Category Archives: Immortality Medicine

Google's Bill Maris believes it is possible to live for 500 years. Photo: Stuart Isett/Fortune Brainstorm TECH via flickr.com/fortunelivemedia/

"If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes," Bill Maris says one January afternoon in Mountain View, California. The president and managing partner of Google Ventures just turned 40, but he looks more like a 19-year-old university kid. He's wearing sneakers and a grey denim shirt over a T-shirt; it looks like he hasn't shaved in a few days.

Behind him, sun is streaming through a large wall of windows. Beyond is the leafy expanse of the main Google campus. Inside his office, there's not much that gives any indication of the work Maris does here. The room is sparse clean white walls, a few chairs, a table. On this day, his desk has no papers, no notepads or Post-its, not even a computer.

Here's where you really figure out who Bill Maris is: on his bookshelf. There's a fat text called Molecular Biotechnology: Principles and Applications of Recombinant DNA. There's a well-read copy of Biotechnology: Applying the Genetic Revolution. And a collection of illustrations by Fritz Kahn, a German physician who was among the first to depict the human body as a machine. Wedged among these is a book that particularly stands out to anyone interested in living to 500. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, published in 2005, is the seminal work by futurist Ray Kurzweil. He famously predicted that in 2045, humankind will have its Terminator moment: the rise of computers will outpace our ability to control them. To keep up, we will radically transform our biology via nanobots and other machines that will enhance our anatomy and our DNA, changing everything about how we live and die.

"It will liberate us from our own limitations," says Maris, who studied neuroscience at Middlebury College and once worked in a biomedical lab at Duke University. Kurzweil is a friend. Google hired him to help Maris and other Googlers understand a world in which machines surpass human biology. This might be a terrifying, dystopian future to some. To Maris, it's business.

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This is where he hopes to find, and fund, the next generation of companies that will change the world, or possibly save it. "We actually have the tools in the life sciences to achieve anything that you have the audacity to envision," he says. "I just hope to live long enough not to die."

***

Maris is an unusual guy with an unusual job. Seven years ago, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, tapped him to start a venture capital fund, putting him smack between those tech titans and the sea of ambitious entrepreneurs trying to be just like them. At the time, he was a young entrepreneur himself, with limited investing experience and no clout in Silicon Valley. He'd sold his Vermont-based web-hosting company and was working at a nonprofit, developing technology for cataract blindness in India. This made him exactly the kind of outsider Google was looking for. "Bill was ready to come at this from an entirely new perspective," says David Drummond, who, as Google's chief legal officer and senior vice president of corporate development, oversees Google Ventures as well as the company's other investment vehicles.

Google Ventures has close to $US2 billion ($2.6b) in assets under management, with stakes in more than 280 start-ups. Each year, Google gives Maris $US300 million ($391m) in new capital, and this year he'll have an extra $US125 million ($162m) to invest in a new European fund. That puts Google Ventures on a financial par with Silicon Valley's biggest venture firms, which typically put to work $300 million to $500 million a year. According to data compiled by CB Insights, a research firm that tracks venture capital activity, Google Ventures was the fourth-most-active venture firm in the US last year, participating in 87 deals.

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Google Ventures and Bill Maris' search for immortality

Google's Bill Maris believes it is possible to live for 500 years. Photo: Stuart Isett/Fortune Brainstorm TECH via flickr.com/fortunelivemedia/

"If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes," Bill Maris says one January afternoon in Mountain View, California. The president and managing partner of Google Ventures just turned 40, but he looks more like a 19-year-old university kid. He's wearing sneakers and a grey denim shirt over a T-shirt; it looks like he hasn't shaved in a few days.

Behind him, sun is streaming through a large wall of windows. Beyond is the leafy expanse of the main Google campus. Inside his office, there's not much that gives any indication of the work Maris does here. The room is sparse clean white walls, a few chairs, a table. On this day, his desk has no papers, no notepads or Post-its, not even a computer.

