2035, Medical Enhancements, The Future of the Young

[ShaneGR]

I read about this on my Blackberry the other day. Scientists in the United States have successfully tested a way to create a rat heart using cells taken from a rat. NOT CLONING. GROWING. They even hooked a device to make it "learn" how to pump. Turn the artificial beating off, it keeps beating for a while. The one thing I like about ALL three Democratic Candidates is that all will support and fund the best in medical research.

Look at this picture and think of the possibilities. Not just new hearts. New Lungs. New Livers. New Kidneys. New Eyes. Think about that. And what about injecting new cells into cancerous organs? What about the skin? Some people call me a kook because I believe within a few hundred years human beings will be able to live for over 200 years and look like they were about 40 at 100. Welcome to the future.



http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/01/14/rebuilt.heart/index.html

(snip)
Researchers at the University of Minnesota were able to create a beating heart using the outer structure of one heart and injecting heart cells from another rat.

Their findings are reported in the journal Nature Medicine.

Rather than building a heart from scratch, which has often been mentioned as possible use for stem cells, this procedure takes a heart and breaks it down to the outermost shell. It's similar to taking a house and gutting it, then rebuilding everything inside. In the human version, the patient's own cells would be used.

"We took a rat heart and used soap to wash out the cells of the heart," said Doris Taylor, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair, Medtronic Bakken professor of medicine and physiology and lead author of the study.

The process is called "decelluarization." To do this, Taylor and her team hung up the heart from a dead rat, introduced a regular soap solution into the top of the organ, and let gravity do the work. The soap moved through the heart's blood vessels, dissolving existing cells, which dropped out of the bottom. This process was repeated until only the outermost casing of the heart was left, resulting in a "white, almost gelatin-looking heart," Taylor explained. This would be the equivalent of the gutted house.

The rebuilding started with injecting new heart cells, in this case cells from baby lab rats, and pumping them through the heart. By treating the cells as heart cells would be treated and using a pacemaker to help them learn how to pump, they grew into a heart that could pump -- essentially rebuilding the organ's interior.

[fenriswolf]

1. like john says

2 americas.

1 for the wealthy who come from all over the world to america for the best and latest medical care

2. for the poor and underinsured they will never see anything like this.

[ShaneGR]

2. Well, this kind of technology can't be "sold" it's long-term life extension

You have to think of it this way, it will simply become unacceptable to not provide the technology because if you didn't, one group would outlive another by centuries, not decades. You think the French were mad about money during their revolution? Think how mad they would of been if their rulers were going to oulive them by 100 years too.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. In 50 years ...

... most of these new techniques will be dirt cheap. And chances are good that many people as old as 60 today will still be alive. The revolution in biotechnology depends heavily on cellular and molecular self-organization, which means much less labor-intensive medical practice. Even today, laparoscopic techniques have dramatically reduced the trauma, the cost, the complexity, and the laboriousness of most surgery.

Medicine is progressing quite well. What we need now is for politics to catch up.

And that's OUR job.

--p!

[ShaneGR]

4. Exactly

One Democratic candidate can open up the flood gates on the money, and after that no one will be able to stop it. Even four years of heavy spending will make a HUGE difference.

[ShaneGR]

5. Bumping just so people see it, so some might see the future coming... nt

[WHAT]

6. who's young?...

frankenstien III? jr