
Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging - charlief
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,725798,00.html
======
grellas
The human race has a problem or two to solve before it can lay claim to
"immortality."

For example:

1\. The 20th century brought us the "war to end all wars," followed by a "lost
generation" that essentially turned to boozing and high living as a way of
escaping the loss of joy and the mass death of trench warfare; it brought us
the mechanized warfare of WWII, by which devastation and death rained from the
skies upon countless thousands of innocent people, the vision of a Third Reich
and mass slaughter in ovens of an innocent religious group, from which
thousands recoiled in horror but were powerless either to stop or to
comprehend how such things were possible, and nuclear death that engulfed
massive numbers of Japanese innocents, from which a mass stockpiling of such
devastating weapons by the world's superpowers ensued, with follow-on
proliferation now having reached into the hands of megalomaniacal dictators
whose main claim to previously unthinkable levels of power will lie mainly in
having developed such weapons and in being prepared potentially to use them,
all followed by a "beat generation" that turned to drugs and other forms of
escapism, and by a "hip generation" that did the same and by subsequent
generations that are still groping in the dark, so to speak, to make sense of
it all while somehow hoping that mankind will improve dramatically in its
quest to achieve peace and tranquility notwithstanding all the sorry history
to the contrary in ages past. As technology enables us to develop ever-greater
forms of lethality, does anyone see "immortality" in his future even if one
could live appreciably beyond the limit of 100 years that serves today as a
pretty good measure of when the very few remaining representatives of a
generation will in themselves be on the verge of dying. Yes, we all hope for
solutions but let us see evidence of such solutions in action before laying
claim to immortality.

2\. The obvious problem that, when one reaches much beyond the age of 90, he
begins to "fall apart." I know that is not a scientific phrase, but it
accurately describes what happens when senility, dementia, and other mental
problems attack the mind, when the body shrinks and most muscle mass is lost,
when the skin deteriorates, and when cancer, congestive heart failure (or
other heart disease), strokes, arterial, vascular, and blood problems, or any
one of countless other illnesses attack and eventually overwhelm the body. And
when there is no obvious illness, there is a winding down, a dying in one's
sleep, a passing away owing to "natural causes." It would be one thing if some
or most of these illnesses has been cured and scientists were able to say, "we
are close and in a short while we will solve the remaining problems." It is
quite another when science has not the slightest idea, based on today's
knowledge, of how to solve even some of this onslaught of lethal conditions
that affects us all at life's end.

3\. The pure force of random accidents. This may not mean much if a lifespan
is measured by a century. Multiply that by several centuries (assuming the
other problems could be solved) and, in time, the odds will catch up with most
people. Thus, solving the aging problem still leaves unsolved the cases of
accidental, traumatic death, etc. that has never been a trivial problem at any
point in history.

This piece, to my mind, projects fairly extreme forms of wish fulfillment in
assuming that modern science is anywhere close to holding the "key" to solving
any of this, much less in speculating that the answers lie in analyzing the
genes of the little girl featured in this piece.

I understand the fascination of believing that potentially vast amounts of
human betterment might result from the careful study of genetic conditions,
and I have no doubt that much genuine progress can come from such studies. But
science has to be tied to reality, above all things, and it does no service to
its cause to deny the obvious (such as the items noted above), or to engage in
what I believe are unsubstantiated speculations about "immortality," in hoping
for the best from any given avenue of research.

Apart from speculating about immortality, this piece is interesting, and even
fascinating, in highlighting the study of this young girl's unusual condition.

~~~
nostromo
I know it's only one part of your comment, but Steven Pinker argues very
convincingly that human violence is at an all time low, even when including
events like WWII.

Ted talk:
[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html)

Chart of warfare deaths: [http://www.martincwiner.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/02/maled...](http://www.martincwiner.com/wp-
content/uploads/2008/02/maledeaths.png) (Note: that last one includes 2 world
wars!)

Edge article: <http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html>

~~~
narrator
World War II was really boring if you lived in South America at the time.

~~~
nostromo
Note that it says "US and Europe"

------
reasonattlm
This case has no application in aging research, and is of no interest to the
biogerontology community. It's an interesting developmental abnormality, but
nothing more. Aging is caused by accumulated biochemical damage, and this
person is apparently aging normally at the level of cells and macromolecules.

