About this item
A mind-blowing journey to the very edge of science.. Caro Soames-Watkins, a talented neurosurgeon whose career has been upended by controversy, is jobless, broke, and the sole supporter of her sister, a single mother with a severely disabled child.. When she receives a strange job offer from Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sam Watkins, a great uncle she barely knows, desperation forces her to take it in spite of serious suspicions.. Watkins has built a mysterious medical facility in the Caribbean to conduct research into the nature of consciousness, reality, and life after death. Helped in his mission by his old friend, eminent physicist George Weigert, and young tech entrepreneur Julian Dey, Sam has gone far beyond curing the body to develop a technology that could solve the riddle of mortality.
About the Author
Robert Lanza is an American scientist and author whose research spans the range of natural science, from biology to theoretical physics. TIME magazine recognized him as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World," and Prospect magazine named him one of the Top 50 "World Thinkers." He has hundreds of scientific publications and over 30 books, including definitive references in the fields of stem cells, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. He is a former Fulbright Scholar, and studied with polio-pioneer Jonas Salk and Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman (known for his work on the biological basis of consciousness) and Rodney Porter. He also worked closely (and co-authored papers in Science on self-awareness and symbolic communication) with noted Harvard psychologist BF Skinner. Dr. Lanza received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a University Scholar and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. Lanza was part of the team that cloned the world's first human embryo, the first endangered species, and published the first-ever reports of pluripotent stem cell use in humans.Lanza and his colleagues were also the first to demonstrate that nuclear transplantation could be used to reverse the aging process and to generate immune-compatible tissues, including the first organ tissue-engineered from cloned cells. One of his early achievements was his demonstration that techniques used in preimplantation genetic diagnosis could be used to generate human embryonic stem cells without embryonic destruction. He and colleagues have also succeeded in differentiating human pluripotent stem cells into retinal cells, and has shown that they provide long-term benefit in animal models of vision loss. Using this technology some forms of blindness may be curable, including macular degeneration and Stargardt disease, a currently untreatable form eye disease that causes blindness in teenagers and young adults. Lanza's company received FDA approval to carry out clinical trials in the US using them to treat degenerative eye diseases, as well approval for the first human pluripotent stem cell trial in Europe. The first patients reported improved vision in the eyes treated with the cells, which The Guardian said "represents a huge scientific achievement." Dr. Lanza and his colleagues published the first-ever report of human pluripotent stem cells transplanted into human patients. After surgery, evidence confirmed cells had attached and continued to persist during the study. There were no signs of tumorigenicity or rejection. The patients who received the stem cell transplants say their lives have been transformed by the experimental procedure--they report that they can use their computers, thread a needle, or even go to the mall or airport on their own. Lanza has also been a major player in the scientific revolution that has led to the documentation that nuclear transfer/transcript
