As the workings and formation of the human brain play a role in my speculative medical thriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH, I thought it would be helpful to include two different slide shows on related topics, as background for your reading.

 The first is from Britain's New Scientist, and provides a sort of map of the parts of the brain, and what each part plays in the overall workings.   That is, click the link to "emotions"  or "social interactions," and the slide flashes the related part of the brain.  New Scientist graphic: How the human brain works    Though it doesn't explicitly say so here, I anticipate that the scientists have linked the brain part to the function by using various kinds of brain scans.

 The second is from a recent Washington Post series on brain injuries, particularly those suffered by American soldiers as a result of roadside bombs.  This slide show also shows visuals of the various brain parts, though here the focus is on the consquences when any of those parts is injured.  You'll  find those visuals here:  Washington Post: The science of brain injury   Bear in mind that these graphics are only part of an extended series in the Post, and you can link to the rest from that graphic.

First readers of my  medical techno-thriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH, questioned the real-world likelihood of implanting the brain cells from a human fetus into Chimp Donnie.  "Too far out!" they said. "Probably too far out even for a Michael Crichton thriller.")

Well, now the future far-out is happening, and happening in the real-world, not just in my thriller. I could cite several reports on how human brain cells have been implanted in the brains of both humans (and animals, earlier, to test the procedures).  The aim is to treat conditions including stroke, Parkinson's, tumors, Traumatic Brain Injury, and ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease).

Here's one news report to get you started: London Guardian: Stem cells transformed into brain cells to treat Parkinson's disease

PLOT ADVISORY re: A REMEDY FOR DEATH:  The experimental implantation of brain tissue as done by Dr. Daulby (with the assistance of Chimp Donnie) is not performed for any of the treatment purposes mentioned above.

Scientist Converts Human Skin Cells Into Functional Brain Cells

"ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — A scientist at the Gladstone Institutes has discovered a novel way to convert human skin cells into brain cells, advancing medicine and human health by offering new hope for regenerative medicine and personalized drug discovery and development."

I had put this article in my "to post" back in the summer, then overlooked it. Find it here:

 Article: Scientist Converts Human Skin Cells Into Functional Brain Cells

Tissue engineering and regrowing human body parts plays a key role in my speculative medical thriller, THE LIFE AFTER LIFE CONSPIRACY, so I'm constantly on the lookout for new breakthroughs in related areas.

I've recently cited a couple of these successes: 

Synthetic windpipes and kidneys "printed" in 3-D

And,

"Lab-grown glands, eyes and brain parts"-- Mo Costandi's report on new Japanese research

Here's  a new instance, this from the New York Times this week, reporting on another successful tissue-engineered windpipe. Particularly interesting are the details of how that was done.

Previously, most implanted tracheas were based on "used" organs taken from cadavers. Those didn't always fit the recipient.

In this case, the medical team (in Sweden) worked from CT scans of the patient's own trachea to get it as close as possible.  Then a "scaffold" was fashioned from plastic (like the plastic used in that soda bottle on your table right now!), and that scaffold was "seeded" with the patient's own stem cells, taken from his bone marrow.

That seeded plastic scaffold was placed in a "bioreactor" and spun for a couple of days to get the process started, then implanted in the patient, and his body then became a bioreactor, and the cells continued to grow into place around the framework.

Now the patient is home, grateful "for a second chance at life."

 NYTimes article-- synthetic windpipe, tissue engineering

The article "Living to 100 and Beyond" in The Wall Street Journal tackles some key questions:

1. Are there ways we can "conquer aging" --- at least in the sense of prolonging our healthy  years significantly longer? Not just another year or two, but what about an extra 50 or 150 or 100 years?
2. If we can, what implications? On society, economics, ethics and the like.

The article, by Sonia Arrison, is based on her new book 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything.

Particularly relevant to this blog, and my related speculative medical thriller, The Life After Life Conspiracy, are some of the anti-aging and related approaches she mentions, certain of which play a role in the plot.  In writing this thriller, I started with the foundation that all of the steps are based on real-world research (though I have in places taken the liberty of going a step or so beyond what has actually been done yet, and in other places combining research in novel ways.) 

That said, areas of  special interest include:

• Gene therapy, citing the work of Cynthia Kenyon at the University of California, San Francisco. I've been following the work of Dr. Kenyon and her "playing with worms" for a decade or more.
• Replacing worn-out body parts, using regenerative medical approaches to "build" new replacement parts, including hearts, livers, bones, and others.  She cites the work of Dr. Anthony Atala at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and that of Dr. Doris Taylor at the University of Minnesota.
• Organ printing--- "printing" stem cells around a scaffold of various types.

Enough. I'll leave you to the article and the book:

Sonia Arrison's article in Wall Street Journal: Living to 100 and Beyond

Sonia Arrison's book, info via Amazon

I suppose it's fair to say that humans' interest in remaining youthful is a quest that never gets old. (Terrible pun, but it does set the scene.)

I've been researching and collecting information on my speculative medical thriller, THE LIFE AFTER LIFE CONSPIRACY, for a long time (longer than I want to think about!).  I came on this 2004 article in FORTUNE by David Stipp in my archives, and felt it deserved to be given a new life (oops! there I go again).

In  any case, this article raises some of the key issues on this topic, including  the medical ethics of prolonging life, as ". . .  research [may be]  threatening to rob life of the meaning that comes from growing old and dying naturally."

Which happens to be one of the issues explored in THE LIFE AFTER LIFE CONSPIRACY.

Another issue explored both in my book and the article is the role--- proper or improper --- of drug or pharmaceutical firms and labs getting into this issue of anti-aging,  slowing the aging process, seeking to extend  life, including what is "acceptable" in these areas, and what is not. (And who is to determine "acceptable"?)

 "Chasing the youth pill"-- Fortune article

In case you missed it, 60 Minutes last night ran its investigation of stem-cell fraud. Actually, this is their second on this topic;  the other was a couple of years ago, and the alleged perpetrators they uncovered in that one are being prosecuted.

I'm mentioning it here, as stem-cells have a peripheral impact on the background of my speculative medical thriller, THE LIFE AFTER LIFE CONSPIRACY.

Here's the link to the 60 Minutes piece.

The self-anointed Establishments in whatever profession have given themselves the authority to decree what is possible, and what is "Bah! Humbug! Utterly impossible!" (And when the impossible turns out to be possible,  after all . . . well, they or another Establishment carries on, unchastened, unlearned.)

via www.michaelmcgaulley.com

This is from my main blog, MichaelMcGaulley.com, and the article seems particularly apropos to the medical possibilities explored in THE LIFE AFTER LIFE CONSPIRACY.