~~~
lionheart
Even though I agree with you, I have to point out:

You don't know that. Nobody does.

We don't know exactly how aging works and this theory needs to be tested as
well. If we stop research because we just know something, we'll never get
anywhere.

~~~
gte910h
We know a lot about how a lot of different mechanisms of aging works. Although
I agree, he very likely doesn't know which ones are and aren't in play in this
case either.

------
Jun8
Amazing story! Two minor details piqued my attention:

* How the journalistic storytelling style is different from the US one. I guess I have grown accustomed to reading NYT and other newspapers here. For example, I don't think the sentence "Other girls her age are driving, going out dancing and sleeping with their first boyfriends" would have been used for a story like this.

* And more importantly this: "Pakula [her doctor] practices in a medical building near the Greenbergs' house. He wears a tie adorned with cartoonish hippopotamuses. A tall stack of paper -- Brooke's file -- sits on his desk. "This can't be lost," says the doctor, placing his hand on the documents. He knows what a treasure the file represents." It's outrageous that they are using _paper_ records to track this girl. At this age of iPads and other amazing handhelds, doctors' offices are still operating in the 1960s.

~~~
britta
To my eyes, this journalistic storytelling style is "feature" writing --
different from "news" style, but US newspapers have both. You'll see a form of
it in NYT Magazine profile articles
(<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/>).

~~~
ugh
Der Spiegel was modeled after British and American news magazines when it was
founded in 1947 in post-war Germany (with allied approval as was necessary for
all press at that time). The magazine is really very similar to Time, Newsweek
or The Atlantic.

------
VladRussian
"The length of the telomeres, on the other hand, corresponds to her actual
age. "

how come "immortality" comes to play here?

~~~
sliverstorm
+1 million. She's still _aging_ , she's just not _developing_

(by aging I mean the kind that kills you. Being an adult does not kill you;
being old does.)

~~~
rbanffy
> being old does.

Actually, being old does not suffice. You need a combination of short
telomeres and cell damage.

------
lukev
Interesting, and I hope that we can learn from her condition.

However, I wouldn't call it "immortality" until she's 70 and has the body and
development of a teenager. Unfortunately, unless that happens, it's just a
rather sad medical condition. Even if we can learn from it.

~~~
joevandyk
I don't think anyone's making the claim that she will live forever (or even
more than normally).

~~~
chc
The article doesn't outright say "she will live forever," but it refers to her
as "Brooke the Immortal," says her DNA is the "key to immortality" through
which humans can live "at least 1000 years." If they're not trying to claim
she's immortal, they're being pretty deceptive.

------
guynamedloren
I've always wondered about the human body. Right now I am studying
engineering, but eventually I would like to delve deep into anatomy and
biology. An automobile can theoretically run forever as long as it is properly
maintained, even if that means replacing major parts - engine, transmission,
even frame (but at a certain point the repairs are no longer financially
feasible). Why then, can't the human body last forever? As long as we are able
to make repairs and replace parts when they fail, I don't understand why
people have to die.

With all of the knowledge and advanced technology of today, something tells me
we should be able to figure out how to stop aging - or at least slow it. We
should be able to cure cancer. We should be able to cure AIDs. We should be
able to regrow missing appendages or failed body parts. Am I the only one that
thinks about these things? I would love to get involved in this field one day.
I know there have been great advancements in these areas, but it seems like
there is so much more that we could be doing.

~~~
possibilistic
Computational biochem student here. Unfortunately we do not have the
technological prowess to replace parts of our body as they age. Researchers
are working on growing whole organs from the extracellular scaffolds of
cadavers, but this technique is in its infancy and I would take all news
concerning it with a grain of salt.

Unfortunately, we are limited by which organs and tissues we can replace. Case
in point: we cannot transplant the brain. Intracellular and extracellular
buildup (eg. amyloid beta, lipofuscins, etc) will cause inflammation and
cellular damage, and there is no way to remove them. Loss of telomeres and the
accumulation of mutations leads to the breakdown of the genome, which is the
host of the majority of a cell's state information. We ARE computer programs,
and the moment memory gets corrupted things start to break down and behave
improperly. The probability of any one of an unlimited number disease states
in a cell correlates also with the level of misfolded, degraded, improperly
tagged or trafficked gene products, which will always increase with time, even
if the central program is well-behaved.

