Parabiosis !

The word " Parabiosis " is likely to become very familiar to the elderly searching for the elixir of life or hoping to find the Fountain of Youth.  Back in the 1950's a researcher in the field of dentistry conducted an unusual experiment when he was trying to prove that tooth decay was caused by the sugar in food and not by some inherent human deficiency.

He cut small patches of skin from a pair of lab rats and then sutured the animals together at the site of the wound.  After a week of being so joined the animals blood vessels began to merge and the result was two rats whose  hearts were pumping blood around a shared circulatory system.  This scientist also noticed that older rats that shared blood with younger rats  lived four to five months longer than similar old rats which did not.

That was enough to get many pharmaceutical companies very excited.   Any company that can market a drug that  extends life will have found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Dozens of papers have been printed detailing the procedures that have been tried with animal research and it seems conclusive that this cross fertilization even operates across species.  It can help repair spinal chords, rejuvenate pancreases and even impair neuron growth in brain cells.  The walls of mouse hearts get thicker as they age.  Young blood can reverse that process as well.

Like Newton's famous " Law of Motion " it also works in reverse.  Wounds and damage in the younger rat exposed to parabiosis take longer to heal.  It can impair growth in younger brains and decrepify younger muscles.   It was also noted that the lab rats were not keen on this type of experiment and needed careful socialising to prevent them tearing each other apart.

No doubt this will be the base of promising future research and progress will inch its way forward. What seems to have been proved is the theory that an old body can gain benefit if the blood coursing through that body is also passing through the body of a younger person.    Perhaps the kidneys and liver of that younger person are doing a better job of removing waste matter than their aged counterparts in the older body.

It seems highly likely that less ethical parts of the world will see an opportunity for profit.  No doubt entrepreneurs will offer " refreshing " holidays for rich old men and women where they will have their blood circulate through a younger person to gain benefit.    It is quite possible that participating in such renewal schemes may replace donating kidneys as a way of poor people getting an economic start in life.

If the results of the rat experiments holds true, it simply means that an improvement in the health of the older person is replaced with a corresponding   decline in the ability of the younger donor to recover from future maladies.  A trading of health - for money.