CHAPTER 1 LIFE FORCE: OUR GREATEST GIFT Connect to the Supreme and Vital Power of Your Life Force "A healthy person has a thousand wishes, but a sick person has only one." --INDIAN PROVERB I''m walking through the open air of St. Peter''s Square, past the immense dome of the Vatican, awed by the grandeur and beauty of this magnificent setting. As I walk up the white marble steps to the Vatican Hall, I see all heads suddenly turning. I follow their gaze, and I notice an older man with a benevolent smile and humble expression walking toward me. I look directly into his eyes as we reach out to shake hands . and then I realize it''s the Holy Father, the Pope. I''ve traveled to the Vatican for a landmark meeting with some of the greatest scientific minds in the world.
They''ve flocked here for a conference hosted by Pope Francis himself. I''ve been invited to deliver the final speech to a roomful of pioneers in regenerative medicine-- one of the great honors of my life. Over three spellbinding days, we listen to a stream of brilliant scientists, doctors, and healthcare entrepreneurs. They speak with urgency and passion about the solutions they''re developing to combat deadly diseases and devastating medical disorders. They share mind-blowing revelations about new methods to restore the body at the cellular and molecular levels--therapies that can reinvigorate muscles and joints and blood vessels, revive damaged organs, conquer illnesses that previously seemed incurable. They take us on deep dives into stem cell treatments, gene therapy, and other life-changing innovations that amplify the body''s natural capacity to repair and renew itself. As you''ll soon discover, many of these advances are so stunning that even a nonreligious person would describe them as miraculous! As spiritual leader to 1.3 billion Catholics around the world, Pope Francis wants to nurture these scientific miracles for the good of all humanity.
In his welcoming speech, he tells us how happy he is to have brought us together "from different cultures, societies, and religions" to serve our shared mission of helping "those who suffer" and exchanging knowledge "for the benefit of all." The fact that the Pope himself is spearheading this historic event tells us just how far regenerative medicine has advanced. It speaks to the enormous potential of these trailblazing approaches to eliminating suffering, restoring our health, and enhancing our well-being. In Rome we had a firsthand, front- row seat to see the impact of these unbelievable breakthroughs. We met a 15-year-old who''d been given less than one chance in three of surviving leukemia--and was now, more than ten years later, in perfect health, thanks to a novel stem cell treatment. We heard from people with advanced cancer who''d exhausted their options with chemo and radiation and were sent home to die. But they didn''t give up. They tried some of the amazing new treatments you''ll be reading about here--and two years later they weren''t just surviving, but thriving! I''ve written this book to help you understand what all this excitement is about.
I want to empower you to take full advantage of this revolution in diagnostics, biotechnology, and regenerative medicine. It has already changed my life in ways I could never have imagined. It''s transforming healthcare from top to bottom. It promises to expand our strength and vitality and potentially how long we can live. I want you to be among the first to benefit from these scientific discoveries, because I know from my own experience how dramatically they can improve the quality of your life. In fact, the practical knowledge that I''m about to share with you in these pages might actually save your life--or the life of someone you love. The aim of this book is to give you the latest information on the astounding tools and therapies that are available RIGHT NOW, and others that could soon be approved by the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These innovations will enable you to solve many of the most common health challenges before they get out of hand. Imagine being able to find cancer at stage zero, when it''s supremely treatable and ultimately curable. Wouldn''t it be invaluable to understand your genetic risk factors, and some of the tools available that could lower or stop those risks from becoming reality? Think of the power of being able to change your lifestyle to avoid degenerative problems like heart disease and diabetes. Did you know that one company is in Phase 3 trials with a tool that could heal arthritis to help you regrow fresh cartilage like a teenager? Many of these developments are so astonishing that they sound like they''ll be emerging in twenty or thirty years. In fact, many of these are happening right now! The speed of the biotech and healthcare revolution is geometrically accelerating , for two reasons. The first is a massive inflow of capital. While COVID- 19 brought devastation to so many, it also served as a massive stimulus for investment.
Despite the pandemic, more venture capital was invested in 2020-- including a record $80 billion in healthcare startups alone-- than at any other time in history. There are more dollars than ever before to drive more and more audacious medical and biotech innovations from research into the market. The second reason is that biology is now an information technology, which means that the field of medicine is getting both better and cheaper at warp speed. Thanks to technology, every phase of medical treatment is being reimagined. On the front end, sensors and networks are upending medical diagnostics. In the middle, robotics and 3D printing are reinventing traditional medical procedures. On the back end, artificial intelligence (AI), genomics, cellular medicine, gene therapies, and gene editing are transforming medicines themselves. Taken altogether, biotech is remaking sick care into genuine healthcare.
It''s changing the medicine from the one-size-fits-all system we all grew up with to a totally new model: future-looking, proactive, personalized, precision medicine. Not only is healthcare being transformed top to bottom by this geometric progression in technology, but costs are plummeting, as they are in other areas of daily life. For example: We forget how much cellphones used to cost. I actually had the first commercial model back in the 1980s, a Motorola that set me back $3,995-- the equivalent of more than $10,000 today.1 It was more than a foot long and weighed nearly two pounds! The battery charged for six hours, and it only gave you thirty minutes of talk time. Today you can get the latest Apple iPhone for free with most cell service contracts-- and it has one hundred times more computational power than the computer that took the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon. Or think about this: Your computer runs on microchips-- they''re the brains of the machine. The first microchip contained 4,000 transistors that cost a dollar apiece.
Today''s state- of- the- art microchips feature more than six trillion transistors that cost an infinitesimal fraction of a penny. They''re 6,500 times faster and 4.2 million times cheaper! Our access to information, education, and entertainment has expanded exponentially as well. Every single day, eighty-two years'' worth of new video is uploaded to YouTube, including entire courses from nearly every university in the world. How do these trends relate to healthcare? Well, consider this: Less than twenty-five years ago, it took more than a decade and cost $2.7 billion to read a complete human genome, the full set of genetic instructions for a person''s growth and development. Today it''s done for under $600--and completed overnight. We now have the technology to "write over" a genome to cure sickle cell anemia and some forms of congenital blindness.
Stem cells can regrow healthy lungs once thought to be damaged beyond repair. Other "living" medicines--using enhanced T cells or natural killer (NK) cells--can supercharge our immune system. Pharmaceutical- quality over- the- counter supplements exist today that can restore or enhance our energy and zest for the highest possible quality of life. Do I have your attention? Are you ready to join me on this adventure? In fact, the innovations I''ve just mentioned are only a sliver of what you''ll find in the chapters ahead! But before we go any further into the marvels of regenerative medicine, before we share more about these life-changing, life-saving formulas, I need to tell you a story. I need to explain what brought me to the Vatican in the first place-- what happened in my own life to make me rethink everything I thought I knew about health and healthcare. After all, if you''d told me ten years ago that I''d be rubbing shoulders with these scie.