Remaining at homeostasis requires us to not reach chemical equilibrium, which
requires we consume a ton of energy. Converting the necessary molecules during
cellular metabolism puts our cells under heavy oxadative stress. Living
requires a substantial number of evolved countermeasures, but eventually it
will all catch up to us.

Why then are we so inept in our understanding of biology? The sheer astounding
complexity of our biological machinery is not matched by any other problem
that faces us. Biotechnology is amazing, but we are vastly limited by what we
can do outside the context of in vitro techniques or simple, sacaled down in
vivo assays. The real systm is always too complex to fully understand, and
with so many unknowns we are essentially flying without radar. We can study
proteins, promoters, etc. (slowly and with great difficulty) but we cannot
"repair" them. We can't excise a damaged region of the genome and replace it
at will. You would probably be shocked to see what techniques are actually
even available--with my own limited experience it often feels like we are
blindly throwing darts at targets that may not even exist. Our sequence
information gives us clues, but we lack structural information (especially
post-translational modifications) or knowledge of interaction details in the
biochemical pathway.

If every physicist, computer scientist, mathematician or engineer stopped what
they were doing and began work on this problem we might make some headway.
Right now our hands are tied. This is absolutely the most important and
complex problem in the world. We need the transcriptome, proteome,
interactome, complete structure data, better algorithms, faster computers,
higher resolution imaging (spatial, temporal, etc), better techniques, higher
througput, I could go on and on. We certainly haven't entered the industrial
age of biotech yet...

Do consider giving biology a try. We could use you and everyone willing. If
you want to live twice as long, not get cancer or Alzheimer's, or cure any
important infectious diseases, you should join us. Especially if you're a
logical and abstract thinker.

~~~
Dn_Ab
I enjoy machine learning, pure and applied maths. Where do I start? Any books,
any summaries of the state of the art for the computationally inclined? I
ignorantly guess that graph theory, statistics and perhaps even group theory
may provide useful perspectives? I know dynamical systems theory has been
applied and hear you can code new simple organisms or something? Am I talking
nonsense? heh This has always been an end goal of mine but I don't know where
to begin. I figure start now and in 5 - 10 years I'll be ready to join you :)

~~~
possibilistic
Graph theory is applicable for exploring biochemical pathways, and all manner
of statistics, ML, and metaheuristics are useful.

We can't "code" an organism, unfortunately. That won't be possible for some
time. Venter has inserted a bacterial genome into a preexisting cell and
called it "synthetic life", but this is hyperbole. He essentially just swapped
out the operating system if you will. Both the genome and the cell were
preexisting. This would be impossible to do for a eukaryotic cell with any of
today's technology since we have extremely complicated molecular (genomic)
machinery. Not to mention how much of our state information is epigenetic--
precise methylation, etc.

We certainly cannot create novel proteins outside of fusions between subunits.
Protein folding is just way too difficult to solve. If we ever figure it out,
society will change overnight.

If you would like to study this, get some texts on cell physiology, molecular
biology (genetics++), and maybe do some reading on higher level function. Like
me you will see that your existing skill set is not immediately transferrable
until you learn enough biology: you cannot effectively program in a language
until you really know it innately. Biology is the same way, just much, much
more sysemitized, complex and abstract. It has a very high barrier to entry
(akin to learning Vim, but takes longer.)

------
ugh
It’s somewhat amusing and nice to see that Aubrey de Grey who is one of the
few people on this planet seriously working on immortality and who always had
to fight for acceptance is the skeptic in this article.

~~~
Udo
No, it's should be an important clue for people who are not aging researchers.

------
stagas
Who knows for sure that this isn't even a rare condition? In theory, there
could be people living among us that are centuries old and might look like
20-30. If I was, I wasn't going to tell everybody. If you travel a lot people
won't notice your condition. I believe this is just proof that the condition
exists, not the magnitude of it.

~~~
aperiodic
There's no proof that she's going to live any longer than a normal human.
She's just developing much more slowly than normal.

