Biography

It is only the rich that afford [new technologies] at an early point, when they don't work. By the time they work a little bit, they're affordable. By the time they work really well, they're almost free. And that will be true of these health technologies. Look at AIDS drugs - twenty years ago they were $30,000 per patient per year, Today they're [more] effective and they're $80 per patient per year.

We are increasing the intelligence of our civilization, and we're doing so exponentially. Technology is part of our civilization. Sometimes people talk about conflict between humans and machines, and you can see a lot of that in science fiction. But the machines we're inventing are not some invasion from Mars. We create these tools to expand our reach, One thousand years ago, I couldn't reach fruit at a higher branch, so I created a tool to increase my reach. No other species does that.

People say, 'I don't want to live like a typical 95-year-old for hundreds of years'. But the goal is not just to extend life. The idea is to stay healthy and vital and not only to have life extension but life expansion.

All my measurements are in ideal ranges. I scan my arteries to see if I have plaque buildup, and I have no antherosclerosis. I come out younger on biological aging tests. So far, so good. But this program is not designed to last a very long time. [It] is what we call bridge one. The goal is to get to bridge two: the biotechnology revolution, where we can reprogram biology away from disease.. Bridge three is to go beyond biology to the nanotechnology revolution. At that point we can have little robots, sometimes called 'nanobots', that augment your immune system . We can create an immune system that recognizes all disease and .. could be programmed to deal with new pathogens.

Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each governed by [a transformation] process. You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era. We each have a fat insulin receptor gene that says, 'Hold on to every calorie'. That was a good idea 10,000 years ago when you worked all day to get a few calories. There were no refrigerators, so you stored them in your fat cells. I would like to tell my fat insulin receptor gene, 'You don't need to do that anymore', and indeed that was done at the Joslin Diabetes Center. They turned off this gene and the lab mice ate ravenously and remained slim. They didn't get diabetes; they didn't get heart disease. They lived 20 percent longer.