Here's where you really figure out who Bill Maris is: on his bookshelf. There's a fat text called Molecular Biotechnology: Principles and Applications of Recombinant DNA. There's a well-read copy of Biotechnology: Applying the Genetic Revolution. And a collection of illustrations by Fritz Kahn, a German physician who was among the first to depict the human body as a machine. Wedged among these is a book that particularly stands out to anyone interested in living to 500. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, published in 2005, is the seminal work by futurist Ray Kurzweil. He famously predicted that in 2045, humankind will have its Terminator moment: the rise of computers will outpace our ability to control them. To keep up, we will radically transform our biology via nanobots and other machines that will enhance our anatomy and our DNA, changing everything about how we live and die.

"It will liberate us from our own limitations," says Maris, who studied neuroscience at Middlebury College and once worked in a biomedical lab at Duke University. Kurzweil is a friend. Google hired him to help Maris and other Googlers understand a world in which machines surpass human biology. This might be a terrifying, dystopian future to some. To Maris, it's business.

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This is where he hopes to find, and fund, the next generation of companies that will change the world, or possibly save it. "We actually have the tools in the life sciences to achieve anything that you have the audacity to envision," he says. "I just hope to live long enough not to die."

***

Maris is an unusual guy with an unusual job. Seven years ago, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, tapped him to start a venture capital fund, putting him smack between those tech titans and the sea of ambitious entrepreneurs trying to be just like them. At the time, he was a young entrepreneur himself, with limited investing experience and no clout in Silicon Valley. He'd sold his Vermont-based web-hosting company and was working at a nonprofit, developing technology for cataract blindness in India. This made him exactly the kind of outsider Google was looking for. "Bill was ready to come at this from an entirely new perspective," says David Drummond, who, as Google's chief legal officer and senior vice president of corporate development, oversees Google Ventures as well as the company's other investment vehicles.

Google Ventures has close to $US2 billion ($2.6b) in assets under management, with stakes in more than 280 start-ups. Each year, Google gives Maris $US300 million ($391m) in new capital, and this year he'll have an extra $US125 million ($162m) to invest in a new European fund. That puts Google Ventures on a financial par with Silicon Valley's biggest venture firms, which typically put to work $300 million to $500 million a year. According to data compiled by CB Insights, a research firm that tracks venture capital activity, Google Ventures was the fourth-most-active venture firm in the US last year, participating in 87 deals.

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Google Ventures provides capital funding for the search for immortality

SOURCE: Regen BioPharma Inc.

Regen Has Raised Almost $700,000 From "Angel" Investors Since December 29, 2014 to Finance Its Ongoing Research

SAN DIEGO, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 10, 2015) - Regen BioPharma Inc. (OTCBB: RGBP) (OTC PINK: RGBP) announced today successful closing of a transaction resulting in acquisition of issued US patent #8,263,571, and associated preclinical data package.The intellectual property covers specific therapeutic agents that gene silence CTCFL.CTCFL, otherwise known as Brother of the Regulator of Imprinted Sites (BORIS) is a gene that is critical for cancer stem cells to survive, in part by inducing expression of telomerase, a protein that creates cellular immortality1.

Thomas Ichim, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Regen is co-inventor of the patent, which was filed in October 2007 by Vendevia Group. Through a private transaction, Dr. Ichim obtained assignment of the patent and preclinical package, which was subsequently assigned by Dr. Ichim to Regen.

"Having co-authored the peer-reviewed publication dating back to 2008 in which potent inhibition of breast cancer was demonstrated by gene silencing of CTCFL2, and having assigned my own gene silencing/immunotherapy patent to Regen3, I am highly enthusiastic that this very promising approach to killing cancer stem cells has now been brought under the Regen umbrella." Stated Dr. Wei-Ping Min, Professor of Immunology at the University of Western Ontario and Member of Regen's Scientific Advisory Board."The use of RNA interference to kill cancer stem cells adds another powerful weapon in Regen's arsenal on the war on cancer."

