Download The Immortal Cell: One Scientist's Quest to Solve the Mystery of Human Aging fb2

I bought this book because I had known the author during college days. What I discovered is a delightful journey into the mind of a brilliant, sensitive and active child and how, when nurtured, that brilliance can do great things scientifically. West delves into the basis of cell activity from the time of fertilization until viability of the individual cells that can become human. Explained so a layperson can understand the basic biology and cytology.

Dr. Michael West is a brilliant man in search of high tech ways to cure catastrophic diseases & pathologies - such as type I Diabetes, Quadriplegia, cancer and heart damage from heart attacks. All noble quests to benefit mankind. The only problem with this is that along with the potential to help mankind with regenerative medicine concepts, therein lies another darker potential. The corruptability of such an endeaver, and yes, there are always those equally brilliant scientists out there who are willing to tweak the bad that generates from the good.
West goes into vague detail explaining what stem cells are, and what the science can acheive in medicine, and cloning. I wish he went into further depth giving examples and photos of what he witnessed under the microscope. If he would have included some slides, I would have given the book a 5 star rating instead of the 4. It is a good book that gives readers a taste of this controversial topic. He further explains how Dolly the sheep came to be in this world, and yes, the sheep was named after Dolly Parton, the country singer, because the sheep was cloned out of a cell from the breast tissue of another sheep.
All this research into the mortal cell costs millions, perhaps billions of dollars, $$$, but in the end, the goal is not to prolong life forever. It's really to maintain the quality of life for all, especially the aged. Dr. West is very compassionate towards the elderly in our world, and it's good to see that somebody is passionate about curing the ails that often accompany old age.
One question that I have for Dr. West is what should the average life expectancy be for people? 100? 110?
Curing hearing and sight loss, kidney failure, liver failure are all good things that could come from recombinant DNA therapy.
But the dark side could promote supernatural human beings; turning engineered cells into engineered people. These 'superpeople' can potentially outthink, outperform and ultimately - wipe out the current natural human race that we have spent millions of years evolving into. If these cloned people reproduced with regular human beings, something called germ-line genetic modification, something terribly wrong could happen. This is one of the kind Doctor's admitted fears.
Our standard of living would become too high to sustain or even achieve. It would create many insurmountable problems the world has never known.
Tinkering with the atom in the Manhatten Project ultimately brought us terrorism as we know it today. Could those brilliant scientists not see the disaster behind the discovery?
Now our modern scientists are tinkering with the human genome project. It is mapped out and published. Scientists such as Dr. West wish to exploit this important and exciting discovery to help mankind, but we must be wary of the ever present dark side of all good creations.
Are we ready to make this scientific leap?
Read the book and ponder the answer...I have no answers at this point---the book contains arguments both ways, but leans towards the pro and dismisses the con pretty blantantly.
Nonetheless, it is a very interesting read, and contains somewhat technical ideas in it, which only encourages me to further research the topic of theraputic cloning and stem cell research.

This book is a narrative account of the author's attempts over the years to study aging. There was a lot of discussion about stem cells. I was hoping for more commentary on immortality, but he talked a lot about therapeutic uses of stem cells instead. The talk of immortality was mostly restricted to getting individual cells to reproduce indefinitely, rather than finding the fountain of youth. There were characters here and there who were introduced and faded away, but by and large the focus was on the author's character.

If you're looking for a dreamy, fountain of youth type of book, this is not really it. That is what I was looking for, so I was disappointed to see it was merely a recounting of events without a whole lot of future vision or insights. I think there are other books on immortality out there you may want to try.

Very interesting read.

After reading so many positive reviews, I ordered the book, and expected to learn in-depth insight into the immortality of cells.
I was disappointed. This book is more of the author's personal story of pursuing the goal of reversing aging rather than detailed look into the biological nature of aging. There are tidbits of gems here and there, but the density is low. If you are looking for a serious discussion of the subject matter, this book is not for you.

Thanks!!

Fascinating book! Received early in good condition and with all pages intact. Thank you!