On September 20, 2022, a new book on our topic will be published with the title "Der Sieg über den Tod: Die wissenschaftliche Möglichkeit, ewig zu leben, und ihre moralische Rechtfertigung" (The Victory over Death: The Scientific Possibility of Living Forever and Its Moral Justification) by Dr. José Cordeiro and David Wood.
Here you can already read the forewords by Dr. José Cordeiro, David Wood and Dr. Aubrey de Grey and the epilogue by Prof. Dr. Björn Schumacher, Director of the Institute for Genome Stability in Ageing and Disease at the CECAD Cluster of Excellence for Aging Research, University of Cologne.
FOREWORD TO THE GERMAN EDITION
And so, having allowed myself the jest, to which a place should be granted because in this thoroughly ambiguous life hardly any page can be too serious, I hand over the book in deep earnest, in the confidence that sooner or later it will reach those to whom alone it can be addressed, and for the rest calmly resigned to the fact that it, too, will meet in full measure the fate that in every field of knowledge, and therefore all the more so in the most important one, has always befallen the truth, to which only a brief celebration of victory is allotted between the two long periods in which it is condemned as paradoxical and disparaged as trivial. The former fate also tends to befall its author. But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth. Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819
We are currently living through a historic crisis that represents a present danger but also a future opportunity. Regardless of where the Covid-19 crisis originated, it is a global problem and requires a global solution. This unexpected crisis can be a fantastic opportunity to move forward together as one global family on our small planet if we face our common enemy together. Covid-19 is one of the worst pandemics in about a century, since the Spanish flu of 1918-1920, when an estimated 50 (some historians even claim up to 100) million people died of that virus. That was an incredible human tragedy: 100 million people out of a world population at the time of about two billion inhabitants; in fact, more people died of the Spanish flu than in the First or even the Second World War. Today, thanks to the exponential progress of science and technology, we are fortunately much better prepared to solve this global crisis. In this great planetary war against the small new coronavirus, including its possible mutations, many public and private responses have emerged. Governments, large companies, small start-ups, universities and even individuals worked painstakingly to find out how to control, cure and eradicate Covid-19. As with most crises, the costs are immense at first, but they are quickly amortized through the mass production of the best treatments across the planet. Another historical note: when HIV and AIDS appeared, it took more than two years to sequence the virus, and for several more years there were no treatment options. AIDS was even considered the ultimate disease, because it destroys the immune system itself and was thus essentially a death sentence from which there was no escape. After years of international research, the first therapies to fight HIV were developed, but each of them cost millions of US dollars. Today, by contrast, HIV is treated as a chronic disease, and antiviral drugs cost hundreds of dollars in richer countries, but only a few dozen dollars in poorer countries such as India. Encouragingly, it is also very likely that a vaccine that can cure HIV and defeat it once and for all will finally be developed in this decade. Even if it is hard to believe in these times of crisis: thanks to the great exponential advances in science and technology, the first antivirals and the first vaccines were developed in just a few months, even though until recently the development of vaccines usually took five to ten years. So the terrible pandemic of this coronavirus will probably be remembered in the future because it was overcome faster than ever before. Covid-19 will become a great lesson for humanity. The pandemic has shown that we must work together, because global problems require global solutions. There will be new pandemics in the future, but thanks to exponential technologies we will be better prepared to overcome them quickly. It is possible that we will sequence the next pandemic virus in just two days, and the one after that perhaps in two hours, rather than in two weeks as now with Covid-19, in two months with SARS two decades ago or in more than two years with AIDS four decades ago. Not only will the times needed to fight these diseases be shortened exponentially, but the costs will also fall drastically. The world will be better prepared for new pandemics and new global challenges such as climate change, wars, terrorism, earthquakes and tsunamis, meteorites and other threats from space, as well as many other future challenges. And hopefully this will be the last major pandemic from which all of humanity suffers! Covid-19 is one of the most recent threats to humanity, but the greatest enemies of all are aging and death. Longevity has long been considered one of the great blessings of life, and now, for the first time in history, we have the opportunity to defeat aging and death. In several countries, the discussion has begun as to whether aging can finally be regarded as a disease, but as a curable disease. Longevity advocates have become active in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Israel, Russia, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, among others. Which country will be the first to officially declare aging a disease? Since 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) has begun to recognize age-related diseases, but not aging itself