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[Bruce Klein]

Coping With Methuselah: The Impact of Molecular Biology on Medicine and Society
by Henry J. Aaron, William B. Schwartz, Brookings Institution

http://www.amazon.co...6904253-8952914

From Book News, Inc.
Emerging from a 2002 conference, seven contributions from scholars affiliated with the Brookings Institution, RAND, and various US universities explore the impact of increasing life span on such aspects of society as demographics, health care, ethics, and the labor market. The first article overviews recent research advances in molecular medicine that could increase life expectancy, according to some, to 90 years by the year 2050; the final chapter discusses the global perspective.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


About the Author
Henry J. Aaron is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he also holds the Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Chair in Economics. He is the author of numerous books, including most recently, Agenda for the Nation (Brookings, 2003) and The Future of Academic Medical Centers (Brookings, 2001).
William B. Schwartz, M.D., is an expert on national health policy and is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He was formerly Chairman of the... read more


Book Description
Many medical authorities predict that average life expectancy could well exceed 100 years by mid century and rise even higher soon thereafter. This astonishing prospect, brought on by the revolution in molecular biology and information technology, confronts policymakers and public health officials with a host of new questions. How will increased longevity affect local and global demographic trends, government taxation and spending, health care, the workplace, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? What ethical and quality-of-life issues are raised by these new breakthroughs?

In Coping with Methuselah, a group of practicing scientists and public policy experts come together to address the problems, challenges, and opportunities posed by a longer life span. This book will generate discussion in political, social, and medical circles and help prepare us for the extraordinary possibilities that the future may hold

[Bruce Klein]

Book Review:

Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now

Aubrey D. N. J. de Grey is in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom. E-mail: ag24@gen.cam.ac.uk

Published June 15, 2004

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020187

Copyright: © 2004 Aubrey D. N. J. de Grey. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The biogerontologist David Sinclair and the bioethicist Leon Kass recently locked horns in a radio debate http://www.theconnec...0106_b_main.asp on human life extension that was remarkable for one thing: on the key issue, Kass was right and Sinclair wrong. Sinclair suggested, as have other experts, including his mentor Lenny Guarente and the National Institute on Aging advisory council member Elizabeth Blackburn, that Kass and other bioconservatives are creating a false alarm about life extension, because only a modest (say, 30%) increase in human life span is achievable by biomedical intervention, whereas Kass's apprehensions concern extreme or indefinite life extension. Kass retorted that science isn't like that: modest success tends to place the bit between our teeth and can often result in advances far exceeding our expectations.

Coping with Methuselah consists of seven essays... http://www.plosbiolo...al.pbio.0020187