Latest dispatches from the quest to stay alive for ever

When Mark O’Connell first held his son in the National Maternity Hospital three years ago, his natural joy was mixed with some much less welcome emotions. He felt overcome by the baby’s physical fragility, doubtful about the wisdom of bringing it into such a dangerous world and frightened at the thought that death must eventually part them one way or the other. His wife summed it all up in a sentence he will ...