She's also had many severe medical conditions which required intensive medical
care. She still has to be fed via a gastric feeding tube. I doubt anyone with
a similar condition would have survived the first 5 years of their life as
short as 60 years ago.

~~~
donaq
Well, at the end of the article, there was mention of a 40 year old in the
body of a 10 year old boy. We can probably observe him to see if such people
can have abnormally long lifespans.

------
carbocation
_"Brooke holds the key to everything," says Walker. He's anxious to press on
with his work, because he feels that his time is running out. But Howard
Greenberg is stalling. He has long felt that he is protecting a valuable
treasure in his red brick house. He's even hired lawyers to examine the issue
of the rights to Brooke's genome._

It saddens me that the state of human genetics in the United States (perhaps
elsewhere, but I've only done genetics here) is such that Mr. Greenberg would
even have to consider such things.

~~~
anigbrowl
You're probably familiar with the case of Henrietta Lacks. Do you happen to
know how these things are handled abroad?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks>

~~~
carbocation
Yes, very much so; her story took place at my hospital. The way that her story
is presented to us varies with who does the presenting, but no matter the
spin, it's hard not to feel terribly for her and her family.

I'm not familiar with how this works abroad, which is why I tried to qualify
my statement.

~~~
tensor
How do you feel her family is being hard done by? This girl is certainly not
the model of immortality that the article makes her out to be. She's likely to
have a very hard life.

If anything, I think it's sad that the father sees his daughter as some sort
of valuable item, rather than working with researchers to help figure out why
this developmental problem came about.

Even if the genetic information _is_ an important piece of the puzzle of
immortality, is keeping this information from the public, and himself, in
anyone's best interest?

~~~
carbocation
There might be a bit of confusion here. In the post that you replied to
directly, I am referring to Henrietta Lacks, not the Greenbergs.

------
oconnor0
"Biological immortality is possible," says Walker. "If you don't get hit by a
car or by lightning, you could live at least 1,000 years."

Interesting that the definition of immortality is living 1000 years.

~~~
sliverstorm
The reasons his idea of immortality has an end time may be for other reasons.
For example, perhaps you aren't going to die of old age but over the course of
time your joints wear and can't repair themselves fully, so you wind up alive
and healthy but broken. Or perhaps you inevitably accumulate CO or some other
trace toxin in your bloodstream and can't get rid of it.

Immortality in his sense I believe simply means you don't die of age, but
there are a lot of other ways to die.

------
danielnicollet
Why the journalists and PR folks probably figured out calling her condition
"immortality" would attract more attention just like it did here on HN, it
appears obvious that there are many possible explanations for her condition,
other than retro-aging. She could simply be suffering from a combination of
genetic or non-genetic disease creating her very small stature and mental
disabilities.

See a video here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBbG2tSDfOo>

------
runningdogx
I think they are obsessing unnecessarily on the semantics of what "development
genes" are.

I strongly doubt there is a bright line separating developmental genes from
normal steady-state genes. A multicellular organism is one hugely complicated,
parallel, state machine. If certain states become unreachable, that doesn't
necessarily mean all the genes responsible for those states are no longer
doing anything.

------
corin_
Not related to the purpose of the article, but the subject:

Are there legal precedents regarding situations like this? If she developed
into a body/mind of a child who understands how to buy something, could she
buy alcohol/cigarettes? If someone had sex with her (again, not now, but say
she developed to the equivilent of a 13-15 year old) then presumably it
wouldn't count as sex with a minor? (If someone were to have sex with her
right now then it might be proven to be non-consensual, but not legally
paedophilia?)

 _Sorry, latter part of that is not exactly a nice subject, but pretty
interesting from a legal point of view I think._

~~~
andrenotgiant
Yes of course there are laws against rape of someone who is mentally
incapacitated. Ususally something along the lines of: "[It's rape if] the
actor knows or has reason to know that the victim is mentally incapable,
mentally incapacitated, or physically helpless"

~~~
corin_
But what about if she becomes mentally/physically ten, and consents?

------
cullenking
I am surprised this hasn't had more attention than the couple articles I've
read about Brooke over the last 1-2 years.

One of the worst parts about this (from a scientific standpoint) is probably
the waiting game - will this person's DNA eventually mutate, forming cancer or
other age related diseases? Are there tests, other than appearance of age
related diseases, to determine if she is aging?

[EDIT] VladRussian pointed out that they talked about the length of her
telomeres corresponding to her actual age. Hence, she isn't "immortal", but
there is something else going on.