CTCFL, also termed Brother of the Regulator of Imprinted Sites (BORIS) is a key protein that was originally discovered by Dr. Victor Lobanenkov at the NIH4, which acts as a "master orchestrator" of numerous genes needed for cancer to maintain the properties of cancer5.Dr. Ichim previously co-authored papers with NIH and other academic groups demonstrating that immunotherapy targeting CTCFL results in regression of breast cancer, leukemia, and glioma6,7,8.

"Having worked for several years on developing the CTCFL gene-silencing therapeutic approach, and witnessing first-hand the promise of this technology in terms of specifically targeting tumor stem cells, I am excited that we identified a mechanism of bringing this highly complementary technology into Regen," said Dr. Ichim. "Currently Regen is using gene silencing to block NR2F6 in cancer stem cells.The acquisition of the CTCFL intellectual property allows for performing experiments in parallel, thus significantly reducing developmental costs while doubling the probability of success."

"The possession of an issued US patent in this rapidly evolving space allows for a wide range of possibilities ranging from internal development, to co-development, to outright licensing," said David Koos, Chairman and CEO of Regen."We have initiated discussions with entities in this industry in order to most rapidly optimize value of this asset."

ABOUT REGEN BIOPHARMA INC.: Regen BioPharma Inc. is a publicly traded biotechnology company (OTCBB: RGBP) (OTC PINK: RGBP). The Company seeks to identify undervalued regenerative medicine applications in the immunotherapy and stem cell space. The Company is focused on rapidly advancing these technologies through pre-clinical and Phase I/ II clinical trials. Currently the Company is centering on gene silencing therapy for treating cancer, telomeres and small molecule therapies, along with developing stem cell treatments for aplastic anemia.

Disclaimer: This news release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. Future events and actual results could differ materially from those set forth in, contemplated by, or underlying the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties to which forward looking statements are subject include, but are not limited to, the effect of government regulation, competition and other material risks.

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Regen BioPharma Acquires Issued Patent and Preclinical Data Package for Targeting Cancer Stem Cell

Google Ventures' Bill Maris said he thinks humans can live to 500 years old This will be due to medical breakthroughs and a rise in biomechanics Google's director of engineering Ray Kurzweil previously said we'd be uploading our brains to machines by 2045 Google Ventureshas invested in genetics firms and cancer startups Tech giant also set up Calico - anti-ageing research and development labs Mr Maris said: 'We have the tools to achieve anything that you have the audacity to envision. I just hope to live long enough not to die' But professor Sir Colin Blakemore believes there's a limit on human life Neurobiologist believes 120 years might be an absolute to human lifespan This is because living for longer is so rarely exceeded that even with medical advances, it is unlikely this threshold will be raised

By Victoria Woollaston for MailOnline

Published: 10:20 EST, 9 March 2015 | Updated: 10:47 EST, 9 March 2015

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In an interview with Bloomberg, Google Ventures' president Bill Maris (pictured) said he thinks it's possible for humans to live to 500 years old

Google has invested in taxi firms, smart thermostats and even artificial intelligence but it is also setting its sights on immortality - or at least increasing our lives five-fold.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Google Ventures' president Bill Maris said he thinks it's possible to live to 500 years old.

And this will be helped by medical breakthroughs as well as a rise in biomechanics.

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Google Ventures' Bill Maris says humans could live for 500 YEARS

Gene expression is really simple. Everyone should know it and feel comfortable thinking about it, said Nobel laureate Craig Mello 82, professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, at a lecture Saturday morning in a packed Salomon 101.

Mellos keynote lecture, entitled RNA memories: Secrets of inheritance and immortality, kicked off Day of Biology, a day-long event commemorating life sciences at Brown. His lecture was followed by colloquia on a variety of topics in biology as well as current relevant University research. Mello provided an introduction to genetics before delving into his own research on RNA interference, which won him the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

He began by discussing germ lines, the cells used for sexual reproduction. Germ lines exist on a cosmic time scale. Every animal on this planet is related to each other were all related to each other.

