Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever

Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman have invited us to revise our beliefs about death and, more importantly for me, aging. As a 58 year-old male baby boomer, I welcome the opportunity to think of death as something I can delay (until and if I decide I am ready to "go") and I embrace their thesis that I don't have to decline along the way. Instead of waiting for, indeed expecting, disease and degeneration of my quality of life, they have given me well-researched, carefully documented, clearly described guidance for preventing illness and optimizing my health. As a physician, I applaud their emphasis on positive actions and behaviors within my reach, instead of our culture's pervasive dependence on prescription drugs and invasive surgeries. Well done!

I bought this book because the authors are very interesting and unusual people. Ray Kurzweil is one of few genuine geniuses of modern technology, and Dr. Grossman seems a very engaged and knowledgeable physician with a prevention-based practise, which I applaud.

It quickly became evident that Ray Kurzweil has a major impetus towards this topic of life extension because of a family history of disease and early death- but, hey, he's not that different from any of us. I myself am a boomer who would really like to find some ways to live as long and healthily as possible, and I'm sure the audience of similar boomers is quite substantial. That is why there are quite a few books similar to this one appearing.

I have read several of these books, am in the medical field, and am quite familiar with the literature on health and life extension. The basic problem with this and many other books is that a program is offered after some discussion of the topic (often very selective) but the program is NOT supported by anything like sufficient evidence to merit its adoption.

I could enlarge on this about a lot of areas of this book, but just to give one example is the issue of supplements. Ray takes about 260 pills a day, and Dr. Grossman about 60 (apparently they don't quite agree). It is very hard to know if these supplements are going to help you, and, importantly that they won't harm you. Just to give an example, even the supplements which would have appear most promising, antioxidant vitamins C and E, have been studied in appropriate trials, and have given very mixed results. In one study, antioxidants of various types were tested to see if they would reduce lung cancer incidence. One antioxidant was associated with a HIGHER incidence of lung cancer. Supplement with care.

In the end, what can you do? Well, you can be sure you never smoke, do not allow yourself to become obese, eat a nutritious balanced diet, get regular aerobic exercise, and keep engaged and purposeful as possible in all aspects of your life. You can't write a book and just have this one sentence, but it appears to be the truth at the present time.

The future- nanotechnology molecular machines zipping around our bodies finding and zapping tumors and so on may happen- but don't hold your breath. This is interesting speculation, but you may not see it until 100 (or 1000) years from now, if ever.

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:).

This book is an excellent primer for becoming as healthy as you can, given best current understanding of how our body operates. It translates cutting edge medical and scientific knowledge into a simple, practical plan for optimum health.

Even if you only put into practice a small percentage of its recommendations, I am sure you will notice many health benefits.

I like Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines so much better. He actually lays out a more convincing path to immortality there. I am not at all convinced that megadosing is the way to retard aging and live forever. One cannot help but wonder if his recommendation of downing up to 250 supplements a day has something to do with authors' new supplements business. While Kurzweil is supposedly slim for his age, he does not look younger. The biggest flaw in Kurzweil's scheme for immortality is his refusal to see that self-help just isn't enough.

This is why you need a balancing companion to Kurzweil's book. I strongly recommend THE IMMORTALIST MANIFESTO by Elixxir. Also available on the store. Wired Magazine has called it a "classic."

Life Extension Magazine describes it as "an extraordinary book (which) challenges the belief that we must grow old and die." The ImmorTalist Manifesto lays out the best plan I have read so far in achieving virtual immortality. It argues that, just like going to the moon, conquering old age and death is a project which requires much, much more than popping antioxidants and supplements. The key is to make the anti-aging breakthroughs come in time for us.

And to do so, we need a powerful political movement which will compel the powers that be to reallocate our hard-earned tax money from reckless war and empire-building into things we voters really care about -- the cure of heart disease and cancer, the conquest of aging and death. It's time we get smart.

