Book Review: Reversal by Dr Michael Fossel, MD. PhD

In this article,  Professor Richard (Rich) Allsopp reviews a new booked called Reversal, authored by Dr Michael Fossel, MD. PhD.  Dr. Fossel is a leading physician-scientist and pioneer in telomere biology. He’s also the Chairman of Telocyte, a biotechnology company developing telomerase therapy for Alzheimer’s disease.

About Reversal

Reversal: Science, Medicine, and a Future Beyond Aging is the latest work from Dr. Michael Fossel, MD, PhD.

As a Stanford-trained neurobiologist and former Clinical Professor of Medicine at Michigan State University, Fossel has spent decades at the frontier of aging science. He’s the author of several landmark texts, including the international bestsellers Reversing Human Aging and The Telomerase Revolution (named among the best science books of the year by both The Times of London and the Wall Street Journal), and founder of Rejuvenation Research journal.

In Reversal, he argues that we are on the brink of treating aging itself — not merely its symptoms — offering practical guidance on lifestyle and therapeutics while envisioning a near future where AI-guided interventions substantially extend healthy human life.

The Review

Since the dawn of modern civilization, humanity has been in pursuit of immortality.  This is as true today as it was thousands of years ago. Reversal provides a captivating description of how we may not only slow the aging process, but also reverse it. It begins by clearly explaining what aging is, and is not, and its distinction from age-related disease. From start to finish there are many real-world analogies that are very apropos, making the more sophisticated concepts related to aging and longevity easier to understand. Reversal also provides an unprecedented, deep discussion on the role of telomeres in human aging and justifies why reversing telomere length can also have a reversal effect on aging in general.

It also gives an excellent description of the strengths, and weaknesses, of the application of AI to improve diagnoses in the elderly and also to develop future therapies for healthy aging.

Simply put, Reversal is a must read for people at any age who have an interest in living longer, healthier lives.

This book is an intellectual tour de force, essential reading for those interested in aging or in the future of medicine. Superbly written and a comprehensive rethink of the aging process, it presents a new view of aging and how the massive breakthroughs in many fields, including AI, will enable both a new and more optimistic understanding and interventions that have the potential to dramatically alter the human experience.

The Dr. Fossel points out in Newtonian terms that the sea of knowledge is opening up, and it’s timely to rethink the aging paradigm comprehensively.

About the Reviewer

Professor Richard Allsopp holds the position of Professor of Physiological Sciences at the College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Saudi Arabia, and was previously Professor at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii. He holds a BSc (Honours) from the University of Waterloo and a PhD in Biochemistry from McMaster University, where he was among the first researchers to associate telomere shortening with cellular senescence.

Rich’s subsequent career spanned post-doctoral fellowships at Geron Corporation and Stanford University — where he cloned the murine telomerase reverse transcriptase gene and studied telomerase’s role in stem cell aging — before moving into academic faculty positions.

His research, published in Science, Nature Medicine, and PNAS, focuses on telomere and telomerase biology in relation to aging and human longevity, including a long-running NIH-funded collaboration studying the FOXO3 longevity gene.