as a disease. Which country will now take the lead and begin to treat aging as a curable disease? Worldwide there are already more people over 65 than children under five, and this trend will continue. In addition, the population will shrink in many countries, as is already the case in Japan and Russia, for example. According to a new study published in the respected British medical journal The Lancet, China's population could fall by half to about 732 million people by the year 2100. A dramatic decline is also forecast for other countries such as Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and Spain. And while many wealthy countries became rich before they became old, Turkey is becoming old before it becomes rich. The consequences will be dramatic if Turkey does not do something about the decline and aging of its population today. The same will happen in more and more countries. It is estimated that Covid-19 could cost humanity more than 11 trillion US dollars in GDP during the current crisis, but that similar future pandemics in this decade can be prevented through annual investments of 26 billion US dollars, according to a recent study in the respected American journal Science. The costs of medical care worldwide already amount to about 10 percent of global GDP, and they are rising rapidly, partly because of the aging society. Let us now consider how much aging costs society and how much we could save if we prevented aging. These are some of the ideas behind the "longevity dividend" initiative, which are also explained in this book. So we will not only save trillions of dollars by curing aging, but we will also avoid incredible suffering and pain for the aging people themselves, their families and their societies.
Covid-19 could help us realize that there is nothing more important than health and that the first human right is the right to life. The world has united against this global pandemic, which triggered the largest vaccination campaign in history to contain the spread of Covid-19, after more than nine billion vaccine doses were produced in just one year. New mRNA vaccines are now being developed against many types of cancer, malaria and HIV, three completely unrelated diseases. What seemed impossible before has now become possible. Hopefully this crisis will also provide the opportunity to finally allocate more funds to curing the mother of all diseases: aging itself. Can we finally fulfill humanity's long-cherished dream of "immortality"? This is the best opportunity to act, the time is now, the place is here, who will lead the way?
José Cordeiro, PhD
David Wood, ScD
FOREWORD
Aging, like the weather, respects no national or ethnic boundaries. It affects all people more or less equally. Much is said about the inequalities that exist in this respect: for example, that the United States, although it is the country that spends the most on health per capita, does not even appear in the group of the 30 countries with the highest life expectancy. However, these statistics should not deceive us, because the differences are numerically small: life expectancy in the United States is only five years lower than in Japan. It is important that the crusade against aging knows no borders. The whole world must join together and make the greatest efforts to solve this problem, because it is the greatest challenge for humanity. Old age kills far more people than anything else. Aging is responsible for more than 70 percent of deaths, and most of these deaths are preceded by unspeakable suffering, both for the old people and for their relatives. Unfortunately, the "war on aging" is not yet rising to this challenge. It is gaining considerable momentum in the English-speaking world, with the greatest efforts concentrated in Silicon Valley, but centers are also emerging in the rest of the US as well as in the UK, Canada and Australia. Germany is also moving to the fore, as are Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Israel. Other parts of the world, however, are much slower to conquer this field. Particularly worrying is Asia, whose more populous countries apparently have serious difficulty understanding that aging is a medical problem, and even more so that it is a solvable problem. Der Sieg über den Tod is a visionary book that confronts us with the terrible reality of aging, and its authors are experts on the subject. In recent years, José Cordeiro has helped to make the war on aging known in many parts of the world, but his main focus has, quite rightly, been on the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries. José has been very successful not only because he himself is both Spanish and Latin American (born in Venezuela to Spanish parents), but also because interest in the fight against aging is growing in Spain and Latin America, as far as I can see.
The co-author of this book is the British technologist David Wood, another well-known anti-aging advocate, who brings a different but complementary perspective. David has transformed the British techno-visionary world with his work as the head of several organizations in London. It is hard to imagine a more powerful partnership to give a book about aging and its (hopefully imminent!) defeat the necessary authority. Given their extensive international experience, there are no better authors than José and David to advance the cause of longevity worldwide. They have been immersed in the anti-aging mission for many years and are therefore exceptionally well informed, not only about the science of anti-aging research and its latest advances, but also about the irrational concerns and criticisms that so often stand in the way of this mission. José and David know the best answers to refute critics and to convince more people of the benefits of radical life extension.
