Doctors Baffled, Intrigued By Girl Who Doesn't Age 599
phyrebyrd writes "Brooke Greenberg is the size of an infant, with the mental capacity of a toddler. She turned 16 in January. Brooke hasn't aged in the conventional sense. Dr. Richard Walker of the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa, says Brooke's body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why. Brooke's hair and her nails are the only two things that grow, Howard said. 'She has pajamas and outfits that are 10 or 12 years old,' he said."
I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:5, Insightful)
It just struck me reading that... it must really, REALLY suck being the first person to ever have a particular disease.
She seems to grow (Score:2, Insightful)
Just very slowly. In the pictures it looks like features are developing but it's on a very, very slow pace. Maybe she might live to be 400 or 800 if her bone structure will remain supportive over time and her cells don't stop dividing like they do with 'normal' aging. I think the parents might already have tried it but she could probably learn to speak or at least communicate over the years - the brain of a toddler is very open to it (unless her brain plasticity has been aging).
Wow...great stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:She seems to grow (Score:5, Insightful)
The article says that her brain has hardly changed at all - it's still an infant's brain. If you read the article, you'll see that the parents and those around her who claim to see changes or improvements in her ability to communicate are projecting their wishes, same as people do with their pets - except that pets CAN grow and learn. Brooke can't.
Imagine if your brain suddenly never changes. You can never learn a new thing, remember anything from even 5 minutes ago, etc. Before the movie "50 First Dates", there was a sci-fi short story that posited this, with horrifying consequences. It would be the worse than having Alzheimers.
Re:Brooke is a deviation (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude. Lay off the weed.
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:She seems to grow (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, from our point of view, it must suck to be that person. But are people with, say, Alzheimer's aware of what they are missing out on? We project our own fear onto those people, and don't realize that it is impossible to know whether or not the afflicted are enjoying life, unaware of their disadvantages.
Re:She looks retarded ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I got the sense that she's more like the family pet than a toy ... but yes, it's sad.
And for all those who downmodded this sort of discussion, it shows more concern with form over function, a lack of understanding about what really makes us human. and/or a knee-jerk reaction to anything that doesn't conform to your initial perception of "don't harm the cute baby." It's not a "cute baby" - it's a grotesque parody of a human, with no potential, no real personality (the brain has not changed since infanthood - she can't talk, and reacts the same as an infant to outside stimuli).
About the only positive thing to say at this point is that baby diapers are cheaper than Depends.
Her bones are aging at an almost normal rate, so there's no question of her living to be centuries old, and "just developing slower". Maybe they can transplant the genes into "Chicken Little".
No, she is aging too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, she'd still accumulate cellular damage and die of cancer eventually. Heart disease would also still be a possibility.
She'd probably die at 85 of pancreatic cancer or something, but look good doing it.
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Old age is a feature, not a bug. With less turn-over it would be difficult to life as a whole to adapt to changing environment. It has drawbacks as knowledge lost by the dead individual. Advanced life forms overcome that with culture.
Earlier simpler life forms probably lacked the aging feature, and were superseded by others who had it.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:She looks retarded ... (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the reason most people don't kill babies is because they are people
Her stem cells are worth a fortune. (Score:2, Insightful)
As a possible fountain of youth.
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:3, Insightful)
A disease, by definition, is something abnormal. Since all living things age and die, she IS abnormal. Saying that all living things are diseased and she's the only normal one would just be silly.
Of course, the other problem is that she probably IS aging. There's not enough info in the article, and I haven't been able to find any details online, but the story does suggest that parts of her body are aging and developing at different paces. Also, they say that there's nothing unusual about her chromosomes/DNA, meaning, I assume, that the telomeres in her DNA are no different than yours or mine. That would mean that, assuming she doesn't die early from disease or a complication of her condition, she'll probably die at the same age as the rest of us - she just won't develop into an adult first.
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, she'd still accumulate cellular damage and die of cancer eventually. Heart disease would also still be a possibility.
She'd probably die at 85 of pancreatic cancer or something, but look good doing it.
I'd take that deal.
Re:She seems to grow (Score:2, Insightful)
the parents and those around her who claim to see changes or improvements in her ability to communicate are projecting their wishes,
How are you in a better position to comment on that than the people around her? And what do the people who are saying her brain has hardly changed know? They diagnosed her with brain tumor and a few days later she was declared tumor-free? How much do we know about the brain to comment? I would rather accept what her family and friends are saying based on direct observation rather than statements based on half-knowledge made by ignorant doctors.
