Eternal verities, eternal questions

摘要

It is difficult for us to understand the controversy that was caused early in the twenty-first century by the advent of human immortality. When, in the late 1990s, the Geron Corporation of California and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center announced that they had 'immortalized' human cell cultures, the general public hardly took any notice. But when the Fossel Clinic in Michigan began demonstrating conclusively that ageing cannot only be stopped but actually reversed — when elderly patients were obviously rejuvenated and returned to the physical condition of thirty-year-olds — the groundswell of enthusiasm and controversy began to shake the world.