There are only two phases of life, the phase of growth and development and the phase of ageing and functional decline which is at present untreatable but there is great interest, and considerable investment, in the search for what would have been called an Elixir of Life but is now called Regenerative Medicine
It is important to appreciate just how serious people are about this mission. The key term is Regenerative Medicine and particularly in the USA where big powerful research centres, like the SENS Research Foundation in Mountain View, California, based on their belief that ‘ a world free of age-related disease is possible’ and new companies. The Financial Times (FT) on its front page on the 5th of September 2014 that Arthur Levinson, who developed Genentech, the company that was the first to use the knowledge locked in the human genome to create new drugs, had resigned from the board of Roche, which had bought Genentech. The reason was to devote himself to this mission. The ‘ 64 year old’, as the FT pointed out, who is also chairman of Apple, will head the mission started by Google, also based in Mountain View to extend healthy life. The new company he will lead is called Calico, short for California Life Company, not only has the firepower of Google behind it but will also benefit from a huge investment from another drug giant called Abbvie