Even with Michael Jackson dominating all the news, the most interesting thing I’ve read all day is this one, about a girl who apparently haven’t aged since she was born sixteen years ago. The headline to the article isn’t actually true since it seems that she does age, most notably the telomeres in her cells seems to undergo changes consistent with aging, but different parts of her body seem to be aging at different rates and she certainly doesn’t seem to grow much, if at all. I certainly agree that this is a unique and extremely interesting case from a scientific perspective, and probably as close to a real-life Benjamin Button case as we’re ever likely to see.
She may not be getting bigger, but she is aging by the look of that pic. It will be interesting what will happen when the scientists do identify the aging genes. Immortality awaits us. Well maybe not us but some (lucky?) souls in the future!
I remember reading the book “Immortality” by Ben Bova which rather excitedly claimed that the very readers alive now could well be immortal. More than 10 years later, it still hasn’t arrived yet. Like you, I believe that we’ll get there some day, but the problem is certainly harder to crack than I first thought it would be!