Toss your creams and Dr. Oz books, bitches.
Science called and said we’re all animated machines following DNA directives – right to our genetically predestined deaths. Unless, of course, you’re up for eating the blood of a delicious newborn.
Well, at least this is what we’ve been informed from the body of a 115 year old woman. The oldest known human, Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, realized she might hold the secrets to eternal youth and thus donated her body to research in 2005 so they could expunge her blood and stuff for study. I appreciate that it takes the better part of a decade to count all the stem cells in a human body, but dude… there were like… two left.
At first I didn’t get what that meant (which is embarrassing ‘cause I have a bio degree), but the fact that her telomeres (chromosome tips that break off a bit whenev your cells replicate) were micro sized and that there were only a couple stem cells left, were part of the discovery that showed the importance of those stem cells in slowed aging.
We are born with maybe 20,000 or so of them (that’s all?), and when they die out (“stem cell fatigue”), so do we. The telomere length thing is no big news (lopped off ends have long been known to be the hallmark of aging), but the fact that their wearing out paralleled the stem cell fatigue kinda confirmed that more is better when we’re talking pluripotency.
But, in a fun twist of alternative medicine, they offer a follow up option: Take the blood of the young and put it into the old.
But since I’ve yet to have a craving for neonate casserole, I think that one other resolution they’ve come up with might work alright:
“Conceivably, we could re-inject ourselves with stem cells saved from birth or early life — stem cells free from mutations and with full-length telomeres.” – Someone better at sciencing than me.
Thing is, I was super excited to hear about the cure for prune dermis. Now I’m hearing that I’m too late? That I’d need younger me’s blood to accomplish it?! Even in my next life I can’t do shit about alerting my medical staff. I’ll be a wise old soul stuck in an animated mass of play-doh skin and barely formed bones sans capacity for language. Then, I’ll get distracted by the wonderful word “no” two years later and forget my whole eternal youth quest until it’s too late. God, baby me is useless. I should just-
Wait… that’s it!
Can we clone me and then let me eat infant me? That’s it! Obviously!(And you can’t tell me it’s not moral, ’cause it’s mah life and ah do what I want.)
Yes. Doppelganger dinner is clearly the only sanguine solution there is.
Let’s start on this yesterday, boys.
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The eternal youth search is in… vein « Miss Ashley Pants
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