The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health
Read The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health Online
Authors: David B. Agus
More praise for
The Lucky Years
“Dr. Agus describes how a series of scientific breakthroughs enables everyone to lengthen and improve their lives—a future in which our body’s natural mechanisms can be enlisted to fight disease and our genes can be edited to eliminate inherited ones. It is an inspiring vision.”
—Larry Ellison, cofounder and executive chairman, Oracle Corporation
“
The Lucky Years
is a steady dose of actionable knowledge about the one thing relatable to everyone: life. It’s the doctor-patient relationship we all want and deserve. Dr. Agus is a trusted voice in a field of uncertainty.”
—Ashton Kutcher
“It sometimes takes a genius to know the difference between what’s good and bad for us amid all the noise in health circles. Thanks, David Agus, for being that genius.”
—Michael Dell, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, Dell, Inc.
“
The Lucky Years
inspires you to live a more healthful and meaningful life and provides practical and hopeful guidance for the path ahead. Dr. Agus will show you what it truly means to enjoy the lucky years.”
—Dov Seidman, author of
How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything
“Dr. Agus presents a provocative, highly informative way of understanding revolutions in health and health care today that will change the quality of our lives.”
—Murray Gell-Mann, PhD, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1969, and distinguished fellow and cofounder of the Santa Fe Institute
“Dr. Agus once again gives us a clear path to better health. We are lucky to have such an incredible guide to such a critical subject.”
—Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO,
salesforce.com
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The Cure Is Already Inside You
The Power of Technology to Extend Your Life
How Your Small Data in the Context of Big Data Will Save You
THE DAWN OF PRECISION MEDICINE
How to Manage Its Power and Perils
How to Measure and Interpret Your Own Data
How to Know Whom and What to Trust
A BODY IN MOTION TENDS TO STAY LUCKY
The One Supplement You’re Not Getting Enough Of
Sleep, Sex, Touching, and Tools to Tame Inflammation
NOTE TO READERS
This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative materials on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health, or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it. The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.
To my dear children, Sydney and Miles:
On May 25, 1961, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy proclaimed, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong with the
Apollo 11
crew fought to land the lunar module before it ran out of fuel. Armstrong eventually took that first step on the moon. The average age of the remarkable team at Mission Control in Houston was twenty-six years old.
That means the scientists and engineers in Mission Control were just eighteen years old when Kennedy made his 1961 statement. These teenagers who listened to President Kennedy were the future space program. Similarly, you and your generation are our future in health and medicine. We need you and are depending on you so we can continue the Lucky Years.
And to my partner, best friend, and wife, Amy:
Your love and support inspire me daily. I am so excited and privileged to continue to enjoy the Lucky Years with you . . .
. . . most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.
—Aldous Huxley,
Brave New World
(1932)
Page 3
: Parabiotic mice. Courtesy of author.
Page 7
: Inflection point curve. Courtesy of author.
Page 28
: Photo of Dr. William Coley. Public domain.
Page 31
: Brain scans of tumor shrinking using polio virus. Images courtesy of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University. Used with permission.
Page 33
: Undated photo of Élie Metchnikoff. Wikimedia Commons,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Dr_Metchnikoff_in_his_Laboratory.jpg
.
Page 35
: Caricature of Metchnikoff. Reprinted with permission of the Institut Pasteur—Musée Pasteur.
Page 39
: “End of History” illustration. Courtesy of author.
Page 42
: The Hydra image comes from Wikimedia Commons,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Hydra_magnipapillata.jpg
.
Page 44
: The killifish image comes from Wikimedia Commons,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothobranchius_furzeri#/media/File:Nothobranchius_furzeri_GRZ_thumb
.
Page 46
: Quantification of biological aging graphic. Duke University School and Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. Used with permission.
Page 50
: Tumor sequencing results (lung cancer). Courtesy of Foundation Medicine, Inc.
Page 51
: Paraffin blocks. Courtesy of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), the oldest and largest breast and colorectal cancer research group in the world. See
http://foundation.nsabp.org/media/photos/image006LG.jpg
.
Page 51
: The CT image of the lung is taken from Wikimedia,
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Biopsie_Lunge_Computertomographie_BC.png
.
Page 54
: Tumor sequencing results (bladder cancer). Courtesy of Foundation Medicine, Inc.
Page 68
The photo of the cave, entitled “Lechuguilla Cave Pearlsian Gulf,” comes from Wikipedia and was uploaded by Beyond Science,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lechuguilla_Cave#/media/File:Lechuguilla_Cave_Pearlsian_Gulf.jpg
, accessed August 7, 2015.
Page 72
: Photo of Sir William Osler. Medical archives of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Used with permission.
Page 73
: Caricature of Sir William Osler. Medical archives of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Used with permission.
Page 74
: My Osler residency team. Medical archives of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Used with permission.
Page 96
–100: Examples of the Bills of Mortality. Courtesy of Jay Walker, the Walker Library of the History of Human Imagination. Used with permission.
Page 106
: The illustration of the mitochondria comes from Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mitochondrion_structure.svg
.
Page 110
: The illustration of new reproductive techniques is an adaptation of a similar illustration featured in the article. Courtesy of author.
Page 126
: Chart of life expectancy. Figures based on data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Adapted from the
Wall Street Journal
, March 17, 2015. Courtesy of author.
Pages 130
–132: Charts and Figures from the Task Force Report on Noncommunicable Diseases, copyright 2015 by the Council on Foreign Relations. Reprinted with permission. The data source is Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Global Burden of Disease Study 2013.
Page 161
: Cartoon of Jenner’s inoculations. Public Domain. Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_cow_pock.jpg
.
Page 189
: Physical activity and life expectancy. Data from S. C. Moore et al., “Leisure Time Physical Activity of Moderate to Vigorous Intensity and Mortality: A Large Pooled Cohort Analysis,”
PLOS Medicine
9, no. 11 (2012): E1001335. Graphic courtesy of author and based on similar graphic in paper. National Cancer Institute and the Public Library of Sciences. Used with permission.
Page 191
: Courtesy of Duke Medicine. Originally published in M. W. Dewhirst, et al., “Modulation of Murine Breast Tumor Vascularity, Hypoxia and Chemotherapeutic Response by Exercise,”
JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute
107, no. 5 (2015): djv040 DOI: 10.1093/jnci/djv040.
Page 203
: Illustration by Habib M’henni, via Wikimedia Commons,
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Obstruction_ventilation_apn%C3%A9e_sommeil.svg
.
Page 226
: Photo of the Kouros by Dorli Burge, via Wikimedia Commons,
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Kouros_Real_or_Fake.jpg
.
Page 230
: Photo of me courtesy of Sydney Agus.
Destiny of the Species
Welcome to the Lucky Years
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t.
—William Shakespeare,
The Tempest
, act V, scene I
M
iss Wanda Ruth Lunsford, twenty-six, must have been thinking about her own mortality the day she reported on a stunning experiment.
1
Picture two rats, one old and gray, the other young and vivacious. Now imagine joining them surgically at their sides by peeling away a thin layer of skin and neatly stitching the exposed surfaces together. Through this Siamese-twin-like junction, the rodents are able to share their circulation, pumping each other’s blood and exchanging bodily fluids. Miss Lunsford and her colleagues wanted to see what would happen. Among the rats that survived the unnatural union, the geriatric ones physically turned into their younger counterparts, as if they’d tapped the fountain of youth. The elder rats gained shinier, more colorful fur and clearer eyes, taking on the general appearance of the younger rats hitched to their sides. A four-hundred-day-old rat, more or less akin to a middle-aged man, lived nearly as long as the spry counterpart to which he was attached.