Tag Archives: fetal tissue research

Genetically Engineering New Forms of Life

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Want to know how to alter DNA to genetically engineer new forms of life?  Sounds like a new take on what we did in my thriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH, but it’s actually Newsweek’s cover story. http://www.newsweek.com/2017/07/07/natural-selection-new-forms-life-scientists-altering-dna-629771.html   

Author of the Newsweek article is Bryan Walsh. (Believe in giving credit where credit’s due, and writing this deserves credit!)

Right now I’ve got to run to an appointment; hopefully I’ll be back to make some points. But at least wanted to get this off to you to peruse over the weekend.

And if you time for even more perusing, please do check out my technothriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH.  https://michaelmcgaulley.net/books/sample-remedy/

Have a heart? Don’t let it break. Now they can recycle it!

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I came on an intriguing article in MIT Technology Review, “Transplant surgeons revive hearts after death.”

These days, we’re familiar with heart transplants from brain-dead patients into others needing a new, healthy heart.

But in a new experimental breakthrough, successes have been achieved in transplanting the hearts of those not brain dead. Yes, there are procedural and ethical issues involved.

Mind you, this involves actual human hearts, not 3-D printed replacements, or bits of heart tissue grown in labs from human stem cells.

But the possibility raises some issues of medical ethics to be explored: if the donor is not brain dead, when and by what criteria can the heart be removed?

Rather than dig in deeply here, I’ll refer you to the article itself. You’ll see a “reanimated” donated heart actually beating outside the bodies of both donor and recipient.  Here’s the link.

“Are myths about the rejuvenating powers of young blood true?””– from Aeon

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The article raises this question: “Are myths about  the rejuvenating powers of young blood true?”

The answer, as I discern it from this and other literature: Definitely yes and no.

Not long ago here we posted about some research in Lund, Sweden attempting to rejuvenate blood (of mice) by reprogramming stem cells.  Link to that post and the article on rejuvenating blood    The broader topic there, of course, is the search for methods of achieving radical life extension.

My point is that the idea of recapturing youth by somehow rejuvenating via young blood is very new– witness the Swedish research.  But it is also very old, as recounted in this article in the Briish AEON, which begins way back in the myths of ancient times and carries through to what’s happening now. Oh yes, vampires are covered in it, as well.  Here’s the link to that AEON article

(This post originally appeared on another of my sites: www.A-Remedy-for-Death.com  That site  was my author’s research blog for the medical science techno-thriller A REMEDY FOR DEATH   

(It is still active, though I am gradually moving the posts over to this new site, MichaelMcGaulley.net, which includes background information for Remedy and  all of my other technothrillers.

A REMEDY FOR DEATH . . . Scientists grow full-sized beating human hearts from stem cells

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My bio-science techno-thriller, A REMEDY FOR DEATH, focuses on a group of super-rich trying to re-create themselves in “healthy, horny 21-year-old bodies with all our accumulated savvy from this lifetime”.
Seems far out?
Not so, as hardly a week goes by without elements of just-that being announced by science labs around the world.
Articles report in the online London Independent https://www.indy100.com/article/human-heart-grow-stem-cells-science-transplant-medicine-technology-7521166 and  by Alexandra Ossola in Popular Science  http://www.popsci.com/scientists-grow-transplantable-hearts-with-stem-cells   how not only is this a step toward the scheme of the bad-guys in A REMEDY FOR DEATH, but — better for the world– will ultimately produce many more of the replacement hearts needed by those waiting for heart transplants.

The photo here comes from the article in the professional journal Circulation Research, where you can read more  http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/118/1/56

“Should a human-pig chimera be treated as a person?”–question raised in Aeon

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pig face“Should a human-pig chimera be treated as a human?”–that’s the title of an article I came upon in Aeon.  https://aeon.co/ideas/should-a-human-pig-chimera-be-treated-as-a-person

(The portrait of Mr. Pig comes from that article.)

It’s a variation of a question that I raise early-on in my technothriller,  A REMEDY FOR DEATH. In REMEDY, a researcher tries to implant brain cells from a human fetus into a young chimp. (Not a plot-spoiler: that is only a small part of the story,)

 

Want to read a FREE 100 page sampler of  A REMEDY FOR DEATH?

https://michaelmcgaulley.net/here-is-your-free-sampler-of-the-technothriller-a-remedy-for-death/

 

In the Aeon article, the focus is on the pigs that may be used to grow replacement human organs:

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