Re:She seems to grow (Score:5, Insightful)
"Before the movie "50 First Dates", there was a sci-fi short story that posited this, with horrifying consequences"
It must suck that your example of this is a crappy rom-com with Adam Sandler rather than a brilliant film like Memento [imdb.com].
Appearance has changed (Score:2, Insightful)
Looking through the slideshow, she does appear to be ageing in some ways even if she hasn't changed much physically. If she survived into old age I imagine she still would have wrinkly skin and white hair etc.
From the information available it looks like rather than not ageing, she hasn't grown up.
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:2, Insightful)
It just struck me reading that... it must really, REALLY suck being the first person to ever have a particular disease.
What also really, really, REALLY sucks is having to change her diapers for 16 years.
Re:The Fountain of Youth. (Score:1, Insightful)
You don't need a citation to explain shitty parenting.
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Check out TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
Why isn't there an "insensitive" mod point?
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:3, Insightful)
Old age is a feature, not a bug. With less turn-over it would be difficult to life as a whole to adapt to changing environment.
Not necessarily. Older organisms and younger organisms must still compete for the same resources and prove their fitness to survive.
Re:She seems to grow (Score:3, Insightful)
"Well, from our point of view, it must suck to be that person. But are people with, say, Alzheimer's aware of what they are missing out on?"
I take it you have no experience with Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's is not instant. It happens over a long period with slow degradation of your memory. During this period, it is very hard on the person it happens to. They realise that something is not right, and they start to struggle with social situations.
They slowly start loosing grip on their own personality and they see what this is doing to their family and friends, making them even more distressed.
Even far into the condition, they sometimes have moments of clarity which mostly just serve to remind them of what they have lost.
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll take age and treachery against youth and strength any day.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:1, Insightful)
A 10-year-old fly is more likely to be eaten than a 10-day-old fly? I would expect the odds to be, at the very least, the same. If we're talking about entities capable of learnnig from their experience (or better yet, the experiences of those around them), then I would expect the older, cannier entity to be less likely to die in a mishap. Of course, there is also the possibility that with increased age comes a high degree of ennui, leading an intelligent being to take greater risks for the excitement.
You actually mean that the probability of an immortal fly surviving 10 years without a fatal incident is far lower than the probability that the fly will survive a mere 10 days, so the genes for immortal flies don't get passed on as often. But how can that be? The immortal fly reproduces just as early and often as the mortal fly. Plus, the immortal flies that do avoid mishap continue to reproduce long after the mortals have died of old age. All else being equal, the immortals are passing on their genes more often than the mortals. How does this select against immortality?
Re:the answer is in the abc article (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why won't this story die? (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'child' is a primordial dwarf. Her symptoms fit to the last detail.
This story has done time on Digg and Fark already, probably several other sites as well, and it seems everywhere large numbers of non-doctors can use Google to compare her symptoms to a RARE but known medical condition. The poor kid's doctors either don't know how to research or are otherwise incompetent.
Or maybe, just a wild thought here, maybe they have a slightly better insight into her symptoms, having actually examined her and seen her test results, and they have already ruled that out for reasons which your cursory diagnosis, based on reading an ABCnews article and several minutes of medical training, missed.
Re:I don't have anything really smart to say (Score:2, Insightful)
Old age is a feature, not a bug.
And a major turn off for the pedophiles. I fully expect there to be some muddying of the legal waters in a couple years when she becomes legal. As if age and appearance weren't disjointed enough already. Give this disease (syndrome?) a name, and we'll have found the new keyword for kiddy porn searches.
Re:She looks retarded ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If she's not suffering, and her family isn't suffering (it's difficult to tell just from an article) there's absolutely no reason why it should be considered "bad" to learn from a condition like this. Hell, it'd be criminal to not take advantage of such an opportunity to learn more about how we live, age, and die.
If doctors, scientists, etc 150 years from now can still learn from this case - perhaps personally, as opposed to relying upon another person's observations - all the better, for us as a species.
I understand that people in general don't like to be considered a medical experiment, but if something abnormal is going on, that's exactly what one becomes. One simply has to remember that in the process of trying to understand the abnormality, a doctor is also trying to help you.
(Unless they're an asshole. Then they're wondering if they can write a paper on you so they can buy another yacht. In which case, one should remember that just because they're an asshole, doesn't mean that they can't help you.*)
* Admittedly anecdotal evidence shows that this is the case in most professions.