Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging (8 page)

Ray Kurzweil
is the futurist of the century. He is a man whose vision of the future is clear and that includes living longer—radically longer—than humans have ever entertained. His work is based on the premise that we now have the knowledge to identify and correct the problems caused by most unhealthy predispositions as well as by environmental assaults
.

He is a highly recognized authority on biotechnology, medical applications, and the implications of molecular nanotechnology, or nanomedicine. He is also a computer scientist, a software developer, an inventor, an entrepreneur, a philosopher, and the leading proponent of radical life extension. He has a twenty-seven-year track record as a futurist. Many of the predictions in his 1990 bestseller
, The Age of Intelligent Machines,
such as the rise of the Internet, have tracked accurately. He has received numerous awards, including nineteen honorary Ph.D.s and the 1999 National Medal of Technology, which he accepted from President Bill Clinton
. Forbes
has called him “the ultimate thinking machine,” and
Inc.
has said he is “Edison’s rightful heir.” He is the subject of the widely acclaimed documentary
The Transcendent Man.

Kurzweil’s theory of the law of accelerating returns is one of the reasons there will be dramatic interventions in the aging process in the near future and why you have a chance to benefit from them. Things are going to happen so much faster and so much more dramatically in biology that most humans will benefit from these advances if they are alive
.

And he’s a cool guy.…

SS:
Hello, Ray. It certainly is an honor to have this conversation with you. The first time I became aware of you was in 2005, when
I picked up your book
Fantastic Voyage
, which blew my mind and inspired me to expand my thinking as to what healthy living really was. Since then I have enjoyed your other works,
Transcend, The Singularity Is Near, The Age of Spiritual Machines
, and have screened the documentary film by Barry Ptolemy,
Transcendent Man
, several times. Mind-blowing … I guess you could say I have been “Kurzweil” ed!

Your concepts of man merging with machines, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality are fascinating, if at times difficult to grasp. Your predictions for the future have been right on and in thinking about it, the “exponential” growth you describe regarding technology is right in front of our faces every day. For instance, recently, I went nuts when I dropped my iPhone in the toilet and felt absolutely lost without it for a day, whereas just a few years ago I had never heard of an iPhone! So for those who think man is not merging with machines, they should throw away their cell phones and try a shutdown of the Internet for a day. We’d all be lost. Your theories and predictions relevant to longer living and improved health benefits are of great interest because they are so uplifting and positive.

So let’s begin with what you describe as biotechnology. What is it and how will it apply to our health now and in the near future?

RK:
Thank you, Suzanne. Biotechnology is basically staying within biology, but reprogramming it. For example, when the fat insulin receptor gene was turned off in lab rats, they were able to eat all they wanted, yet they remained slim and got all the health benefits of being slim. They didn’t get heart disease or diabetes and lived 20 percent longer. There are now more than a thousand drugs in the pipeline to turn off the genes that promote obesity, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases. Think of it as updating the software on your cell phone. We’re updating the software in our body: turning off genes that promote disease, that promote aging; adding new genes that extend our longevity; using stem cells and reprogramming them to regrow organs or rejuvenate our tissues; and turning off cancer stem cells. So basically, we are changing the software of life using these different methods.

We can model, simulate, and reprogram biology just like we can a computer. It will be subject to the law of accelerating returns, a doubling of capability in ten years, a billion times more capable in twenty-five years.

SS:
And this applies to all parts and conditions of the entire body?

RK:
Yes. For instance, I’m working with some MIT scientists on the bad stem cells, which are cancer stem cells. We believe that cancer
stem cells are the ultimate cause of cancer. Chemotherapy and radiation do kill cancer cells, but they don’t kill the cancer stem cells. In fact, in many cases these methods provide ideal conditions for cancer stem cells because they are anaerobic.

SS:
Anaerobic means the cancer cells don’t require oxygen for life?

RK:
Yes. We’ve actually identified and are culturing cancer stem cells. If we take a culture that has many cancer cells and cancer stem cells and radiate it, all the cancer cells are dead, but the cancer stem cells are happy and thriving.

SS:
Then clearly the present protocol of cut, burn, and poison is pretty useless.

RK:
You could say that the protocol is part of the solution, but of course, part of the solution is not enough. If you can’t kill the cancer stem cells, you haven’t gotten rid of the cancer, and these stem cells are ultimately responsible for metastasis. There is a whole field of scientists who agree with this theory, but they’ve never actually seen a cancer stem cell. They identified it based on certain chemicals on the surface called
antigens
. One is called TD-44. Turns out these antigens are an unreliable method of identification. We can actually identify cancer stem cells based on their shape and their unique form for reproduction. Our work is to identify the substances that destroy them but don’t harm normal human cells.

SS:
Could this be accomplished with your nanobots?

RK:
Yes. Nanobots will be blood-sized cells injected into the body to carry out a mission.

SS:
Like a blood-cell-sized robot?

RK:
Yes. They might be inserted to destroy the ultimate source of cancer, or to turn off a gene that promotes Alzheimer’s. These profound diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s are caused by an information flaw in the software. There’s some genetic switch that gets thrown, and the answer to it can be fairly simple.

SS:
Providing you know which switch.

RK:
Yes, and there is probably a fairly simple trigger to diabetes, which is actually a group of diseases. We can learn to reprogram these things with technology that will not have serious side effects, because we will be very sharply focused on exactly the cause of these diseases as opposed to complex drugs used today, which are blunt instruments. These “blunt hammers” may have a positive effect, but they are not sharply focused on accomplishing their task because they
are not based on a real understanding of how these disease processes work.

