Trading in Futures

In Merchants of Immortality, Stephen S. Hall trails the scientists and entrepreneurs who hope to capitalize on the discovery of molecules involved in the process of aging. And he discusses how politics is now stifling one of the most promising avenues of research.

In Merchants of Immortality, New York Times magazine writer Stephen S. Hall ponders some of the scientific discoveries that could extend human life and provides a dense account of the people and companies that have capitalized on them. Yet the book leaves crucial territory underexplored. The first chapter describes gerontologist Leonard Hayflick's work in the late 1950s producing vaccines in fetal cell cultures, which led to the discovery of the "Hayflick limit," the built-in wall that many cells hit after a fixed number of divisions. Hall then follows Hayflick and his prot g , biotech entrepreneur Michael West, on a tour of the politics and personalities that have dominated the science of stem cells, therapeutic cloning, and telomeres, the regions at the end of chromosomes that wear down each time a cell duplicates. Other areas relevant to the "dream of human life extension," particularly the ongoing quest for so-called longevity genes, receive relatively short shrift. Hall quotes Hayflick's dismissal of the genetics of aging at the outset of the book ("there are no genes for aging"), and one gets the sense that the author inclined toward his subject's viewpoint when approaching this field.

The narrative of Merchants of Immortality centers more on people than on scientific theories or advances. For example, Hall introduces us to Alexy M. Olovnikov, the Russian scientist whose speculative theory of "marginotomy" first explained how telomere shortening could bring cells to the Hayflick limit. We also read about Ali Brivanlou, a Rockefeller University embryologist who postponed his embryonic stem cell research for 2 years until political debate over those cells was resolved. But Hall showcases mostly the flamboyant West, an antievolutionist turned immortality chaser with a propensity to oversell his various companies' scientific findings. "Whatever else might be said about West," writes Hall, "his personal journey from creationist to biotech prophet represents one of the most extraordinary intellectual transformations ever to influence a national debate in this country." The national debate in question concerns the ethical propriety of allowing the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Hall devotes much of his book to dissecting the stem cell story, and he provides a riveting account of how President George W. Bush came to decree that publicly funded researchers in the United States would have access only to embryonic stem cell lines established before 9 August 2001--a declaration that has hampered scientific progress in an area that holds promise for the treatment of disorders such as diabetes and Parkinson's disease.

West--who built one company (Geron) to pursue research on telomeres and another (Advanced Cell Technology) to pursue research on embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning--plays a dramatic role in both the aging and stem cell stories. So to a significant extent, West controls the shape and direction of Hall's story. He does not, however, control the storyteller. Hall relentlessly critiques West's "self-mythologizing" tendencies, as well as his habit of publicizing scientific findings before he publishes them. Merchants of Immortality serves as an invaluable case study on the sociology of scientific hype, describing in detail how corporate motives and media feeding frenzies lead to the overselling of promising, but limited, research. A key example comes in the telomere area. "Scientists who championed the view that shortened telomeres 'caused' aging were courted and quoted by science journalists," writes Hall. Meanwhile, more cautious experts such as Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, "tended to see their opinions appended, if at all, to the subterranean plumbing feeding the 'fountain of youth' stories."

Hall also chronicles how biotech companies have constrained scientific inquiry through material transfer agreements and other legal restrictions, a situation that has harmed research on both telomeres and embryonic stem cells. A central problem, as Hall sees it, is that abortion politics in the United States has driven human fetal and embryo research into the private sector, where entrepreneurs have pursued it for profit without federal oversight or safeguards. This situation has helped people such as West--who "operated in the cracks of a convoluted logic warped by abortion politics, in which it was okay to destroy embryos in the private sector but not in the public"--to draw funding-starved scientists into commercial research agreements. Hall helpfully contrasts this situation with that in the United Kingdom, where in 1990 Parliament created the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to regulate public and private research alike and enforce ethical standards.

