Dr. Terry Grossman outlines "Three Bridges" to longevity: Bridge 1 uses diet (e.g., Okinawan Hara Hachibu or Mediterranean meals), bioidentical hormones, and early disease detection like CAS scans to reduce biological age by 15–16 years; Bridge 2 leverages stem cells (adult over embryonic due to ethics) and telomere research for organ repair, with lab-grown corneas and bladders already emerging; Bridge 3 envisions nanomedicine reversing vices like smoking or nicotine addiction by replenishing dopamine precursors. Critics question accessibility and risks, but Grossman insists exponential tech progress will democratize treatments, making aging optional—limited only by accidental death or future-unknown diseases. [Automatically generated summary]
American snowboard would be snow that's then evaporating before it hits the ground.
But with the uh with the moon out there just a little bit, providing a little bit of backlighting, you can see this wonderful white blanket that's sort of floating across the valley.
It's incredible.
Absolutely incredible.
At any rate, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be in the world's prolific time zones.
This is that program called Coast to Coast AM.
Weekend version, I'm Art Bell.
Honored, privileged to be here with you.
And we've got a lot to talk about.
So let me begin with, this comes under the I knew it, I knew it category.
In a defeat for President Bush, rebellious House Republicans on Saturday derailed legislation that was designed to overhaul the nation's intelligence agencies along lines recommended by the September 11th Commission.
Quote, it's hard to reform, end quote.
That was Speaker Dennis Astor, who sought unsuccessfully to persuade critics among the GOP rank and file to swing behind the measure.
Yeah, sure, I knew it.
The moment I heard about something that would take the power at the top of our various three-lettered agencies, CIA, NSA, all those letters, and consolidate it, I knew there was going to be gigantic trouble and that it would never work.
And sure enough, it isn't.
At least not yet.
Maybe eventually.
But I knew that anything like that would be bitterly, bitterly received in the halls of power at these agencies.
They all have their little fiefdoms and kingdoms within these agencies, and something like this would drive them absolutely nuts.
This one, this story, I wrote down, bastards.
Insurgents battled American troops in the streets of Baghdad Saturday, killing a U.S. soldier in an ambush, gunning down four government employees signals that guerrillas remain a potent force despite the fall of their stronghold of Fallujah.
Nine Iraqis also died in fighting west of the capital in Fallujah, where U.S. Marines and soldiers are still battling pockets of resistance.
Insurgents waved, get this, insurgents waved a white flag and then opened fire on U.S. troops, causing casualties.
Bastards.
That's, of course, what would you expect, I suppose.
But they depend on our usual rules of engagement.
And generally, when you wave a white flag, that means you're giving up.
But they used it to ambush and wound, if not kill, some of our people.
This story bears very close listening.
Facing nuclear challenges on two fronts, our president warned Saturday that Iran's suspected weapons program is, quote, a very serious matter, end quote.
And he stood united with leaders of Asia and Russia in demanding North Korea's return to stalled disarmament talks, of multilateral talks.
Iran and North Korea, two nations in what Bush has branded an axis of evil, dominated the president's attention.
And you've got to wonder, are they next?
In other words, if they don't give up the nuclear dream, are they next?
We have invaded and now occupy Iraq at quite a cost.
And I wonder if Iran would be next, or would it be North Korea?
New world out there.
Now, I'm not good with names, especially sports names, but Ron Artest, Jermaine O'Neill, and Stephen Jackson of Indiana and Ben Wallace of Detroit, all suspended by the NBA after a gigantic fight.
You probably saw it on CNN.
People in the audience just going berserk in the stands.
They were all, it was a big, giant fistfight, a bad fight.
And I'm sure you've seen the footage.
And I just wonder if it is our nature.
We are a very competitive people.
You might even go so far as to say we are a warlike people.
And we are.
I mean, we really are relatively warlike, aren't we?
History tells that story.
Not so small a plane, really.
They say a small passenger plane boat was carrying 53 people in China, went down, killing all aboard.
In a moment, I'll skip ahead to the other news of the day, much of which you may not have heard until now.
All right, I'm going to take a moment and I'm going to try to explain to some of you who probably will not understand what I'm about to say if I'm not careful something that's going on.
My headline would be: something is wrong with the ionosphere.
Something is wrong with the ionosphere.
Now, let me lay out my case for you and perhaps beg a little bit of help.
I am an amateur ham radio operator, as you know, and I tend to hang out a lot on the 75-meter ham band.
That is a frequency, or a range of frequencies, actually.
And I've been a ham since 1958 consecutively.
I've been in ham radio since 1958.
So I've seen a few sun cycles come and go.
Not a long record, but I've seen a few.
And I'm here to tell you tonight that I have never, in all the times I've been using the ionosphere to communicate with my friends, mainly on 75 meters, I have never seen what's going on in the last, let's say, five weeks.
All right?
About the last five or six weeks.
Normally on this range of frequencies, one could dependably communicate with people two, three, four, five hundred miles away.
And for the last six weeks, not only has it been not dependable, but it has been virtually gone.
That is the ability to communicate with people over a short range on a frequency where that should be reliably true.
Now, true, we're in the winter season when things change a little bit.
We're toward the bottom of the sun cycle, acknowledged.
However, if you discount the sun flares that we had, which of course disrupt communications severely at times, and certainly did disrupt them, and you look at the numbers both prior to that whole bunch of sun flares that we had and following the sun flares after they had calmed down,
there is absolutely nothing, let me repeat, nothing to justify the inability to have communications where we have traditionally had communications.
Now, that means something is wrong from my perspective with the ionosphere.
And I can't tell you what it is because I don't know.
I just know something is wrong.
Now, I think we have trouble at any numbers of levels of the atmosphere above us.
It's not just the ionosphere.
As you well know, we have trouble with the ozone layer as well.
And I'm telling you, there's something going on with the ionosphere, and I can't tell you what.
And so here is what I'm requesting.
And I've sent off some emails to people at NOAA and the Space Environment Center and so forth and so on, asking for an expert to come on and try and tell me what's going on with the ionosphere.
Now, many of us have speculated about many things, including, by the way, HAARP.
After all, the primary goal of HAARP is to experiment with the ionosphere, literally burning holes in the ionosphere.
And I'm not saying that what we're experiencing right now is because of HAARP, but it certainly is one outstanding possibility.
Anyway, again, the headline is something is wrong with the ionosphere.
Something is going on.
It may well be something totally explicable that some scientist or person could come on here and explain.
But until they do, I'm telling you, something's wrong.
I have never experienced anything like this in all of my hamdom.
So let me just observe that for you and move forward.
But if there's anybody out there who would like to come on as a guest, who has credentials with respect to ionospheric and radio propagation studies, I'd love to have you come on board.
But the average person out there, again, my headline is, something is wrong up there.
So we'll leave it at that.
And if you are such an expert or you feel you can explain what's really going on that would clobber a band like this, actually many bands for weeks on end, then feel free to contact me, artbell at mindspring.com or artbell at aol.com.
In other news, you're going to love this.
Listen carefully.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday appointed a new Department of Motor Vehicles director, and this new director apparently has advocated, you're going to love it, taxing motorists, that would be you and me, for every mile they drive by placing tracking devices in their cars.
The idea would mean a significant overhaul of how California collects taxes to maintain its often crumbling roads.
Under the plan, the state gas tax, now about 18 cents gallon, by the way, would be replaced with a tax on every single mile your car or your truck travels.
The notion not yet endorsed by the governor, but it is gaining acceptance among transportation and budget experts.
As Californians drive increasingly more fuel-efficient cars, state officials are alarmed that the gas tax will not raise enough money to keep up with the holes in the road.
Charging people for the miles they drive also worries some owners of hybrid cars because, why, it could wipe out any gas tax savings They might enjoy now.
There are other concerns as well.
For example, how about your privacy?
This thing would look at every mile you drive.
Privacy advocates worry about government tracking the whereabouts of every car in California.
In one scenario, currently being tested in Oregon, incidentally, tracking devices send a signal to a GPS satellite following the car, and that information would be used to calculate the tax bill.
Other devices send a signal directly from the car to the pump, which calculates the tax based on the odometer reading.
Oh, brother.
