Who Wants To Live Forever

It appears that the alleged vampiric activities of Countess Bathory were on the right tracks, if a little crude in their application ....

Countess Bathory - Early Gene Replacement Therapy

scientists have found that injecting the blood of young mice into older rodents boosted their brainpower, thus reversing some of the processes of ageing.

 

There has also been a related discovery of the effect of the growth differentiation factor 11 (GDF11), which is a protein that has been identified to promote rejuvenating effects in heart, brain and muscles, and that occurs in greater concentration in young than on old, and which was reported in the journal Science.

 

However I am sorry to say that in my view, unless the quality of life is maintained, then a long life per se is actually more like a curse ... you can become a prisoner in your own body. I once, in what now seems like another lifetime, used to go and visit people approaching their personal century, to ascertain if they or their families wanted to receive the congratulatory 'telegram' (although it was not actually a telegram message) from the Queen. This was to try and prevent Her Majesty being embarrassed by someone rejecting her congratulations, an event I had never witnessed, but apparently quite common with old revolutionaries and communists in some industrial areas such as the Clyde etc.

Anyway, on one of these visits I met a 99 year old man, who was particularly alert, and we talked for about an hour - unusually he was on his own sat in a chair when I visited, normally a relative and or a nursing home owner would be with them, but this was a home visit. However all was explained as we talked, apparently his home help had left after just 30 minutes, and he would be on his own until an evening visit to get him to bed. 

 

It then came out that he had not only out lived his own three children, but two of his grandchildren, and he didn't actually know his great grandchildren as people. All his contemporaries were dead, and even his near contemporaries, and to top it all, despite his great lucidity, he was effectively housebound due to frailty, and that as far he was concerned, he was now a 'prisoner in a time not my own, as well as my body' .... he said that he wished he hadn't lived to the great age of 100.

Needless to say I was very much affected by this opinion, coming as it did from the horses mouth, and came to the firm opinion that the age range of 70 to 75, in good mental and physical health was by far a better option to hope for.       

So, sorry to say this again, but this obsession with eternal youth seems to me to get in the way of living what we've got well, in a few decades time people will be able to sit and watch drivel on their TV, while eating fatty burgers and processed food, and grunting their limited vocabulary for even longer .... the prophetic film 'Idiocracy' nicely fits the bill

Konspiracy Korner: There are some strange theories doing the rounds about all these medical advances. For instance apparently in 2013, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the USA, managed to place false memories into a mouse, and have now been able to alter existing mouse memories ..... and this, in conjunction with these abilities to reverse ageing have fuelled conspiracy theories that all these medical developments are a part of some US military project .... a bit like that one about all the fluoride which is accumulating in our brains, like lime scale inside taps (to be fair, recent long term studies appear to show that the claimed water fluoridation benefits, may not be that great, and even be harmful) ... although a conspiracy to achieve what, apart from brain altered old people, its hard to determine.

Oh well, if I keep having these sudden urges for cheese sandwiches, and to squeak, I'll know the treatments working .....