win the war against aging. ... Today, the incentives to experiment with general-purpose anti-aging technologies are limited. Only if a technique can be demonstrated as helping to treat a specific disease can its development be funded and its efficacy tested in humans. Of course, many of the techniques necessary to achieve de Grey's vision can be shoehorned into a disease-fighting agenda somewhere, which is why he can report results that justify his belief in the potential to conquer aging. However, there remains the fact that the current system gives too much incentive to find stopgap solutions to specific diseases and too little incentive to develop general-purpose anti-aging technologies."