Scientists at the National Institute on Aging may have found a fountain of youth in the transplant anti-rejection drug rapamycin. A medication long used to help prevent the rejection of transplanted organs, the drug has recently been found to extend life in other ways — lab mice who took rapamycin had their life expectancies extend as much as 38%. {via CNN}
Posts Tagged ‘liver transplant’
Longevity Meds
Posted: Thursday, June 10th, 2010Liver 2.0
Posted: Friday, September 25th, 2009
Somehow we missed the newsy tidbit that Apple head Steve Jobs had a liver transplant back in April. “As you may know, I had a liver transplant,” Jobs told the audience assembled for Apple’s music event in early September. “So I have the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash, and was generous enough to donate their organs. And I wouldn’t be here without such generosity.” And here this whole time we thought his pancreas was the one giving him trouble. {via Wall Street Journal}
Guts on Vacation
Posted: Thursday, September 10th, 2009
If you were planning on taking your guts on vacation for a little organ tourism, think again. Organ tourism is a lot like sex tourism, though rather than picking up a prostitute or STDs you pick up a nice liver or kidney instead. Last week China formally announced it was ending its policy of harvesting organs from executed prisoners and starting a volunteer organ donation program nationwide, thus likely bringing an end to China’s thriving black market for organs. Personally, organ tourism brings to mind visions of livers and kidneys sitting on the beach sipping daiquiris. But we know it’s not quite like that.
Heart Topics
Posted: Thursday, September 10th, 2009
A few guts spruced up the tables at the Transplant Ethics Community Education Event, hosted by California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. The event included a lecture on topics vital to people in the transplant community — who gets an organ and when? How will these organs be obtained? All good stuff, we hope the guts were good listeners. {All photos by Benjamin Robert}
After Our Own Heart
Posted: Monday, July 6th, 2009
Ridiculously cute super-organ art by Hagit Oleg of Tea Party Studio in Israel. I love that the heart looks like a really tough strawberry, and the liver is so very devilish! This was a contract illustration for an article about organ donation in Maariv magazine. There’s also a pretty great drawing of a brain pumping iron in Tea Party’s portfolio.
