Читать книгу Aging - Harry R. Moody - Страница 111

I was doing a BBC radio interview in 2001 following a scientific session I had organised on the question of how long humans can live, and sitting next to me was a young scientist, with obviously no sense of history, who was asked the question: “how long will it be before we find the cure for aging?”

Without hesitation he said that with enough effort and financial resources, the first major breakthrough will occur in the next 5–10 years.

My guess is that when all of the prophets of immortality have been asked this question throughout history, the answer is always the same.

The modern notion of physical immortality once again being dangled before us is based on a premise of “scientific” bridges to the future that I read in a recently published book entitled Fantastic Voyage by the techno-guru Ray Kurzweil and physician Terry Grossman.

They claim unabashedly that the science of radical life extension is already here, and that all we have to do is “live long enough to live forever.”

What Kurzweil and others are now doing is weaving once again the seductive web of immortality, tantalising us with the tale that we all so desperately want to hear, and have heard for thousands of years—live life without frailty and debility and dependence and be forever youthful, both physically and mentally.

The seduction will no doubt last longer than its proponents.