Annaline Newitz, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which monitors privacy issues, said if the device can communicate with a satellite and then communicate back with another device on the ground, why it could be used for something else.
That would be my concern.
How are limits placed on how this device might be used?
Yet some transportation experts say the technology has wider implications.
Officials are intrigued by the idea because California could begin taxing people for using specific roads at specific times to keep people off freeways at peak hours, for example.
Per mile fees for city streets could be pegged at a lower rate than the highway.
That could prompt people to use alternative routes.
So the obvious question is, how you feel about the possibility of a little black box being included with your car?
One that would, by law, I might add, one that would, and gee, think what else they could learn.
They could probably learn how fast you're going.
Well, that would be calculated against the mileage, right?
And all of this reported by satellite to the tax people.
Oh, man.
Big Brother really is on the way, isn't he?
Here's a worrisome little story, and then we'll do open lines.
Yeah, we're going to do open lines.
Anything your little heart would like to talk about, we are prepared to discuss this evening.
The headline is Bird Flu, Bird Flu Seen As The Next Pandemic.
Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm said Monday in Minneapolis that animal diseases emerging in foreign countries are on a course to threaten U.S. families, agriculture, and the economies in ways we've never seen.
Osterholm, who is associate director for the National Center for Food Protection and Defense for Homeland Security, told a national conference of agricultural bankers that he believes the bird flu epidemic in Southeast Asia is about to become a lethal pandemic.
His words.
Last week, the World Health Organization sounded a similar alert, urging preparations for such a pandemic as a matter of national security.
And on Monday, researchers at the National Institutes of Health announced initiatives to step up research to stave off an outbreak and develop a response should it hit.
Osterholm projected that a pandemic, listen carefully now, could kill about 30,000 Minnesotans, 1.7 million Americans, and 177 million people worldwide in its first year.
The world is unprepared with inadequate amounts of vaccine or even face masks.
If the bird flu virus mutates into one that spreads easily among hogs and people, that would slam travel to a halt and it would cripple the economy.
This is going to be, this is a quote, this is going to be the most catastrophic thing in my lifetime, end quote.
That was Oster Holm.
Remember, he's an epidemiologist.
When this situation unfolds, he goes on, we will shut down global markets overnight.
There will not be movement of goods.
There will not be, or there will not be movement of goods.
There will not be movement of people.
And this is going to last for a year, maybe two.
That came from the Star Tribune, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, if you want to look it up.
Now, that's really serious stuff.
30,000 people dead in Minnesota, possible.
1.7 million in America, 177 million worldwide.
That's a very, very, very serious story.
And it, of course, comes on the heels of a story we're all dealing with right now, and that is no flu vaccine.
I think we've got about 300 flu vaccine shots for our little town of Paramp.
I guess that's our allotment, as it were.
And they are going to the young, the old, the infirm.
As you would imagine, in a shortage situation would happen.
But my God, what if story A coincided with story B?
I refer here to the bird flu.
What a time that would be.
So things to worry about in the new century.
That certainly would go up near the top of the list, along with, I suppose, nuclear weapons being developed by Iran And North Korea getting into the wrong hands.
So we've got a lot to worry about in this century.
Yeah, I just wanted to make mention that in the movie Back to the Future 2, with the infamous history book on sports, they make mention that the Boston Red Sox will win the World Series in a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals.
I wanted to say, you know, I mean, they're nicking little by little at the people of America and taking little by little of their freedom away, you know.
And I wanted to say, if that's not communism, what is, you know?
It was not just Michigan, as I'm sure you're aware.
It was all across the northern latitudes.
In fact, they were seen at one point as far south as Arizona.
So, yes, we had some magnificent solar disturbances.
But I want to make it clear again that what I perceive as wrong with the ionosphere right now has no relationship to that period of disturbance at all.
In fact, looking at the current numbers, and I do realize there are some very fast stuff coming from the sun particles, but still, none of this justifies what we have been experiencing for the last six weeks, five or six weeks.
I'm telling you, I have never seen Anything like it.
And those who operate on those frequencies understand exactly what I'm talking about.
What we need to do is reach out and get an expert in that area and have him.
I'm sure there's an explanation, but until then, my personal little headline is: there is something wrong with the ionosphere.
There are several people who wrote to me who said, oh my God, I've been working on something very similar now for some time and like to fell out of my chair when I heard the SpearCom broadcast.
Yes, there are people getting results, and I'm working on getting them on the air.
unidentified
That would be great.
I'd love to hear some more about that.
I mean, you know, I mean, just recently having family pass away and whatnot, you know, I mean, it's just kind of a pipe dream, really, but, you know, just something I'd like to hear about.
And if you didn't hear it, what to a lot of people amounted to an hour and 20 minutes of just unbearable noise and weirdness was, in a lot of ways, I consider it to be one of the most important stories I ever put on the air.
I mean, look, we're not here to do what everybody else does on talk shows.
And so sometimes that results in something really weird.
SpearCom was one of those times.
This man, George Meeks, for years, for his whole life, adult life, worked on technical ways, and they were described in great detail on the website, to talk to the other side.
And in my mind, he proved he was doing it.
It was one of the most incredible, if you had the patience, and I begged people to have the patience to sit through it as I played that.
I received hundreds, no, thousands of emails about Spiracom.
And the people who really did strain and listen and understood what they were hearing just were totally blown away.
Here's what a lot of my listeners would have noticed, and I should have said this earlier because it would bring it down to the level that a lot of people could understand.
Even though it does not affect the AM broadcast band to the degree that it does with what I call 75 meters, that's three.
Think of the broadcast band from 540, right, to 1700 or 1710, whatever it is these days.
Where I operate is up around 3.8 megahertz.
So it's not that far away.
And there have been days where the broadcast band is affected.
So radio stations you would normally hear at 50 and 60 miles away are just flat gone.
unidentified
Well, the other night on 540 and on 970 and on 1700, I couldn't pick y'all up anywhere.
You don't think that that was Don's prediction, right?
Not false.
unidentified
Yeah.
And I think it's going to happen, but the thing is, people just got to keep their heads and get out as quick as they can so they don't lose everything.
The president, when the market falls precipitously, our president always gets on the air and says the economy is sound.
And he's always been right so far.
However, there are a number of areas in which our economy now is basically teetering.
The dollar isn't doing so well.
And economies and the best economies and the biggest economies in the world are no longer here in the U.S. So, you know, things are changing, and it all bears watching.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified
Hi.
Yeah, Art.
I'm impressed at how calm some of your call-ins seem to be very nervous talking to you here.
You know, you mentioned that satellite tracking of cars that Schwarzenegger wants to do, and that's kind of alarming to me, being a lover of my own privacy.
I worked for a guy a few years ago who had a company that was devoted to, well, one of the divisions was devoted to land mine detection.
And they found out a way of fluorescing, you know, target areas in front of, like, say, a moving vehicle at convoy speed, which was six kilometers an hour or something like that.
And they had a 200 to 300 meter fluorescent range.
And it would pick up landmines based on all six nitrate-based propellants, which to quite a degree is a lot like gunpowder.
And so he was saying that their success rating was 110%, meaning that they could find out where land mines had been buried, and they would leave residual traces.
And so I was talking to him, and he was saying that it could find ammunition in a car.
Somebody was transporting their rifle to the range.
If it became the law in California that a little black box that would report your movements to a satellite by law had to go into your car, how would you react?
I'm just curious.
unidentified
Well, I'd be stunned.
I'm stunned, outraged.
I'd be trying to find others who felt like me that we could politically, peacefully form some kind of a legal resistance to this.
If push came to shove, though, and they said, look, you either take this or you don't get a license, you don't drive.
unidentified
Well, I think I would make plans to leave the state.
I suppose I'm a little bit paranoid or overreactive, but I don't like the feeling that the government is part of my household.
I like to feel that the government would be an entity that would protect me, the sovereignty of my country, the solvency of my money, and jobs, air, that kind of stuff.
Of course, it's not doing any of those things.
It seems to be more interested in me and what I might think.
I wonder how many other Californians would join in in that level of protest should it occur.
unidentified
I don't know.
But, you know, the people that I would have thought, you know, like the Berkeley Knights, you know, the people from the 60s who didn't want the government in your face, you know, that generation, which I'm part of, now seems to be the people who want to be in your house with you.