The germ lines of humans and nematodes also known as roundworms have journeyed together on this planet for three million years, he said, adding that a wide range of animal biology can inform the study of human anatomy and physiology.

Mello discussed the relationship between DNA, RNA, ribosomes the part of the cell that creates proteins and gene expression. DNA encodes information that is transformed into messenger RNA, which brings the genetic information to the ribosomes, linking amino acids in ordered pairs to create an organisms proteins.

Mello said there are four building block nucleotides that combine to form codons, which code for the twenty amino acids the precursor molecules of proteins.

Four letters in the alphabet make 20 different words, which are the amino acids, Mello said, adding that RNA is really simple, but proteins are really diverse.

Mello also discussed his research on RNA interference, for which he and his collaborator Andrew Fire, professor of pathology and genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, shared their Nobel Prize. RNA interference can turn genes off, preventing their expression in the organism and its offspring.

We discovered that cells need a search engine, Mello said. Theyre dealing with information in much the same way that we all do on the (Internet). The precise chemical information allows a query to precisely identify a matching RNA cell.

By targeting messenger RNA, Mello and Fire learned how to enter search queries inside of cells. We can find genes and regulate them. This is really transforming what we can do in the laboratory.

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Craig Mello 82 gives biology keynote

Testing breast cancer cells for how closely they resemble stem cells could identify women with the most aggressive disease, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that breast cancers with a similar pattern of gene activity to that of adult stem cells had a high chance of spreading to other parts of the body.

Assessing a breast cancer's pattern of activity in these stem cell genes has the potential to identify women who might need intensive treatment to prevent their disease recurring or spreading, the researchers said.

Adult stem cells are healthy cells within the body which have not specialised into any particular type, and so retain the ability to keep on dividing and replacing worn out cells in parts of the body such as the gut, skin or breast.

A research team from The Institute of Cancer Research, London, King's College London and Cardiff University's European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute identified a set of 323 genes whose activity was turned up to high levels in normal breast stem cells in mice.

The study is published today (Wednesday) in the journal Breast Cancer Research, and was funded by a range of organisations including the Medical Research Council, The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Cancer Research UK.

The scientists cross-referenced their panel of normal stem cell genes against the genetic profiles of tumours from 579 women with triple-negative breast cancer - a form of the disease which is particularly difficult to treat.

They split the tumour samples into two categories based on their 'score' for the activity of the stem cell genes.

Women with triple-negative tumours in the highest-scoring category were much less likely to stay free of breast cancer than those with the lowest-scoring tumours. Women with tumours from the higher-scoring group had around a 10 per cent chance of avoiding relapse after 10 years, while women from the low-scoring group had a chance of around 60 per cent of avoiding relapse.

The results show that the cells of aggressive triple-negative breast cancers are particularly 'stem-cell-like', taking on properties of stem cells such as self-renewal to help them grow and spread. They also suggest that some of the 323 genes could be promising targets for potential cancer drugs.

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'Stem cell' test could identify most aggressive breast cancers

Until the Scientific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress. They thought the golden age was in the past, and that the world was stagnant, if not deteriorating. Strict adherence to the wisdom of the ages might perhaps bring back the good old times, and human ingenuity might conceivably improve this or that facet of daily life. However, it was considered impossible for human know-how to overcome the worlds fundamental problems. If even Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha and Confucius who knew everything there is to know were unable to abolish famine, disease, poverty and war from the world, how could we expect to do so?

Many faiths believed that some day a messiah would appear and end all wars, famines and even death itself. But the notion that humankind could do so by discovering new knowledge and inventing new tools was worse than ludicrous it was hubris. The story of the Tower of Babel, the story of Icarus, the story of the Golem and countless other myths taught people that any attempt to go beyond human limitations would inevitably lead to disappointment and disaster.

