Category Archives: Immortality Medicine

First, a declaration of interest. I came to Michael Collins ninth book, Midnight in a Perfect Life, with a pre-conceived idea, namely that, on the strength of his previous eight, he is one of the finest living Irish writers.

Yet, despite his work winning several awards, and being shortlisted for both the Man Booker Prize and International Dublin Literary Award, he is relatively unknown, and when I recommend him to people, their instinctive reaction is, you dont mean...? as you watch them try to reimagine the War of Independence hero as a plotter of fiction, not revolution.

The author is, according to family lore, a relative of the patriot, though more distant, he realises now, than he imagined when growing up in Co Limerick, where he was born in 1964. If someone said to me who is my model, says Collins, it is him, a hardcore political figure who took people down, murdered, was politically expedient, but also an absolute pragmatist, who negotiated what he could get, who decided you do things in stages.

Collins left for the United States on an athletics scholarship to University of Notre Dame. He never went home, completing a PhD in Chicago, where he narrowly survived a brutal mugging in which he was stabbed repeatedly with what he recalls as a Crocodile Dundee-type knife.

Unable to afford a move away from the borders of the ghetto where he lived, he started running again. A few months after being stabbed, he ran the Chicago Marathon and, on pure adrenaline, finished in 28th place. Collins still runs. Boy, does he run. In 2006, his Fire and Ice Challenge saw him run marathons in both the Sahara and at the North Pole in the space of six weeks. This year, he hopes to represent Ireland again in the world 100km championships in Gibraltar.

A short career as a Microsoft engineer in Seattle followed his studies, before the success of his third novel, The Keepers of Truth, written longhand after hours at work like a Neanderthal aboard a space ship, secured him an American publisher and a couple of movie deals, encouraging him to pursue his true vocation, writing politically-motivated thrillers, sugaring his sociological philosophising with suspense, about the economically devastated rust belt of America, the workers and their families churned up and spat out by Reaganomics, the American dream turned sour.

It seemed the dismantling of America and the death of industrialisation was for each American a personal guilt trip and not an occasion for workers to band together in unions to try and preserve their jobs... he muses on his website. The notion of taking responsibility for your own economic and spiritual salvation was the single most important thing I learned about how America works.

The US edition of his brilliant last novel, The Secret Life of E Robert Pendleton, was renamed Death of a Writer, and his new book, Midnight in a Perfect Life, could easily share that title, for it is the story of Karl, facing the frailty of forty, a troubled author forlornly chasing literary immortality with his dubious Opus while in truth he is failing even to make ends meet as a hack and a ghost writer. Meanwhile, his wife wants biological immortality in the form of a child. Karl, whose father killed himself after apparently murdering his mistress, reflects: trying to get pregnant seemed to me about as absurd as trying to get polio.

Karl, who has already secretly remortgaged their home to pay for his mothers nursing home costs, now juggles credit card applications to pay for Loris fertility treatment, while his writing leads him down dangerous alleys, first a magazine assignment with the beautiful Marina, a mysterious Russian performance artist, and then a challenge from Fennimore, the crime writer he ghosts for, to find him the perfect real-life victim, implying that his next work could be a snuff novel (another echo of Collins last work).

The subject matter is dark, but the writing glitters memorably, and if the plotting sometimes feels underdone, this book of ideas is thought-provoking like few others, tackling modern notions of sexuality, IVF as a scam on career women in their forties, the culture of easy credit, and the place of fiction in the free world.

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall, wrote the critic Cyril Connolly, so how does Collins combine writing with being a father, not to mention the long-distance running?

It has its challenges, he admits. I have four children under the age of eight and one had a brain cyst. The priority has to go towards the children. With kids the intense concentration that you need for art is obviously compromised, I dont mind that. I used to write from 11 at night to 4am, now its compressed to 1am or 2am.

He has always combined writing with a fulltime job, making notes during the day, writing them up at night. Ive understood that the mania of what youre trying to express can draw you away from human contact. When you live within your mind, when your mind is your office, that can become overbearing and lead to insanity.

Today he teaches at a community college in the small town where he lives 30 miles away from Notre Dame. This is the territory where his books are set, which look at the devastation of poverty, the dignity of the individuals who are oppressed by economic circumstances. In terms of writing political novels about disenfranchised groups of people this is a kind of haunt for me.

The way Collins describes an upmarket apartment in the language not of an estate agent but an existentialist philosopher reminds me of Eoin McNamee, another author of big ideas and dark deeds.

He is around the same age as me, theres a strain of writers who are not so much plot-oriented as politically oriented or philosophically oriented. Plot is a secondary concern, says Collins, referencing the grinding poverty of 1970s Limerick, which formed his social consciousness and conscience, the era of Boomtown Rats singing I Dont Like Mondays, not love songs, he says.

Karl is a dark character but Collins defends him against critics charges that he is racist or misogynistic. I feel sad for him but hes honest about the male preening, women aggressively in the workplace, the economic joke of credit applications, private enterprise raping people, he recognises the endgame for society, he is a soothsayer, a marginalised figure, maddened. He lives in the greatest democracy in the world where you can say anything but no one wants to listen.

I constantly react against modernism in terms of taking away your psychological dignity, you cant say what you want to say because everything is politically incorrect, its a minefield to speak your mind. In physical terms, America is a country of obese people and cars.

In a western world gone mentally lazy and physically flabby, Collins bucks the trend, running like mad, thinking like crazy.

Going for a run, doing something physical, with the endorphins, if there are issues on your mind, it percolates, things crystallise. I go for a run for 20 miles and this is when I really think.

For me as an artist it has always been about truth. Early on I landed on the title The Keepers of Truth, and this book is about uncovering truth, everything looks one way, Lori looks like shes pregnant but shes wearing a pregnancy belly, a man looks like a woman but he has a penis. In Limerick, he says, fathers he knew in one sphere by day were involved in the IRA at night.

