So it’s finally afoot then. Biomedicine is drawing blood from
that familiar incubus, age-related disease. The changes in the
flesh which cause old people’s bodies to fail, are now within
the sights of regenerative medicine. It is not yet certain to
what extent rejuvenation biotechnologies will be able to reverse
the crippling conditions of late life. But given that everybody
has always dreaded the prospect of age-related disease, why were
rejuvenation biotechnologies not widely demanded and anticipated
before, by entire populations, even when they were beyond our
grasp? Why were they not conceived of as objectives years
earlier, along with cures for every other infectious disease
plus cancer? Why wait for regenerative medicine to reach its
present state before even considering a strike of this sort at
the diseases of aging? The answer is that it had never been seen
as a logical step until recently. Among both scientists and the
general public, there was never anybody with the vantage point
necessary to concei