Back from Ukraine

I have recently returned from visiting my wife's family in Ukraine. My wife and son are staying a little while longer.

This was a trip planned a few months ago but the timing has turned out to be rather appropriate, if sad.

My wife's father passed away two weeks ago so the first day we arrived via Kiev, coincided with his funeral. He had been ill for some time so his passing was not a complete surprise although remained a shock as much as the ending of any life of a family member is. I did not attend as I sat with our son, who is just over a month away from his second birthday. Ukrainian funerals, in common with much of the region, seem to be open casket affairs in contrast to the more shielded practices in Britain. It did not seem right to bring a little boy into such proceedings.

We did however all attend the meal afterwards and the numerous older female faces in comparison to a mere handful of older males bore testimony to the appalling male life expectancy in Ukraine (somewhere around 60 compared to 74 for women) . It really was quite sobering to see the reality of this statistic in a cross section of the population attending a funeral of a friend and neighbour who had died in his mid-sixties.

Despite the start to this trip it has not been too sad. Having a toddler in the party doesn't allow too much time for gloom and doom. There is always a cupboard to refill after it has been carefully emptied all over the floor !

The trip has also been a revelation into the world of Ukrainian healthcare. For some while I have suffered from migraine headaches, as far as such things can ever be clearly diagnosed.

Probably with the relative fragility of male life (real or imagined) in their mind my Mother-in-law and her sister persuaded me to to see a specialist doctor on the subject.


I visited a hospital that was as green as a London park. Trees and grass were between each of the twenty or so buildings. The hospital gave off an aura of gentle decay. When we arrived to see the doctor (neurologist or equivalent) it turned out she spoke good English. Her view was that I had a classical migraine but I was "welcome" to a MRI scan. I was luke warm on the prospect but the conversation switched to Russian and the following day I was heading off for the scan.

After a long wait, some confusion and a very modest (by UK standards at least) fee, I was heading into the scan room. My wife had departed to get our son to bed and I was left with my wife's non-English speaking Aunt to explain what type of scan I needed. Somehow the scribbled note from the doctor had gone missing. I was promised a "panic button" for my time in the narrow confines of the MRI tube.

When I did make it into the scan room, concentrating on Russian instructions I only realised I had no panic button once firmly in the tube. Lying flat the plastic roof looked barely an inch or two from my eyes. I closed them and tried to think positive thoughts. That is easier said than done in such circumstances and it gives a brief insight into the possibilities from torture.

The noises of the scan were many from buzzes, beeps, a low hum that got louder to tapping. Sometimes I got the sensation of floating or spinning backwards. I tried to imagine sitting beside a stream or a river before abandoning that route as I then thought about being stuck in the tube with water coming in ! Although completely painless, lying in a confined space with a machine scanning your brain makes you realise how fragile life is. After what felt like an age, but was in fact just 20 minutes, the noises finally stopped and I heard the welcome sound of the door opening. Next I was sliding out and being told to get off the place I had been lying.


It was all over. The scan result was broadly postive. No horrors were found but I do have some modest restriction in blood flow to one part of my brain. It is manageable with drugs but could be the cause of the migraines. The terminology used in the explanation of the scan is highly technical so difficult to translate from the Ukrainian it was written in. I will probably have to end up going to a doctor in the UK but I am not relishing the prospect of another scan !


The next day our young son was found to have a tick in the top of his leg. I have never seen such things, let alone experienced them but they are apparently not so rare in Ukraine. A visit to the hospital where I had been scanned lead to the conclusion that the tick's head had come off so the body would need to be got out by an appropriately skilled doctor. A night time taxi ride to a children's hospital followed. We arrived and the grounds were shrouded in darkness in contrast to the permenantly lit hospitals of Britain. The surgeon was located and after we had pursaded him to at least let my wife stay with our son (he had wanted us both to leave, also in contrast to the UK). Agreement reached, the tick was removed in barely a couple of minutes and we returned back in the same taxi. Our son seemed considerably braver than I had been in all this !

Each interaction with doctors was pleasing although some kind of payment was expected as doctors in Ukraine do not really earn enough to live on.