All of this analysis provides telling insights into the state of biological research in the United States today. Still, one might justifiably ask, Is Hall's book really about life extension? Regenerative medicine using embryonic stem cells, from cloned embryos or otherwise, has the potential to prolong life indirectly, just as ordinary medical advances do. But Hall curiously slights more direct findings that have shown initial promise: calorie restriction, for example, or the discovery of longevity genes in worms, flies, and mice and the hint of similar ones in human centenarians (see "What's Next for Longevity Research?").

Hall's book comes to life when he takes an in-depth look at the debates over embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. In June, Hall penned a scathing op-ed for The New York Times denouncing the Bush Administration for falsely claiming in 2001 that "more than 60" embryonic stem cell lines were available for scientific research. Hall exhaustively backs up this charge in his book. Indeed, Merchants of Immortality packs its biggest political and policy punch on this topic. Thanks in part to Hall's efforts, journalists have shown renewed interest in embryonic stem cells--at a time when the Bush Administration's candor is in the public eye.

The 2000 presidential election, Hall explains, held tremendous importance for embryonic stem cell research, although the topic was barely discussed on the campaign trail. When Bush became president, scientists felt certain that his allegiances to antiabortion groups would doom the prospect of federally funded research involving embryonic stem cells. ("Abortion politics was the river running through this entire, contested domain," writes Hall.) However, in the summer of 2001, when stem cells became the hottest national policy issue and prominent Republicans such as Orrin Hatch came out in favor of federal funding, Bush wavered. And then he gave his infamous speech of 9 August 2001, in which he outlined his supposed embryonic stem cell "compromise."

Bush promised scientists that federal funding would be allowed for research on the "more than 60" currently existing embryonic stem cell lines, a number provided by the National Institutes of Health. But that information was preliminary and incomplete, and Hall suggests that the Administration might have deliberately misinterpreted it. Soon, scientists questioned the number 60, even as Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said of the cell lines, "They're diverse, they're robust, they're viable for research." That simply wasn't true. As Hall explains, the 60 embryonic stem cell lines that Bush discussed weren't cell lines at all. A cell line, by definition, is a culture of cells that can be propagated indefinitely. But the Bush camp included in its count every instance in which cells from early human embryos had been "dissected, harvested, and tossed in the freezer before the White House deadline," Hall writes. Thompson and Bush, he concludes, should have known better. Instead, writes Hall, "the White House sent Bush out on national television without having vetted (or even understood) the biological status of the cell lines he had embraced as the foundations of his compromise policy."

Hall provides a behind-the-scenes account of the stem cell fight, following the activities of Washington, D.C., attorney Jeff Martin, a well-connected mover and shaker who suffers from Parkinson's disease. As an advocate with a personal stake in stem cell research, Martin came to serve as a kind of nerve center for the patient and activist groups that were pushing for unlimited federal funding. And Hall shows that Martin--who was on friendly terms with Thompson--informed the secretary of the significant problems with limiting embryonic stem cell research to existing cell lines long before Bush's speech. In an interview with Hall, Thompson even admitted to recalling the letter he received from Martin. In short, Hall concludes, the White House had little excuse for the mistake it made.

Hall also argues convincingly that Bush's compromise decision is ethically absurd: "In the president's curious moral universe, destroying leftover embryos to create more stem cell lines was unethical, but allowing fertilization clinics to create and then toss out excess embryos was simply a legitimate cost of doing business." In the end, Merchants of Immortality delivers a comprehensive indictment of the supposedly deliberative process leading up to Bush's infamous stem cell speech. From this point forward, it should serve as a definitive source on this sad moment for federal policy with respect to scientific research.

Chris Mooney is a writer in Berkeley, California. He, too, is a merchant of immortality; he writes regularly about the science of aging and life extension.

Merchants of Immortality: Chasing the Dream of Human Life Extension

By Stephen S. Hall

Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2003. 448 pp. $25.00 ISBN 0618095241