Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever

by Terry Grossman and Ray Kurzweil

Book Overview

From the author of The Singularity Is Near and How to Create a Mind comes a book about the science behind radical life extension. Startling discoveries in the areas of genomics, biotechnology, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1579549543
• ISBN13: 9781579549541
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.3" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Amazing

Amazing

Read it - Fantastic Book!!!

This book is extraordinary because Ray Kurzweil is extraordinary. How often can you say that somebody is the real thing, but that's exactly what Kurzweil represents? This man operates on the outer edge of human knowledge. I am reminded years ago of a science fiction writer named Lester Del Rey, a mind so gifted that MIT hooked up a microphone to his neck. Everything he verbalized was recorded because it was felt that he was a hundred years ahead of his time. People like Kurzweil come along only rarely, and when they do, we are the lucky ones who find out about their existence and can learn from them. This is not to say that Kurzweil is right about everything he says, and thinks. He's not John von Newman, the Hungarian mathematician and advisor to the Manhattan Project during World War II. It was said about von Newman that once he thought about something, and gave an opinion there was no need to think about the subject anymore. He was that thorough in his thought processes. Forgive my digression, but it's a story you will tell your friends. While von Newman was lecturing one day on mathematics at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, Einstein asked if he could sit in on the lecture. During the lecture, Einstein looks at von Newman and says in German, "Johnny, slow down, I can't keep up with you." Now there's a brain. What Kurzweil and von Newman have in common is their ability to convey their thinking to the rest of us. Richard Feynmann the physicist was also like this. It is a rare gift among any group of advanced intellectuals when they can take topics, and break them down into language that the layman can deal with. It is a trait that is also vitally necessary if they are to have influence, and in Kurzweil's case, he does have influence. Kurzweil was given the National Medal of Technology, and is a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Being an entrepreneur, he doesn't want for money, those needs were taken care of by the sale of his inventions, ideas, and companies that he started. The premise of this book is that our technology is exploding at such a rate that the authors believe that in the next several decades we will have the knowledge via nanotechnology and others that will allow us to live for hundreds of years. His personal objective is to bridge the gap (his words) in time from now, until this new technology becomes available. Kurzweil wants to live FOREVER, don't we all? What about sex though, will we have sex when we are 200 years old, or will we have to be satisfied reading Plato. When you consider the amount of energy that each of us has that's put into anxiety concerning our future deaths, Kurzweil is really talking about the ultimate revolution, and the freedom from death. It's nice work if you can get it, and certainly will drive classically trained psychoanalysts up a wall, if they have to give up their anxiety in this yet unrealized future. As for me, I love the book for other reasons. This fab

THE BEST HEALTH BOOK

Being a personal trainer as well as a nutritionist, I'm allways looking for new books on health to improve my practice. This book gives any health practitioner enough information to implement a longevity program and to help a client reverse Metabolic Syndrome, Type 2 Diabetes and Heart disease (I specially like this chapter, where the real causes of heart disease are revealed and we understand why so many people die of the disease, even when they suffer state of the art surgery). I already used this book in my practice with clients who suffered from Metabolic Syndrome. One of them went from a glucose: 157 to 95; Tryglicerides: 220 to 110; HDL: 34 to 51 without any drugs, just the Ray & Terry's recomendations. If I would have to recomend only one book to a health practitioner, I would recomend fantastic voyage.

They never said it would be easy.........

I've seen some reviews criticising this book as being 'too extreme'. I'll tell you what's extreme: dying at 55 of a heart attack. I don't want to do that-I want to live for ever. Other reviews characterise the recommendations as 'too expensive'. Eating vegetables is cheap. Priced lentils lately? Exercise (walking) is free y'all! I'd like to congratulate the authors for not toning down their advice, which we would no doubt tone down on the way to implementation:).

A great book with important information...

Here is a book I can wholeheartedly recommend to everyone without any hesitation. For those who are interested in attaining and maintaining good health in all its aspects, I would even go so far as to say this book is essential reading and a necessary resource to keep close at hand. If you even entertain the possibility of living forever, then this book is a must for you. The authors are, without a doubt, knowledgeable about the topics of which they write and provide literally hundreds of facts, proposals, insights, suggestions, and recommendations regarding everything from developments in medical nanotechnology and biotechnology to disease prevention, nutrition, food preparation, living a healthful lifestyle, and, in fact, more information than you will assimilate during a first reading. The authors are well-known within their fields of expertise. Ray Kurzweil, a recipient of the National Medal of Technology and an inductee into the Inventors Hall of Fame, is one of the world's leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists and the author of three previous books on technology. Terry Grossman M.D., the founder and medical director of the Frontier Medical Institute in Denver, Colorado, a leading longevity clinic, is certified in anti-aging medicine and lectures internationally on matters related to longevity and anti-aging strategies. These two experts, one in technology and one in medical science, have joined together to write about how you can "live long enough to live forever." While I endorse and highly recommend "Fantastic Voyage," the subtitle of the book presents a problem for me. The very idea of "living forever" is a proposition with which I am not entirely comfortable. I am philosophically oriented both by training and by disposition and I have to wrestle with this question: "Is living forever a suitable and desirable goal for any human being?" I believe this is fundamentally an ethical question and at this moment I cannot answer it, at least for myself, because I haven't had time to consider it in depth and in all its possible ramifications. To be frank, I haven't really given any thought to it until reading this book. So now, thanks to the authors, I'll have to explore this problem. But I think it's an important issue to raise and debate, particularly considering that, while we may be able to prolong life indefinitely in a physical sense, there are psychological, sociological, and political factors which must also be considered. Once we put this matter aside for further thought and discussion, the authors do indeed take us on a fantastic voyage into the world of cutting-edge technology, a place where modern biology, information science, and what is called "nanotechnology" intersect and impact each other. Their discussion of "nanobots" is especially interesting. These are robots, the size of blood cells, built from molecules placed in our bodies and bloodstream to enhance every aspect of our lives. Nanobots, suggest the authors, will