When modern culture admitted that there were many important things that it still did not know, and when that admission of ignorance was married to the idea that scientific discoveries could give us new powers, people began suspecting that real progress might be possible after all. As science began to solve one unsolvable problem after another, many became convinced that humankind could overcome any and every problem by acquiring and applying new knowledge. Poverty, sickness, wars, famines, old age and death itself were not the inevitable fate of humankind. They were simply the fruits of our ignorance.

A famous example is lightning. Many cultures believed that lightning was the hammer of an angry god, used to punish sinners. In the middle of the eighteenth century, in one of the most celebrated experiments in scientific history, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a lightning storm to test the hypothesis that lightning is simply an electric current. Franklins empirical observations, coupled with his knowledge about the qualities of electrical energy, enabled him to invent the lightning rod and disarm the gods.

Poverty is another case in point. Many cultures have viewed poverty as an inescapable part of this imperfect world. According to the New Testament, shortly before the crucifixion a woman anointed Christ with precious oil worth 300 denarii. Jesus disciples scolded the woman for wasting such a huge sum of money instead of giving it to the poor, but Jesus defended her, saying that The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me (Mark 14:7). Today, fewer and fewer people, including fewer and fewer Christians, agree with Jesus on this matter. Poverty is increasingly seen as a technical problem amenable to intervention. Its common wisdom that policies based on the latest findings in agronomy, economics, medicine and sociology can eliminate poverty.

And indeed, many parts of the world have already been freed from the worst forms of deprivation. Throughout history, societies have suffered from two kinds of poverty: social poverty, which withholds from some people the opportunities available to others; and biological poverty, which puts the very lives of individuals at risk due to lack of food and shelter. Perhaps social poverty can never be eradicated, but in many countries around the world biological poverty is a thing of the past.

Until recently, most people hovered very close to the biological poverty line, below which a person lacks enough calories to sustain life for long. Even small miscalculations or misfortunes could easily push people below that line, into starvation. Natural disasters and man-made calamities often plunged entire populations over the abyss, causing the death of millions. Today most of the worlds people have a safety net stretched below them. Individuals are protected from personal misfortune by insurance, state-sponsored social security and a plethora of local and international NGOs. When calamity strikes an entire region, worldwide relief efforts are usually successful in preventing the worst. People still suffer from numerous degradations, humiliations and poverty-related illnesses, but in most countries nobody is starving to death. In fact, in many societies more people are in danger of dying from obesity than from starvation.

The Gilgamesh Project

Of all mankinds ostensibly insoluble problems, one has remained the most vexing, interesting and important: the problem of death itself. Before the late modern era, most religions and ideologies took it for granted that death was our inevitable fate. Moreover, most faiths turned death into the main source of meaning in life. Try to imagine Islam, Christianity or the ancient Egyptian religion in a world without death. These creeds taught people that they must come to terms with death and pin their hopes on the afterlife, rather than seek to overcome death and live for ever here on earth. The best minds were busy giving meaning to death, not trying to escape it.

That is the theme of the most ancient myth to come down to us the Gilgamesh myth of ancient Sumer. Its hero is the strongest and most capable man in the world, King Gilgamesh of Uruk, who could defeat anyone in battle. One day, Gilgameshs best friend, Enkidu, died. Gilgamesh sat by the body and observed it for many days, until he saw a worm dropping out of his friends nostril. At that moment Gilgamesh was gripped by a terrible horror, and he resolved that he himself would never die. He would somehow find a way to defeat death. Gilgamesh then undertook a journey to the end of the universe, killing lions, battling scorpion-men and finding his way into the underworld. There he shattered the mysterious stone things of Urshanabi, the ferryman of the river of the dead, and found Utnapishtim, the last survivor of the primordial flood. Yet Gilgamesh failed in his quest. He returned home empty-handed, as mortal as ever, but with one new piece of wisdom. When the gods created man, Gilgamesh had learned, they set death as mans inevitable destiny, and man must learn to live with it.