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 even be used for surgery. For example, teams "of millions of nanobots will be able to restructure bones and muscles, destroy unwanted growths such as tumors on a cell-by-cell basis, and clear arteries while restructuring them out of healthy tissue." This especially caught my attention, as one who suffered a heart attack a couple of years ago and had to undergo an emergency angioplasty. If a nanobot could continually keep my arteries clear, I'd be more than happy to let it do so!

But correcting a medical problem after the damage has been done is not the major thrust of this book. I would guess that more than ninety-five percent of "Fantastic Voyage" is devoted to preventing disease, promoting good health, and dealing with the aging process. (I should warn the reader that there is some discussion of chemistry involved here, but I found that one can skip through the various chemical formulas discussed and not miss anything vital to understanding the point being made.) In line with the major thrusts of the book, the authors present "Three Bridges" which are "emerging transformations in technology that will usher in powerful new tools to expand your health and human powers."

The First Bridge is "Ray & Terry's Longevity Program" which includes "present-day therapies and guidance that will enable you to remain healthy long enough to take full advantage of the construction of the Second Bridge." The reader will learn about carbohydrates and the glycemic load, the importance of fat and protein, why the modern diet is out of balance, how to eat nutritionally, why sugar is the "white Satan," the real cause of heart disease and how to prevent it, and much, much more. The Second Bridge is the "Biotechnology Revolution" where "we learn the genetic and protein codes of our biology" and "the means of turning off disease and aging while we turn on our full human potential." The reader will learn about gene expression, somatic gene therapy, recombinant technology, therapeutic cloning, and how human aging can be reversed. The Third Bridge is the "Nanotechnology-Artificial Intelligence Revolution" which will "enable us to rebuild our bodies and brains at the molecular level." The reader will learn about programmable blood, nanopower, nanosurgery, "intelligent" cells, and a lot more.

I could go on and on; I've only scratched the surface of the information provided in this interesting and valuable book. Kurzweil and Grossman are to be commended for making this important information available to the public, written in an easy and understandable style, with recommendations that the reader can implement immediately. At the end of the book they provide a page of resources and contact information and the standard index to topics. More importantly, however, they provide over sixty pages of notes, references, and citations so the reader can consult the primary sources for more detail. I wish more authors would do that.

This is a serious book to be read once and then consulted continuously for its suggestions and recommendations. But, now, the real question: Do I really want to live forever? Well, let me think about that for a few years!

Great book. Author is well know and well respected in scientific world.

Before publishing he did detailed research in human health and present technology. Worked with several medical doctors. He beleive everyone can live long in good health. That what he is talking about in this book. How to manage our body. What is right food for you? Which vitamins are good for us and why? He also talks about nanotechnology and biotechnology ... GNR will help us to rebuild our bodies against deadly diseases.

While it is a very interesting book indeed, and I dont doubt the validity of most of the authors' advice, the title does not do the book justice.

It is more aptly titled Fantastic Voyage : Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Assuming you are Filthy Rich.

Ray seems to make the assumption that as soon as technologies become available, they become available to everyone. Whether or not his predicitions come true at the predicted date, it will probably be quite a bit longer before this innovations are available for the average person.

For each of the authors personal programs, the following recommendations are made:

Take roughly 50-75 pills of supplements each day. That is hard to swallow both in price and in reality. But wait, thats not enough, how about intravenous vitamins once a week as well?

Bathe in filtered water, and drink double filtered, alkanized water. But make sure you dont drink it out of a plastic bottle, don't cook using aluminum, on and on.

On top of that, most of the advice is quite extreme. Be ready to drink nothing but green tea, and in the morning, how about a yummy glass of vegetable juice, made from kale, and celery? You can put in a carrot, but be careful, thats too much sugar!

I don't doubt that the authors suggestions will in fact do a body good. But if you are buying the book looking for *practical* advice, you wont find much of it here, unless you are a very disciplined, and very rich person.

God only knows how much the genomics, and various other tests cost that he describes in the book. The upcoming nanotech and biotech technologies sure sound great, but Id say it will take another 10-20 years before anyone can reasonable afford them.

