A REMEDY FOR DEATH

We just posted a new book trailer on Slideshare.  It gives a brief overview on various breakthroughts on what is termed "radical life extension" -- most of which we have posted over the past few years on this site, as we came on news of these various pieces of research, and as they were relevant for the technothriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH.

You'll find that some of the items in the slideshow echo posts we've made here, and we will continue to add other new findings as blog posts . . .  and maybe include them in the sequel to this slideshow. (When and if there ever is a sequel, as that's is hard work!)

 Among the topics touched on in the slideshow (and in this blog) are these: anti-aging methods, bio-engineering, bio-artificial organs, chimeras (human-animal hybrids), quest for eternal youth, human stem cells, human cell implants, human immortality, medical ethics, organ fabrication, organ harvesting, organ regeneration, regenerative medicine, growing human body parts, tissue engineering, transhumanism, reversing the aging process, 3 D printing of replacement human organs, and more. 

 Here's the link to Radical Life Extension and A REMEDY FOR DEATH

I check out Zite (an app on my Ipad) at least once every day, and it's a rare day that I don't come upon at least one excellent article.  Today it was "Arrested Development: The Girls Who Never Seem to Age," by Virginia Hughes.

For one thing, it gives one of the best short overviews what's being done in researching human aging and the concept of radical life extension.

But it also covers the work of Dr. Richard Walker (and his book, Why We Age).

Dr. Walker has had a career-long fascination with those issues, and went down a variety of not-so-productive paths until he came upon the strange, sad phenomenon of young girls who basically never really age, at least not as we know it.  

"Aging is usually defined as the slow accumulation of damage in our cells, organs, and tissues, ultimately causing the physical transformations that we all recognize in elderly people. Jaws shrink and gums recede. Skin slacks. Bones brittle, cartilage thins, and joints swell. Arteries stiffen and clog. Hair greys. Vision dims. Memory fades. The notion that aging is a natural, inevitable part of life is so fixed in our culture that we rarely question it. But biologists have been questioning it for a long time."

 I'll leave you to the article for the rest.

As I said, I found it on Zite, which is a compiler. The origin of the article is not totally clear to me. It apparently appeared August 7, 2014 on Pacific-Standard: The Science of Society, which I had never run upon before, but seems to be filled with fascinating stuff.  And, if I read the attribution correctly, the article, under the title "Arrested Development" earlier appeared in Mosaic.

Article in Pacific Standard

Quest to grow human organs inside pigs-- the headline says it all. Google those words ,and you'll come on many links to the same research, including Youtube and photos. 

By the way, "chimera" is the term used for human-primate hybrids -- that is chimps and the like, which are around 98% or more genetically similar to humans. I suspect the term chimera is being extended to cover other types of combinations . . . and if you Google onwards you'll see  much more. I'll add some more here another time. Another related term is "transgenic"-- also something for another time. Still another related term is "Radical life extension."

I suspect these human organs "carried" in pigs and other animals are going to become a very big deal for the regenerative medicine industry. I think they are also going to be a much-discussed topic in the area of medical and research ethics.

It's relevant here as my technothriller A REMEDY FOR DEATH begins with the attempted creation of a human-chimp hybrid.  'Nuff said.

Well, maybe not quite yet. But work is underway.

In Austria, researchers took both embryonic stem cells (i.e. from human embryos) and adult skin cells, then did some "lab magic" and in about a month the cells grew and self-orgaized into what the researchers termed "brain-like organoids" 3-4mm in size that showed "neural activity".  

Think of it!  A few flakes of skin can become the startings of a human brain. Now that's not to say that these litle bits had consciousness, that's many more steps ahead.

They have survived a year (as of when the article went to publication in the journal Nature,) but have not grown any larger, apparently because at this point there is no blood supply in. (But other research in other labs is focusing on generating bio-artificial  blood vessels.)

This work was reported on in  Britain's New Scientist , BBC News , Washington Post via Reuters , Siongularity Hub  and others .

What about the ethical issues of growing even a tiny  human brain?  The researchers are aware of the issue, and the Austrian team does not want to see larger human brain specimens grown now, as that would be "undesirable."

Gary Marcus, in a New Yorker article, looks at this same research, though taking a much longer look at the implications  of where this kind of work may lead decades or a half-century from now.

 "But we’ll also need to confront immense ethical quandaries. What rights does synthetic brain tissue have? Should a 3-D-printed brain have the right to vote? To an education? To terminate its own life? (Or to not be terminated?) For now, these questions are still just another round of thought experiments. But it’s more likely than ever that such thoughts might some day be held by just another brain in a jar."

Beyond all that, there's still one other big issue: even if we can "grow"  a complete human brain, where is the mind?   That is the biggie we tackle in  my technothriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH --Playing God with Body, Soul, and Biotech,  . . . though suggesting an approach other than bio-science.