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The myth of pure science: Its all about political, economic, religious interests

Australian Queen Garnet has five to 10 times more anthocyanins than a normal plum Fruit was accidentally created during a breeding programme Marks & Spencer currently the only UK supermarket to stock the fruit

By Anucyia Victor for MailOnline

Published: 09:23 EST, 5 March 2015 | Updated: 09:23 EST, 5 March 2015

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A plum, which was 'accidentally created' , has been touted as the next superfood to rival the acai berry.

TheAustralian Queen Garnet contains some of the highest levels of antioxidants ever found in a fruit and has just gone on sale in the UK.

According to studies the fruit has five to ten times more anthocyanins than a normal plum.

The Australian Queen Garnet has five to ten times more of the antioxidantanthocyanins than a normal plum

Link:
Jammy tasting new plum variety hailed as the next big health trend

For the last week, an Italian neurosurgeon has been executing a full-blown media offensive, talking up his plan to stitch one persons head to another persons body. If the powers-that-be would just get over their ethical queasiness, Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group says he could accomplish the feat by 2017.

But full-body transplants arent so crazy. In fact, it might surprise you that there was a successful operation as far back as 1818. Well, successful if you ignore that the transplantee freaked out and murdered his doctors family. Oh wait. That was Frankenstein. I take it back, full body transplants are totally crazy.

What the hell, going to the moon was crazy too, right? And a maybe-crazy-but-what-the-hell moonshot is exactly how Canavero sees his plan to help patients with severe physical impairments. Why did the US and the Soviet Union just vie for being the first to space? Because it is about measuring dicks. We want to demonstrate as a country, to say: I am the best, he says. Canaveros latest paper glosses over questions of ethics and practicality and tacklesthe trickiest aspect of the head-swapping procedure: The spinal splice.

Canaveros plan focuses on sewingtwo people together by their spinal cords. (Hooking up the rest of the utilitiesblood vessels, airways, blood vesselsis incredibly difficult, but trifling in comparison.) Step one is to sever the cords with a special, ultra-thin blade. Canavero rightly notes most cases of spinal trauma are well, traumatic: Snapping your neck on a skateboard ramp is bound to leave the spinal cord in an untidy condition. Those nerve cells scar, and scarring would impede their regeneration (if cells in the central nervous system could regeneratewell get to that in a sec). A clean wound, on the other hand, heals cleanly. Canavero likens those million sharply severed neurons to spaghetti. Italians adore spaghetti, I love spaghetti, and spaghetti is what is called for here, he says.

The job of fusing those spaghetti-like spinal sections together falls to a substance called polyethylene glycol. This stuff has actually been pretty good at repairing the motor functions in rats with spinal traumathough even the kindest critic will point out that successful rat experiments are a far cry from proving that the stuff will repair human spines. Still, Canavero is raring to go. I have enough animal data, he says. Give me a brain dead organ donor. Say someone is in a traumatic car accident, and doctors say that he cannot be saved. In the time between when the persons family says its OK to pull the plug and the moment the doctors actually do so, Canavero asks for three to four hours. I sever the spinal cord, add polyethylene glycol, and start measuring electrophysiological responses, he says.

After surgery (and during it, one hopes), Canavero will keep the patient in a coma. He estimates it will take about at least two weeks for the first axons to beginlacing themselves together, at which point the patient can be revived. Throughout the coma and for some time after, Canavero will bathe the spinal splice with a mild electrical current. This is not a free Frankenstein joke from the good doctor: Its actually a method thats seen surprisingly promising results healingrealhuman patients with spinal trauma. Canavero is confident that this will keep the muscle cells operational. Combined with physical therapy, Canavero estimates his as-yet-unchosen patient (any volunteers?) will be back on her (new) feet in about a year.

