Now Batting for the Red Sox: Number 9. Williams...
Death be not proud is so passe and 1940s. The new mantra: death be not permanent. At least that's what one American scientist is learning from a lowly worm.
Professor Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado, a scientist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the suburbs of Washington, DC, "is now trying to unlock the genetic secret underlying the process" of spontaneous regenereration of the head in flatworms "in the hope that one day humans with brain or spinal chord damage will be able to regrow brain cells and reconnect nerves."
According to the indispensable Scotsman, Sanchez Alvarado has "already identified a number of genes that are central to regeneration." What's more, the good professor thinks that humans share many of the worm's regenerative genes -- but that they're obviously not used in quite the same way. Yet.
Some people -- such as baseball/fishing/hunting/fighter-jet legend Ted Williams had faith that such advances might come along after their death. Williams, you may recall, had his head (and body, too) cryogenically frozen upon his death. Many laughed at him. Latenight television had a field day. Now, it seems, Williams's presciense may one day in the not-so-distant future reward him (and us, but hopefully not Jay Leno) mightily.
That's using the old noodle, Ted! And when you return, Ted, as "the first immortal,"** people will say of you this: "There's the greatest hitter that ever lived." The only debate will be whether you've lived twice, or if you never died at all.
**Definition of "brass balls": Referring to Ted Williams as "the first immortal" and filing reports from a Christian fundamentalists' creationism conference in a southern town that boasts the word "lynch" in its name.
Professor Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado, a scientist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the suburbs of Washington, DC, "is now trying to unlock the genetic secret underlying the process" of spontaneous regenereration of the head in flatworms "in the hope that one day humans with brain or spinal chord damage will be able to regrow brain cells and reconnect nerves."
According to the indispensable Scotsman, Sanchez Alvarado has "already identified a number of genes that are central to regeneration." What's more, the good professor thinks that humans share many of the worm's regenerative genes -- but that they're obviously not used in quite the same way. Yet.
Some people -- such as baseball/fishing/hunting/fighter-jet legend Ted Williams had faith that such advances might come along after their death. Williams, you may recall, had his head (and body, too) cryogenically frozen upon his death. Many laughed at him. Latenight television had a field day. Now, it seems, Williams's presciense may one day in the not-so-distant future reward him (and us, but hopefully not Jay Leno) mightily.
That's using the old noodle, Ted! And when you return, Ted, as "the first immortal,"** people will say of you this: "There's the greatest hitter that ever lived." The only debate will be whether you've lived twice, or if you never died at all.
**Definition of "brass balls": Referring to Ted Williams as "the first immortal" and filing reports from a Christian fundamentalists' creationism conference in a southern town that boasts the word "lynch" in its name.
posted by TtP Staff @ 7/23/2005
< Home>