A FRENCH ANTI-AGING BOOK
Pierre Boutron has written a book on fighting aging, titled Arrêtons de vieillir, which could be translated be "Let us stop aging" or "Stop aging". Its references are " Pierre Boutron, Arrêtons de Vieillir, Thierry Souccar Editions, 2007 ". In France, it can be found or ordered in all the book shops. From United States, it can be ordered by internet, for instance by amazon.fr , where it has five stars . If it will be possible, this book may soon be translated into English. Boutron used and cites many original scientific articles.
He first describes the main known mechanisms of aging, such as aging due to free radicals, glycation, shortening of telomeres, to the drift of hormones concentrations, of calcification, of methylation, to the drift of the reading of genes be alternative splicing etc... Then the effects of anti-aging drugs on the lifespan of animals, on the number of doublings of normal human cells in culture, on health, and their possible side effects are reviewed.
In another part, systematic quantitative comparisons between diets and supplementations are done. Boutron concludes that the best diets for different anti-aging drugs are incompatible between each other and that the best dosages of supplements, though moderates, are better than what one can find with diets. So by going against nature one can hope to overcome one's natural lifespan limits and to live longer than Jeanne Calment, the French dean of the humanity who lived 122 years.
This is in opposition to the widespread opinion spread by deathists according to which one cannot extend lifespan more than by just eating many fruits and vegetables and by having a good ratio omega-3/omega-6.
Boutron suggests future research for extended lifespan much more than by supplementation, possibly indefinitely, for example by forcing our cells to produce telomerase, by genetic modifications using as models immortal cancerous cells, species with imperceptible aging, by using the methods of putting back the aging clocks to zero during sexual reproduction. In the last part, he justifies wanting to live indefinitely : to be immortal, by confronting the opinions of the immortalists and of the deathists.
Due to the lack of space, human cryopreservation is mentionned in only three pages. Mentionning the last experiments of Fahy and Wowk, Boutron concludes that if the necessary experiments are done with enough means, one could soon be able to cryopreserve human beings without damage." The book has been in French book shops since the beginning of this year. It is a "true" book in that he did not to pay for its publication. It is in French, but the editor will try this year to find another editor for its translation into English.
MEET PIERRE BOUTRON
Born in Tulle in Southwest France in 1938, from 1940 Pierre Boutron spent his childhood in Gap in the Southern French Alps. He came to Paris for his studies where he was a student of the very well known Ecole Polytechnique.
Then, as he enjoys skiing and the mountains, he came to Grenoble, the main city of the Northern French Alps. In 1964 he entered the CNRS to do scientific research. He first did research in magnetism, where he defended his thesis in 1969. In 1966, he bought by chance the French translation of the book by Robert Ettinger "The Prospect Of Immortality".
When, as a small child he was told that everyone will die, this revolted him so much that he didn't want to grow up, preferring to stay at the beginning of life. Therefore, in 1975 he published his first book on immortality called " Le Virus de Jouvence" (The Youth Virus) at the Pensée Universelle. This book was published at his expense, and unfortunately, there remain samples only at his home.
In 1975, he changed his research from magnetism to cryobiology, because he was bored with magnetism, and he was more interested in biology and also because he wanted to contribute to research to be able to cryopreserve human beings without damage.
He studied how to impede as much as possible ice crystallization by researching most efficient possible cryoprotectants, and how to obtain a wholly amorphous state (no ice present) at very low temperatures at the lowest possible solutes concentrations and cooling and warming rates for solutes of very low toxicity. Red blood cells where used as a model for comparing survival after cryopreservation and the glass-forming tendency of his solutions.
Most of his findings have been published in the journal Cryobiology, and a few in Cryo-Letters. The main application of his research was the cryopreservation of human embryos with 1,2-propanediol. Many children are born from embryos cryopreserved with this coumpound. His researches are used for humans cryopreservation, but at the very beginning rather than at the end of life !
He continued to do research in cryobiology till 2003, voluntarily during the last years while already retired. He has been interviewed several times on television and in various journals. In 1994 he received a prize from the French "Académie des Sciences" for his research in cryobiology. From 2003 to 2006 he wrote his book Arrêtons de vieillir.