More Like Salamanders

Fight Aging!

Do you want to live a longer life in good health? Simple practices can make some difference, such as exercise or calorie restriction. But over the long haul all that really matters is progress in medicine: building new classes of therapy to repair and reverse the known root causes of aging. The sooner these treatments arrive, the more lives will be saved. Find out how to help »

One vision of stem cell medicine is, as this Forbes writer puts it, "to make human beings more like salamanders. When chopped into bits, salamanders regenerate. Humans don't. By exploiting an elegant natural process -- the body's ability to heal itself with stem cells -- scientists are hoping to find therapies or cures for a long list of conditions including spinal cord paralysis, heart failure and Alzheimer's. 'Humans have a mechanism that sort of dampens down that ability. Infusions of stem cells are basically overcoming the damping-down mechanism.'" The path ahead is quite clear from a high level viewpoint, but a great deal of work remains to fill in the details and achieve goals. Fortunately, funding and public support exist - it's amazing what can be accomplished with those two things in hand.

Link: http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2005/04/29/hscout525412.html