14
Biomedicine, nanotechnology and other strategies
Michael West, president of Advanced Cell Technology and 
one of the founding fathers of modern stem cell research 
has written Therapeutic Cloning. It gives us an exciting 
insight not only into the scientific background, but also into 
his very personal experiences and hopes in relation to the con-
quest of death.
While stem cell research is still an immensely dynamic field, 
we have recently seen the emergence of another exciting area of 
potential anti-aging treatments: Nanomedicine  the science 
of creating medical devices through nanoscale and eventually 
molecular manufacturing  has received intense media scrutiny 
and generous public funding in the US and Europe. Robert A. 
Freitas, a true pioneer in this area, describes how tiny machines 
could be effective in the conquest of death. As a special bonus, 
a second part of this chapter, including numerous illustrations, 
is published online - http://imminst.org/book1.
Once  inspired  to  consider  molecular-sized  machines,  we 
are  not  limited  to  healing  and  repairing  our  aging  bodies: 
Ray  Kurzweil,  well  known  futurist  and  the  recipient  of 
the 1999 US National Medal of Technology introduces us 
to  Human Body Version 2.0, where advanced technol-
ogy  constructs  and  defines  the  very  substance  that  we  are 
made of.
This introduces a second vision of immortality, one that 
ventures  beyond  biology.  Dr.  William  Sims  Bainbridge, 
Deputy  Director  for  the  Division  of  Information  and 
Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation, con-
siders  how  digital  information  about  personality,  feelings, 
likes and dislikes can be recorded. By archiving the unique-
ness of a person, we might achieve some Progress toward 
Cyberimmortality. But can we be more ambitious? Will we 
one day be able to copy our selves onto a computer?
Will Robots Inherit the Earth? asks Professor Marvin 
Minsky,  who  in  1959  co-founded  what  became  the  MIT