Parabiosis – I first came across this gruesome practice while reading the Economist. Bizarre as it may sound, there is actually quite a bit of scientific data on this. Vampirism is not effective and conjoining is out of the question, but how about infusing old bodies with young plasma? Our 3 “antifascist” leaders could have discussed this. Who knows, maybe they’re already doing it. It’s not baseless. 嫩草is good for老牛😂
From the book Ageless by Andrew Scott:
“Unfortunately, this being biology, things aren’t quite that simple. Firstly, for anyone thinking of drinking young blood, you should be aware that enzymes in your stomach will thoroughly break down most of the signalling molecules it carries before they ever make it into your own circulation.
This means necking blood from someone’s jugular won’t be of any use. However, it’s not just the traditional vampiric mode of delivery which is flawed. What also didn’t make so many headlines was the significant negative effect on the younger mice in the partnership. This suggests an alternative explanation – rather than young blood being the elixir of life, maybe older blood is deadly, and the service the young mouse is providing is dilution of the problematic signals in older blood, at great cost to its own health. (In fact, it’s probably a bit of both.)
The final caveat is that heterochronic parabiosis is far more than just mixing blood. The older animal has the privilege of the younger one’s youthful organs. The younger rat or mouse has a better liver and kidneys for filtering toxins; better lungs and a stronger heart to make sure more oxygen is delivered to the organs of both mice; a youthful immune system with a fully functional thymus, better at seeking out and destroying bacteria, viruses and pre-cancerous or senescent cells; and so on. There are also far more everyday factors: for example, young mice run around their cages more and, if you’re an old mouse sewn to one, you benefit from an enforced exercise regime. That means the advantages to an old mouse in a parabiotic pair go substantially beyond simply adding pro-growth signalling molecules or diluting bad ones.
These ambiguities didn’t stop a surge of interest from scientists and Silicon Valley biohackers alike, who proceeded with varying degrees of scientific rigour. Continued parabiosis experiments have shown us that the older mouse in a heterochronic pair has improved growth of both brain cells and blood vessels in the brain, better spinal cord regeneration, and can have an aged, oversized heart shrunk back to a more normal size. This extends the catalogue of organs which benefit from parabiosis and might harbour latent healing capacity, but doesn’t bring us much closer to a workable therapy.
Others tried injecting youthful plasma into old mice and humans. There is some scientific rationale to trying this out just to see what happens: plasma transfusions are a relatively safe procedure, and a positive result would provide proof of principle which could then be built upon, rather like the original parabiosis experiments. However, human trials don’t appear to have been a resounding success one in South Korea hoping to use young plasma to alleviate frailty began in 2015 and has yet to report any results, and a US trial gave transfusions of young plasma to Alzheimer’s patients but didn’t succeed in turning back the disease.”
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