| THE DREAM OF ETERNAL LIFE Biomedicine, Aging, and Immortality Mark Benecke Rachel Rubenstein (Translator) New York: Columbia University Press, 2002 |
Rating: 3.5 Fair |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-7432-3343-5 | ||||
| ISBN 0-231-11672-1 | 196p. | HC/BWI | $? | |
| Page 1: | "Miller almost created life in his witches' brew." |
| S/B "witch's". More important is the vast exaggeration in this statement. Stanley Miller's famous 1952 experiment created amino acids — a long, long way from DNA, and even farther from life. |
| Page 2: | "Miller's experiment demonstrated that life probably started a seemingly infinite number of years ago in the blackest of stormy nights." |
| The ghost of Edward Bulwer-Lytton aside, this is a questionable statement on two grounds: the experiment says nothing about how long ago life began, and it can shed no light on how dark the surface of the Earth was at any time. |
| Page 21: | Talking about replacement of exhausted cells in the human body, the author says, "This general repair process, however, occurs at varied paces in various organs. Red-blood cells are particularly short-lived: 2.4 million of them die each second in our bodies and are immediately replaced. Liver and bone cells, on the other hand, remain functional for several years." |
| There's nothing wrong with the above. But just below it in the book is a table which, among other claims, asserts that each of us replaces our liver 18 times in one year. This is just one example of the fragmentary, contradictory way Dr. Benecke presents his subject. |
| Page 39: | "From the 2050-1570 B.C. on, the model for mummifiers and participating priests was Osiris." |
| I think this is an example of bad translation. First, it should read "2050-1570 B.C." Second, the five-hundred-year range is confusing: Is it a starting point for, or the entire period when, Osiris was the model? |
| Page 39: | "Commanded by the sun god, Re, Anubis, the god of the dead, descended from heaven and prepared Osiris's body for resurrection." |
| AFAIK, this should be "the sun god Ra". |
| Page 55: | "Through a healthy lifestyle, 'life energy' and, by extension, the body is strengthened." |
| Missing and misplaced commas: S/B "'life energy', and by extension the body, is strengthened". |
| Page 57: | "This table, which is actually a kind of survey, can calculate a person's age, if there is no accident to cause an untimely death." |
| S/B "a person's ultimate age". |
| Page 67: | "The pills these people ingest are nothing other than growth hormones. In old age, the body ordinarily does not dispose of these substances; ..." |
| Probably S/B "does not make use of". Bad translation again? It makes no sense as written: If the body did not dispose of growth hormones (and by implication they were there to be disposed of), what need to ingest more? |
| Page 69: | "The WHO claims that a quart of beer per day can protect people from heart disease and heart attacks; for women, two cups suffice." |
| What, women are not people? <g> But seriously, this is no doubt yet another example of bad — as in over-literal — translation. |
This list is not complete. I stopped recording mistakes at page 69.
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