The first edition of this book appeared in Spanish (La Muerte de la Muerte, Editorial Planeta, 2018) and quickly became a bestseller, first in Spain and then in several Latin American countries. The second edition was in Portuguese (A Morte da Morte, LVM Editora, 2019) and also became a bestseller, first in Brazil and later in Portugal. Now Der Sieg über den Tod is being published in an updated version in German and in several other languages, including English, Korean and Russian. Based on its success so far, it will surely continue to revolutionize the world.
I am convinced that this book will play an important role in the fight against aging in the coming decade. I also believe that the authoritative and exhaustive description of this fight that José and David provide in this excellent book will accelerate this process. Let's go!
Aubrey de Grey, co-author of Ending Aging and co-founder of the SENS Research Foundation
EPILOGUE
Der Sieg über den Tod is a visionary work on human immortality. The certainty of one's own death and the search for immortality run through the history of humanity like hardly any other theme. Even humanity's first epic, the Epic of Gilgamesh, deals with the Mesopotamian king's search for the elixir of immortality, which takes him to the edge of the world and yet leaves him without hope. The first emperor of China, Qin Shihuangdi, likewise feared none of his enemies as much as his own death and probably succumbed to the mercury-containing "elixir of immortality" of his physicians. Various religions also hold out the prospect of immortality in one form or another. Now, however, the authors José Cordeiro and David Wood pose the question of immortality in a new era. In doing so, they draw on their complementary expertise as an engineer and a technology developer. They examine the topic from different perspectives: technological, biological, medical, economic, social and ethical. They come to the clear verdict that immortality is not only desirable but also just. The resounding success of the Spanish title La Muerte de la Muerte, which has so far been translated into Portuguese (A Morte da Morte) and French (La Mort de la Mort), proves that the time is ripe for such a book. For the book not only presents the authors' arguments for human immortality, but also gives food for thought to those who have doubts. The historical theme of the human quest for immortality is thus shifting from a traditionally rather philosophical concept to a technological question. For modern humans no longer die an early death from infections and their environment, but from their own aging process. Life expectancy has now doubled. People born today can hope for an average of eight decades of life. This also means that a considerable proportion will make it to a hundred. But will they live in health or in sickness? A paradigm shift is currently taking place in medicine. Whereas the focus has so far been on the treatment of the chronic diseases of old age, be they cardiovascular diseases, dementia or cancer, the maintenance of health and the prevention of age-related diseases are now coming to the fore. This paradigm shift is inevitable, because the costs of demographic change are already immense today. For as long as aging is almost inevitably associated with chronic disease, it will be a burden, for the individual as well as for society. Even a small gain in healthy lifespan can massively reduce the number of serious illnesses. That is why it is of central importance to understand the biological aging process and to stop it. Institutes for aging research are currently springing up all over the world, and new biotechnology companies are launching every week. For the aging process is complex; maintaining the body's functions depends on a multitude of repair systems and mechanisms of regeneration. Pharmaceutical companies, regulatory authorities and political decision-makers are waking up only very slowly. Investments in maintaining health pay off many times over. The authors consistently think scientific and technological progress through to its conclusion. Accordingly, a gain in knowledge and application that is not linear but rather exponential is to be expected. Insights into the mechanisms underlying the aging process, combined with technological implementation, will transform human life. Cordeiro and Wood argue passionately for overcoming limits and for consistently thinking through the value of human life. Lifting the time limit on healthy human life is the vision of this book. This book should provide inspiration to set out into an age of human health. The diversity of its arguments offers material for reflection and discussion. Humanity's proverbially oldest theme is now becoming the theme of our time and should give everyone food for thought.
Prof. Dr. Björn Schumacher, Director of the Institute for Genome Stability in Ageing and Disease at the CECAD Cluster of Excellence for Aging Research, University of Cologne