Most things can be arranged in Ukraine but nearly everything has a price.

That said, Ukraine in the summer is a green and vibrant land with inexpensive and comfortable trains to travel accross it. It's vast farm lands come to life after the bleak winter and the cycle of life rolls on.

A certain mania

Obama-mania reached some parts of London today.

Mania is the right word because it is a form of madness and is based on nothing rational or proven. It is simply based on a feeling and a vague hope.

Even in allegedly serious corporations and firms such as the one I work for, an email was received inviting all those interested to attend the auditorium and watch coverage on TV from 4.45pm GMT. Never mind the credit crunch, never mind work, all were welcome and implicitly encouraged to watch the Obama inauguration. I, for the record, did not go and watch it "live".

We would not do that for a change in our own prime minister so I fail to understand why that is necessary for a change in American president. It is of course political correctness, trend following, jumping on the band wagon or whatever you want to call it.

The ludicrous expectations, it goes without saying, will be disappointed. I am strangely neutral to Obama now certain he will not be as good as people say but not certain he will be as bad as "Obama-cynics" such as myself feared.

As with Blair in 1997, the worst aspect of Obama is not the man himself but rather his ludicrous followers talking as if a new world had arrived. The agenda of some of his backers is to be feared but whether they will prevail remains to be seen. The lesson of Blair is that those cheering loudest today will ultimately be most disappointed while those most cynical today will end up pleasantly surprised. I am sure it will not be an exactly the same but it seems to be the way of things that those who cheer loudest at "new dawns" often go to bed the most disappointed !

So am I simply miserable today ? Not at all. We live, as the cliche goes, in interesting times. Records are constantly being broken, corporations are collapsing daily, jobless totals are soaring, house prices crashing and yet I do not see dispondency.

There is an awakening of something positive and a realisation that the age of unabated consumerism and debt addiction is both over and that it is a good thing too.

The suffering of some people, especially those who were poor to start with, is undoubted. Yet I remain positive that things ultimately will get better. That hope is not based on one man thousands of miles away but on the God-given innate resourcefulness of people everywhere.

In terms of "yes we can" my advise would be not to look at the media-fest played out on every news channel swooning over Obama like lovelorn teenagers. Instead I would look in the mirror. That is where hope and recovery will come from.

Those most effected by Obama-mania are already on the road to taste the bitter fruit of disappointment. For the rest of us, let's just get on real life !

A less than gracious city….. Sometimes

London is, I suspect, typical of any big city in the rough and tumble to be had on its streets.


People at a superficial level have no time for one another and can come across as very rude. Happily in the face of big challenges or emergencies the mythical "blitz spirit" (sometimes an overused phrase) emerges and we all help each other out.


However there are times when I think the rudeness is getting the upper hand and is worse than it used to be. Maybe I am just getting older to think like this!


Here are three recent examples:


1) In suburban London, near to where I live, a middle aged woman found a discarded training shoe on her drive. I was walking past on route to the station and watched as she methodically kicked it down the drive way and into the gutter. There was something mildly shocking about this at that moment. It seemed to sum up a wider social breakdown. While she would no doubt belong to the large group who bemoan the behaviour of "hoodies" and similar, here she was showing no respect for someone else's property. The tale behind how the training shoe had got on her drive way was unknown but it presumably belonged to someone. The priority here was not a lost trainer but the aesthetic integrity of her suburban house. It seems the tyranny of property makeover programmes is now limiting our ability to be good citizens. Twenty years ago or even less I suspect the same woman in the same street would have picked up the trainer and put it on a nearby wall so that if the owner passed by they could see it and collect it. Now the trainer gets kicked in the gutter.



2) Walking through the City, to work, a man in his twenties storms off a double-decker bus. He walks up the road a few paces and gives the driver a "one finger salute". There was apparently some dispute about not letting him off while the bus wasn't at a stop. The bus was sitting in traffic at the time. The rights and wrongs of getting off the bus are unclear to me but the solution to the dispute was rudeness- in this case a rude sign.


