14
Biomedicine, nanotechnology and other strategies
Michael West, president of Advanced Cell Technology and
one of the founding fathers of modern stem cell research
has written Therapeutic Cloning. It gives us an exciting
insight not only into the scientific background, but also into
his very personal experiences and hopes in relation to the con-
quest of death.
While stem cell research is still an immensely dynamic field,
we have recently seen the emergence of another exciting area of
potential anti-aging treatments: Nanomedicine the science
of creating medical devices through nanoscale and eventually
molecular manufacturing has received intense media scrutiny
and generous public funding in the US and Europe. Robert A.
Freitas, a true pioneer in this area, describes how tiny machines
could be effective in the conquest of death. As a special bonus,
a second part of this chapter, including numerous illustrations,
is published online - http://imminst.org/book1.
Once inspired to consider molecular-sized machines, we
are not limited to healing and repairing our aging bodies:
Ray Kurzweil, well known futurist and the recipient of
the 1999 US National Medal of Technology introduces us
to Human Body Version 2.0, where advanced technol-
ogy constructs and defines the very substance that we are
made of.
This introduces a second vision of immortality, one that
ventures beyond biology. Dr. William Sims Bainbridge,
Deputy Director for the Division of Information and
Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation, con-
siders how digital information about personality, feelings,
likes and dislikes can be recorded. By archiving the unique-
ness of a person, we might achieve some Progress toward
Cyberimmortality. But can we be more ambitious? Will we
one day be able to copy our selves onto a computer?
Will Robots Inherit the Earth? asks Professor Marvin
Minsky, who in 1959 co-founded what became the MIT