Living a long life in a healthy, strong and youthful body has always been one of humanity's biggest dreams. Recent advances in genetic manipulations and reduced-calorie diets in laboratory animals promise that science will one day enable us to fully control our own biological aging.

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Almost all scientists who study the biology of aging agree that one day we will be able to significantly slow down the aging process and extend our productive, youthful lives. Dr. Aubrey de Grey is perhaps the most optimistic among these researchers. As reported in media such as The New York Times, Dr. de Grey believes the key biomedical technology needed to completely eliminate age-related weakening and death is now within reach.

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In Ending Aging, Dr. de Grey and his research assistant Michael Rae describe the details of this biotechnology — a technology that would not only slow down age-related physiological decline but would regularly reverse it and keep us biologically young for an indefinite future. They explain that the aging of the human body, just like the aging of machines, results from an accumulation of various types of damage. As with machines built by humans, this damage can be repaired at regular intervals, resulting in an unlimited extension of the machine's fully functional life, as is routinely the case with classic cars. We already know what types of damage are accumulating in the human body, and we are rapidly moving towards the comprehensive development of technologies to eliminate this damage. By demystifying aging and its delay for non-expert readers, de Grey and Rae systematically dismantle the fatalistic assumption that aging will forever defeat the efforts of medical science.