However, many on the governor's staff are apparently very hot on the idea.
And it's a little black box that would fit inside your car, report to a satellite on your movements, how many miles you drive, what roads you drive on, perhaps, just everything about you.
And then even your speed, I suppose, calculated on the fuel usage, or speed could just be another little piece of data that's reported.
Big brother indeed.
First time caller line, you're on the air.
Hello?
You have your radio on.
Please extinguish your radio as a first step toward getting on the air.
Hi, and I just have one thing I wanted to just throw out at you.
But first, I just wanted to go ahead and say also that here in Iowa, up until just a couple of days ago, for at least a week, about a half a dozen AM stations that I listened to at night were dead silence.
Yes, well, what's going on is something very odd, hon. We had aurora borealis due to some sunflares, but this condition has extended, was present before the sunflares and continues now, well, after the effect of the sun flares.
And that's what's got me very concerned.
Otherwise, the aurora is very pretty when it's there, isn't it?
unidentified
Yeah.
Did you get to see some of it?
Just no, just some friends of mine said they saw some of it.
Either it's an urban legend or it's real legislation that may be proposed.
But here's what I get out of it.
The commercial people who sponsor television shows are beginning to get very upset at the TiVos of the world.
These are devices that record upon a hard drive, television programs, and then when you play them back, you're able to readily skip boom, boom, boom, boom, right across the commercials and watch, oh, let's say a one-hour program in probably about two-thirds the time it would take you to watch if you sat there and sat through each commercial.
Now, it's not all that different than VCRs.
I mean, you could record a commercial and then go buy them.
TiVo simply makes it a little easier.
So the rumor is, and at this stage I can't qualify it beyond a rumor, that the manufacturers want some sort of bill introduced making it illegal or impossible, perhaps impossible, for you to skip through the commercials.
So there you go, that little black box in your car.
Well, the last I heard, she was doing quite well and had been moved out of the intensive care ward into a regular ward where she's recovering and with all her faculties intact.
And if you listen carefully, over the coming few hours you may learn how to do exactly that, or you may learn the state of the science that will eventually get you there.
If you so desire, that that's much more by itself, isn't it?
He is also the founder and the medical director of Frontier Medical Institute in Denver, Colorado.
His longevity medical practice attracts patients, I can imagine it would, including many VIPs from around the country, in fact around the world.
He graduated from Brandeis University in 1968 and the University of Florida School of Medicine in 1979.
Dr. Grossman undertook the study of nutritional and anti-aging medicine back in 1994 and in 95 opened Frontier Medical Institute in Denver, so he must have thought it worked.
That quickly grew into one of the largest complementary medical centers in the country.
He is assistant professor of family practice at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
He is a member and board certified physician by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine as well as the American Holistic Medical Association.
Dr. Grossman is also a widely sought-after lecturer on longevity medicine throughout the U.S. and has presented keynote addresses at anti-aging seminars all the way around the world.
In addition, he is the author of the Baby Boomer's Guide to Living Forever and Fantastic Voyage, the science behind radical life extension.
Yes, it was my contention with the first book, The Baby Boomer's Guide to Living Forever, that the prospects for radical life extension and even potentially for effectively living forever really is not that far off.
It may be a technology that's available to us within the next few decades.
And for people who are younger than the baby boomers, barring legislative fiat or global catastrophe, there's a good opportunity that they will be able to take full advantage of these therapies.
But the baby boomers are kind of a crux generation.
And for them, if these technologies come to full fruition in, say, 25 years, many of them may take advantage of them.
But if they don't bear fruit until 35 or 40 years, then it becomes more problematic.
But we feel that the technology to allow people to live those additional decades is available today for people, even at the oldest baby boomers, and even beyond the baby boomer generation.
So therefore, the new book that I wrote, Fantastic Voyage, we actually subtitled Live Long Enough to Live Forever.
The sword of Damocles is hanging over us more than the younger baby boomers who right now have just turned 40.
And for the Generation X and younger people, I really think they will be able to take full advantage of these technologies.
But for people our age, it's particularly urgent that we do the things that we discuss in the book in order to try to take full advantage of these therapies.
Assuming it is now possible to extend life by decades, that's quite a claim right there.
Let's talk about that.
What would have to be done to take somebody, let's say our age, roughly, and extend their life decades long enough to perhaps get to the magic bullet point?
Well, in our book, we discuss what we refer to as the three bridges.
And Bridge 1 consists of today's therapies, things people can either do or take advantage of from the medical community available now that will enable people to live long enough so that they can then take full advantage of Bridge 2.
And Bridge 2 is really the full expression of the biotechnology revolution, which is only now just beginning.
Well, in Bridge 2, I consider there to be actually five key elements of Bridge 2 therapies.
And the telomeres actually are part of one of these therapies.
But I would consider, for instance, stem cell therapies that we hear so much about in the news, both the embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells, which we could talk about as one of the true big five of the Bridge II therapies.
May I please ask, from a purely medical and scientific point of view, how important are embryonic stem cells versus adult stem cells to this Research that could potentially have us on our way to living forever.
Well, you raise a very good point because the embryonic stem cells are the type of stem cells that are creating so much debate.
Because, as you know, stem cells are cells that are very plastic.
They can change into all types of different cells of the body, and they can be, with the right growth factors applied to them, turn into different type of cells, which is why they have so much therapeutic potential.
And up until recently, we thought that stem cells needed to be harvested from organisms that were very, very young, such as in the embryonic stage or fetal stage, and people were taking umbilical cord blood to harvest stem cells.
But actually, we found that stem cells persist even into adulthood.
And a very simple source of stem cells is to just pluck a hair and to take some of the follicle cells, and in that area are found adult stem cells.
And another very rich source of adult stem cells are the fat tissue.
So there are stem cells in adulthood.
And the question, the big debate among scientists now is, are stem cells as valuable?
Can they be coaxed to do the same things that the embryonic stem cells are?
And there is some evidence that's coming out that suggests that this may be true, and even other evidence that suggests that stem cells may have advantages over the embryonic stem cells.
Yes, not only because the adult stem cells are not subject to the same moral and ethical quagmire that the embryonic stem cells are, but the adult stem cells, the embryonic stem cells, are actually very, almost, they're almost too plastic.
They're difficult to control.
They're like wild.
They're hard to control in the laboratory.
And maybe the adult stem cells will prove easier for the scientists to work with.
So there may actually be advantages.
I think in the near future, we'll reach the point that we're able to coax the adult stem cells to do what we want them to do, to create new organs and tissues that are desirable for maintaining health, for improving health.
And then we don't need to enter into the political and moral ethical dilemma about embradic stem cells.
No, in other words, a stem cell that resides, you may be right, a stem cell that resides in the hair, for instance, may have already been differentiated and it has been told you are to become a hair cell one day.
Right, and it's well already a hair cell, if not already being lost to a bald head, who knows by the time it's very adult.
So, I mean, I'm trying to get down to the, forget the moral aspect of it for a second, hard as that may be.
If you had your choice and you were deep into the research, which for all I know you may be, would you choose to work with embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells, doctor?
Well, at this stage of our progress, I think that the embryonic stem cells would be easier to work with because they are more plastic and they can be coaxed more easily.
But there is some thought that we will be able to de-differentiate a hair follicle stem cell.
And due to the fact that there has been a relative difficulty in getting funds to do embryonic stem cell research, some laboratories have begun to look more seriously at adult stem cells, and they may have considerable value.
So if we can coax the adult stem cells to de-differentiate to become more like the what are called pluripotent or totopotent stem cells, which are the earlier embryonic-like stem cells, then we will be able to utilize them for the purposes we want.
Maybe we should explain to the audience when you say differentiate.
In other words, they are differentiated as a hair.
In other words, you're going to become a hair follicle, or you're going to become a liver, or you're going to become a fingernail, or that's what these things are, right?
In other words, each cell in the body contains the complete genetic code for the entire body.
And the only reason that a cell that is in your liver became that liver cell was because certain factors, certain chemicals in its environment, told it to express these genes, to turn certain genes on, and to turn certain genes off, and therefore it ultimately turned into a liver cell.
The same nucleus, the same blueprint that's in the DNA told another cell to become a heart muscle cell.