He has been accused of being a highbrow writer slumming it as a crime writer, another casual insult to a genre that often beats the literary genre at its own game. How true is he to his true self as a writer? Collins admits that when no one would publish Emerald Underground in America, despite its success in Europe, he decided he wouldnt let economic reality stop him writing so to gain a readership, to gain the eye of an editor who thinks it might sell, I consciously decided to do a dismemberment novel, a philosophical novel where you throw in the crime element of a murder ... but the essential nature of closure where things are solved didnt settle with me.

He describes as anathema the idea of introducing a cop figure who would clear everything up, just as he didnt want to write a novel that an eighth-grader could understand, because there is no neat or happy ending, he believes, in a world and economy that is falling apart in an expanding universe. Closure is a nineteenth-century conceit, he says, and that he is why he is annoyed that the title he gave his novel was changed.

I understand Im going to get hammered, so you need a title to condition people to see what youre trying to do with the book. The original title, Of Uncertain Significance, was a harrowing term I first heard from doctors in describing my daughters brain cyst. The doctors could not determine if it was the underlying cause or not.

In writing the novel, in reviewing my time at Microsoft and the general aimlessness of modernity and the decentralised nature of information, I think the prevailing theme for the book firmly settled on the idea of life as Of Uncertain Significance.

I think a novel has to have an underlying philosophical intent. I personally adhere to the prevailing view of the universe as described by modern mathematics that there is no essential closure or certainty in the universe. This sense of chaos or entropy has been firmly established for decades in the mathematical realm and forms the basis of how the universe is perceived and studied.

What is disheartening for me as a writer, and what I think is a pitfall of our craft, is how confined we are intellectually and structurally by our ordinary audience, where there is limited tolerance for intellectual deviation from the time-honoured tradition of narrative as having a beginning, middle and end. The standard by which popular fiction is judged falls on notions of completeness and satisfaction, toward the comfort of the known and easily understood.

If I could say Midnight is politically prophetic, it would be in anticipating and railing against the financial madness of the last decade, which is now under postmortem as if it can be fixed or really understood. (My question is, who didnt know it was a scam all along?) A central anxiety Karl faces throughout the book is the need for money. We see him surviving on the false economy of credit card applications that magically transform into credit, where the money is then consumed by the vast expense of caring for his mother.

Was Karl the only one anxiety-ridden about the lack of economic underpinning these last years? Is he not a soothsayer for the modern economic condition? As the novel begins, the need to pay for fertility treatments consumes Karl. What most galls him is this sudden supposed urgent need for women to reclaim their role as nurturer after being bullied into a rabid feminism that eschewed all things maternal. For Karl, he sees the scam for what it is another societal hoodwink of elective medicine redefining what is woman? for the sheer sake of bilking independent, established women of means.

I fear, much of modern fiction is a last refuge for fools. As a writer I try to push against the crushing ordinariness of this fiction, and at least challenge convention. Alas, with a few more damning reviews, I might be silenced... but Ill go down swinging. Midnight in a Perfect Life was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2010. This article was first published in The Irish Post. Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times

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Michael Collins, midnight writer - Irish Times

First Posted: Mar 25, 2017 05:27 AM EDT

Application of gene therapy for achieving longevity is full of medical and ethical conundrums. (Photo : InformOverload/YouTube screenshot)

Gene therapy in theory implies the administration of healthy genetic components into an organism with the aim to cure a disease. Conventionally, it is applied or at least proposed to be applied in the treatment of incurable chronic diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders. But what happens if gene therapy is used to regress the effects of aging or, in other terms, achieve immortality?

Though it sounds too sci-fi and non pragmatic, some people have already started experimenting with the notion. Elizabeth Parrish, who earlier used to work for software companies in Seattle, made the headlines after she voluntarily took gene therapy to cure "aging," Wiredreported.

Of course, aging is not a disease. However, as time passes, our body, its miniscule cells and the organelles and biomolecules present inside it (including DNA) get damaged. The wear and tear of these subcellular components is inflicted on the overall physiology of the body. This is why people tend to develop certain age-related diseases.

Scientists have proposed that the age-related DNA damage can be reversed by restricting the shortening of telomeres. Back in 2015, Parrish voluntarily tested the very same telomerase gene therapy on herself. By that time scientists have indicated that the said therapy is capable of increasing longevity in worms and mice. Its human application was and still is restricted due to ethical concerns.

Subsequent analysis of Parrish's genetic samples indicated that the gene therapy has managed to increase the length of telomeres by 600 base pairs, which is supposedly equivalent to living an extra 20 human years.Inspired by her results, Parrish opened up a company called "BioViva" that works on implementing the persisting knowledge on gene therapy for the treatment of diseases and aging, Genetic Literacy Projectreported.

The company was criticized by the entire scientific community regarding its carelessness in handling, implementation and distribution of the technology (gene based drugs) developed on the basis of extremely sensitive data -- the gene therapy data. On the flip side, if BioViva manages to achieve what no one else dared to do, then the company and Parrish herself may become the pioneers of gene therapy-based drugs.

Tagsbioviva, Gene Therapy, Immortality

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Gene Therapy: The Road To Immortality Or Eternal Doom - Science World Report

Although Zoolander 2 doesnt offer much as a stand-alone movie, it lives up to the hype as a sequel.

Able to be seen on the RHA Movie Network for University of Nebraska-Lincoln students living in dorms, Zoolander 2 is a must watch.

Picking up where Zoolander left off, the sequel begins by creating a feel-good environment of smiles and warmth.

Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller), and Hansel (Owen Wilson) start off seeming down in the dumps and alone, as they are living in seclusion following an unfortunate orgy pregnancy and the collapse of Dereks building, the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Cant Read Good.

