Elderly Mice Perk Up With Transfused Blood 178
Some exciting news, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, might make you glad that human blood is a renewable resource: "Giving old mice blood from young ones makes them smarter and improves such functions as exercise capacity, according to reports from two research teams that point to new ways to study and potentially treat diseases of aging. In one study, researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco found that blood transfusions from young mice reversed cognitive effects of aging, improving the old mice's memory and learning ability. The report was published Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine. Two other reports appearing in Science from researchers at Harvard University found that exposing old mice to a protein present at high levels in the blood of young mice and people improved both brain and exercise capability. An earlier report by some of the same researchers linked injections of the protein to reversal of the effects of aging on the heart. ... What isn't known from all this research, said Buck Institute's Dr. [Brian] Kennedy, is whether young blood might also increase the life span of mice and, if so, what such implications for humans might be."
Vampirism (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see the dystopia: Young people selling blood to old folks to pay the interest on student debt, mortgage debt, credit card debt... the old generation literally sucking the blood of the new generation.
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Norman Spinrad's "Bug Jack Barron" :)
Although it wasn't blood i think, and the young donors died.
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Norman Spinrad's "Bug Jack Barron"
Or the first step to the pervasive organlegging in Larry Niven's Known Space. Where's Jack Brennan when you need him?
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That was the first thing I thought of as well. When the greater part of humanity becomes aware that extreme lifetimes are possible (Howard families), that spurs longevity research which ends up producing the idea of "young blood" transfusions to keep people perpetually healthy. At the time, I thought it was probably completely unscientific (that is, something he'd come up with absent any evidence it would work). Now I wonder... was there evidence suggesting this result, fifty-odd years ago?
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If so, how long have select groups of people already been doing it?
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My first thought as well: Methuselah's Children [wikipedia.org]. IIRC this is where we first meet Lazarus Long.
In the story Lazarus Long and others are long-lived due to breeding program that financially rewards people whose parents and grandparents are long-lived who marry. For many years they stay under the radar of popular society and government but when they're found out no one will believe it's genetic. Rather they believe the long-lived must have some secret.
The long-lived escape Earth on a stolen spaceship. While
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I think you mean figuratively sucking the blood of the new generation. Since, you know, the heart pumps the blood out, so there is no sucking required. ;)
Re:Vampirism (Score:5, Funny)
This is how they keep Keith Richards alive, isn't it?
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Yea but it does not explain Ozzy
Ozzy (Score:2)
Ozzy uses young bats.
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I heard about blood doping sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. They take their own blood weeks in advance, refrigerate it and give it back to themselves prior to a sporting events to increase their endurance. There were rumors that rock stars were doing it for tours also.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org] found it I knew I remember something about this from the 80s it was banned at the Olympics.
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Ozzy's longevity you can chalk up to his Neanderthal lineage. [slashdot.org]
Re:Vampirism (Score:4, Insightful)
The young poor will be forced to give blood to the old rich. The old poor will be expected to die before they start actually using their social security.
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Just out of interest, where were you planning to go? Every country has its problems, and being honest the tradeoff between benefits and disadvantages in the US is one of the better ones, globally. It sure as hell could be a lot better and I don't like the direction it's going in, but lets be realistic here.
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Here I diffed it for you.
*** current.scenario 2014-05-05 14:16:07.554773500 +0530
--- dystopian.scenario 2024-02-30 14:16:31.182773500 +0530
***************
*** 1 ****
! Young people selling blood to old folks to pay the interest on student debt, mortgage debt, credit card debt... the old generation sucking the blood of the new generation.
--- 1 ----
! Young people selling blood to old folks to pay the interest on student debt, mortgage debt, credit card debt, internet (neutrality) debt... the old ge
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It's already happening in China. I know students who old a kidney to pay for their education. The UK isn't far behind, with sites catering to sugar babies [seekingarrangement.com] looking for a daddy to fund their studies in exchange for sex.
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It's called the oldest profession for a reason. Pussy is a valuable commodity. Women used to get a lifetime of support, these days they can only get rent.
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I can see the dystopia: Young people selling blood to old folks to pay the interest on student debt, mortgage debt, credit card debt... the old generation literally sucking the blood of the new generation.
And what percentage of the population do you think will engage in such a dark activity?
If I had to guess, I'd say about.... 1%
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Likely the same people who do the plasma donation thing now.
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How is this different then now. Other than the blood today is more metaphorical
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I wouldn't be surprised if long term use of blood transfusions could cause allergies.
What you really want is a brain dead clone to tap blood from (and supply replacement parts when necessary).
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So short sighted. What you want to to repaid the organ that puts whatever chemical causes this to happen.
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Re: Vampirism (Score:1)
Because people see death as natural.
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(Another AC here)
Anti-aging doesn't necessarily mean living longer, it can mean living in better health.
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I don't give two fucks if it's natural, but I recognize deluded, selfish junkies when I see 'em. The idea is that it's better for 100 people to live 100 years each, than for me to live 10000 years. The idea is to shit, get off the pot, and let someone else have a turn.
Instead of being cancer.
Just like power, longer lives will be utterly wasted by those who crave them the most. The people who would be pleasurable to have around longer, are fine with playing a mere not in a symphony. The people who do want it
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Bullshit.
I want to live forever. I want to see where things go, I want to be there when we establish the first off world community, I want to watch great achievements, participate if events that are unimaginable at this time.
I don't mind working while I do it.
As for you? I have no problem if you end it at 100. Assuming you don't leave some else with an undue burden
There is no 'idea' their is just what happens.
So fuck you, you lazy quitter, I get shit to do.
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This sucks because eventually in the future there will be a generation born that won't die.
They'll die, eventually. Anti-aging cures won't keep you from being killed by a speeding bus.