------
TamDenholm
I wish we could leave people like this alone, why does this kid have to endure
a life of being a lab rat?

Also, giving "mankind the gift of eternal life" is a flawed idea. Simply by
improving our medical science which has given people a longer lifespan has
caused a ridiculous amount of problems.

There are too many people on this planet and by creating more and more that
live longer and longer we are sacrificing the longevity of the human race as a
whole, not to mention the other life on this planet.

~~~
lukev
Disagree strongly. At risk of sounding too metaphorical, death is the greatest
enemy of the human race. It represents the loss of unique and worthwhile
personalities, and places a strict upper bound on mortal human achievement.

Of course we'll have to deal with the sociological and economic ramifications
of that in the scope of limited resources. But it is entirely appropriate to
rage against the dying of the light.

~~~
TamDenholm
I suppose i was taking a contrarian stance but i still believe that right now
humans living longer is causing many problems that just arent being addressed
at all.

Taking social problems as an example, governments are scared to do anything
about it because they'd have to do things like raising the retirement age,
which is what France had major problems with recently.

The people that dont want things to change for the older population are the
older population and that is the demographic that is already huge and getting
larger and larger and because their against it, nothing will get done.

This is a very specific argument but my point applies to the broader problem.

------
malkia
I've had distant cousin, and she was exactly like that - older than me, she
was still baby at 18. I'm not sure whether she's still alive.

------
chadp
Amazing story.

As stated in the article, assuming we do figure out how to make people live
forever (or a very long time), Who is allowed to use it? The rich? The
fastest? Strongest? Smartest?

Everyone can't live forever, there would be too many people. Unless we move to
colonize space of course.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Global 2-child policy for the 'immortals' + colonize space. When people like
Einstein can continue building on their knowledge and understanding for ~1000
years instead of ~60, I imagine we'd develop the science and technology
required to colonize space at faster rate.

------
alokm
We are not ready for immortality yet. Just think of the strain it would put on
the already overpopulated earth. Resources are already scarce and we are
searching for more efficient ways of using energy. Moral, Economic and Social
Consequences would be disastrous.

~~~
knieveltech
Nonsense. Human beings have turned thinning our own population when resources
are contested into a science and that's before you factor in the odds of any
true immortal being torn to shreds by the masses of have-nots doomed to a
"normal" human lifespan.

------
DjDarkman
Interesting. I always thought that living beings age just because they were
programmed to do so, because that's how the genetic algorithm works I guess.

~~~
tensor
Programmed isn't quit the right word. It is true that aging is in our genetic
code, but it has arising via random mutation combined with selection. This
case is hypothesized to be a result of yet another random mutation that has
tampered with the aging mechanics. Thus, it's interest to scientists.

~~~
rbanffy
Death supposedly helps evolution by removing previous iterations of the genome
from the gene pool, leaving newer, allegedly better adapted, "models" with
less competition. It works cross-species - if your species does not provide
better adapted generations for some time, it will be outcompeted into
extinction.

~~~
possibilistic
A really ineresting way to look at aging is this: if longer life was
evolutionarily advantageous, we would have evolved additional molecular
mechanisms to support it. It's not that by dying earlier we keep the gene pool
fitter, because that's not how evolution works. (We'd otherwise have a much
more complicated algorithm on our hands.) Rather, we die simply because there
is no advantage in having us persist--we only gained and conserved what was
optimal for our species' lifecycle. Anything else requires extra energy and
support machinery and is not likely to be amplified since occasional
breakdowns are likely to be serious or fatal (and more common with the
increased complexity!)

Compare gymnosperms (conifers) and certain angiosperms (flowering plants). The
former persist for long periods under drought and stress conditions and only
bear seeds after a two-year long development. Some desert angiosperms sprout,
pollinate, spread seeds, then die in the span of a week. -- Different
evolutionary strategies evolved under different environments and selection
pressures.

(Concession: evolution isn't "optimal", but it has found good enough solutions
that I often call it such.)

------
adrianwaj
rewrite: "Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to (Aging)
Developing"

If they can find someone's who's telomeres haven't shortened or aren't
shortening (and they haven't contracted any cancers) then there might be a
chance.

------
koeselitz
That poor kid.