SS:
When will we be able to access these new technologies like nanobots?

RK:
I believe the full flowering of biotechnology is only about fifteen years away. That doesn’t mean we’re going to have nothing for fifteen years, and then suddenly we’ll have it. It’s already rolling out there with benefits like stem cell advancements. It’s at the edge, but it’s not approved in the United States. You have to go to Thailand.

Nanotech is to go beyond biology and even go beyond a reprogrammed biology by introducing nonbiological systems. But these systems are as intricate as biology and at the same level, so the quintessential application will be nanobots that are blood-cell-sized devices that have intelligence because they have little computers in them. They can have robotic capabilities.

SS:
And how do we use them? Are they injected or are they a capsule?

RK:
You would inject them into the bloodstream. It’s a concept that’s been around for some time. They were first discussed by Eric Drexler, and there have already been experiments with animals. One scientist has a little nanobot that has eight nanometer pores so it’s really at the molecular level, because one nanometer is like five carbon atoms. This little device lets insulin out in a controlled fashion and has actually cured type 1 diabetes in rats as an experiment. Early experimentation in rats has shown therapeutic value. Ultimately, they can be very sophisticated. So one type of nanobot could replace a portion of your red blood cells, but they would be a thousand times more powerful. You’d have much more ability to oxygenate your tissues. You’d be protected from a heart attack if you had one.

SS:
Making heart attacks a medical rarity?

RK:
Yes, these nanobots will keep you going for many hours. But their uses are very varied; for instance, you could do things humans have not been able to accomplish, like doing an Olympic sprint without taking a breath for fifteen minutes, and that’s just with a fairly simple form of nanobot. I believe the really useful one will be a robotic white blood cell.

SS:
Why are white blood cells useful?

RK:
They are very intelligent little creatures. I’ve actually watched my own white blood cells in a microscope outside my body and I saw two of them trap a bacterium and then ultimately destroy it. They
are very slow, lumbering little creatures. I observed them doing this and it took about two hours.

SS:
What are the limitations of white blood cells?

RK:
They don’t respond well to pathogens. They don’t recognize cancer because they think it’s “you.” They can attack you accidentally, as in autoimmune disorders.

SS:
Why, because it thinks you are a foreign object?

RK:
Exactly. We are working on a robotic white blood cell that first of all could download new software from the Internet for new pathogens, so it could work on things never seen before. With this technology, the body would not be subject to autoimmune disorders anymore. The technology could also attack cancer and ultimately protect you from virtually every type of pathogen-based disease, including cancer. I used to call it the “killer app” but that’s probably not a good idea.

SS:
[Laughs.] Probably not! And eliminating autoimmune disease would be life enhancing. I hear from so many on a regular basis about their lupus, MS, or fibromyalgia—debilitating, painful, degrading conditions that are treated with even more debilitating drugs, creating a vicious cycle. What else will these nanobots be able to do?

RK:
Many things, and we are constantly creating new usages. They will be able to go into the brain and noninvasively interact with your biological neurons as a kind of brain extender. At present, we have computers we put into the brain or at least connect to the brain to give commands. In fact, there are dozens of different neural implants being experimented with for different kinds of neurological conditions.

Right now there’s a neural implant for Parkinson’s disease, and the latest version actually allows you to download new software inside the body from outside the patient. These implants require surgery because they are not blood-cell-sized, although they are pretty small, the size of a pea, but still too big to send through the bloodstream.

We will also have an artificial retina that will attach right to the optic nerve.

SS:
Wiping out Parkinson’s, having increased brainpower, restoring vision. This is wild stuff, and you are saying this is what we can expect in the near future?

RK:
Absolutely.

SS:
I read in your incredible book
Transcend
that nanobots would be able to vaporize arterial plaque and turn on islet cells, thereby curing diabetes. These are huge advancements. Is there a catch? I
mean, what will keep us from being able to access this incredible technology?

RK:
Poor health. That’s why taking care of you today is so important. I mentioned that the quintessential application, the killer app, will be nanobots that augment your immune system. They will roam through your body and destroy disease cell by cell, actually working at the molecular level. It would be beyond what our immune system does at present, which is to destroy germs, bacteria, and viruses. These nanobots could also do little repairs, sort of like surgical repairs. They could repopulate cells that are needed, like the islet cells. We are already doing those sorts of things with stem cell therapies, but the nanobots could carry a stem cell to exactly the right place. Like a little army of machines to do maintenance in order to keep your body young and healthy while destroying disease at the level of individual cells before it becomes life threatening to an organ.

SS:
So you are doing the impossible, outthinking nature. That in itself is spectacular if used correctly.

What about the hormone-making glands? I mean, rather than replacing what you are missing due to aging and stress with bioidentical hormones, which involves rubbing on the individualized, prescribed amount of cream every day, could you, in essence, “restart” the internal hormone-making machinery again?

RK:
Yes, that’s easy; we can already define what optimal hormone balance is. In fact, there are all kinds of trace nutrients, hormones, and other substances we’d like to see in the blood; plus, of course, there are things we’d rather not see in the blood.

These nanobots can access and process the blood. They can add substances that are needed to bring them to optimal levels. They can remove toxins and other potentially destructive chemicals, so, yes, the whole endocrine system is ultimately relatively easy to re-create in a “version two” approach, while keeping people at their optimal, youthful levels. I’m not just talking about the classical hormones but many things in the blood that are critical. The bloodstream is a whole communication system, sending all these chemical signals, which is basically what hormones do.