The plot and vision of the film starts looking up as the two are invited to a fashion show in Rome, where they cross paths with Valentina Valencia (Penelope Cruz), which changes the vision and plot of the movie entirely.

Valencia, a member of Interpol, pleads for their help to stop other gorgeous people, such as themselves, from being mysteriously murdered.

As the events of the movie unfold and celebrities continue to be killed, the wittiness and silly jokes of this spoofy comedy live on.

Between a mixture of run-on jokes, and comedic play on modern issues, Zoolander 2 seems to force laughs and giggles right out of you.

However, if you are looking for an incredibly well-calculated Steven Spielberg plot, or an astounding M. Night Shyamalan twist, youve clicked on the wrong film.

After their meeting with Valencia, Zoolander and Hansel are sent on an undercover mission to uncover the truth about the deaths.

As the duo of delightful and drop-dead gorgeous superstar divas go on a tedious trip to uncover the mystery as to why their conceited, yet comely and cute compatriots are dying off, the main plot becomes skewed.

Throughout the middle of the film, it dives in what seems like dozens of directions.

The main characters get wrapped up in side stories ranging from ghosts to obese offspring to the tale of the fountain of youth to even biblical references of Adam and Eve.

This distracted from the main storyline, and made the movie a tad cheesy.

On the other hand, it doesnt necessarily need to be the most capturing plot if it makes you laugh. And that it did.

As the movie carries on we follow the group, comprised of Zoolander, Hansel, Valencia and the chosen one, Derek Jr. (Dereks obese son), on their mission through Rome to uncover the mystery.

The audience is slowly led to believe Mugatu (Will Ferrell) is once again the culprit behind the murders as revenge for his imprisonment in the first film.

One event leads to another, and Zoolander and crew encounter Mugatu attempting to drink Derek Jr.s blood to access immortality and a battle unfolds.

Using weapons such as beautiful poses and runway looks like El Nino, the group of models fights it out.

Ultimately the good side prevails killing Mugatu and Derek and Hansel return to modeling as well as find love.

The movie finishes with good vibes and happy scenes, and the audience is left forgetting anything they came into watching the movie with.

Laughing and smiling was the overall goal of the movie and I believe it succeeded in its attempt.

After all, laughter is the best medicine, and Zoolander 2 seems to be a perfect prescription.

If you dont want to trust me in my assessment however, take the main characters instead as Zoolander said it best.

Were back.

arts@dailynebraskan.com

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Flick Pick: 'Zoolander 2' gives audiences a good laugh - Daily Nebraskan

Fr. Thomas Bergs "Hurting in the Church" is an important and necessary book, rooted in a solid ecclesiology and free of both excuses and histrionics.

(us.fotolia.com/stokkete)

Two things will strike readers of Fr. Thomas BergsHurting in the Church: first, that this book needed to be written at all, for who could have ever believed that so much hurt could have been inflicted so quickly on so many in the Church; second, that an effective response to such pain would not only help heal those hurting in the Church, but could also inspire others not wounded to become greater vessels of charity and justice within the Mystical Body of Christ.

Fr. Berg, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York teaching at its Dunwoodie Seminary is, and is honest about being, what Henri Nouwen famously called a wounded healer. The psychological abuse suffered by Berg and many others who once belonged to the great fraud known as the Legion of Christ ran deep in him for years and in some ways runs still today. But Berg knows that, in most cases, we cannot insist on being completely healed ourselves before setting about helping others to heal. In part, therefore, as a step in his own recovery from the terrible betrayals that Marciel Maciel worked on the Church, and in part to assist others toward recovery from the various hurts they have suffered at the hands of ecclesiastical figures, Berg wrote Hurting in the Church. And thank God he did because this book is a treasure.

As one who has suffered no more than the usual slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in a lifetime of Catholic living and working, I frankly came to Hurting in the Church with some emotional distance from its theme. I was interested, to be sure, in learning more about what others have experienced (and Berg includes several illustrative stories besides his own) and I was desirous of knowing how experts (spiritual, psychological, administrative, and so on) might be able to help those suffering today.

But what surprised me as I moved though the narratives that Berg presented and his observations on them was, first, just how many and how varied are the experiences of ecclesial pain; and second, how these stories make real demands on the entire Christian community, how, in other words, there are (or should be) no merely interested observers, but instead, how all in the Church are called to respond to this crisis.

Bergs ecclesiology, focused on the responsibility of all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ for one another, shines through in his writing, of course, but not in a sanitized way that obscures the special responsibility of those in positions of responsibility (clerical or lay, paid or volunteer) to take care that the image of the Church they bring to others is truly marked by the face of Christand to repent of all the times that they failed to reflect Him. Moreover, Berg does not, I think, make the mistake that some others have made in addressing this topic, namely, that of accusing the Church herself of inflicting evil on her members, but neither does he paint so rarefied a picture of the Church that ecclesiastical leadership and rank-and-file members alike can wash their hands of responsibility for the deeds committed on their watch.

The mechanics of Bergs discussion are easily set out. He looks first at the surprising number of ways that believers can suffer hurt in the very contexts wherein ecclesiastical solace and support should be most abundant. Berg takes away nothing from the gravity of the harm suffered by victims of clerical sexual abuse (a topic he addresses frankly) by acknowledging that others have suffered other forms of psychological or emotional torments at the hands of pastors and formators (such as those Berg himself suffered) and he illustrates how, for example, certain ecclesiastical employment scenarios can be disrespectful of human dignity.

Second, Berg looks at some of the practical methods that he and others have discovered for bringing relief from the personal pains experienced by those wounded in the Church and which portend a measure of healing for wounded psyches and souls.