The header tells it all: "Organs Made to Order: It won't be long before surgeons routinely install replacement body parts created in the laboratory"

This is from the Smithsonian Magazine, and provides a brief overview of the work being done in human organ regeneration by one of the leaders in the field, Dr. Anthony Atala at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.  You'll pick up a feel for the approach and the terminology, and will also see some excellent photos of the work done, like this regenerated ear-in-progress.

 (Photo courtesy Smithsonian.)

Here's a link to that article

I'll leave you to the full article (link is below), but here are a couple of excerpts to give the flavor of the Transhumanist concept:

 "As the name implies, Transhumanists are people who want us to become "beyond human". It’s an umbrella term for a broad family of ideas united by the vision that technology now, or at least soon will, allow us to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.  That means everything from bionic limbs to uploading our entire brains on to memory sticks and carrying them around with us as back-up."

 Well, while there are times I'd like to have my, uh--what's the word? Ah, memories!-- on a stick, the reality is I'd probably forget where I put it.

Here's another excerpt, this looking at some of the down-sides:

"The whole project throws up very difficult ethical and philosophical challenges. Is an uploaded mind still human? Should we give "human rights" to an artificial intelligence with a superior intellect to a human? Then there’s the bread-and-butter social problems. Presumably, human enhancement technologies would be disproportionately available to those with greater financial resources, creating a genetic divide. And if you lived forever, are you taking up the place of another generation? What about the more mundane things: what would be a fair prison sentence for murder if we could all live for 200 years? Or the right retirement age. I’m guessing it won’t be 70 if we can all make thirty score and ten. Above all: are we happy about all of this, and can we stop it?"

Here's the link to the Telegraph article.   It's by Jamie Bartlett, Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos.

This is a follow-up to "Michael Crichton-- victim of a conspiracy" my post here yesterday morning.  Link to that post

via www.michaelmcgaulley.com

This is the second of the linked articles on the alleged Michael Crichton conspiracy.

Michael Crichton was long one of my favorite authors. (As a matter of fact, I was a fan of his books even before he became Michael Crichton!  If you're a long-term Michael Crichton fan, you'll know what I mean; if not, I'll post an explanation another time, after folks have had a chance to think about it.)

via www.michaelmcgaulley.com

This is the first of the linked articles on the alleged Michael Crichton conspiracy.

Hyperbaric oxygen chambers are an element in my technothriller, A Remedy for Death. Interestingly, a couple of pieces I posted on the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy  have been probably the most read of all the posts on all of my websites  

(Here's a  link to one of those articles, and from that you can link to the second on hyperbaric therapy, as well as to another post on how swimmer Michael Phelps uses his hyperbaric chamber in training.)

This morning, the Washington Post featured another long article on the use of hyperbaric oxygen chambers. This was on how the Washsington Nationals' relief pitcher, Rafael Soriano, uses his chamber through the season to keep himself young and healthy. "When I was younger, I didn't train like this," he said. He feels he is less likely to be injured, and recovers more quickly, particularly as the season goes on.

Here's a photo, courtesy of the Washington Post.

 His chamber is about 7.5 by 4 feet, and is inflatable via remote-controlled air pumps. While he's in it, for about 90 minutes, he can watch DVDs or text friends.

The article also mentions other athletes, both football baseball players, who use their hyperbaric chambers to get up for games, or, in many cases, to ward off or recuperate from injuries  . . . thereby lengthening their careers.

Oh yes, the price-tag. About $20,00--a good investment if it gives you another year or two with major-league.

Curious what the other most-read articles on my blogs have been? A poair of  posts on the so-called "Michael Crichton Conspiracy" that someone has put out onto the web a few years ago.  Crichton's thrillers were among my long-time top-favorites, so I posted it. And there's been hardly a day someone from around the world hasn't checked one or both of those pieces.  Rather than linking them,t, I'll just reblog the two original articles to this blog.

Washington Post article on Hyperbaric Chamber

Imagine collecting a burn patient's own stem cells from an unburned part of the body, placing them in a growth solution for an hour or so, then spraying that solution of human stem cells onto the raw, burned area . . .  and in four days having the patient's skin looking fully back to normal.

Well, you don't have to imagine it, it's not future science fiction, it's here and now, as reported by National Geographic

Mind you, growing human flesh to put over burned areas is not new--among others, Organogenesis has been producing that kind of regenerated skin since the 1980s. Trouble is, that method takes weeks, and to protect the patient against infections, an "immediate" new skin is better. And it's here, though still experiemental.

Here's the link to the   National Geographic video  (via the site Big Geek Dad, which is a great source for all sorts of interesting, sometimes off-beat stuff).