And what the stem cells can do is they have the ability to become any type of cell.
A liver cell can only become a liver cell at this point, and a hair cell can only become a hair.
But a stem cell can become any type of cell given the right program, given the right chemicals in its environment.
Okay, does this mean that you anticipate someday somebody will draw back a syringe with something in it that when injected will begin to grow a, oh, let's say a new liver for somebody or a new heart or whatever?
This is the current promise of embryonic stem cells today.
And there are actually clinics outside of the United States.
I know very little about them, but I've heard about them.
Patients of mine have actually traveled outside of the United States to receive these type of injections that you described.
And what happens is they receive injections of stem cells, embryonic stem cells, that are available Elsewhere than the United States.
And these cells will travel anywhere in the body that they are needed.
They have enough knowledge to know that, okay, there's a problem in the spinal cord, an injury, spinal cord injury, or there's a problem in the liver, or there's cancer in the lung, and they will travel to wherever these problems are and immediately take up residence there and become the needed cells.
Well, in a Petri dish, I think this is happening now.
Scientists are able to take stem cells and cause them to differentiate or become heart-muscle cells.
This type of therapy is going on.
Whether or not you can just take an injection, a syringe full of embryonic stem cells, and inject it into a patient's bloodstream and expect them to go to a damaged heart or go to a damaged spinal cord, I don't think that we really have enough evidence to show that that's true.
But there are clinics outside of the United States that do this.
Well, to hear what they say, I've actually been to lectures that have been presented by people that have done this therapy.
And to hear them talk, they have a great deal of success.
But in the few patients that I have seen that I did not refer to these clinics, but I know they went on their own, they did not have a great deal of success.
So I don't know to what degree these clinics are able to do this.
But I think in the near future, they may have this technology.
If you were to get an injection today and you had a, I don't know, a troubled heart, a damaged heart because you'd had a heart attack, as an example, and you received a shot for this, what would it do?
What would the expectation be with today's level of technology that would go in and begin to repair the heart damage?
Yeah, I think they found it on their own and just asked me what I thought.
And, you know, it's kind of let the buyer beware type of flops because I really don't know, and we don't have any studies to demonstrate that these clinics are or that these therapies are at the stage that are providing the type of help we need.
Well, things are accelerating so much, it's hard to predict that, but I don't think it's unrealistic that we could be looking at something like that in the next 10 or 15 years.
Well, let's take the case of an individual that's had a heart attack, a serious heart attack, and that heart attack has destroyed a significant part of the heart muscle.
Heart muscle is unable to pump adequately to supply the blood flow through the body.
At the current stage of our medical expertise, that patient would either need a heart transplant or a prosthetic heart.
If we had the ability to take some stem cells and grow a new heart, that patient could then receive a cloned heart, a heart that was created of their own stem cells.
It wouldn't be rejected.
And or they could get a transplant of muscle, heart muscle, to replace the damaged muscle.
And I think that the damaged muscle transplant would be realistic within the 10 to 15-year time span, and the entire heart may be 15 to 20 years off.
So that would be realistic for this type of therapies.
So in other words, these stem cells are things that can be differentiated.
That is to say, they are told what they're going to be.
Now, normally, our genetic code orders them to be what they are.
What Dr. Grossman is talking about is a way to take either the very early stem cells, the very, very early ones, which are essentially blank, which you would think would make them easier to work with, and that's why they're the great argument over embryonic stem cells, or adult stem cells, and then like you would erase a blackboard, I guess, you erase it and then tell it what you want it to be.
You know, they're doing it basically in glass, in teacher dishes and in sterile environments.
And they're putting in the appropriate chemicals that will create the environment to cause the stem cells to grow into the desired organ.
So they can grow corneas to replace damaged corneas or also to create bladders.
The bladders haven't been done clinically.
I don't think either of these have been done in humans yet, but they're growing these organs now, and I think they'll be able to grow more complicated tissues and more complex organs in the very near future.
And they've also grown, they've taken stem cells and coaxed them to grow to become scaffolding for blood vessels.
So, you know, right now when people have like an aortic bypass, they need to take a Dacron type of graft and use that instead of the patient's own if it has damage.
We'll be able to actually grow blood vessels such as aortic tissue, things like that, because that's also a simple tissue, basically just a tube.
So I think that these type of stem cell grown tissues will be available in the next few years.
I think that really they're out of the ballpark altogether because they're not taking into account the fact that change is accelerating.
Technical progress is really changing at an accelerating rate.
And right now, for instance, we have accomplished or we are at a rate to accomplish as much technological change in the first 20 years of this century as we did in the entire last century.
Well, it just is the nature of this is what's happening and the bandwidth of computers, this is what's happening.
If you take a lot of technological progress and plot them on a logarithmic curve, you'll notice that the curve is not straight, that it's actually also an exponential curve, which means that the rate of change is also increasing.
So, it just seems to be the nature of technology, and now we're at the steep part of this curve.
So, actually extrapolating this out, we anticipate that in the 21st century, we'll actually accomplish the equivalent of 20,000 years of change at today's rate.
At 59 and yourself 57, if we were to do the things that would get us decades further down the line, just decades, is there any hope, Doctor, that at some point, not only will you be able to virtually arrest age, I suppose, or aging, or maybe that's a whole separate question, but would there be a point where it could be rolled back to a more ideal point?
I think that we'll approach these challenges one at a time.
And the first challenge is really to extend human lifespan so that people our age will be able to take full advantage of these technologies that we've just started to hint at.
For instance, women in Japan right now, the average life expectancy is 90 years.
So if we were to just simply reach that average, that really gives us another 30-some years, which will probably allow us to take advantage of most of these technologies.
So the first hurdle is to live long enough to take advantage of the technologies.
The second hurdle will be to basically stop the aging process so that each year we don't really continue to age.
And in some ways, we are able to measure the aging process.
I have a machine in my office that actually measures biological age.
And I measure the biological age of my patients.
And I have seen in many cases where people undergo the type of therapies that we do in a longevity clinic that their biological age decreases.
So one of the tests that this, it's a computerized device, and one of the tests that the computerized device does is it measures high frequency hearing or hearing loss.
Another thing that changes with age is memory.
So the device plays a game with the patient like Othello, where you have to follow the buttons and remember 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and it keeps going, becoming more and more complex.
If somebody were to undergo all the currently available treatments for life extension and then were to take a test on your machine before and after, what are the best expectations, doctor?
I have seen people roll back as much as 15 years, 16 years in their biological age.
So I think that's a very impressive change.
So, you know, we've seen cases where people look younger thanks to plastic surgery and things like that.
Well, I think we can also make the insides younger through these other strategies, which are really at today what we refer to as the Bridge One strategies.
Well, let's touch on the Bridge One a little bit because it's what's happening right now.
If you wanted to go through the full Magilla and do everything that's available to roll you back biologically, physiologically, how much would you spend?
Well, you know, the average American consumes somewhere in the neighborhood of 154 pounds of sugar a year, and that has increased also exponentially, unfortunately, over the past several decades.
It was only in the neighborhood of 20 pounds or so at the beginning of the last century, so that's gone way, way up, and it's really been associated with a lot of degenerative diseases.
All right, well, let's put our cards on the table here.
When we're talking about diet, are we talking about something where you might as well be dead anyway because you can eat nothing but chopped green things with other unrecognizable floating things around in there?
Do you recall going in front of some Japanese bakery windows and inside in Japan, a restaurant or someplace that serves food, they put little plates out with a fake but very realistic looking food that you will get when you go inside?
I've made trips to Japan each year for the past three years.
And unfortunately, I have watched what has happened in Japan over the last three years, which is there's been a progression in the incidence of overweight Japanese.
We also like the Mediterranean diet, the diet that's rich in tomato products and olive oil and fresh fish, a little bit of chicken, lots of fresh vegetables.
That diet is also associated with longevity and is a very healthy diet.
So people can pick and choose.
They don't just need to eat sushi and octopus and things like that.
People can pick what is right for them.
And the diet that I follow is quite varied, and it's very enjoyable, and I don't eat sugar, but I do well with this diet, and I enjoy it.
Well, in addition to eating, I think we need to look at supplementation, the taking of nutrients that are not obtained in diet, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, things along those lines.