Finally, Berg looks at certain institutional factors that might have contributed to the scope of the damage a relatively few could inflict on others, and he offers suggestions for turning the Churchs governing apparatus into a more effective tool for protecting and serving her faithful. All of this he does calmly and clearly without the sort of histrionics that are more likely to distract than to describe. Bergs individual chapters, after an authors note and a general introduction, can be read in pretty much any order that appeals to individual readers. He relegates factual citations and deeper commentary to end-notes which I, for one, found helpful.

One thought occurs to me, however, a thought that Berg could not have conveniently included in the present work but about which his views might be appreciated in some future study, namely, what about that new kind of hurta genuine, palpable painbeing experienced by more and more faithful as they watch ecclesiastical leadership (notably prelates, but other shapers of Catholic opinion as well) fail, time and again, to defend basic Church teachings on, say, sacraments, conscience, and the capacity of the Gospel to critique a society that is unquestionably careening off its rails. Berg, aware of this emerging crisis, too, could offer us, I am sure, some good insights into dealing effectively with this novel kind of failure in the Church and with the suffering being sown in its wake. But I stray from our present concern.

Fr. Thomas Berg has written a necessary book that will help many who were wounded by some people in the Church. He has written an important book that can engage others who might not suffer in the Church, but who need to be more aware of and more committed to assisting those who do.

Hurting in the Church: A Way Forward for Wounded Catholicsby Fr. Thomas Berg Our Sunday Visitor, 2017 Paperback, 208 pp.

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A "Wounded Healer" Offers Guidance for Wounded Catholics - Catholic World Report

Sonny Lacks is known for his smile. Wide and welcoming, it's a feature that others tell him he shares with his mother.

He wishes he knew that for himself, but he was only 4 when she died.

On a recent Monday afternoon, Sonny and his older brother, Lawrence, sat at a dining room table in Baltimore and examined sketches of what will be their mother's tombstone. They've never had enough money for one. Finally, after all these years, a gift will allow their mother to be remembered as they want her to be.

Lawrence looked at the images but said little. He doesn't like talking about the mother he lost when he was 16.

"Don't know why; I never could," he said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his moist eyes. "I just can't."

The course of their lives changed in 1951 when their mother visited what was then Johns Hopkins Hospital, just 20 minutes down the road from where her boys now live. It was there that doctors discovered her strange illness and removed mysterious cells from her body.

The sons are one legacy of Henrietta Lacks a poor woman from the tobacco fields of south-central Virginia. The other is this: Her cells are still multiplying ferociously nearly six decades after her death. They have led to medical miracles such as the vaccine for polio and have produced millions of dollars in revenue for others.

The family's great loss has become the world's great gain.

___

Henrietta Lacks, died in 1951 at 31, but millions have been helped by study of the cells that killed her.

Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant on Aug. 1, 1920, in Roanoke. The boys aren't sure how she became Henrietta, which was shortened to Hennie after her mother's death when the girl was 4.

Hennie and her nine siblings were sent to live with aunts, uncles and cousins in the tiny farming town of Clover, about four hours west of Norfolk.

Hennie landed with her grandfather, who also was raising one of her first cousins, David. They lived in what was called the "home-house," a two-story cabin built of hand-hewn logs and pegs that once was the slave quarters of their ancestors.

It looks toward the family cemetery, where the white relatives Hennie's great-grandfather and great-uncles were plantation owners are buried behind a row of boxwoods. The bushes separate their resting places from those of the family's black members, many of whom are in unmarked graves in a meadow.

The hundreds of acres surrounding the home-house were, and still are, known as Lacks Town. Those living in nearly every dwelling dotting the tobacco fields were, and still are, kin.

Growing up, the cousins scared each other with tales about the cemetery and phantom dogs and pigs that roamed Lacks Town Road, which runs alongside the house and up a half-mile to where cousin Sadie Grinnan was born in 1928.

Sadie remembers Hennie as the most beautiful thing, with honey-colored skin, a round face and a smile that made boys act like fools.

Sadie said she was surprised when Hennie and David, who went by "Day," started acting like a couple; they'd been raised like brother and sister.

But Lawrence was born to them in 1935 and Elsie four years later. Elsie was as striking as her mother but was born different, what some called "deaf and dumb."

Hennie and Day married in 1941, and the family left their life of farming tobacco to join the flood of blacks making their way to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., where wartime prosperity awaited in the shipyards and steel mills.

They were headed, they thought, to an easier life.

Sadie moved to Baltimore in the mid-1940s and often caught the No. 26 trolley to Turner Station, where Hennie had settled in as a housewife in the brick apartments built for the workers swelling the waterfront.

But Hennie missed the country and often piled the kids onto a bus for trips back to Clover.

Whether in Virginia or Maryland, she loved being a mom. Sadie watched her braid Elsie's long, brown hair and fret about the way the girl ran wild and darted off if they weren't looking.

Hennie could be as strict as she was sweet. After Sonny came along in 1947 and Deborah two years later, Lawrence was in charge of hand-washing the babies' diapers. If they weren't clean enough, Mama made him do it again.

About the time their fifth child, Joe, was born in 1950, Hennie and Day decided it was best to put Elsie in Crownsville State Hospital, once known as The Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland.

It broke Hennie's heart, "but she would visit her all the time," Sadie said.

___

A statue of Jesus dominates the original entrance to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The tradition is for those passing to rub the foot or touch the robe. Members of the Lacks family say they remember rubbing the toe when they arrived with Henrietta Lacks for cervical cancer treatment in the early 1950s.

A few months later, Hennie shared a secret. She'd started bleeding even though it wasn't her time of the month. And one morning she took a bath and discovered something. She told Sadie: "I feel a lump."

Dr. Howard Jones was the gynecologist on duty Feb. 1, 1951, in the outpatient center at Johns Hopkins when Henrietta Lacks came in.