3) In a card shop in the City just before Valentines Day. The shop is crammed with people ahead of this rather cheesy commercial fest- albeit one that some of us are obligated on ! The atmosphere is tense as City workers jostle round a dwindling stock of "acceptable cards". A woman calls to her friend, "Why are you standing there ?". Her friend replies "Because I'm getting fed up of people elbowing me in the back everytime they go past". This is in preparation for a celebration of love in London.

I will end this brief series of social observations on a positive note. Walking through a local park, we pass a middle aged couple who have just stumbled across a lost glove. The woman picks it up. The man debates whether to run after a a group of women pushing prams. He decides against it for reasons of embarrassment as there is absolutely nothing to link the glove to the group. His wife suggests leaving it "on top of that red box". The red box in question is actually a special bin for "dog waste". Deciding against this they settle for placing it on top of a wrought iron fence so it can be clearly seen and kept out of the dirt. The effort is more than likely to be futile but it is reassuring that even in London some sense of community remains and not everyone is out only for themselves.

That's January done

Some people just seem to wish their life away.

I was talking with one colleague today who expressed sheer delight that we'd "got through January already". Quite what we were all getting through January to achieve was unclear but there was a reference to "soon be Christmas".

This is partly a joke I assume but there is an element of truth as many people seem to live their lives either "aiming for" the weekend, holidays, Christmas or similar. Whole oceans of time are endured for a short time on islands of apparent celebration.

How sad that whole months of our short lives are just seen as something to be "got through". There must surely be something wrong here ......

This Man thinks we can all live for 1,000 years !!!

Aubrey de Grey- he has a lot of brains as well as beard :-)
(Photo credit-Kevin Perrott )


So, back to the 1,000 year life expectancy question… Good thing or bad thing?

The question was raised when I recently watched an episode of "Time", a series covering a range of issues around that overall subject and presented by the engaging Japanese American Michio Kaku.


This particular episode focused on our own mortality and how this affected our lives. In past ages the rich and famous would sometimes be painted holding a skull to remind them of their own transience and maybe keep their egos in check. These days the approach is a little different- plastic surgery, botox and if this all proves too much- therapy.

This was more philosophical. However, "here comes the science bit", as Jennifer Aniston used to say in shampoo ads. There is apparently no genetic reason why we have to die. Contrary to some earlier theories there is no "program" inside us that says we have to die at 60, 70 or 100. While mice only live a couple of years, parrots can live longer than humans and tortoises can live up to a couple of centuries.

Apart from accidents, war and disease the thing that gets most people in the end is simple "corrosion" or aging. Humans are very good at repairing themselves but this is not effective forever. Hence skin thickens, hair greys, bones thin etc etc.

The "good news" for the future is that need not be inevitable. The "corrosion" is all the effect of free radicals- damaging "bits" that escape from us reducing the effectiveness of our cells, both slowing them down or killing them. The effect of this ranges from the mild (wrinkled skin), the profoundly disabling (Alzheimer's), to the terminal (cancer).

However "a prophet" in the field of studying aging (bio gerontology) is a 43-year old Cambridge scientist called Aubrey de Grey. Mr. de Grey is nothing if unconventional (enormous beard, older wife, fond of a pint) but is also undoubtedly highly intelligent and knowledgeable in his field.

His basic premise is that aging is not inevitable. There is no overriding program that determines we will age and die. Rather there are a range of processes that our bodies suffer that result in corrosion and degeneration. These processes (Mr. de Grey summarises these under 7 distinct problems- see below) could all be either prevented or reversed.

De Grey also feels right is on his side as "aging" broadly kills two thirds of people or 100,000 people a day. So to cure aging would "save" 100,000 people a day.
Of course his theories are not without controversy. While no one alleges de Grey is in this for money, many simply believe that what he suggests cannot be done. All his opponents broadly see aging as bad but inevitable. Others have argued that even if he did succeed de Grey "would surely destroy us in attempting to preserve us" because living for such long periods would undermine what it means to be human.

Not being a scientist it was this argument that had most interest to me. I lack the knowledge to be able to comment on reversing damage to cells but I can take issue with the belief that to be human is to die at 70 or even 100.

