Skip to main content

The Long Tomorrow – Michael R. Rose *****

A mixture of a book on the science of aging – gerentology (at least as applied to fruit flies) and an exploration of how a career in science develops, this title by Michael Rose joins the few really good books that give an idea of the realities of being a scientist.
The book starts at a conference discussing human aging, where Rose is shocked that some attendees wouldn’t want human lifespan increased, primarily for theological reasons – and this is very entertaining – but the really excellent part is when we get to follow his career. When he makes a start as a postgraduate, the last thing he wants to work in is aging. What’s interesting about aging to someone around the age of 20? But he takes up a post, primarily to be near his academic hero.
As often seems the case in true science, his progress is a mix of intended direction and re-focussing error as he begins what is to be a more than 30 year relationship with the fruit fly Drosophilia. Just occasionally Rose tends to lose the reader with his science – not that what he’s describing is hugely complex (he leaves out the messy maths), but there are one or two places you have to re-read to make sure what he intended. But these are rarities in what is generally both an enjoyable and very personal journey where you will discover as much about Rose himself as you will about fruit flies and about aging.
His great, and almost accidental, discovery is that it is possible to breed Methuselah flies with an unusually long lifespan, from which he hopes that it should be possible to get a bet understanding of the various genetic factors that make all animals age, and hence in the future to be able to do something about it. In the 1990s, he dabbled with biotechnology spinoffs, as everyone seemed to be at the time, and two or three times came close to being involved in a successful life extension company without ever quite making it. Somehow, the reader is glad about this – Rose keeps ending up back where he ought to be, with his fruit flies.
One of the most impressive revelations is when Rose is writing an article for a magazine, years after first starting working in the area of aging. The magazine asks him about relevance to the extension of human life, and genuinely isn’t until that point that he realizes that his work may be more than just a study of fruit flies. (It helps, as Rose points out, that by then he was getting to the sort of age when you first realize you really are going to die at some point.)
In a final chapter, Rose summarizes the position on the control of aging. We shouldn’t blindly go along with the likes of Ray Kurzweil who blithely assure us that people alive today have a chance of effectively living for ever, but even so he is very positive about the opportunities for understanding the different factors contributing to aging, and being able to do something about them, this century. A warm, highly recommended popular science book by a real scientist.

Hardback:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Meteorite Hunters - Joshua Howgego *****

This is an extremely engaging read on a subject that everyone is aware of, but few of us know much detail about. Usually, if I'm honest, geology tends to be one of the least entertaining scientific subjects but here (I suppose, given that geo- refers to the Earth it ought to be astrology... but that might be a touch misleading). Here, though, there is plenty of opportunity to capture our interest. The first part of the book takes us both to see meteorites and to hear stories of meteorite hunters, whose exploits vary from erudite science trips to something more like an Indiana Jones outing. Joshua Howgego takes us back to the earliest observations and discoveries of meteorites and the initial doubt that they could have extraterrestrial sources, through to explorations of deserts and the Antarctic - both locations where it tends to be easier to find them. I, certainly, had no idea about the use of camera networks to track incoming meteors, which not only try to estimate where they wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more