The Price of Immortality

In the tradition of Jon Ronson and Tim Wu, an absorbing and revelatory journey intothe American Way of Defying Death . . . As longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people, the quest to take the next stepto live as long as we choosehas spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley. Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal is becoming increasingly credible as the pace of technological progress quickens. It has also empowered a wild-eyed fringe of pseudo-scientists, tech visionaries, scam-artists, and religious fanatics who have given their lives over to the pursuit of immortality. Starting off at the Church of Perpetual Life in Florida and exploring the feuding subcultures around the cryonics industry, Peter Ward immerseshimself into an eccentric world of...