Real 'Benjamin Button'? Stem cells reverse aging in mice

This is pretty amazing if you ask me. I know the research is really in it's early stages, but there have been so many stem cell breakthroughs in the last few years.

Imagine what would have occured had the ban on stem cell research never occured?

By Linda Carroll
Scientists may one day slow down aging with a simple injection of youthful stem cells. They’ve just proven this can be done in mice, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.

The mice, which had been engineered to mimic a human disease called progeria, would normally have grown old when they were quite young. But that changed when researchers injected muscle stem cells from healthy young mice into the bellies of the quickly aging mice. Within days, the doddering and frail mice began to act like they were living the storyline of “The Strange Case of Benjamin Button” as they started looking and acting younger.

“It was mind boggling,” said study co-author Johnny Huard, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “When I saw them I thought, ‘Oh my God, I must have made a mistake and put the normal mice in the wrong cage.’ But they were indeed the mice we’d injected with the stem cells.”

Source

Thoughts ATS?

~Keeper

You can see why the government put a ban on the study, it would benefit the little people. But I don't see the general population having any access to this. Only the elite will have the access!

The study would have to be repeated in normal mice to know if it had any true benefit for mouse life extension.

reply to post by chrismicha77


Not really. At first yes, but as techonology and cost reduction continues, these treatments could be easily available to everyone. There are an abudance of stem cells and manners to get them as well.

~Keeper

no i disagree with the population at 7 billion it will not be made availible to everyone and thats a fact our resources cannot keep up with our growth rate and if millions of people extend thier life spans by decades... well spells disaster to me

I think this will cause a split in the Human race as a whole, Some will live longer and concentrate power even more so, while the "sheeple" will have short lives.

this will make current class warfare look like childs play, instead of having a president for 4 years you might wind up with one for 40.

or the meek ( short lived fast breeders) shall inherit the Earth, the expanded lifers will reach for the stars.


(I'm betting on the first senario personally, sad to say)

Stem cell tech is amazing. I remember a report I saw on TV where researchers had
severed a spinal cord of a mouse, they then injected stem cells and the nerves grew back!
The new nerves needed a structure to grow on so another scientist had made scaffolding using
nano tech that looked like a gel. The disabled mouse regained 60% of its mobility.
This video is of a rat but you get the idea



The op also reminds me of the medieval countess who bathed in virgin blood to keep
her youthful appearance. Elizabeth Bathory, maybe she was onto something?