And we believe in an aggressive supplementation approach.
So I think people can assess where they are biochemically at this stage of their life and then design a supplement program that will help them to actually, we referred to it, my co-author, Ray Kurzweil and I, he came up with the term to reprogram our biochemistry.
And I think that's a very appropriate term.
We can, with supplementation, actually reprogram our biochemistry to take advantage of the full expression of the Bridge One therapy.
And this represents an unfortunate trend because we really have enjoyed considerable freedom in the ability.
Like, for instance, in Australia, melatonin is illegal, and in Canada, DHA, I believe, is illegal.
Every country has different laws.
The United States is actually quite free with our ability to obtain supplements, and it would be a shame, very unfortunate, in this progress to eliminate that.
From the high desert in the middle of the night, I'm Art Bell.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
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From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
And my guest is Dr. Terry Grossman, who just finished telling us how good turkey would be for us.
We're discussing honor of possibility eventually, of living forever, and certainly of severe life extension, much of it possible beginning, really, right now.
And if you didn't know that, you're going to want to listen very carefully.
I am not a big turkey fan, he says, as it comes toward Thanksgiving and another opportunity to eat turkey.
I once took a flight to Puerto Rico, and I was going to name the airlines, but I guess I won't.
And, you know, it's finally mealtime, and, you know, it's a pretty long trip from the west coast to Puerto Rico.
Anyway, so the stewardess comes up, and they hand out a little thing with the meal.
This was back in the days when they actually served meals on airliners, serious meals.
And there was a menu, you know.
And you know what the choice was?
The choice was turkey burgers.
Actually, it said burgers and then turkey in parentheses.
So turkey burgers.
You know, I'm not a big turkey burger person, so I and then the other choices were, so you'd get turkey burgers, turkey ham, or turkey.
Well, I like the use of bioidentical hormone replacement to help with the diseases of aging.
There's been a lot of controversy lately, as I'm sure you know, with regard to certainly women's hormone replacement therapy with the Women's Health Initiative trial.
And a lot of women have found themselves without the ability to get prescriptions for these hormones that have been shown to not only help the symptoms of menopause, but actually help with the aging process itself.
So we've resorted to using bioidentical hormones and luckily bioidentical hormones, which are the identical hormone to what's found naturally in the body.
So we don't replace premarin, excuse me, we don't replace progesterone with a progestin, such as provera.
Well, for instance, when a woman takes provera, which is a very common synthetic progestin, it is a completely different molecule than progesterone that's found naturally in a woman's body.
And when a woman takes primarin, it is actually a derivative of pregnant mare's urine, and that's why it's called premarin, pregnant mare urine.
This product has a lot of hormones that are similar to what a woman has, but it has a very different ratio of hormones.
And it also has a number of hormones that are specific for horses and are not found in the human female.
So when women take these artificial hormones, they sometimes have some side effects that they don't seem to get when they take the bioidentical hormones.
So therefore, by using bioidentical hormones, we can achieve these benefits without the downsides.
And after about age 50, what happens with men is their male hormones, their testosterone levels, begin to decline somewhat.
But even more importantly, their estrogen levels tend to increase.
And most people don't realize this, but the average 55-year-old man has more estrogen circulating in his bloodstream than an average 55-year-old woman.
And where estrogen is beneficial and a youth-providing hormone for a woman, for a man, it doesn't promote youth.
One of the main problems with these bioidentical hormones and why the drug companies resorted to the use of the artificial hormones was because if you take estrogen just as estrogen or progesterone that's identical to what's found in the body or testosterone and put it in a pill and swallow it, it is immediately destroyed by stomach acid.
So what they needed to do initially was they formulated into a gel or a cream that men and women could apply typically to their skin.
Now they have a micronized form or a sublingual form that dissolves under the tongue.
And in these formulations, men and women can get these hormones into their bodies to help produce the effects, the desired effects, without resorting to the artificial hormones.
As an anti-aging strategy, I think it has some value.
As a life extension strategy, I don't think we found that these hormone Replacements have any significant effect in extending life, but they maintain the quality of the life that we have.
Well, you know, there's, of course, the usual things like controlling stress.
Stress is an ager.
I mentioned one hormone, or excuse me, one chemical that was associated with aging, and that chemical is sugar.
Another chemical that's very profoundly associated with aging is cortisol.
And cortisol is a stress hormone.
And cortisol both ages you and destroys your mind.
And they've done experiments where they've taken laboratory animals like mice and taught them to run a maze and then given them injections of cortisol, a stress hormone, and the mice promptly forgot how to run the maze.
I don't recall almost any patient that I ask if they have a stressful lifestyle and they say no.
I mean, it's very rare that people say to me, oh, no, I don't have any stress, or I don't have any significant stress in my life.
I think it's just a concomitant of the age that we live in.
But anyway, it is, so controlling cortisol, and you can do that through one of the other pyramids of the Bridge One therapies, which is exercise.
Exercise will reduce stress.
And meditation or prayer, whatever it is that reduces stress for that individual is the value, going to yoga classes, things like that.
So that's a very, very important part.
And I think perhaps one of the most important of all, and the thing that will give people a payoff almost immediately, is the early detection of disease.
And I had mentioned the two big killers in the United States, heart disease and cancer.
And heart disease, we had very imprecise means of detecting heart disease until it was too late.
A la Bill Clinton.
Here's a man who had access to the best medical care, yet he ended up having heart disease undetected until he needed essentially an emergency bypass.
Well, we have technology that enables doctors to detect heart disease five or ten years before its clinical expression.
In other words, before people develop chest pain or have a heart attack.
And those technologies involve the use of non-invasive testing.
Up until recently, we had to do a catheter, which was inserted in the groin and then inject dye into the heart, which is very invasive and actually associated with a certain small percent risk of fatality.
So we're not going to do that as a screening test.
It's too dangerous and it's too expensive.
But if we can do that with a CAS scan, and we can now, then we can detect heart disease before it becomes manifest, and then patients can be put on appropriate supplementations, appropriate dial, lifestyle changes, and medicine if needed, then we can stop heart disease from occurring.
And I think in most cases, heart disease is preventable.
If you take them all together, I think we are talking about decades.
So we're talking about people our age in the late 50s.
If we can add a decade or two to our life, that flips us under the wire when these Bridge 2 and then ultimately Bridge 3 therapies will begin to kick in.
If we are unable to experience our lives and our brain is the interface through which we experience reality, if we don't have a functioning mind, we don't know what's going on, then it's all for nothing.
But I think that the same strategies that keep our bodies healthy will also keep our minds healthy.
For instance, I'm lucky in one way, in that genetically, one of my grandparents lived to be almost 105.
And he was very sharp, and his memory was perfectly intact.
And when he just died suddenly of a stroke shortly before his 105th birthday, he still, his faculties were quite good.
And I think people can do that.
I think he kept his mind alive.
He was fluent in a half a dozen languages.
He read in all of those languages.
And by keeping your mind active, I think we can, the brain is like that, like a muscle.
We keep the brain active.
I think we can maintain, and once again, avoiding excessive stress, because over the course of decades, excessive stress will attack the mind and actually kill neurons.
Well, we hinted on, you mentioned telomere therapy, and the telomeres are the end caps of the chromosomes, and every time the chromosome divides, telomere comes off.
There are these beads at the end of the chromosomes, and there is an enzyme called telomerase, which keeps the end caps on.
And with telomere-telomerase strategies, we may be able to extend life.
That's one of the therapies.
We had hinted a little bit about therapeutic cloning.
Therapeutic cloning is the creation of organs and tissues, the creation of a heart muscle, the creation of a cornea or a bone or things like that, or even an entire heart.
But we're not talking about reproductive cloning, a la Dali.
We're not talking about creating clones of ourselves, but harnessing, cloning, therapeutic cloning, where we create tissues and organs that we need.
This is a wonderful strategy that could lead to many, many decades of additional life for people.
Proteomics and genomics.
Genomics is therapy that's available today.
It's a diagnostic modality where we can actually look and see what genes people have.
Because if you know, for instance, that you're predisposed to get Alzheimer's disease, then there's certain things you can do to reduce your risk.
And if you know that you're predisposed to developing lung cancer, for instance, then you want to be very, very careful to live the type of life that reduces your risks of that.
