Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls Author’s Note The following essay was originally delivered as the inaugural lecture in the Technology and Society Lecture Series at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Although it is still very much a work in progress, I am honored to be invited to contribute it to this inaugural issue of The New Atlantis. Let me begin by offering a toast to biomedical science and biotechnology: May they live and be well. And may our children and grandchildren continue to reap their ever tastier fruit — but without succumbing to their seductive promises of a perfect, better-than-human future, in which we shall all be as gods, ageless and blissful.