X-Message-Number: 25684
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 13:31:32 -0800 (PST)
From: Doug Skrecky <>
Subject: Inventor Kurzweil aiming to live forever..

[Great article, but deleting any mention of immortality or living
forever is highly recommended. Anyone with a working brain knows
literal physical immortality is an impossibility. Immortality is a
topic for discussion solely by religions. An indefinite lifespan would
be a more accurate description of what Ray is aiming for. Perhaps a
new snappy one word term will have to be invented to describe the
indefinite lifespan of a humans exhibiting negligible senescence.
Any ideas?]

WELLESLEY, Mass. (AP) -- Ray Kurzweil doesn't tailgate. A man who
plans to live forever doesn't take chances with his health on the
highway, or anywhere else.

As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight
to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea. He also
periodically tracks 40 to 50 fitness indicators, down to his ``tactile
sensitivity.'' Adjustments are made as needed.

``I do actually fine-tune my programming,'' he said.

The famed inventor and computer scientist is serious about his health
because if it fails him he might not live long enough to see humanity
achieve immortality, a seismic development he predicts in his new book
is no more than 20 years away.

It's a blink of an eye in history, but long enough for the 56-year-old
Kurzweil to pay close heed to his fitness. He urges others to do the
same in ``Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever.''

The book is partly a health guide so people can live to benefit from a
coming explosion in technology he predicts will make infinite life
spans possible.

Kurzweil writes of millions of blood cell-sized robots, which he calls
nanobots, that will keep us forever young by swarming through the body,
repairing bones, muscles, arteries and brain cells. Improvements to
our genetic coding will be downloaded via the Internet. We won't even
need a heart.

The claims are fantastic, but Kurzweil is no crank. He's a recipient
of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize, which is billed as a sort of
Academy Award for inventors, and he won the 1999 National Medal of
Technology Award. He has written on the emergence of intelligent
machines in publications ranging from Wired to Time magazine. The
Christian Science Monitor has called him a ``modern Edison.'' He was
inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. Perhaps the MIT
graduate's most famous inventions is the first reading machine for the
blind that could read any typeface.

During a recent interview in his company offices, Kurzweil sipped
green tea and spoke of humanity's coming immortality as if it's as
good as done. He sees human intelligence not only conquering its
biological limits, including death, but completely mastering the
natural world.

``In my view, we are not another animal, subject to nature's whim,''
he said.

Critics say Kurzweil's predictions of immortality are wild fantasies
based on unjustifiable leaps from current technology.

``I'm not calling Ray a quack, but I am calling his message about
immortality in line with the claims of other quacks that are out
there.'' said Thomas Perls, a Boston University aging specialist who
studies the genetics of centenarians.

Sherwin Nuland, a bioethics professor at Yale University's School of
Medicine, calls Kurzweil a ``genius'' but also says he's a product of
a narcissistic age when brilliant people are becoming obsessed with
their longevity.

``They've forgotten they're acting on the basic biological fear of
death and extinction, and it distorts their rational approach to the
human condition,'' Nuland said.

Kurzweil says his critics often fail to appreciate the exponential
nature of technological advance, with knowledge doubling year by year
so that amazing progress eventually occurs in short periods.

His predictions, Kurzweil said, are based on carefully constructed
scientific models that have proven accurate. For instance, in his 1990
book, ``The Age of Intelligent Machines,'' Kurzweil predicted the
development of a worldwide computer network and of a computer that
could beat a chess champion.

``It's not just guesses,'' he said. ``There's a methodology to this.''

Kurzweil's been thinking big ever since he was little. At age 8, he
developed a miniature theater in which a robotic device moved the
scenery. By 16, the Queens, N.Y., native built his own computer and
programmed it to compose original melodies.

His interest in health developed out of concern about his own future.
Kurzweil's grandfather and father suffered from heart disease, his
father dying when Kurzweil was 22. Kurzweil was diagnosed with Type 2
diabetes in his mid-30s.

After insulin treatments were ineffective, Kurzweil devised his own
solution, including a drastic cut in fat consumption, allowing him to
control his diabetes without insulin.

His rigorous health regimen is not excessive, just effective, he says,
adding that his worst sickness in the last several years has been mild
nasal congestion.

In the past decade, Kurzweil's interests in technology and health
sciences have merged as scientists have discovered similarities.

``All the genes we have, the 20,000 to 30,000 genes, are little
software programs,'' Kurzweil said.

In his latest book, Kurzweil defines what he calls his three bridges
to immortality. The ``First Bridge'' is the health regimen he
describes with co-author Dr. Terry Grossman to keep people fit enough
to cross the ``Second Bridge,'' a biotechnological revolution.

Kurzweil writes that humanity is on the verge of controlling how genes
express themselves and ultimately changing the genes. With such
technology, humanity could block disease-causing genes and introduce
new ones that would slow or stop the aging process.

The ``Third Bridge'' is the nanotechnology and artificial intelligence
revolution, which Kurzweil predicts will deliver the nanobots that
work like repaving crews in our bloodstreams and brains. These
intelligent machines will destroy disease, rebuild organs and
obliterate known limits on human intelligence, he believes.

Immortality would leave little standing in current society, in which
the inevitability of death is foundational to everything from religion
to retirement planning. The planet's natural resources would be
greatly stressed, and the social order shaken.

Kurzweil says he believes new technology will emerge to meet
increasing human needs. And he said society will be able to control
the advances he predicts as long as it makes decisions openly and
democratically, without excessive government interference.

But there are no guarantees, he adds.

Meanwhile, Kurzweil refuses to concede the inevitably of his own
death, even if science doesn't advance as quickly as he predicts.

``Death is a tragedy,'' a process of suffering that rids the world of
its most tested, experienced members -- people whose contributions to
science and the arts could only multiply with agelessness, he said.

Kurzweil said he's no ``cheerleader'' for unlimited scientific
progress and added he knows science can't answer questions about why
eternal lives are worth living. That's left for philosophers and
theologians, he said.

But to him there's no question of huge advances in things that make
life worth living, such as art, cultural, music and science.

``Biological evolution passed the baton of progress to human cultural
and technological development,'' he said.

Lee Silver, a Princeton biologist, said he'd love to believe in the
future as Kurzweil sees it, but the problem is, humans are involved.

The instinct to preserve individuality, and to gain advantage for
yourself and children, would survive any breakthrough into biological
immortality -- which Silver doesn't think is possible. The gap between
the haves and have-nots would widen and Kurzweil's vision of a united
humanity would become ever more elusive, he said.

``I think it would require a change in human nature,'' Silver said,
``and I don't think people want to do that.''

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