Critser continues to meander through the subject of human aging, meeting the snake-oil salesmen, then the hard-headed scientists, and people who cannot quite be pigeonholed into either group. His journey takes him from magnificent charlatons who lucratively exploit the gullible to fascinating thinkers. They all seem to have splendidly exotic names—Rochelle Buffenstein, Leonard Hayflick, Caleb Finch, Leonard Guarante, Aubrey de Gray and Steven Austad.
Eternity Soup examines the greed, deceit and legitimate science that surrounds the manufacture of many anti-aging products and treatments (such as hormone therapy). We meet the new wave of pharmacists who are reviving the erstwhile art of “compounding”—using mortar and pestle to mix extravagantly profitable potions for aging boomers seeking to recapture flagging sexual vitality. Here, too, are the theorists and researchers who are seeking to understand the cellular level causes of senescence and aging. And there are others who say, “Why bother with that? Instead we should just learn how to repair and replace organs and tissue that breaks down.” The latter seems like a weird and mind-bending thought until you look at Critser’s chapter on “Cellular Engineering” and meet the Vacanti brothers and Judah Folkman and Gabor Forgacs and learn about breakthroughs in tissue culture and the use of stem cells. Already there have been successful implants, in animals, of partially engineered organs—heart valves in lambs, partial stomachs in rats, kidney structures in pigs. There has been success in creating transplantable mouse and pig arteries. They have discovered a way to take cells from the tail of an adult mouse and make them act like embryonic stem cells.
Since the early ‘90s there have been a couple of medical societies promoting the idea that aging is a disease that can be stopped or slowed down. However, many of the so-called “aging processes” are not universal. Different people age for different reasons. Many scientists think we should focus on extending the healthy life expectancy, but it’s not out of the question that we expand the maximum life span.
In the anti-aging realm Critser finds a surprising degree of optimism–even among some formerly sober skeptics–that we may indeed be on the cusp of something big. . . . And that elicits its own new set of concerns: How will our society cope with a projected new cohort of a million healthy centenarian Americans? How will they liberate themselves from the age segregation that shunts them off to “God’s Waiting Rooms” in the sunbelt? Where will they find joy and meaning to match the inevitable loss that comes with longevity?