New Aging: FDA approved procedure reverses aging

Throughout history explorers have ventured into uncharted territories in search of waters that could cure sickness and restore youth. One manifestation of this quest was driven by a belief that such “waters” might reside in the young. The idea of transfusing the essence of youth from young to old is ancient. Recent research suggests we may have found the holy grail and it’s not what we expected.

Parabiosis, the surgical joining of two animals’ blood circulation, was invented in 1864 by the French physiologist Paul Bert. Clive McCay, a gerontologist at Cornell University, was the first to apply parabiosis to the study of aging. In 1956 his team linked old and young rats (heterochronic parabiosis) for 9–18 months. The old rats’ bones were transformed into dense young tissue. Fifteen years later researchers at the University of California studied the lifespan of joined old-young rat pairs. The older animals lived four to five months longer than controls (a significant amount of time given an average lifespan of 2–3 years), suggesting for the first time that young blood could extend longevity.

Despite these promising findings, parabiosis lost traction in the research world. This was due in large part to many lab animals not surviving the procedure. The fact that parabiosis in mammals had only been successful when using genetically…