Bill Driscoll in witf:
Chip Walter’s new book is titled “Immortality Inc.: Renegade Science, Silicon Valley Billions and the Quest to Live Forever.” It’s about the money, and the research, that’s seeking a way to extend human life indefinitely. Sounds like science fiction, but Walter thinks breakthroughs are just around the corner. “I think it’s going to begin to happen in the next five years,” said the Pittsburgh-based science writer in a recent interview.
As the term “renegade science” suggests, efforts to “cure death,” as Walters puts it, remain something of a fringe enterprise. But given that the likes of Google and Apple are backing work by scientific visionaries, Walter is convinced they won’t be for long. And his 300-page book doesn’t seem to be dwelling on the fringes: Walter is a former CNN bureau chief with other respected science books to his credit, and “Immortality, Inc.,” published by National Geographic, is getting respectful reviews from the likes of Publishers’ Weekly.
The project started several years ago, when Walter recalls magazines running cover stories on research that had the much more modest goal of helping people live to 120 or so. At the time, he didn’t find the prospects for such lab work especially bright. That changed in 2013, when he learned that Google and Apple were getting into the game. “And you went, ‘OK, now it’s serious,’” he said. “That was to me a huge turning point because there was some serious credibility behind that. It wasn’t just snake oil.”
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