The girl forever young

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Explorers throughout history have searched far and wide and to the ends of the earth for something to beat mortality.  Man has looked for the Fountain of Youth since the species gained the capacity to fear death and what may or may not come after.  In modern culture, vampires, though technically considered undead, are idolized for their ability to simply ignore Grandfather Time and the slow attrition he places upon those that breathe.

But all the idolizing and searching may soon be at an end.

Brooke Greenberg is a 16-year-old-girl, still lives at home and gets all the attention any teenager would love.  Sounds normal right?  It does up until you take into consideration that she is the size of a toddler, has baby teeth, the bone development of a 10-year-old and the intellectual capacity of a rugrat.  What baffles scientists is that she has no genetic defects known to interrupt the growth process, and that her body is completely out of sync with what little growth has actually occurred.

Geneticists now wonder if little Brooke holds the key to finding what causes us to age, and if possible, how to play God and open the door to mankind dictating its own lifespan.  It is an interesting scientific ethical dilemma, one that has presented itself in other endeavors, such as cloning.  What stands out as the key difference between cloning and immortality, and where public opinion may differ on the topic, is simply fear:

People fear death.

Rob @ June 29, 2009