In case this wasnt entirelyclear: Canaveros plan is insane. Like, James Bond villain insane. And its not just because his plan fits together like a Voltron of bad science (which it does). Its kind of a bummer, actually, because his plan couldmaybework, if he was given free rein to cut and sew living peoples heads to dead peoples bodies until he got it right. But besides ethics, theres an unfortunate fact of biology standing in his way: The central nervous system in higher vertebrateslike humansdoes not regenerate. Hes insane. You cant put a head on somebody else! says Binhai Zhang, a neurosurgeon at UC San Diego. The reason why goes down to your DNA. The genes in a mature mammalian central nervous system that control regeneration are repressed, says Michael Beattie, a professor of neurosurgery at UC San Francisco. Theyll stay that way, no matter how much you treat the spinal cord with polyethylene glycol and electrical currents. (Although, hey, who wants to work on un-repressing those genes?)

Nobody knows for sure why the cells in your brain and spine arent wired for regrowth. After all, your peripheral nervous systemthe circuitry for every other part of your bodyconducts electrical impulses in exactly the same way, but its genes can code for self-repair. Beattie says this may have to do the fact the spine and brain contain the circuitry coded for movement, not just for conducting signals. Spinal cells must knit themselves together in super-complex configurations in order to command the motor functions youve learned over a lifetime. Once the connections are made, you dont want the wrong connections getting created, he says.

The only reliable way to induce spinal cell regrowth in higher order vertebrates is with stem cell therapy. Last year scientists showed pluripotent stem cells could regrow damaged spinal cordsbut only in rats. Mark Tuszynski studies stem cells in spinal injury at UC San Diego, and he says even with this advance the research community is years away from attempting suchtreatments on humans. Its not at the stage yet where there can be meaningful advances in clinical trials, he says. Plus stem cells will need help, in the form of drugs that knock down natural regeneration inhibitors that your body creates (because cancer), and still more drugs to keep your body from creating scar tissue around the wound. (Though in fairness, thats the idea behind Canaveros super-thin knife.) All of this research remainsyears away from clinical application.

And this slow, careful tempodo no harm being a hallmark of western medicineis what drives Canaveros bold assertion that he will have a successful head transplant in 24 months. There are all these people who tell you: Who is this guy who can do this in two years? When you go public with something like this, you have to have two balls like this. There are people who are not so strong-balled and will just get crushed by the critics. But I love the critics. This is a feat of theoretical neuroscience and the evidence is there and its going to work. In case you need clarification, his main argument there is Haters gonna hate.

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Full-Body Transplants Are a Crazy, Wildly Unethical Idea

To Spur Adoptions, an Oakland Cafe Puts Cats Among the Patrons New York Times (EM)

White Trash Gothic Michael Lind. FWIW, I never understood the enthusiasm for To Kill a Mockingbird.

Game of Thrones Monopoly Will Make Fans Fight For The Iron Throne, Too Inquisitur (furzy mouse). This tells me the GoT brand getting awfully close to its sell-by date.

Transient star grazing our solar system just left, cosmically speaking CNET (Stephen M)

New AIDS drug shields monkeys: study Agence France-Presse

My taxes go where? How countries spend your money BBC (furzy mouse)

Thailand To Give Chinese Tourists Etiquette Manuals Inquisitur (furzy mouse)

Prostitutes drop allegations against Strauss-Kahn in pimping trial France24 (Nikki). The case was always seen as weak. For all his considerable faults (he was known for zeroing in on pretty women and pursuing them very aggressively, in addition to his use of prostitutes), there evidence that DSK had procured the talent for the orgies, um, sex parties, was thin. And why should he have? He was a busy guy and its not unreasonable to assume friends with similar tastes or people wanting to curry favor did the organizing.

Argentina Nisman Death: Hundreds of Thousands Rally BBC (Ryan R)

Grexit?

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Links 2/19/15