So with the genomic therapies, you can do that today, which has only been available in the last few years.
And then that will lead to what's called proteomics therapies, where by knowing what genes you have, genes express themselves by making proteins, you can actually design proteins to accomplish specific goals or to block certain genes.
So we have all types of therapies to affect genes, gene-based therapies, that will lead to dramatic increases in lifespan and health.
So you do believe, don't you, that someday, some year, some decade, it's going to be possible to virtually keep people alive, well, let's put it this way, for as long as they would like to be?
I think we're really on that steep part of the exponential curve of lifespan.
And I think later this century, and it's not that many decades off, perhaps the next two decades, three decades, we're going to approach lifespans that are very, very significantly longer.
And it's hard to calculate what they're going to be, but I think they may be Drastically longer than what we're accustomed to.
If Bridge 3 were in use today, then I think that we would be able to remain useful essentially for an indefinite period of time.
If we wanted to be 25 years of age and look 25 and have a 25-year-old brain, I think with the Bridge 3 therapies at full fruition, it's not unrealistic that we could remain 25 for an indefinite period of time.
And then the only thing that really would interfere with our continued survival would be an accident.
And to Dr. Terry Grossman, middle of the night, middle of the darkness.
This is coast to coast A.M. So you want to live forever?
I'll take that as a yes at about 2 in the morning.
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It's 2 a.m.
The sun is still warm.
I'll do my best.
I'll find you a chance.
2 a.m.
The heart of me is dark to me to have to be happy.
Before the magic out of the way In the morning with the night Playing in the shadows I'm up to the night To the morning light To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
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From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
My guest is a highly credentialed physician, professor, Terry Grossman, anti-aging, and he's described several bridges.
And we're on bridge one right now.
That's a time when you can actually extend your life by several decades if you do the right things.
We've described bridge two, which begins to get a little more magical.
You know, the stem cells, things like that, telomeres.
Then there's bridge three.
And bridge three is what we're talking about right now.
Bridge three means that you virtually would have the opportunity to live forever, save the possibility of an accident.
I'm going to bring that one up in a moment.
Not science fiction.
You're listening to, you know, the real thing this morning.
Both what can be done now and what's coming.
And I got a very interesting email from a fellow named Joel.
And Joel just asks some really superb questions.
So I want to be sure that Joel gets credit for the email for the questions.
These are good ones, Joel.
And here's where it begins.
Orion Art.
On Coast to Coast tonight, please, if you would, talk about the increasing mathematical probability of death by accident as we get older.
Check this out.
About 25 years ago, I read somewhere that the probability of accidental death approached 99 plus percent during a 700-year human lifespan.
To put it another way, if humans had the natural ability to live to be 1,000 years old, then 99% of us would be dead by age 700, even in good health, because there was a 99% probability of death by accidental cause during the first 700 years of life.
These mathematical models have been done by statisticians up till now.
And I don't know what the exact figures are, and I don't know what models they used to build this.
But I think he's pretty close to correct on these.
Because if we reach the point where the Bridge Tree technologies are in full blossom and we are able to live on it for an indefinite period thanks to these technologies, then really the only thing we need to worry about is some sort of accident or catastrophe, if you would.
And the statistical models indicate that that sort of catastrophe would occur somewhere, like the bell-shaped curve, would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 300, 400 years.
So half the people would die somewhere around that time, and then a few would live well beyond that.
But I think he's right at 700 years, the overwhelming majority of people would have, during that 700 years, suffered a fatal accident.
Now, it may be what we're not taking into account here, and what these mathematical models are not taking into account, is that technology is not just going to allow people to live longer, technology is also going to allow people to maybe reduce the likelihood of these accidents and to make the world a safer place.
So there's all sorts of things that we're not taking into account.
We're basing these statistics on today's world and maybe even today's response to these dangers.
So these may change in tandem with our technological advancement that will allow us to live longer.
It's certainly possible, but I don't think it's too likely.
Or even if it were likely, I think that we would have the same technologies that enable us to deal with the aging process itself would enable us to deal with that disease process itself.
So I think that it's possible, but I think it would be treatable.
But I think that the technologies that will be coming in bridge through, the nanotechnology, will really make it possible that Alzheimer's is relegated to the dustbin of history.
And then finally, Joel says, is it possible that humans are genetically wired so that some latent brain functions, like mental telepathy, for example, appear routinely in all humans after a certain age?
For example, 200 years old.
For example, human reproduction ability doesn't start until around age 12, right?
And then after that age group, all folks have reproduction ability.
So, I mean, there are things that occur at landmark ages in the aging process itself, yes?
Something like telepathy would be expressed at a certain advanced age.
It's certainly possible.
But I think that with the nanotechnology that's coming, we will be able to achieve virtual mental telepathy with essentially having ourselves wired to one another with Internet access built into ourselves.
Well, I think we're exploring what this means, and the idea of downloading memories, which I think will be doable in the not-too-distant future, will also be doable.
But no one's looking to download the memories and then upload them into a computer chip and live a virtual existence.
It's certainly not my goal to get rid of biology altogether.
Instead, what I look for in anti-aging medicine, longevity medicine, is to perfect human potential.
And I'm not looking to interfere with that indescribable human essence that we refer to as consciousness or the soul.
I think that we were looking to enhance, not replace the human body.
Well, I certainly think that everyone is entitled to do whatever they want or not do what they want.
But as human beings, we as a species were not content to live the 18 or 30 years that we were given to our ancestors thousands of years ago.
Life back then was very, very difficult and filled with hazards.
And really, the ultimate goal of all of the advances we've had over the last centuries has been to improve human performance, to alleve suffering, and to extend life.
Now we're just moving to a point where we're doing it a little bit better than we've done in the past.
So if people don't want to do that, you know, I guess it's just a matter of where do you draw the line.
Well, you do understand that there are people with belief systems and frankly, those perhaps who don't have them that are quite content with the way it's laid out today and how it works and the fact that our life ends at a certain time.
There are certain subgroups of society that don't treat pneumonia with antibiotics, but most people, the overwhelming majority, when they are challenged with a life-threatening disease, they seek medical care to treat it.
So as long as the quality of life is good, I mean, if you're healthy and you're feeling good, if you have a disease that could be easily cured by technologies that are available, I just don't think people are going to turn their back on these technologies, whether they occur at age 18 or whether they occur at age 112.
Well, I'm a doctor, and I've, in the course of my practice career, I've seen a lot of patients who are on both sides of that question.
There are patients who are, at any age, I've seen patients who are quite young, and they've had enough because life has really dealt them a pretty bad hand to play, and their life really has been very, very difficult and filled with suffering.
And I also know people who are very, very advanced in years and have enjoyed life and don't want to give it up at all.
And they fight and fight and fight.
And they actually overcome very critical illnesses.
So it just depends on the individual circumstance.
I don't think we can assess a specific age or answer that question.
Of those people who meet up with a life-challenging disease or condition, of those who have an incredibly strong will to live and beat their disease, as opposed to those who just give up and allow it to consume them and say goodbye mentally, how much difference in cure rate is there?
I have seen people recover from illnesses that I did not think they had much chance.
And yet they overcame it.
And I think it was due to a combination of their will to live, the prayers and well-wishes of many people around them, a number of circumstances that are above and beyond.
I don't know if I want to go into those right now, but I do believe that when people pray or when they pray for someone else's health, I agree with you, it works.
They're putting this very powerful energy into the world, this healing energy, that actually helps.
I do believe that, and I believe it's been documented.
In the What Bleep Do You Know movie that came out recently, they showed a molecular structure, spectrographic analysis of water that was prayed over by Buddhist monks, I believe.
And then they had this water that was also very ugly words of anger were said over, and it had a very ugly structure.
So I think we actually have physical documentation that by putting this type of positive healing energy into the world, you can actually affect change in the world.
You can create that.
So from that point of view, I do think that well-wishes and prayer can help in the healing process.
And when he's talking about issues outside of what's our reality and can be demonstrated scientifically, I think scientists, as a rule, are a group that gravitates towards what is in the here and now.
And anything that they cannot demonstrate with an experiment or in the laboratory bench or things like that, they just tend to discount as not being possible.
It's not true.
