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Futures

Nature 404, 439 (30 March 2000) | doi:10.1038/35006520

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Eternal verities, eternal questions

Ben Bova1

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How our ancestors reconciled themselves to eternal life

It is difficult for us to understand the controversy that was caused early in the twenty-first century by the advent of human immortality. When, in the late 1990s, the Geron Corporation of California and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center announced that they had 'immortalized' human cell cultures, the general public hardly took any notice.