I find such a belief patronising and analogous to "well-travelled" middle Englanders who take delight in pronouncing how long is appropriate in a particular holiday destination. Tell one of these "know-it-alls" you are going to Paris and they will say "Oh how lovely. Mind you, you wouldn't want more than a week there. You will have seen everything in a week". ("See everything in Paris in a week " I silently cry incredulously) These people will also advise on 2 week limits for a beach holiday (obviously Robinson Crusoe went wrong here) or a minimum period in relation to more far flung destinations like Australia ("Oh you must go for 3 weeks to make it worth while"). Such statements that come out as ex cathedra pronouncements rather than personal preferences put my back up and I snobbily tell them I once went to Chile for a 4 day visit.

Anyway, to return to life, I find statements that human life is limited to 100 years similar to a suburban philosopher saying "Life as a human being. 70 years is nice but you wouldn't want more than a 100. 110 is too much. Whatever next you'll be spending a fortnight in Rome!"

Aubery de Grey's science may be unproven but if he can do it, I would be up for it. To live 1,000 years would be a gift. Of course it would require flexible attitudes. Assuming you were born a 1,000 years ago you couldn't have got to 500 and say, "I'm afraid I will never be able to get on with anything except the quill pen and the scroll". Equally while you could keep your principles you would have to be tolerant of changing social attitudes. In one lifetime you would deal with the dark ages in your youth, Puritanism, enlightenment, Victorian values to our current relative pool.

Reskilling and education would also be an issue too. If you started as a sword-maker in your 20s, in your 980s you might have to earn your crust in a call centre (ghastly thought!).

All this brings home how mentally programmed we are to dying around "three score years and ten". If we were to live to 1,000 we would want our friends to live for similar lengths (well most of them anyway !) or it would prove difficult to make new batches of friends every 50 years or so.

Maybe the biggest obstacle to a successful 1,000 year life is our attitudes. By our 20s many of us think we know it all. In our current age especially there is a world weary cynicism, "we've seen it all before" attitude. It's not cool to be surprised, even amazed.

Well if Mr. de Grey is right I would like to think I would be happy to learn something completely new on my 383 rd birthday. When we fear age now, we think of decline and illness but if aging could be "cured" we would be as healthy at 650 as at 35.

The only thing that would scare me would be the thought of a few hundred years commuting on the train to Cannon Street Station, London. In fact isn't that a contradiction? If I can "only" hope to live for 70 years shouldn't I be doing something far more interesting as I'm nearly half way through already? Whereas if I was going to live for 1,000 years a mere 40 years on South Eastern trains wouldn't be such a big deal !

Maybe our expectations are too low. We expect our lives to be short (if not "nasty, short and brutish" as Hobbes wrote) so don't make enough effort. Whereas if we had 1000 years, we would surely plan to do something amazing?

Aubrey de Grey has created a vision which may or may not come to being. He married in his twenties a woman who was 20 years old than him. They are still together so maybe he has a vested interest in this theory. He hopes that this generation can "outrun death". By our 50's or 60's the damage to our cells can be reversed to enable us to live to 150. By then science should have advanced further to enable us to reach 300 and so on.

However for many of us maybe the biggest problem is not the coming of death but the loss of dreams and the lack of desire for new thoughts or new insights. If you think you know it all by 25 then of course the prospect of 975 further years may be a little dull. However if your attitude is open and you are interested in life then no period is really too long.

We don't know it all by 25. In fact I am certain I will never know it all. Until my last day, I hope I learn something new every day. For that reason, I would like all the time I can get. Healthy time of course rather than years ill in bed. However as Mr. de Grey's photo shows, no one is yet immune from aging ! So perhaps I had better not count on more than 70 years for now- until some clear evidence to the contrary. In which case time is running out..........


HOW TO CURE AGING !

Below are Aubrey de Grey's 7 steps to curing aging:

1. The problem: Cell loss or atrophy
Mr. de Grey's solution: Develop stem cells to replace lost cells. Or use chemicals that stimulate the division of cells to produce new ones.