So perhaps they might want to give an answer, a more direct answer of no, it's not possible.
So when you get in, I would imagine you've had some lively conversations with other physicians, probably through medical school and all your life, I would guess, huh?
Well, I think, once again, if we were to live a life like we're living today and not anything else change, we have the same type of reality, yes, it would get boring.
But I think that part of the nanotechnology revolution will also bring a revolution in the ability to experience reality.
And things like virtual reality, real virtual reality, will enhance our quality of life so much.
With nanobots, these are the nanobiotic robots that will be circulating throughout our brain, expanding human consciousness and intelligence.
I mean, we potentially will be so much more intelligent than we are now, able to think so much more quickly and assimilate so much more information that I don't think we will get bored in the future.
So instead of television programs, we might choose to have the real experience, to in some way live the life of somebody who's led a very exciting life.
My guest, a well-credentialed physician, Dr. Terry Grossman, and he's telling us that we're on Bridge 1 right now.
Right now, that means decades of extra life if you want to go on the regimen.
Bridge two is just ahead, and it's going to mean a lot more life than Bridge three.
Well, seven hundred-year-old human beings.
Seven hundred years.
Eight hundred, nine hundred, a thousand, fifteen hundred years.
It may only depend on whether or not you have an accident.
We're going to certainly become a very polite, careful society, aren't we, under those conditions?
More in a moment.
If life continued virtually indefinitely, which is what would be the case with Level 3, as is being described this morning by Dr. Grossman, that would bring on many changes, as the MASH theme song would reflect.
Remember that?
Suicide brings on many changes.
Well, so does living indefinitely, many changes.
And one of them would be overpopulation.
We would have, well, I can imagine a world, for example, where a young mother, I guess they'd all be young, holding a baby would be regarded as a selfish, life-worth-sucking person who's just sucking the life out of the rest of the world because there are already too many people here.
Because what we're seeing in the first world economies, in the first world countries today, in many parts of the world, like in Europe and in Japan, we've already achieved zero population growth and even negative population growth.
So I think with increased technology and increased wealth, that won't be an issue.
As technology spreads and people live longer, they actually tend to have smaller families.
Well, you know, the motivation for large families in the undeveloped world really is twofold.
Firstly, it relates to a lot of the loss of children early in life.
And in fact, I've heard that in a lot of the undeveloped world, mothers don't bond that closely to their children until they reach about three or four years of age, because so many of them die before reaching that age.
So part of it is because so many children die.
And another reason is in the undeveloped world, there is no social security.
There's no safety net for people should they be fortunate enough to live into old age.
So they need a large number of children, at least a few that survive into adulthood, to take care of them.
Those issues do not exist in the developed world where there's very little, very few pregnancies, term pregnancies don't end in a healthy child, and we do have a safety net in terms of Social Security.
Well, wouldn't there have to be some sort of control implemented?
I mean, good Lord, if people were living to be 700 years old, the changes would Social Security system goodbye.
I mean, we're worried about it today.
That would do the trick entirely.
And I guess you would envision a world in which people were productive through 700 years, where they were working and building up gigantic bank accounts.
Yeah, I think that things have to change from that point of view.
If we're talking about a life expectancy of 200 years, then retirement at 62 is not realistic anymore.
We can't anticipate that other people are going to provide 138 years of Social Security for someone.
So with these additional years of life, come additional responsibilities, too.
But I don't think that people will really need to work as much because we need to take into account the fact that this longer lifespan isn't the only change that's going to take place.
And in fact, the same forces and the same technologies that allow for this radical extension of human life will bring tremendously positive additional benefits.
And chief among those is the low cost of producing goods that nanotechnology will bring about.
We haven't even begun to talk about what nanotechnology is, but nanotechnology just has the ability to drive down the price of goods and services to a negligible amount.
And just one technological advance that's being discussed is there is a nanotechnological solar panel that, if it were implemented, it's only a few molecules thick, very, very expensive, almost a spray-on type of device, that was able to convert solar energy into usable energy.
And they've calculated that if we were able to harness 0.07% of the solar energy, we would be able to meet the entire energy needs of the world with a population of almost 10 billion by the year, say, 2030.
So, you know, this is the type of technology that we anticipate coming along at the same time.
The nanotechnology that allow us to live longer will also bring these engineering marvels.
Are you aware of any studies, Doctor, that have looked at the world's environment and the number of people in the world and concluded what would be a scientifically appropriate number of people for the planet to comfortably support?
Yes, I have, but I find the same type of thinking applies to those projections as applied to what I've referred to again and again, which is they're not taking into account the fact that the new technologies will enable us to clean up the environment more effectively, that the new technologies will allow us to grow our foods without the use of so many pesticides, et cetera.
So we won't be polluting as much.
If we had these solar panels in place, we wouldn't be burning any more coal.
We wouldn't be creating the pollution.
We wouldn't be having cars that have these type of exhausts.
So it wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem in the first place.
And in fact, Eric Dreckler, who was the originator of the term nanotechnology and first advocated these ideas in his book Engines of Creation, Eric Dreckler's chief concern has been harnessing this technology so that it is used for good because it also has incredibly great destructive power.
I might as well extend this then into another question.
Grey goo aside for a moment, we actually now have the ability to effectively eliminate our presence on the planet.
Now, we could do that with a full-on nuclear exchange.
There'd be no living things left.
So really, it's a very good question to ask you.
I mean, all these wonderful medical advances that you see coming in bridges ahead, and then wondering about whether, you know, as we make all these advances, equal dangers are going to come with each wonderful new advance, equal greater dangers.
And we already have great enough danger we could eliminate ourselves.
So do you think we'll actually get there safely?
You're an optimist, so you probably do.
Or do you think there's a great chance that we will torch ourselves?
I am an optimist, and I do think that we will survive this.
But I also agree that we will need to be very, very cautious and make sure that these technologies have built-in safety valves so that they're not allowed to fall into the wrong hands, or if they do fall into the wrong hands, that we will have effective antidotes.
Well, when you look around the world today and you look at this terrorism thing and, you know, they're trying to get their hands on a nuke and, oh, geez, Muller or something just gave Osama bin Laden permission to use nukes religiously.
You know, it was okay to kill millions of Americans.
It's a pretty dangerous world, all in all, out there right now.
And looking at current world trends, conditions, and all of history, I wonder how you can be that optimistic.
And this live cell therapy is done at some of the health spas in Switzerland, and I know people have gone over for these therapies and reported good results.
There are no such spas like that, to my knowledge, in the United States, but I have been to medical conferences where these live cell injections are for sale.
I have not utilized them, and I don't know any doctors that do utilize them, but I know that they are available in the United States.
Well, there's a double-edged sword in the United States.
With the recent Viox scandal, we're seeing that it's very, very difficult.
You know, on the one hand, we want to have access to medications, the latest medications, as soon as possible.
But on the other hand, we don't get the evidence that they're safe sometimes for several years afterwards, and then this leads to massive lawsuits.
So it really is a difficult quandary that both the drug development companies find themselves in, and we as patients find ourselves in, that we want these therapies, but we want them to be safe.
If a physician was on national radio or television and asked that question, would any physician be poorly advised to answer, oh, we're way too cautious?
I think there would be many of my colleagues that would feel that we are being too cautious, that we should speed drugs up.
And from that point of view, the more serious the disease, the less caution we should have, let's say.
So for instance, if there were a drug that was developed for a currently incurable disease, so say, for instance, like ALS, which currently doesn't really have anything that has much value, if someone came up with a drug company, came up with a drug that really seemed to help it, I think it should be allowed through the pipeline more quickly because there's nothing else that's available and disease is so difficult to treat.
But if we're talking about something that affects tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people, like aches and pains and arthritis, then that drug needs to have a much higher margin of safety in order to be applied to so many more people when there are other safer drugs available.
So I think we actually need to take it on an individual drug basis.
But can't we assume, Doctor, that if a real bullet comes along, a real magic bullet for whatever, oh my God, not only is it going to be not available here for quite a while, but those who travel elsewhere to get it are going to be paying incredible prices because, well, heck, that's the way the market works.
With nanotechnology, I think the price of goods and services will become inexpensive for everyone.