Jones, who with his wife would later found the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, examined her and saw something so peculiar it would stay with him for decades: A glistening, smooth growth that resembled purple Jell-O.

It was about the size of a quarter at the lower right of her cervix, and it bled easily when touched.

Jones thought it might be an infection and tested Lacks for syphilis, but the results came back negative. He ordered a biopsy cutting away a small portion of the tissue and within 48 hours had the diagnosis: cancer.

When Lacks returned for treatment eight days later, a second doctor sliced off another sliver of her tumor. Following the practice of the day, Lacks was not told.

Radium capsules were packed around her cervix to kill the cancer cells, and she later was released from the hospital.

At home, Lacks didn't tell anyone about her illness.

She continued to take care of her babies, two still in diapers; visit Elsie when someone would drive her to Crownsville; and cook her husband his favorite foods, such as white pinto beans.

She regularly returned to Johns Hopkins for treatment, but the cancer cells were swarming faster than the radium could kill them. It was becoming difficult for her to hide the pain. Cousins would enter the house and hear her upstairs, wailing, "Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, I can't get no ease! Jesus, help me, Jesus!"

On Aug. 8, shortly after her 31st birthday, she was readmitted to Johns Hopkins for what would be the last time.

Just after midnight on Oct. 4, 1951, Henrietta Lacks died. Doctors performed an autopsy that revealed firm white lumps studding her body, her chest cavity, lungs, liver and kidney. Her bladder appeared to be one solid tumor.

The cells seemed uncontrollable.

Sonny's only memory of his mother is from her funeral in Clover.

She was buried in an unmarked grave near the home-house, and he remembers how rain poured from the sky, as though heaven were weeping for Hennie.

___

Lawrence Lacks, 75, the oldest son of Henrietta Lacks lives in Baltimore, where most of the Lacks family still lives. Lacks was a teenager when his mother died in 1951 of cervical cancer.

Back in Baltimore, cousins came to help the widowed Day, who was trying to pull shifts at the shipyard and manage his three youngest children. Visits to Elsie became rarer.

Lawrence helped out, but he soon left to join the Army. Two relatives, one the family would later describe as evil, moved in to care for his brothers and sister.

Sonny recalls being beaten for no reason and having little food, maybe a biscuit, each day. The cabinets were locked so the kids wouldn't try to get more.

As they grew older, the children spent summers in Clover, plucking and stringing tobacco as their mom had done. They kept the abuse to themselves. Stoic, like their mom.

After his Army stint, Lawrence returned to Baltimore, married and took in his brothers and sister when their dad became ill. Elsie died at Crownsville in 1955; the family learned years later that she had been abused and may have had holes drilled in her head during experiments.

No one in the family talked about Hennie. Lawrence and his father didn't want to, and the younger kids didn't ask. Part of the Clover upbringing was that children didn't bother grown-ups with a lot of questions.

Henrietta's children had children of their own, and they, too, didn't ask about Grandma. It was as though she hadn't existed.

Then, in the early 1970s, the family got a call.

Researchers wanted Sonny and other family members to give blood samples so more could be learned about their mother's genetic makeup. The family wanted to know why.

Part of their mother, they were told, was alive and growing more than 20 years after her death.

Tissue from their mother's second biopsy in 1951 had been given to Johns Hopkins researcher Dr. George Gey, who for years had been trying unsuccessfully to grow human cells outside the body in his search for a cancer cure.

Technicians expected Lacks' cells to do what previous samples had done: nothing, or perhaps live a few days then die. Instead, the cells multiplied in petri dishes, spreading and piling atop one another. Uncontrollable.

On the day Lacks died, Gey appeared on a television program called "Cancer Can Be Conquered." He held Lacks' cells in a bottle close to the camera and discussed his scientific breakthrough: the first human cell line ever grown.

Gey called the cells "HeLa" the first two letters of Henrietta Lacks' first and last names and gave samples to other researchers around the country. Cancer cells work enough like normal cells that doctors could test and probe them and unlock their secrets.

Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School infected HeLa cells with the polio virus and studied the reaction. By 1955, he had created a vaccine that helped nearly eradicate the crippling disease.

Companies used HeLa to test cosmetics. Researchers put flasks of HeLa near atomic test sites to measure the effects of radiation on human cells. Scientists sent HeLa into space with white mice to determine what happened to human flesh at zero gravity. HeLa helped scientists discover genetic mapping.

The cells multiplied so rapidly that they often contaminated other laboratory samples. In the 1970s, Soviet researchers thought they had discovered a virus that caused cancer, but it turned out HeLa cells had permeated the Iron Curtain.

The revelation led to improvements in the way labs handle cells and cultures.

Other cell lines were being born, but HeLa cells had become the gold standard. They shipped and stored well, and were incredibly robust. Jones said most cells can duplicate themselves in a culture in 36 hours; HeLa doubles in 24. The chromosomes in most cells shorten with each duplication until the cells can't divide anymore. Not HeLa.

Doctors still aren't sure why. Jones, 99, said recently: "They are still that unique."

___

David Sonny Lacks, 62, right, and Lawrence Lacks, 75, both of Baltimore, talk about their mother, Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951. Sonny doesnt remember his mother but is told he has her smile. Lawrence doesnt like to talk about her; she died when he was 16.

Over the years, the Lacks family became used to the occasional phone calls from reporters and researchers.

They told what little they knew to Rolling Stone and Jet magazines and to the BBC.

What family members couldn't get used to was what had happened to Hennie.

They were angry at Johns Hopkins because they felt the hospital removed her cells without her permission.

They were bewildered by all the scientific jargon and how researchers took their blood but did not follow up or explain the results, they said. None of the children have developed their mother's aggressive cancer.

