Brainless bodies and pig organs: does science back up Putin and Xi’s longevity claims? | Ageing
Perhaps Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were an exaggerated show of deadly weapons that led to the mortality rate at this week’s military parade in Beijing.
It was more joke than serious discussions, but both of them can feel more than 72 years old, the Chinese President and the Russian counterpart, the cold hand on the shoulder, and the 41-year-old North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who wandered with them.
Speaking through a interpreter, Xi told Putin that 70 was accepted as young today, and Putin asked Putin to claim that human organs could now be transferred and potentially people allowed people to “establish old age indefinitely”. “This century,” Xi replied, “It may be possible to live to 150.”
This was airy, but did organ transplant progress reach the stage in which procedures could expand their lives and save those who have deadly illness?
Transplantation cases is open for certain patients. “When you have the last stage kidney, liver or heart disease, transplantation generally adds life for years, AB says Reza Motallebzadeh, Professor of Kidney Transplantation at UCL. “Absolutely saves lives.”
A long organ and tissue list, including heart, lungs, kidneys, pancreas, liver, small intestine, skin, bone, heart valves and corneas can be transferred. And more organs are added. Earlier this year, he became the first woman to give birth after receiving a uterus donated by a woman’s sister.
The demand for organ transplantation all over the world exceeds the supply. In the UK, the waiting list for life -saving organ transplants has never been so high. With a limited supply, which organs have, go to those who stand to benefit from young and deadly patients.
What if we had plenty of organ supply? Does it make sense to offer them to the elderly to keep them well? Motallebzadeh skeptical. “It is a big operation to have organ transplantation and you must be strong enough to achieve it, or he says.
Motallebzadeh, that’s not the only thing. “The three main causes of death in transplant receiver are cancer, infection and cardiovascular disease. And many of the rejection antiinth treatments have side effects that cause it.”
In short, multiple surgical rounds that increase the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and fatal infection may reduce continuously strong anti-edic drugs rather than extending their life.
There are great efforts to solve the problem of organ shortage. A route involves the use of organs from pigs. The procedure remains experimental, but the doctors in New York performed pork kidney and pig lung transplantation to dead people to see how they were charged.
Last year, two living patients took genetically modified pork kidneys. The arrangements removed harmful pig genes, inactive viruses hidden in the pig genome, re -awaken and cause infections, and most importantly, he added human genes to make them more harmonious.
The organs were provided by Ergenesis, a biotechnology company founded by the Genetic Church of the Geneticist George University. He said that both patients were “healthy and happy ve and that he was no longer in the kidney dialysis.
The company received approval from the US Food and Pharmaceutical Administration for a clinical research in 33 patients. “If 33 do the first two, the whole population will be scaled for the whole population,” he said. “The number of pigs we need to do is a small part of the number consumed for bacon and pork pyrzola every year.”
For now, the company focuses on kidneys, liver and heart, but the church is normally expected to provide every organ and texture that is transferred from person to person.
Agricultural pigs for organs are an application that will be critics, but much more radical and ethical offers on the table. Earlier this year, researchers said that progress in stem cell biology and artificial uterine technology could create scientists. spare human bodies.
The process is curved, but it involves making an embryo from a patient’s cells, disabling genes to form a brain, and enlarging in an artificial uterus. The result is a brainless human body made to supply organs to the genetic parent.
“There is a ICK factor, Cars says Carsten Charlesworth, a post -doctoral at the University of Stanford. “For many people, a arm fine, a liver fine and a kidney penalty. But when you have everything except a brain, more people like and more people are worried.”
The church has high hopes for another approach. Liver and other organs can be genetically modified to secrete anti-age compounds such as infection resistant and proteins that help protect the body’s health. “You turn the organ into an anti -aging therapy, or he says. If it is done on the spot, it prevents large surgery, risky rejection drugs and the need for headless people.
Can people born in this century live until the age of 150? “Man probably will be the last person who does not have the option to live until the age of 150,” he says. “It would be sad to be the person who missed the slaughter, and I feel that I’m one of those people.”
