I have been reading about Stem Cells and what they can do for us for some time now and I would like to put in my two cents worth. Since the advent of the genome projects I have been fascinated by Bioscience, especially stem cell research. I’m writing this having reached my seventy third birthday; which would explain my interest in Bio Gerontology.

Most Bio Scientists are looking to solving cancers, stroke and cardiovascular disease and to find new medicines, looking at stem cells as just another tool with which to eventually "repair" body parts, like damaged heart tissue, but they don’t think we will be able to integrate new neurons into the brain and cure other difficult conditions. They say the brain simply cannot be removed and replaced; not even bit by bit. 

But that is not the concept to which I am alluding! I think that Occam’s Rasor would say- 

Stem cell therapy is NOT "invasive surgery". It is “simply about boosting our own bodies healing processes many times over”, allowing our body to heal itself, a re-genesis as it were.

As Advanced Cell Technology Inc. said in a statement, “stem cells carry the blueprint for health. By nature, they are attracted to the site of disease or defect and upon arrival produce or heal the cells which are required by the body for health”. 

I am convinced that we are very close to a major “break-through” in this area. 

We know that that human bone marrow includes in it, stem cells! With the use of adult cells we would be using the patient’s own marrow! There won't be any rejection. (and we can now make old stem cells like new again).

As we get older too many things start to go wrong, and the body needs some help or we die. That’s where stem cells come in. The stem cells will travel through the body dropping off to fix damaged heart tissue, build more neurons for the brain, rebuild an organ or two, and maybe build a new gall bladder to replace the one taken out years ago. Back problems could be fixed. All this and more.  In other words the whole body would be brought back to “DNA factory” specifications.

The scenario might go something like this –

You make an appointment with a Re-genesis Clinic. On your first visit a whole body scan is done and marrow is taken from your “body” and sent to the lab to harvest the stem cells, and then grown in a culture environment to several millions of cells.
You're booked to see a surgeon to have your body scoured of all contaminants, foreign bodies, cancerous and precancerous lesions and polyps etc., spotted during the scan.
On the next visit you would be connected to a dialysis machine in order to have your blood thoroughly cleansed, after which the stem cells would be introduced into the dialysis unit, along with your cleansed blood, for slow and steady injection of stem cells into the body.

What would that mean for you? I would say that in a few months you would look, feel, and be, young again. And who’s to say we couldn’t go back 30 or 50 years later and have it done all over again!

How long could we live? Well maybe Aubrey de Grey is right; barring a tragic accident, we could live for hundreds of years by visiting a Re-genesis Clinic over and over again.

What do you think? Is pseudo immortality a possibility in the very near future??

I'm going to live forever,
or die trying !
Wayne A. Gill

waynegill@shaw.ca

ps   I am being tested for Alzheimer’s and several other things as I write this -

       I need some help before it’s too late!