So to the baby boomers looking to get this book in order to extend your life until the doctors can keep you alive forever, I hate to break it to you, but unless your rich, you're probably still going to die. Luckily for me, I'm still in my 20s, but I still have quite a bit of doubt that even the most basic of future technologies that he describes will ever become available to me, unless of course, I manage to strike it rich by writing a book about how cool the future is going to be.

I bought this book with great excitement one week ago. I have read only the preface, introduction, and first two chapters so far. But, I have discovered that one of the recommendations in the book, is disputed by science and chemistry. Thus, I am now suspicous of the entire book. I am rating a neutral 3 Stars becuase I haven't read the whole book, and many recommendations in the book may be backed-up by science.

[...]

Please go to that link and scroll down to the 2nd table (with the purple background). It looks like all this alkaline promotion is a sham. The stomach is so acidic, that it overpowers alkaline fluids anyway. On that page, the chemist describes the body's elaborate mechanism for maintaining pH levels. Drinking an alkaline beverage has no effect on pH levels in the body. And, I know for a fact that my drinking water is already alkaline. I
test it often with a pH tester for hydroponic gardening.

I was really exicted about this book based on the supposed credibility of the authors. But now that I know one of their major recommendations is a sham, I wonder about the credibility of the rest of the book and the authors.

The information in this book is pricelss; especially that about diet, what we should eat and why and what is wrong with some of the things we do eat. They backup all of their recommendations with technical, scientific explanations.

We live in a time where medical process, in drugs, in machines, in techniques is exploding. We are spending more money on health research (largely because of AIDS) than we ever have before. We've learned about DNA and viruses in ways that we never could even glimpse before. We've learned about heart disease, cancer (some cancers more than others) stroke, and other organ diseases than we ever knew. In the more distant future there will be nonotechnology that will allow small devices, robots really that can directly interface with our biological systems.

In this book two experts, one in technology, one in medicine combine to discuss the science behind radical life extension.

With all the wonders of medical science and technology I do not see any sign whatsoever that Mankind has come close to understanding how to slow up the process of aging- or for that matter to deal with the increasingly large number of people who live to advanced age in conditions of mental and physical paralysis.

I have yet to see one strong and able ninety- nine year old, and I have seen thousands of feeble, sick people who truly need something better than even the most advanced medical science is giving them.

Perhaps we should wait another couple of hundred years or so before we begin dreaming of living forever.

Hi there, I have enjoyed Kurzweils stuff until now.
BUT, this Fantastic Voyage stuff, is NOT science.

I was completely shocked to see Dr. Terry Grossman saying, "well, i ate some tree bark, and my knee got better, and i stopped and started to test for the placebo". That is so outrageous, its beyond reproach.
Does he not even know the first thing about science?
You have to do controlled tests with large samples, REPEATEDLY.

And just because "Ray did X and feels better" doesn't mean a damn thing.
There are people who claim eating rhino horns make them virile.

I am trying to read this book, but it is NOT SCIENCE.
And this Dr Grossman who prescribes a bunch of untested "alternative" stuff to his patients, is just some Quack doc doing his own thing, and making some money.

Where is the SCIENCE?

This stuff about "alkalinity" is BOGUS!
Sure, don't drink pop, but this book is a terrible disappointment to me.

I fear in Kurzweil we might have someone who is extremely obsessive and neurotic about his Health, and is not following the methods of science, which is the ONLY way to go in the complex area of Nutrition.
Otherwise, join the long line of Quacks!!

If Kurzweil has crossed over to the Dark Side of unproven superstition, and bad science, then that is a sad day.

Ouch.
I just read "Rays personal program".
One day a week, he SPENDS THE DAY receiving intravenous therapies while working from an office!
He also takes 250 supplements a day, and give a list for "what they do".

Folks, this is not science. This has nothing to do with science.

