WHY WE DIE
by Venki Ramakrishnan
(Hodder Press, $39.99)
“If we live to be 120 or 150 years old, we will fret about why we can’t live to 300.
‘Who wants to live forever?” we bravely tell ourselves. But if we were offered a pill that promised another 10 or 20 years of life, how many of us would really say no?
For better or worse, that’s not a decision you’re likely to face soon. Nobel Prize-winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan has surveyed the many and varied efforts to extend the human lifespan and – to jump to his conclusion – decided it will be another decade or two before we know whether current anti-ageing research is likely
