Though increased funding will be difficult to come by, Stipp makes a convincing argument for more widespread anti-aging...
According to former Wall Street Journal science and technology reporter Stipp, scientists are coming close to achieving the goal of using “the powerful new tools of molecular biology” to “shrink death’s dominion.”
Since the turn of the 20th century, the life expectancy of Americans has increased dramatically, thanks to major improvements in sanitation, decreased infant mortality and the introduction of antibiotics, but only now are gerontologists beginning to make significant headway on the causes of aging. In his intriguing debut, Stipp delves into the story that began in the 1930s with the discovery that a calorie-restricted diet increases life expectancy, and continues with the current effort to develop safe drugs that will mimic the effect of a CR diet. The author begins with his 2006 WSJ front-page story about how daily doses of resveratrol, found in red wine, not only protected rodents from the effects of a devastatingly rich diet, but apparently rejuvenated them. Add to this the fact that a genetic mutation causing dwarfism, which suppresses growth hormones, is also a life extender, and the basis for a new comprehensive theory is emerging. A group of genes that normally control the production of cell proteins can be switched to activate cell-repair mechanisms, causing them to absorb the “accumulation of harmful crud…thought to play a major role in aging.” Scientists have now established that the rate of aging in widely diverse organisms is not only amazingly plastic but controllable. The same CR mimetic drugs that are being developed to ward off the ravages of old age can also help counter the effects of obesity. To rival the advances of the 20th century in increased life-expectancy, Stipp estimates that the federal government will need to launch a federal program on par with the 1960s Apollo project. “Sadly,” he writes, “comparative gerontology…has long been one of biomedicine’s poor cousins. Indeed, it’s arguable that most of the lines of research covered in this book are lamentably underfunded.”
Though increased funding will be difficult to come by, Stipp makes a convincing argument for more widespread anti-aging research.Pub Date: July 8, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-61723-000-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Current
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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