2. The problem: Cancer
Mr. de Grey's solution: Aggressive gene therapy will make it impossible for cancer cells to reproduce. Stem-cell therapy will prevent side effects.

3. The problem: Mitochondrial mutations
Mr. de Grey's solution: Mitochondria are the cell's power plants, and they house separate genes that are prone to harmful mutations that cause diseases. To prevent those problems, copy the critical mitochondrial genes and insert the copies in the cell's nucleus, where they will be better protected.

4. The problem: Unwanted cells (such as fat cells)
Mr. de Grey's solution: Possibly stimulate the immune system to kill unwanted cells.

5. The problem: Stiffening of proteins outside the cell
Mr. de Grey's solution: Proteins outside cells help support tissues, making arteries elastic and ligaments strong. But chemical reactions throughout life link those proteins and make them less mobile. Specific chemicals could break those links and allow the proteins to move more easily. One chemical is already in clinical trials, says Mr. de Grey.

6. The problem: "Junk" outside the cell
Mr. de Grey's solution: Plaques accumulate outside the cell and may lead to diseases such as Alzheimer's. Small molecules called beta-breakers may break these plaques down.

7. The problem: "Junk" inside the cell
Mr. de Grey's solution: As cells age, molecules can change in ways that make them stop working. Those structures can accumulate in cells and and eventually overwhelm them. Extra enzymes from bacteria could be given to cells to degrade the unwanted material.

More details can be found on his Web site:

http://www.sens.org/AdGbio.htm

Would you like to live for 1000 years ?

Ironically I have run out of time to answer that question for myself this evening !!!

However a recent TV programme I saw raised this question and I was initially surprised that the general consenus was not "yes".

I am not referring to any religious promise of eternal life here. That is a separate issue and one worthy of far more than a few lines on a blog.

For blog purposes, I am just posing the question- would you like to stay physically alive for 1,000 years ?

Any answers gratefully received.

Hope to be back with my thoughts in the next day or two........

The Power of Love

London, like all cities, sometimes hardens the soul. The pace of life forces us to put up defences just to survive. We start the day pushing or being pushed onto a train. Everywhere is crowded. Everyone wants our time. We are forced to say "no" to hordes of market researchers, pamphleteers and beggars.

We end up complaining every day about the trains, the office, the shops and other people in general.

Then, every so often, if we are fortunate, an event comes along that reminds us we are truly human, reminds us that most of the daily grind is irrelevant whether it is tough or easy and reminds us that nothing matters more than love.

Such an event came this weekend when my wife and I attended the wedding of my best friend in Kent.

Kent is known of "the Garden of England" and despite being the main freight route from the continent of Europe to the UK, it still retains large areas of rural tranquillity all a short drive from London.

For October in England the weather was unusually kind. The wedding ceremony was in a rural church out in fields away from the village. It looked like it had hardly changed in hundreds of years.

More important, even to a jaded Londoner like me, there was a spirit in the air that was powerful and inspiring. It was a spirit of sincere love and hope for the future.

Maybe it was partly due to the fact the groom was a close friend that I felt this more. All the same, while other weddings I have been to have been sincere and happy, I have rarely felt this spirit of love so strongly emanating out of a wedding before. Maybe it was that little Kent church. Maybe it was the blessing of God that the priest made.

Whatever it was, it felt right. Both bride and groom are happy to come from strong families. Maybe the fact they have all four grandmothers is a testimony to the benefits of matriarchal rule :-) (By the same token, the sad demise of all four grandfathers is a reminder of the fragility of male life :-( :-))

It was a happy day of the union of two strong families to celebrate the marriage of one family's son to the other family's daughter.

I have always known that love is the most powerful force in the world. However we all need to be reminded that sometimes. One of the best ways of remembering the power of love is to see it living in two people who commit the rest of their lives to each other. When you see them do that in happiness and sincerity it is really the antidote to all cynicism!I wish the bride and groom well on their future lives together. Going on the feeling of the day, I have every confidence that their future will be long and happy. Thank you for sharing your big day with us and thank you for the inspiration and reminder of what is important in life!

(For those of you who prefer my more complaining posts, I fear that "normal service" will be resumed shortly !)