Sorely needed
Quick, now – name your cousins or nephews or aunts and
uncles, in order of age. Even if you
come from a large family you will do that easily, if you are, say, 65 or
younger. If you are my age – soon to be
84 – you are likely to first ponder the question “what is a nephew, anyway?”,
then lose interest mid-way through the list.
Let’s face it: as we age our cognitive abilities deteriorate. What we need is an Elixir of Youth. One may be on the horizon.
It appears that some dudes from Stanford have discovered
that they can make old mice behave like young mice, by injecting them with
embryonic mouse blood! It seems that
this blood is rich in a particular protein that was known previously and had been studied
for other purposes. If they extract
the protein from the mouse blood and inject it into old mice, they get the same
rejuvenating effect. (It must be
disgusting to see all those wrinkled old mice chasing young females around the
cage – and if the rejuvenated old mouse is female … too awful to
contemplate.) Anyway..
The Stanford group has gone still further. Human afterbirth contains a few cc of
embryonic blood, and that blood when injected into doddering, senile old mice also
causes rejuvenation. Nobody has
attempted to inject young mouse blood into old humans – the FDA probably would be
mightily displeased. However, with a
little imagination you might be able to see an Elixir of Youth just over the
horizon. And all kinds of problems.
Here is the article.
Easy reading: https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/04/25/aging-research-plasma-protein-revitalizes-the-brain/
I wrote about something similar, scornfully, a few months
ago. Silly me.
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