MICHAEL McGAULLEY, J.D.

"Body parts age at different rates" -- article in DISCOVER Magazine

From the article by Breanna Draxler in DISCOVER .  It's not quite what we're talking about in A REMEDY FOR DEATH, but it's a step in that direction.

"Move over, anti-aging cream. Researchers have found a new biological clock in human DNA that determines the rate at which bodily tissues age—revealing some surprising things about which parts of our bodies feel the brunt of aging soonest, and how such aging may eventually be reversed."

And:

"Researchers found, for example, that healthy breast tissue is usually two or three years older than the rest of the tissues in a woman’s body. This could be due to the concentration of hormones in breast tissue and could potentially explain why the breast is the most common site of cancer for women.

"Heart tissue, on the other hand, tended to be about nine years younger than the rest of a person’s tissue samples, most likely because it is constantly being regenerated by stem cells. On the extreme ends of the spectrum, researchers found that cancer cells are on average 36 years older than the rest of the body, whereas pluripotent stem cells are a constant age 0."

Just thought you'd want to know. And bear it in mind some grey Monday morning when the working week looms ahead and your heart is telling you "I'm too old for this." Respond, "Well, heart, not really!"

Michael McGaulley, J.D., is the author of a series of technothrillers including  A REMEDY FOR DEATH,  THE GRAIL CONSPIRACIES,  and the related self-help book,  JOINING MIRACLES: Navigating the Sea of Intended Synchronicities.

THE INFINITE DOUBLECROSS: The French Riviera. Art theft, art forgery, artful duplicity. A “perfect guy” (or is he?), and a vacationing techie who finds herself caught up in a tangle of duplicity and doublecross: If she can’t trust herself, who can she trust?

 

 He is also the author of business and career books drawn from his work as a management consultant and lawyer. These  include    SMART QUESTIONS : People Skills for Winning the Games of Career Success (& Office Politics!);  SELLING 101, and others.   MORE AUTHOR BIO

  

For more on the THRILLERS and TECHNOTHRILLERS, including background and SAMPLE CHAPTERS

For more on the BUSINESS and CAREER BOOKS, including background and SAMPLE CHAPTERS

For more on the SALES TRAINING BOOKS and GUIDES, including SAMPLE CHAPTERS

The blog posts below link to some of the research in preparing to write the various books, as well to continuing developments in related fields.

"A step closer to mind-reading technology"--

"The world's first brain-to-brain connection has given rats the power to communicate by thought alone." -- That's the lead in a story in Britain's NEW SCIENTIST. Link to that NEW SCIENTIST article  "First mind-reading implant gives rats telepathic power."

Mind you, that's the respected NEW SCIENTIST, not a supermarket tabloid.

For another take, see  the LONDON TELEGRAPH story "Scientists create 'telepathic' connection."

Both have videos showing what's been done at Duke University.  Very basically, electrodes were implanted in the brains of two rats, one the "encoder," the other the "decoder."  The encoder rat sent signals via the electodes, which were picked up and acted upon by the decoder rat.

What's the point, the potential long-term outcome of this kind of research? For one thing, it relates to other work being done to enable amputees to move artificial limbs.  Beyond that are intelligence and military uses-- imagine a poisoned rat or bug, controlled by the mind of a human, being used as an assassin. 

Beyond that, it is an interesting bit of research  to call upon next time someone says "telepathy is bunk!"  And this may be just the start. Who knows what's next?

One of the posts sent in following the TELEGRAPH article referenced this in the context of the work of Rupert Sheldrake and his concept of "morphogenic fields."  Interesting linkage, and we'll explore Rupert Sheldrake and his work another time here.

And what does this have to do with my technothriller A REMEDY FOR DEATH?  Nothing. But in my next techothriller, who knows what may appear!

 

"SCIENTISTS CLAIM 72 IS THE NEW 30" --- article in Financial Times

My technothriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH: Playing God with Body, Soul, and Bio-tech, is about just that: finding a way to overcome aging and death. In the story-line, we explore issues including regenerative medicine, growing replacement human organs and other body parts, other elements of the bio-tech revolution, and reversing the aging process . . . as well as some of the medical and legal ethical issues involved.

The core issue is this:  What if the terms of life have changed . . .  for a certain super-wealthy, well-connected elite?  What if today's emerging bio-tech and regenerative medical technologies--including the ability to regrow and implant body parts and organs--offer the chance for another whole go-round in life to a select, secretive few?

Intriguingly, this Financial Times also explores that issue, though from a different perspective: "How much longer can we extend life? We just don't know," says Oskar Burger, lead researcher on a pr0ject at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Dr. Burger's work focuses on how average human life expectancy has lengthened in large part because of relatively mundane things such as better access to clean water, better agicultural technology, and, of course, antibiotics.

But what if we take those kinds of advances, then combine them with other bio-tech research (only some of which has been tried with humans)?  But then that would raise other problems: will those added years be happy and productive? What about the effect on retirement funds? What about the generational chasm that could develop between the "new" 30-year-olds, and the real 30's who are still working?

Here's the link to that article in the Financial Times: "Scientists claim 72 is the new 30"  But, warning: you will need to register to get the article  (free) , but,  frankly, I have never encountered a more cumbersome enrollment procedure.  I had to go through it three times, feeling as I did that I was caught in an endless loop --- one of those computer traps that you can't escape from and yet can't finish the job. (The term comes from Po Bronson's Silicon Valley novel: The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest.)

"How human beings can now be rebuilt from top to toe with artificial parts"

After I wrote yesterday's post, "How to build a bionic man," I went back through some files and came upon a related article, though a couple of years old (November 2010), which gives a very helpful overview of the various research projects under way to develop artificial parts that may before too very long be used with humans.  (That article by Richard Gray appeared in the London Telegraph.  Body parts mentioned include:

• Brain: a microchip implant that "encodes memories for storing elsewhere in the brain."
• Eyes: also a microchip that has already been used experimentally to restore vision. So far the results are "fuzzy," but that's only for starters.
• Ears: cochlear implants have been in use for decades, and now work is underway to refine the signal sent to the brain, making it easier to understand speech and enjoy music.
• Heart, arms, muscles, tendons, even the sense of touch.

Bear in mind that this report is over two years old, and a lot of work has been done since, but it is a useful overview.

Bear in mind, also, that all of these approaches are via "hardware"-- microchips, miniature pumps for hearts, and polymers for synthetic muscles and tendons.  (See my post, "How to build a bionic man", on Rex the bionic man of mechanical parts now on display in the Science Museum in London.)

But that's not the only way, as for most of those body parts other research is under way to grow in labs replacement elements, including artificial hearts, corneas, arms, legs, ears and so on.   You'll find some of that research already on this blog, with more to come, as I've tuned into that aspect of the research as background for my technothriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH: Playing God with Body, Soul, and Biotech.

Another post, Reversing the aging process using pig hearts, is one example of that kind of work under way.

Organ regeneration, the New York Times series, and "A Remedy for Death," a technothriller

Organ regeneration ("bio artificial" replacement organs) and tissue regeneration were the subject of a three-part series in the New York Times this week. (All by Henry Fountain, under the broader heading, "Body Builders.")

via www.a-remedy-for-death.com