Can i be blunt? I don't want to be offensive, as i liked Ray's other books, but this is pure "neurosis".
He happens to be a wealthy man, afraid of dying and disease, and is an extremely obsessive person.
We have a "Howard Hughes" type of a situation here.
To sit in a office and have your body pumped full of stuff ALL DAY, in some "alternative" practice? Can you spell anti-death obsessed Super-Yuppy with money to burn?

I can give you the end of this story.
This is NOT going to happen as they claim. Not even close. Not for a VERY VERY long time.
Ray will have a "normal lifespan", and sadly will pass away, like the rest of us.

But i am glad folks are out there raising these questions.

But they need SCIENCE, not primitive, untested Beliefs. This type of Quack stuff helps no one.

But i am glad there are folks who are out there trying to move things forward.
But this is not even science fiction.
Its just pseudoscience, and extremely sloppy thinking. Wishful thinking.
This is not helping, its hurting, and setting things backward, if anything.

Sorry guys, and i hope this is not just about making money by selling supplements.
I hope not.

Dr. Terry Grossman is not a scientist, and sadly, he exists in Quackdom.
Frankly, he is an Entrepreneur, who is making a lot of money, but is doing nothing for science, as far as i can see.

He floats things like his diet can help autism.
WHERE'S THE PROOF?
WHERE'S THE PEER-REVIEWED PUBLISHED PAPERS ?
Its all anecdotes, to lure people to his clinic.

Notice how he has all these all "services" for sale, for a lot of money?
His website is just about SELLING HIS CRAP TO PEOPLE.
Just another of the countless hundreds of Quack doctors out to make a buck, and perhaps too arrogant to know how wrong they are.
Completely CLUELESS as to how science and medicine actually work.
In my view, this guy is just another alternative health con-artist, out to get rich and famous.

Man, i am so disappointed. This has been a real reality check.
These guys are blowing some serious smoke.
I am really quite ticked-off....

Well, here is my overall opinion.
There are some decent health tips, like exercise, stop eating crap, eat well, lose weight, etc.

But there is an enourmous amount of smoke-blowing in this book.
And lets face it, this is a BUSINESS for these guys. Its largely about making more money.

There is no real research behind this stuff, just SELLING stuff. This is not science.
Its a real disappointment, and 10 steps backward.
I give it an F, because Kurzweil should know better, but i think he is caught up in some type of Delusion, literally.

Ray Kurzweil, popular promoter of futurism and human longevity, is also the supporter of creating an elite genetic class similar to the system presented in the film Gattica. Kurzweil firmly believes that the key to living forever is taking numerous multi-vitamins (he takes 250 per day himself) and a rich diet of organic vegetables and fresh fish. I decided that it was in my best interest to purchase some of his brand's multi-vitamin supplements to decrease my risks of developing heart disease and cancer later in life. I was amazed to find out that his supplements cost upwards of sixty dollars per month! If these methods are truly the key to living forever, then the only people who can afford to follow the techniques proposed are those who can afford them! Kurzweil is famous for tracking technological trends and speculating their impact on the future. If this trend of expensive nutrition equating to an infinite lifetime continues, then the class gap will widen infinitely and a class of immortals will emerge over the rest of us. Orson Scott Card explores this idea in The Worthing Saga, in which an elite class lives their lives cryogenically frozen, coming out one year every ten and accumulating massive amounts of wealth in the process. Kurzweil's plan scares me because if HIS trends prove to be correct, then there will be a massive social class transformation in the next fifty years from which our society will never recover.

I bought this book thinking it would uncover some interesting conjecture. What I am now wondering is whether either of these men are in the pay of Monsanto. Seriously...this book supports GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS! Not one mention on organically grown crops or trying to eat locally just, "Hey,not getting enough nutrients in your food? We can fix that, let's start slicing and dicing DNA strands from bacteria and put it in potatoes so they give out more vitamin E!!!" Wow! I am so glad I bought it used so I only wasted a few dollars. There are many other books worth your perusal such as the "Wheat Belly" book or "The Fat Resistance Diet" or even "The pH Miracle." Don not waste your money or your time!