Life, the Universe, and Everything

Book review: The Death of Cancer: After Fifty Years on the Front Lines of Medicine, a Pioneering Oncologist Reveals Why the War on Cancer Is Winnable–and How We Can Get There, by Vincent T. DeVita, and Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn.

In my last review of a medical book, I was disappointed about the lack of explanation as to why medical advances get deployed much too slowly, particularly cancer treatments.

By some strange coincidence, the next medical book I read, published a decade earlier, provides some valuable insights into those problems.

This is a memoir of both luck and skill. DeVita is uniquely qualified to describe the origins of the war on cancer, due to a career that included diagnosing patients, running clinical trials, and serving as director of the National Cancer Institute.

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Super Agers

Book review: Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity, by Eric Topol.

I was somewhat disappointed, partly because the title misled me.

The book is broad and shallow, as if he’s trying to show off how many topics he’s familiar with. Too much of the book consists of long lists of research that Topol finds interesting, but for which I see little connection with aging. He usually doesn’t say enough about the research for me to figure out why I should consider it promising.

He mostly seems to be saying that the number of new research ideas ought to impress us. I care more about the quality of the most promising research than about the quantity of research.

The book is mostly correct and up-to-date, but I’m unclear what kind of reader would get much out of it.

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Book review: The Ageless Brain: How to Sharpen and Protect Your Mind for a Lifetime, by Dale E. Bredesen.

As expected, The Ageless Brain repeats a good deal of information from Bredesen’s prior groundbreaking books about Alzheimer’s. Maybe 10% of the book seemed like ideas that I hadn’t seen elsewhere.

This time, he’s focused a bit more on cognitive decline in people who are young enough to not be at much risk yet for full-fledged Alzheimer’s. But that doesn’t create much of a difference in his advice for brain health.

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I participated in the TRIIM-X trial, a phase 2 test by Intervene Immune, intended to regrow the thymus. Regrowing the thymus likely delays age-related declines in health.

I’m also an investor in Intervene Immune.

Here’s a video presentation of some results of the trial. It confirms the moderately impressive evidence from the original TRIIM trial.

The main ingredients of the treatment are human growth hormone, metformin, and DHEA.

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I’ve been using Modere’s Curb, a supplement intended to produce healthy GLP-1 levels.

I started taking it in late October, hoping to lose enough weight (3 to 5 pounds?) that I could stop taking Rauwolfia to handle my blood pressure.

My weight dropped 2 pounds in late November, to 149. Since then my weight has been more stable than before. Any remaining trend has been too small to measure. I suspect that the timing of my weight loss is due to getting more exercise than usual the last week in November.

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The standout announcement from the recent Foresight Vision Weekend came from Openwater, who presented a novel cancer treatment.

I’ve been a bit slow to write about it, in part because my initial reaction was that it’s too good to be true, and most big claims of medical advances are not true.

TL;DR: They’ve developed a cheap ultrasound device that can selectively kill cancer cells by exploiting their unique resonant frequencies, similar to how an opera singer can shatter a wine glass.

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Book review: Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation, by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber.

Hobart and Huber (HH) claim that bubbles are good.

I conclude that this claim is somewhat true. That’s partly because they redefine the concept of a bubble in ways that help make it true.

Boom is densely packed with relevant information. Alas, it’s not full of connections between the various pieces of information and any important conclusions. Nor does it excel at convincing me that its claims are true.

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Book review: The Cancer Resolution?: Cancer reinterpreted through another lens, by Mark Lintern.

In the grand tradition of outsiders overturning scientific paradigms, this book proposes a bold new theory: cancer isn’t a cellular malfunction, but a fungal invasion.

Lintern spends too many pages railing against the medical establishment, which feels more like ax-grinding than science. I mostly agreed with his conclusions here, but mostly for somewhat different reasons than the ones he provides.

If you can push through this preamble, you’ll find a treasure trove of scientific intrigue.

Lintern’s central claim is that fungal infections, not genetic mutations, are the primary cause of cancer. He dubs this the “Cell Suppression theory,” painting a picture of fungi as cellular puppet masters, manipulating our cells for their own nefarious ends. This part sounds much more like classical science, backed by hundreds of quotes from peer-reviewed literature.

Those quotes provide extensive evidence that Lintern’s theory predicts dozens of cancer features better than do the established theories.

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Book review: Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World, by Nick Bostrom.

Bostrom’s previous book, Superintelligence, triggered expressions of concern. In his latest work, he describes his hopes for the distant future, presumably to limit the risk that fear of AI will lead to a The Butlerian Jihad-like scenario.

While Bostrom is relatively cautious about endorsing specific features of a utopia, he clearly expresses his dissatisfaction with the current state of the world. For instance, in a footnoted rant about preserving nature, he writes:

Imagine that some technologically advanced civilization arrived on Earth … Imagine they said: “The most important thing is to preserve the ecosystem in its natural splendor. In particular, the predator populations must be preserved: the psychopath killers, the fascist goons, the despotic death squads … What a tragedy if this rich natural diversity were replaced with a monoculture of healthy, happy, well-fed people living in peace and harmony.” … this would be appallingly callous.

The book begins as if addressing a broad audience, then drifts into philosophy that seems obscure, leading me to wonder if it’s intended as a parody of aimless academic philosophy.

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