They were enraged by biomedical companies that produced the cells like they were printing money and sold them for millions, while many in the family couldn't afford health insurance.

Cousin Sadie Grinnan, now Sadie Sturdivant, 81, lives in Nathalie, near Clover, and is bothered by it, too.

"These other people," she said, "are making billions and billions."

What was hardest for Hennie's children to deal with was that so many people knew so much about their mother, while they knew so little.

"That's what hurts," Sonny said.

Now, he's looking for closure. It began in earnest with the release earlier this year of Rebecca Skloot's book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."

The book recounts the family's struggle, the science and the ethical implications surrounding the use of the cells.

Sonny's sister Deborah had worked closely with the author but died last May from heart disease. Deborah, who was 59, went to her grave wanting to honor her mother.

Sonny now is determined to fulfill her wish.

___

Henrietta Lacks great-granddaughter Aiyana Rogers, 11, looks at a family photo and a book about Lacks at her grandmother's home in Baltimore on April 12, 2010. Aiyana says shes proud of her great-grandmother. I just like that the world knows her now, she says. And that she is the most important woman in the world.

The family is working with an attorney to get a handle on all things Henrietta. For example, Sonny recently heard that a group in New York is holding a Henrietta Lacks race, and he wondered how people could do that without the family's permission. He and his brothers don't have the time or know-how to answer those kinds of questions.

Lawrence, now 75, rehabilitates houses for a living. Sonny, 62, is a truck driver who often picks up his grandkids in the afternoons. He helps out his younger brother, Joe, who changed his name to Zakariyya Abdul Rahman and goes by Abdul. At 59, Abdul has problems with his legs and can't get around easily.

The family has pooled its money to buy headstones for their father, who died in 2002 and is buried in Baltimore, and for Elsie, whose body was relocated to a grave near her mother's in Clover.

The Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta has volunteered to pay for Hennie's tombstone, and Skloot will buy one for Deborah, who was buried in Baltimore. The author also has established a scholarship fund for the family.

In a ceremony in October, Johns Hopkins will honor the contributions of Henrietta Lacks and others who have participated in scientific research.

Administrators say they think the medical center's role in Lacks' story often has been misrepresented. Dr. Daniel Ford, director of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Johns Hopkins, said the hospital's critics are applying modern rules to a different era.

Patient consent, now a medical standard, wasn't even considered in 1951. Ford noted that Lacks' tissue was given away by researcher Gey and that the hospital never patented HeLa cells or sold them commercially.

"Gey's whole goal was to find a human cell line that would reproduce," Ford said. "It would be a platform, a model that scientists could learn human cell function from."

Gey had no idea what would happen.

Over the years, HeLa cells have multiplied to the point that they could weigh more than 20 tons, or 400 times Lacks' adult body weight. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, there are close to 11,000 patents involving HeLa. The cells are so prevalent that they can be ordered by the vial on the Internet.

The family tries to concentrate on all the good that's come from them. On Memorial Day weekend in Lacks Town, they will install their mother's headstone, made of granite with a rose-colored tint that hints of flowers sweet, like Hennie, and growing, like her cells.

Her grandchildren came up with the words that will be carved into the stone:

"In loving memory of a phenomenal woman, wife and mother who touched the lives of many. Here lies Henrietta Lacks (HeLa). Her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever."

Aiyana Rogers, one of Sonny's granddaughters, flopped down at the dining table in Baltimore where the Lacks brothers talked about the memorial. She brought out a family portrait and Skloot's book, which she has started to read.

Aiyana's intrigued by the science and by the cures, but mostly she's just proud of her great-grandmother.

"I just like that the world knows her now," the 11-year-old said, with a wide, welcoming smile. "And that she is the most important woman in the world."

Originally posted here:
Cancer killed Henrietta Lacks then made her immortal - Virginian-Pilot

By: Santanu Chakraborty

We can now use our own cells to replenish the ones that are lost, weak or old

Observing the news from around, rather depressing and mostly violent, the world these I cannot but feel that the desire for immortality is part of what might fuel the end of our species. The level of conflict that can be provoked by unverifiable untestable ideas is rather striking. But there is another sphere, another kind of immortality that mankind perhaps covets even more than the lasting fame, power and grip of its belief systems. The literal one. I mean the power to be physically alive, preferably young, forever. Stories from many lands over many eons have eulogized various elixirs of life. Potions with the power to present eternal youth, at least life, to those who consume them.

Now these dreams havent really come true for humans. Now biological science has certainly advanced over the past century. So much so that if the ancients could peer into the future they might have seen the tremendous gain in life expectancy in our generation and wondered if we were onto somekind of elixir of life. After all the average life expectancy has more than doubled since the middle ages. Quite a remarkable achievement for medical science. Yet the methods used could be called death prevention instead of life extension, as the technolgies that have driven humans living longer are really things like antibiotics: things which have prevented that extraordinary number of premature deaths. You could say that better nutrition amounts to some life extension. It does but you wont live forever no matter how well you eat. In fact there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that eating a diet rich in nutrients but low in calories - which means hunger - actually promotes longevity. So its all very confusing with only one certainty. Death.

Now that is unless we can turn our cells new again. A tremendous advance towards this end was made when John Gurdon, an English scientist, did an unthinkable experiment. Gurdon knew that a fertilized egg, one made when a sperm and a naiive egg fuse together, is what gives rise to an entire animal. It was in 1962 that John Gurdon replaced a fertilized frog egg cells nucleus with another nucleus, this one from the intestine of a tadpole. Think of cells as two concentric balloons, the smaller one (nucleus) contained within the larger one. The spaces inside these membranes contain a tremendous amount of molecular machinery that enables these cells to divide and produce near perfect replicas of themselves. And that is just the begining. A fertilized egg divides into two cells first and then they divide again. The cells start out identical but soon start producing different cells to make the varying organs of the body. What would you expect to happen when a nucleus that was made after many many replications inside the tadpoles intestine is reimplanted into a from egg, its raisondetre not to mention its ancestral environment.

