medical research moves ten thousand times as fast as it did twenty years ago. Progress is approaching the speed of light! This is why life-extending technologies and cancer and heart disease technologies, which seemed to be advancing agonizingly slow, are about to go into hyperdrive. That is exponential.
SS: What do you see as your end point? What’s it like? How long will it last?
RK: Well, I am sixty-three. I come out much younger on biological aging tests. In fact, I am healthier than I was twenty years ago. I don’t feel I am any slower physically or mentally than I was when I was forty. So I plan to basically not age from this point on, or age so slowly that by the time I get to fifteen years from now, I’ll be about the same age or less. Biologically, I am already much less than my chronological age, so I want to stay ahead of the power curve. I think our generation (you and I) can do this but not without effort put forth.
It doesn’t go without saying; it takes a concerted effort, the kind of effort that overwhelms most people because they don’t yet understand the benefits.
SS: I hadn’t really thought about this in terms of “reverse aging,” but I had a complete medical workup at the Chaum Center in South Korea last year, and my biological age came out to be thirty-four. At sixty-five, I thought that was kind of impressive, but I do put forth effort, case in point the many supplements I take daily (as I notice you do also). In fact, I enjoy when we have dined together,because you don’t think I’m a quack taking supplements throughout the meal. I also noticed you take more than I do!
RK: Yes, it is great. So, clearly, your books and my books are a wake-up call to our baby boomer peers that you can make it through. Unfortunately, most people are oblivious to this perspective. So, instead, they shrug and say, “Ah well, if I try hard, maybe I’ll add a few months here and there. It’s not really worth it.”
SS: As they take another deep puff of that Marlboro …
RK: Right. Most don’t realize they might be the first person to make it into that theater, but that you have to work really hard to make it through. Our kids are going to have a much easier time. They’ll probably be in good shape fifteen years from now barring an accident. But we baby boomers can make it also. Fifteen years is not that long of a time. You now see many people in their seventies (your husband, Alan, being one of them) who are still very vital. So that’s my plan … stay healthy in order to get to Bridge Two and then ride to Bridge Three and see the Singularity [what Ray defines as a time in the future when we multiply the intelligence of the “human-machine civilization a billion-fold through merging with the intelligence we are creating”].
SS: And I’m coming with you.
RK: Great. Can’t wait.
SS: Thanks so much, Ray. It has been an honor.
CHAPTER 4
ADVANCED MEDICINE—THE NEW DOCTOR YOU’LL WANT TO VISIT
Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.
–The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity
The planet has changed drastically. To live longer and healthier our approach to medicine must also change. A new type of doctor has emerged because more and more people are expressing dissatisfaction with the limitations of our present orthodox medicine and its “allopathic only” approach, meaning “a pill for every ailment.” Allopathic medicine evolved at the turn of the twentieth century when a man by the name of Abraham Flexner was hired by the two richest families in the country at that time—the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, who by the way
owned
pharmaceutical