And that's really the wonderful part of nanotechnology, is it will be possible to create our clothing and our food for a fraction of its current price so that the basic needs of everyone, not just in the United States but around the world, will be able to be met.
In the beginning and stages, it's probably likely that these cutting-edge therapies will be more expensive and only available to a few people that can afford them.
Well, I mean, how do you put a price on 100 years?
If you can get another 100 years of life, why the people are going to find the money from somewhere, aren't they?
And so you can almost assume that would be the biggest business in the world keeping people alive longer, wouldn't it?
For a while.
Biggest business in the world.
More billions than the car companies and more billions than everything you can think of because what would somebody pay for a year, five years, ten years, a hundred years?
How much would you pay for a hundred years?
There's the answer you'd give right now, and then there's the honest answer when you get to be 99.
Right?
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Well, I think it's time to get ready To realize just what I have found I have been on the care of what I am It's all clear to me now I have been on the
care of what I am You get a shiver in the dark, it's waiting in the pop me with it, you're stopping your hoof, everything, double ball right,
Thank you.
Coming in out of the rain, they hear the jabs go down.
Competition in other places.
But the horns, they're blowing that sound.
Way on down south.
Way on down south, London town.
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Indeed, I've asked some, I think, pretty hard questions and received some very straightforward answers from Dr. Terry Grossman.
He's longevity expert.
Bridge 1, we're on that trunk now.
Bridge 2 and Bridge 3 lay ahead.
When we get there, human beings may well live to be as long as they want to live.
Virtual immortality.
And of course, by then, many things may be discovered.
To imagine all of this is right in front of us, not as science fiction, but as science fact, is as incredible as any space alien adventure you could think of.
I mean, it really is.
In the real world, here it is right in front of us.
The implications of it are staggering and amazing.
And I wonder how it will change human thought about almost everything.
The answer is it will change thought about almost everything, right?
There may be one area where Dr. Grossman is just simply too optimistic from my point of view, or maybe I just can't see it.
But he seems to lay out this rosy future where life extension will be plentiful and cheap, and life support will be easy.
Sort of like the Star Trek thing where you order up a meal and it just appears, that kind of thing, and where nanotechnology manufactures things for us on request, and everybody has the latest three-dimensional television or whatever because they're turned out.
It's sort of an idyllic world.
But Chuck from El Paso, Texas fast blasts me this, Doctor.
He says, do you really believe drug companies today would release developed cures for illnesses and cut away their profits from drugs and just treat the symptoms now anyway, and they make lots of money?
Well, you know what?
I could answer that for you, doctor.
The answer is, well, no.
I think the drug companies would switch to charging so much for the stuff you're talking about that they wouldn't need to worry about the rest of the disease and all that.
They'd be making just untold profits.
They might even be the profit center of the entire world.
So I'm not as optimistic as you, doctor, that it'll all somehow be plentiful and free to the masses.
I don't doubt where you're going with the technology, but I think, you know, the rich will get it and the poor probably won't.
Well, that may be the case initially, but I think ultimately the price will come down.
And I think that drug companies, if there are some, and I know they are working on these type of products, they will make them available as soon as they can.
In both of the books that I wrote, The Baby Women's Guide to Living Forever, I initially espoused this theory that aging can be regarded as a disease, and then followed up with it in our latest book that I wrote with Ray Kurzweil, Fantastic Voyage, Live Long Enough to Live Forever.
And we have quite a bit of information about these, if I can mention a website.
My question was, you go to him for anti-aging therapy?
unidentified
Yes, I do in a way.
Okay.
I had a heart attack a while back, and I found out about some of the products and services that he has, and I took up a program that's called ATAC Program.
What he's referring to, Art, is he is a member of the federally funded TACT Trial, T-A-C-T, the trial to assess chelation therapy.
We're one of the clinical investigating centers for participating in this double-blind placebo-controlled study of chelation therapy, and he's one of the patients.
So since it's a double-blind study, neither he as patient nor I as physician knows what he's getting.
Let me take a side trip very quickly and ask you about the placebo effect.
Now, I know the way you think about certain things, so this should be an interesting area to interrogate you in.
How strong is the placebo effect?
How strong would it be for somebody like the man who just called to be told by a doctor like yourself that you're giving him the very latest in whatever, and by God, it's going to cure.
You're sure it's going to cure what he has, but there's sugar pills.
How big an effect is that?
In other words, his own brain would begin to turn and think that it's going to be cured, and so in fact it would happen.
It's a very powerful effect, but there are caveats about the placebo effect.
And the most important caveat is they don't last forever.
And that's how you usually can tell if someone, and how the patient can tell they're getting a placebo, is the effect, the patient wants to get better, the doctor says you're going to get better.
So this placebo effect takes hold, the patient feels better, has improvement, but it doesn't last forever.
After a period of weeks or a few months at most, the disease rears its head again, and they can't fool themselves any longer.
So there is a placebo effect, but it's not a permanent effect, except in very rare cases where people will be cured by a placebo for a chronic illness.
Well, I talked in the Fantastic Voyage book, we have a chapter on genomics therapy.
And I tell an anecdote about the 104-year-old grandmother who attributes her perfect health and longevity to smoking two packs a day and having a jelly donut for breakfast.
So, in that case, it clearly doesn't relate to her lifestyle at all, and in fact, it relates to her incredibly wonderful genetic structure.
So, the gentleman's father, I believe, father, grandfather, who lived to be 78 despite all these adverse lifestyle choices, clearly began life with extremely good genes.
And if he hadn't drunk so heavily and smoked so much, then I doubt that he would have died at 78, and he'd probably still be going strong for many years beyond that.
And that also explains the counterside, why someone else who has other genes will make those lifestyle choices and then suffer a heart attack at a much younger age or develop cirrhosis of the liver, et cetera.
I've been trying to sort of pouch together my own version of a longevity program now for some time, but I feel that I'm subverting my efforts with the cigarettes.
And I've been trying for two years to quit smoking.
So at this point, what I'd really like to do is better understand the physiology of nicotine addiction.
And I've gotten two explanations.
One being that what happens with a nicotine addiction is that the nicotine molecule binds to the acetylcholine receptors on the cell, inducing the cell to produce more receptors.
And then when the nicotine is withdrawn, the cell is flooded with acetylcholine, causing the withdrawal symptoms.
The other explanation I've gotten is that for some reason or other that I don't understand, dopamine levels go down when nicotine is withdrawn.
And so what I was thinking was if I could determine what the actual mechanics are that are involved in the withdrawals that I have when I try to quit smoking, maybe I could find a supplement that would either maybe block acetylcholine, boost dopamine, something like that.
And I'm wondering if the doctor has any advice for that.
Yeah, the neurotransmitters involved in addiction chiefly involve the dopamine receptors.
And some people have a certain genetic variant of dopamine, and it makes it very, very difficult for them to quit certain addictive behaviors like smoking.
And by replenishing the precursors to dopamine, they can sometimes find it much easier to no longer engage in something as unhealthy as smoking.
I find that the majority of patients, as a conventional doctor, before I started to do longevity medicine and the type of medicine I've been practicing for the past 10 years in my clinic, my success rate in helping patients quit smoking was much lower.
And it's increased dramatically.
And it's well over 50% now, maybe even 75%.
So I think that it is very, very helpful.
And the majority of patients can quit smoking successfully.
Removes the desire so that the chemicals in the brain that require this repeat stimulation of the dopamine receptors, which creates the addiction, they no longer need the nicotine in order to.
I was diagnosed with migraine headaches at the beginning.
It wasn't that, Then they diagnosed me with pseudotumor cerebri.
What I really had was an AV malformation that led to aneurysm.
So I went like this for about a little over a year.
Now, it affected my optical nerve.
With this stem cells, is there something where they would do like an injection to the optical nerve to help it regrow so I might be able to get my eyesight back?
Well, ultimately, yes, but at this stage of our current technology, I'm not sure without seeing more of the exact medical history and what precise pathology exists.
But if a person wants to indulge that sort of thing now, they've got to go to Switzerland or some other country where they're doing that sort of thing.
You know, it's amazing to me that they are elsewhere.
Anyway, your books, Baby Boomer's Guide to Living Forever, Fantastic Voyage, the Science Behind Radical Life Extension, both I would take it available on Amazon.com, hopefully.