A crude analogy would be grafting organs from an old human into a young one. Out gut instinct is to think that this would not work, except in the reverse. Young tissue can replace old but never the other way around. What Gurdon found was that the egg cell implanted with an old nucleus grew into a frog without breaking a sweat. Thus was the worlds first clone was born. Its more famous sister Dolly, the sheep, was cloned by nuclear transfer many years later in 1997 by Ian Wilmut. Many scientists looked beyond the excitement to discern a subtle fact. Gurdons idea was a demonstration that even cells that have divided many times and settled into their final form - fully differentiated cells - contain all the genetic information required to turn into an entire living organisms. Within each of our cells then is contained the elixir of life. An especially remarkable finding in light of the legends that indicate mankind has perhaps looked far and wide searching for fountains of eternal youth.

How could we then turn our own cells to a slightly more primordial state so that they may divide and replenish the ones that are lost, weak or old. These cells we could pluripotent - with the potential to turn into many different cell types. The ability to make them at will would be particularly valuable, in fact they would be a revolution for medicine. Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese doctor, took up the challenge. His answer came after a long and winding road full of challenges tackled over many years. It was almost unbelievably simple. Of the thousands of genes that make protein in the nucleus of a cell, and their many potential combinations, Yamanaka showed that forced activation of only four genes would turn the clock back all the way to make what he called induced pluripotent stem cells.

Today these cells are taking center stage as scientists develop the next generation of regenerative therapies and even in the fight against cancer.

Life may just get a little longer in the decades to come thanks to the courage of scientists who persisted against considerable social odds to get humanity tantalizingly close to immortality.

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The Yamanaka affair - Bangalore Mirror - Bangalore Mirror

The American Meditation Institute (AMI) in Averill Park, New York will host Leonard Perlmutter's 17th annual summer retreat July 13-16, 2017. This CME accredited foundation course for self-care will present an extensive curriculum of Yoga Science as mind/body medicine including topics on AMI Meditation, stress and pain management, breathing, easy-gentle yoga, Ayurveda, Yoga psychology, immortality and nutrition.

AVERILL PARK, NY (PRWEB) March 14, 2017

The American Meditation Institute (AMI) in Averill Park, New York will host Leonard Perlmutter's 17th annual summer retreat July 13-16, 2017. This CME accredited foundation course for self-care will present an extensive curriculum of Yoga Science as mind/body medicine including topics on AMI Meditation, stress and pain management, breathing, easy-gentle yoga, Ayurveda, Yoga psychology, immortality and nutrition. The weekend intensive is designed for first-time or experienced meditators, and offers 18 continuing medical education credits for physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals. Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev), AMI founder, noted educator and author of the award-winning book The Heart and Science of Yoga: Empowering Self-Care Program for a Happy, Healthy, Joyful Life will present all course components.

This intensive "Heart and Science of Yoga" retreat presents Leonard's comprehensive training in the world's most effective holistic mind/body medicine and explains its scientific foundation. Noted physicians Dr. Oz (Mehmet Oz MD), Dean Ornish MD, Bernie Siegel MD and Larry Dossey MD have endorsed the curriculum being offered. The American Medical Association and American Nurses Association provide medical accreditation credits for health care practitioners in attendance.

As part of AMI's "Yoga of Medicine" program, this weekend intensive will include the following areas of study: an easy meditation procedure; a systematic method for harnessing the power of the mind; breathing practices to enhance the immune system; an understanding of the creative benefits of mantra science; Ayurvedic health principles; easy-gentle yoga exercises for joints, glands and internal organs; and the benefits of contemplation and prayer. The entire agenda is designed to encourage active participant interaction by combining engaging lectures, practicums and Q&A in a concentrated three-day format. Leonard Perlmutter's 40 years of personal study and teaching will provide all attendees, regardless of the level of experience, a complete set of meditation tools that can relieve stress, reduce pain, boost the immune system, heal relationships, enhance problem solving abilities, and help them experience greater health, happiness, creativity and security.

Meditation master Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev) has taught on the faculties of the New England Institute of Ayurvedic Medicine, the Himalayan Yoga Teachers Association and the College of Saint Rose. He is a disciple of holistic health pioneer Swami Rama of the Himalayas, the Yoga scientist who, in laboratory conditions at the Menninger Institute, demonstrated that blood pressure, heart rate and the autonomic nervous system could be voluntarily controlled. Leonard has presented courses at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the Albany Medical College, the Commonwealth Club of California, "The New York Times" Yoga Forum with Dean Ornish, MD, and the United States Military Academy at West Point.

According to Leonard Perlmutter, "Human beings are not merely physical bodies. We are breathing and thinking beings alsoliving with complex thoughts, desires and emotions. Our individual achievement of optimal health does not begin with a lower health insurance premium. First and foremost, human wellness requires a reliable blueprint for mind/body self-care. With active and discriminating participation in our own health management, we can form a healing partnership with our physiciansand stop working against our own best interests."

About the American Meditation Institute The American Meditation Institute is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization devoted to the teaching and practice of Yoga Science, meditation and its allied disciplines as mind/body medicine. In its holistic approach to wellness, AMI combines the healing arts of the East with the practicality of modern Western science. The American Meditation Institute offers a wide variety of classes, retreats, and teacher training programs. AMI also publishes Transformation, a bi-monthly journal of meditation as holistic mind/body medicine.

