by J. R. McLeay
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My Author Journey
The idea for this book came to me on a business trip from New York to Los Angeles. I was scanning the in-flight magazine and came across an article written by a biologist. He was discussing the life cycle differences of different species and made a comment that caught my attention. He theorized that nature created the aging mechanism so that parents would ‘get out of the way’ of their offspring when the parents were no longer needed.
This struck a chord with me, perhaps because my job at the time involved analyzing the root cause of unexplained phenomena. Previously, I’d had good success applying my process to solving health problems that doctors could not cure. This got me thinking about the ultimate ‘health’ problem: why we age and why we die. What was the underlying mechanism behind the aging process, and could it ever be stopped or reversed?
I took pen in hand and began stair-stepping the cause(s) of death. Why do we die? The normal cause of death is a failure of one or more essential organs. Why do our organs fail? Our cells deteriorate and lose their ability to replicate healthy new cells over time. Why do our cells gradually lose their ability to replicate? I continued this line of inquiry until I reached an impassable void: the ‘instruction’ for aging is ultimately embedded in our DNA, which we cannot change.
But this surfaced another conundrum. Why do youngsters, who are still growing, show no sign of aging, whereas even teenagers’ body functions begin to deteriorate shortly after puberty? (Google loss of hearing frequencies by age, for instance.) I initiated an online search using the terms: aging, longevity, juvenile, hormones. To my amazement, the first search result that came up was a study by two biologists who discovered a species of Monarch butterflies that developed a way to live six times as long by suspending their juvenile development. The biologists were able to reproduce the same effect in other butterfly species by surgically removing a gland equivalent to the human pituitary.
I embarked on an intensive research effort to uncover everything I could on this subject. The more I studied and searched, the more the pieces aligned. Across virtually every species in nature, there is a direct and close correlation between an organism’s age of maturity and its longevity. The longer it takes for each species to develop to sexual maturity, the longer it lives. But correlation does not mean causation. The more revealing research involved studies where biologists, like the Monarch butterfly biologists, directly manipulated hormone or gene expression to delay aging and death.
Could it be this simple? Could life be extended sixfold—tenfold—or indefinitely—simply by artificially delaying or suspending the maturation process? All the studies and research in this fascinating field of biogerontology focused on basic life forms such as insects, worms, and rats. Nothing had ever been tested with higher life forms such as primates. Were we on the cusp of a dramatic new breakthrough where researchers might find the holy grail of eternal youth and life? Four years after I began my research, three American scientists won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology by decoding the genetic and chemical code underlying the process of cellular senescence.
I believe we are approaching ‘critical mass’ in the investigation of aging, and that sometime within this century researchers will discover a way to apply these learnings to dramatically slow, or even arrest, the natural aging process in humans. Whether everyone—or anyone—will choose to embrace the new technology and thereby change the fundamental rules that nature, or God, has laid down for us will be a deeply personal decision.
For my part, continued research on this subject has become a full-time pursuit, and my future novels will explore the next logical steps in this journey. As with The Cicada Prophecy, my books will be a synthesis of science and fiction, exploring the scenarios by which mankind might respond and adapt to a radically changed world. If you’d like to be a beta reader for my new releases, drop me a line at [email protected] and I’ll add you to my (non-spam) mailing list. I look forward to sharing my author journey with you.
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Acknowledgments
The initial germ for this novel was planted more than thirty years ago when my best friend in college threw down the gauntlet with his graduation gift to me, a book titled ‘Conquest of Death’. This book suggested that within our lifetimes, advances in biology and medicine would find a way to reverse the aging process and ultimately ‘conquer death’. At the time it seemed pretty far-fetched, but tremendous strides in biochemistry have been made in recent years, and we are now beginning to understand the mechanism of aging at the molecular level and seeing the potential to arrest the cause of life-threatening diseases and perhaps aging itself.
To Richard Ross, who suggested with youthful bullishness ‘if anyone can do it, you can’—you are the inspiration for the protagonist in this story, and my role model for achieving ethical excellence in everything we do.
The medical science underlying the central hypothesis in this book, that hormones activated when we pass through puberty send chemical signals which slow and ultimately restrict the cellular replication process that keeps our tissues healthy, is a synthesis of many theories previously developed in this area of study. In this respect, I have stood on the shoulders of giants trying to gain new insights into the potential applications and learnings from the field of biogerontology. Most notable of course is the work of Charles Darwin, whose seminal study ‘On the Origin of Species’ and his development of the theory of evolution is the foundation upon which all of modern biology rests; but also George C. Williams, whose book ‘Sex and Evolution’ revealed the intrinsic trade-off between traits that help our survival in early life and diminish our survival in later life.
My interest in this subject—and the specific challenge of investigating why organisms die—was stoked by my professional experience as a root cause facilitator in industry. One propitious day, a particular client, Scott Boggs, challenged me to apply my process to a difficult health problem, and thus began my passionate pursuit of ever-widening and more complex investigations of health issues heretofore unsolved. Eventually this led to the ultimate biomedical conundrum: why do we age and die? Of course, this story presents only one hypothesis, albeit one grounded in real medical science and much empirical study, but this hypothesis could not have been formulated without the extensive training and fundamental root cause analysis experience I received during my many years as a consultant and associate with Kepner-Tregoe.
I would also like to thank those who reviewed my initial manuscript and provided invaluable feedback. Graciela Barrera graciously offered to read my first draft (which was all the more challenging during her first pregnancy), and gave me positive feedback to continue developing my story. Kelly Kreth gave critical and constructive feedback on my writing style, with many suggestions for story improvement and potential titles. And of course Mom, Dad, and my son Britton gave supportive feedback that this story had potential—thanks for your continued encouragement. Finally, special thanks to Dr. Silvio Inzucchi, Professor of Medicine at Yale University, my providential seatmate on the Acela Express between Washington DC and New York City, who generously offered his special expertise on the subject of endocrinology and who edited my story notes concerning the hypophysectomy surgical procedure.
This book is dedicated to those technicians and scientists on the leading edge of biogerontology research, whose exciting and em
erging discoveries in this field are driving the race to solving mankind’s greatest medical quest—the conquest of death in our lifetime.