Cell Research Points To Immortality
Bruce Klein
27 Sep 2002
Much of the following is well known by ImmInst members, but interesting nontheless.
MARK Twain, who claimed the only certainties in life were death and taxes, would be turning in his grave.
Although ageing is a universal human experience, our bodies are not actually programmed to age and die.
"Death is not an inevitable process," said Professor Tom Kirkwood, from the Institute for Ageing and Health in Newcastle. "We age because our evolutionary past only equipped us with bodily maintenance and repair systems that were appropriate for the more hazardous conditions of our early ancestors, when we only lived until we were 40.
"As we live, our lives our cells accumulate tiny faults . . . which eventually cause us to age and die - attacks by free radicals or mutations in DNA.
"The new science of somatic cell cloning and the promise of stem cell therapies . . . offers tantalising suggestions that we might be able to overcome the build-up of damage that makes us age.
"If we could in some way wrap our cells in cotton wool to protect them from attack, we would be immortal."
Avoiding taxes may not be so simple.
- Sept 12th
Link
MARK Twain, who claimed the only certainties in life were death and taxes, would be turning in his grave.
Although ageing is a universal human experience, our bodies are not actually programmed to age and die.
"Death is not an inevitable process," said Professor Tom Kirkwood, from the Institute for Ageing and Health in Newcastle. "We age because our evolutionary past only equipped us with bodily maintenance and repair systems that were appropriate for the more hazardous conditions of our early ancestors, when we only lived until we were 40.
"As we live, our lives our cells accumulate tiny faults . . . which eventually cause us to age and die - attacks by free radicals or mutations in DNA.
"The new science of somatic cell cloning and the promise of stem cell therapies . . . offers tantalising suggestions that we might be able to overcome the build-up of damage that makes us age.
"If we could in some way wrap our cells in cotton wool to protect them from attack, we would be immortal."
Avoiding taxes may not be so simple.
- Sept 12th
Link
