Steam engine time: A review of ‘Ending Ageing’ by Aubrey de Grey

Aubrey de Grey has summarised his ideas on Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence - SENS - into his book Ending Ageing. He groups the molecular and cellular damage that result from ageing into seven categories, and describes what he believes are approaches to treating or reversing all of them. Some are relatively simple, some very radical, but, even if they are implemented imperfectly, de Grey believes that healthy lifespan would be extended significantly and some adults alive today would live healthily and productively to be 120 or beyond. At that point, further development of anti-ageing technology would extend their life further, and so on. The key is the practicality of technologies for addressing the basis of ageing today. The book is unashamedly a polemic and a plea for support for this grand vision, and its partisanship, first-person conversational style and occasionally immoderate comments may distract some readers from its message. This would be a shame. I think the vision unrealistic in its extreme version, but worth pursuing for its more modest aims, and the book worth reading for its bold ideas and its ability to stimulate the receptive mind to think about how its grand vision might be reduced to practice, to the benefit of us all. Above all, for readers of this Journal, it is an example of how carefully argued hypotheses can make you think and (I hope) act.