Media Contact: Robert Washington 60 Garner Road Averill Park, NY 12018 Tel: 518-674-8714 Fax: 518-674-8714

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/03/prweb14146125.htm

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Leonard Perlmutter's 17th Annual Meditation and Yoga Retreat to be Held at The American Meditation Institute in ... - Benzinga

Nearly 100 students presented at Oakland University's second annual Graduate Student Research Conference, which took place March 10. The event spotlighted a diverse array of research topics and was keynoted by Dr. Kathie Olsen, a neuroscientist whose career includes leadership roles at NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Dr. David Stone, Oakland Universitys chief research officer, noted the value of having Dr. Olsen on campus as a role model to aspiring science and technology professionals.

Kathie Olsen started her career as an undeclared major at a small college, she fell into biology by accident and rose to the top of the federal science community, Stone said. What a great reminder that where you start doesnt dictate where you finish.

Following breakfast and registration, the day started with a 90-minute block of oral presentations held in various rooms of the Oakland Center. Thirty-five students delivered oral presentations, with topics ranging from health care and medicine, to physics and engineering, to accounting and finance, to the social sciences.

Showcasing a variety of research topics helped to broaden the conference's appeal across campus, according to Physical Therapy faculty member Dr. Christine Stiller, a member of the faculty committee that organized this years event.

The oral presentations were arranged in breakout sessions consisting of four to five presenters, with each presentation running 15 minutes. Each session featured presentations on related research topics, with presenters from different academic areas. Stiller moderated a session with presenters from Oakland's School of Health Sciences, School of Computer Science and Engineering, and the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine.

Stiller said that bringing students together from different areas helps promote collaboration and interdisciplinary learning. The experience also prepares students to present at professional conferences around the country.

It's a great opportunity for graduate students to develop their presentation skills, but also for undergraduate students to come and see where graduate school could lead them, Stiller said.

After the oral presentations, the event continued with a series of poster presentations by students from each of the university's schools, along with the College of Arts and Sciences.

Claudia Petrescu, dean of Graduate Education at OU, said this years conference featured twice as many presenters as last years event.

Students see this venue as the key venue to present their work, to connect with other students and to be in the spotlight, Petrescu said. It is wonderful to see how important this conference is becoming to OU.

Kathie Olsen

When the presentations concluded, attendees gathered in the Oakland Center Banquet Rooms for lunch and a keynote presentation by Dr. Olsen. The former Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the National Science Foundation and Chief Scientist at NASA shared stories from her career and touted the robust outlook for high-paying jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, especially those requiring advanced degrees.

A Ph.D. opens the door to so many opportunities, Olsen said. You will have a job.

She also emphasized the importance of diversity, noting that women are still underrepresented in science and technology.

Diversity is critical for best products, said Olsen, pointing to examples such as voice recognition technology. If you have a diverse team, your products are going to be better.

Aside from money and prestige, Olsen cited what she called the ultimate reason to pursue a STEM career.

When you choose science and technology, you choose immortality, she said. Research has a lasting impact and is really good for society.

Learn more about OU's graduate education programs at oakland.edu/grad.

Learn more about research at OU at oakland.edu/research.

Read more:
Graduate students showcase research at annual OU conference - News at OU

New York Times

What Our Cells Teach Us About a 'Natural' Death New York Times While as humans, we often consciously or unconsciously hope to achieve immortality, immortality has a very real existence in the cellular world it's called cancer. In fact, most cancers occur because of defects in apoptosis, and most novel cancer ...

The rest is here:
What Our Cells Teach Us About a 'Natural' Death - New York Times

DURHAM -- Multimedia artist and R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe will premiere an audiovisual installation that explores desire and movement during Moogfest 2017, to be held May 18-21. It will be set to a solo composition from Stipe himself.

Here are some more updates from Moogfest:

-- Kate Shaw will deliver the keynote lecture on Exploring the Universe and Impacting Society Worldwide with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Shaw will discuss the present-day and future impacts of the collider on society. She will also share findings from the work she has done promoting particle physics in developing countries through her Physics without Frontiers program

-- Joe Davis of MIT will trace the history of several projects centered on ideas about extraterrestrial communications that have given rise to new scientific techniques and inspired new forms of artistic practice.

-- Magenta by Google Brain: The Google brain team will bring its work to life through an interactive demo plus workshops on the creation of art and music through artificial intelligence.

-- Zoltan Istvan (Immortality Bus), former U.S. presidential candidate and leading Transhumanist, will explore the path to immortality through science.

-- Marc Fleury and members of the Church of Space Park Krausen, Ingmar Koch, and Christof Veillon return to Moogfest for a second year to present an expanded program with daily explorations in modern physics and the occult, Illuminati performances, and a Sunday Mass in their own dedicated Church venue.

-- Andy Cavatorta of MIT Media Lab will present a conversation and workshop on a range of topics including the four-century history of music and performance at the forefront of technology.

-- Michael Bierylo of the Berklee College of Music will present his Modular Synthesizer Ensemble alongside Csound workshops from fellow Berklee professor Richard Boulanger.

-- Chris Ianuzzi, synthesist of Ciani-Musica and past collaborator with Vangelis and Peter Baumann, will present a daytime performance and sound exploration workshops with the B11 brain interface and NeuroSky headset.

-- Duke University professors Mark Kruse and Katherine Hayles along with physicist Steven Goldfarb will lead the full ATLAS @ CERN program that will take place in addition to Kate Shaw's keynote address. The program will include a virtual visit to the Large Hadron Collider via a live video session, a half-day workshop analyzing and understanding LHC data, and a Science Fiction versus Science Fact live debate.

-- Duke professors Ryan Shaw and Michael Clamann will lead a daily science pub talk series on topics that include future medicine, humans and anatomy, and quantum physics.

A full schedule and more details will come later. For tickets, visit http://www.moogfest.com.

See more here:
REM frontman Michael Stipe to premier audiovisual installation at Moogfest 2017 - Durham Herald Sun