Turn on any television in the world--Beijing, Chicago, Tel Aviv, Rome, Los Angeles, or Tokyo--and you will find Dr. Sanjay Gupta reporting on the latest breaking medical and health news.
As Chief Medical Correspondent for CNN, Dr. Gupta is currently the most famous and listened to doctor on the planet. Millions of viewers learn daily about advances in medicine that can change their lives. Additionally, Dr. Gupta is assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory University Hospital and associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital, where he practices.
Most recently, Dr. Gupta embarked upon a remarkable quest to investigate "new discoveries in the search for immortality to help you age less today." For his investigation, he interviewed scientists around the globe from Okinawa and Russia to laboratories throughout the United States. His findings resulted in both a book and documentary titled Chasing Life (Warner Wellness).
Dr. Gupta approached this broad subject from a unique perspective as both a practicing physician and as a seasoned journalist. In his search he left no subject, no matter how controversial, untouched. Chasing Life covers every imaginable topic, from caloric restriction and stem cell treatments to cryonics, resveratrol, and hormone supplementation. His goal was to assess the work of the best minds researching methods to slow aging and increase life span
technologies. After hearing him propose this, what are your thoughts?
SG: I think in the next couple of decades, we're going to get to a point of practical immortality. It's not true immortality, but practical immortality, meaning that we're going to live much longer without getting sick, and as a result we'll have many more functional years. It seems that we are going to get to the point where some people will be able to decide how long they want to live by doing some of the things that Kurzweil talks about. There is a lot of interest and activity around promising technologies such as exchanging body organs, rejuvenating cells, and even nanotechnology which will eliminate even a single cancer cell in the body before it can ever start replicating.For a lot of people these ideas are on the fringe, but frankly now that I have researched it and spoken to the scientists in the field, I believe that we are getting very close to realizing some of these fantastic ideas. I think that we're going to be much further along in the next twenty years than ever before.
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However, a lot of moving pieces need to come together for all of this to really work. When we think about how long people want to live there is an implicit understanding that they will be of strong mind and strong body. We can't be assured that even though we might be able to replace a failing heart or replace failing kidneys with perfect genetically engineered matches, that their mind will necessarily be sharp. These are all factors that need to be taken under consideration.
LE: In the last five years, it seems as if the possibilities of medicine have exponentially exploded. You can almost see the future happening right before our eyes.
SG: That's correct. Along that line of thought, right now there is a great deal of extremely sophisticated technology that a lot of people still don't know about or even use. For example, I have a history of heart disease in my family. Previously you had to wait until you had a coronary event to really know what was wrong or even do something about it. Now, through noninvasive
http://www.articlearchives.com/humanities-social-science/journalism/990455-1.htmlI for one think that this is a redeeming feature of the new administration.