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I read that 1600 years would be about the longest someone would live based on accident probabilities.
I did nothing to confirm that, but ir was written by people who do actuary and have Phd in statistics, so I took it at face value.
I know, I know.
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Sounds reasonable to me. However, that's probably assuming current accident rates. If, for instance, we mostly abandoned private cars and mass-transit buses, and moved instead to SkyTran [wikipedia.org] automated personal rapid transit, very few people would die in road accidents. That'd probably leave natural disasters and murders as the main killers of humans: storms, asteroids, tornadoes, etc. Also, childhood accidents (kids falling out of trees, etc.).
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Fewer children, since people won't be in such a hurry to have them before it's too late.
Which means population decline along with an aging population.
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Except the exact opposite is happening, in most developed countries the population is stable or even in decline.
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Specifically, countries with women who are educated and haven't had there reproductive rights stripped from them.
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Tha'ts an interesting perspective, not the education aspect but the abortion one. A spot of idle Googling reveals alarm in Japan that the country had 260,000 fewer people from one year to the next, while at least 210,000 abortions were carried out (probably more). I'd have serious doubts that the population decline in these countries is solely due to abortions though despite the close numerical correlation, look up "herbivore men" for an example of much larger contributory social trends.
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Either that's going to happen anyway and we should just get it over with, or it's never going to happen.
Either way it's a horrible argument. We're inventive! We're good at surviving. We'll come up with something.
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Rather, we should not be afraid of death as some ultimate end, but instead realize our real opportunity for life beyond death, i.e. living through the genes and mem
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In fact, I guess primitive life forms could well have been potentially immortal, and mortality could have been proven a good long term strategy.
I have another argument: immortality is a statistical impossibility because whatever nearly impossible thing WILL happen to you, if you become potentially immortal. You'll get hit by a meteorite. So, you are looking at a looooooong time and then die anyway, and you can bet that one of your pseudo-immortal peers will be guys much powerful and/or much afraid to die.
Pi
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There are immortal Jelly Fish.
" Now still want to live?"
Yes.
Tech becomes cheaper with time.
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Hmm, what's the best way I can put this?
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
No. Evolution happens when offspring get mutated genes from their parents. Actually, the older an organism gets the more mutations it's likely to pass on to its offspring! But this of course misses the larger point: Evolution is not good nor bad, it just IS. There's no advancing, wonderful goal. It's just a process that happens over time. We don't need to respect it or some garbage like that. We are alive, and we can do wonderful things. T
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"...well death is evolution in action..."
False.
"Without death, species would not advance."
wrong.
Cheese's Christo*, you have no clue of what evolution is.
*I'm hungry
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Well, what do you think would happen if we all lived much longer? Overpopulation.... And all those people need a job, but there aren't any.. We first need to rethink our society before we actually go and create 'immortality'...
I know your comment was partly tongue-in-cheek but the reality is that if you improve the quality of life for individuals that are highly experienced (i.e. almost everyone that is old) you end up with a much more capable workforce. We already crossed the bridge of geriatric overpopulation back in the 70s when we got good at organ transplants and heart attack/stroke care. If we can keep the aging population feeling good and contributing to society we will end up much farther ahead than if we just keep goin
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We won't do that until we have a 'immortality' of sorts at first.
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We can't necessarily make an artificial version cheaper than we could simply pay people to donate. We can't clone blood cells in a vat yet, and probably not any time soon.
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If you read the summary you'd see they need young mouse blood not people blood.
Giving a new twist to the age old question "are you a man or a mouse"?
Link (Score:2, Informative)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303417104579541950544978572
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It doesnt show up because someone didnt complete the A tag. This is the source of the summary:
[a] makes them smarter and improves such functions as exercise capacity[/a]
Whoops. Missing an HREF there.
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Thanks for the link to TFA [wsj.com]. (I included a hyperlinked version for the benefit of the copy-paste impaired).
Reading that WSJ article allowed me to find the actual scientific paper in Nature Medicine [nature.com], for those so inclined. Unfortunately it's paywalled except for the abstract and figures but those in the target audience of the paper probably have access through their institutions.
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http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303417104579541950544978572
The article written by Bruce Goldman of the Stanford University School of Medicine [stanford.edu] is a closer source to the original research without being paywalled. It's better than the Wall Street's version; there's less fluff with a little more depth in the explanation and also includes additional links to related sources.
Ineterestingly noted was that this is considered an unsophisticated critical experiment; unsophisticated in that anyone could have done this decades ago without any real knowledge on the workings of
Scientific Vamperisim! (Score:1)
I LIKE this idea. Catch the slow and the stupid so that I might drain them of their own precious bodily fluids so that I might prolong my own life.
On a somewhat less silly note I do wonder just how much of an improvement can be had via this. And more importantly how might it be applied to new treatment techniques. Using some of the regenerative techniques maybe we could culture, say, the bone marrow of a baby and use it to constantly produce fresh blood. Maybe every few years go in for a completely 'oil
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Sigma protocol.
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Never heard of that novel. But it DOES look interesting.
And really I was thinking a bit more of some of Heinlein's later works. One way they slowed aging involved replacement blood.
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It seems surprisingly close in detail to The Hunger, 1983 [imdb.com], Starring: Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, and Susan Sarandon.
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Also Traitement de choc [imdb.com] (USA: Shock Treatment, UK: Doctor in the Nude).
Re:Scientific Vampirism! (Score:3)
You do realise that the rich and powerful can easily pay the fast and the strong to catch you so that they can drain your precious bodily fluids so that they can prolong their own lives. Still like the idea?
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Blood can't be stored for prolonged periods of time. Don't offhand recall the time span, but it's weeks or months rather than years or decades.
What might be the answer is long term storage of blood stem cells, like so called 'cord blood' repositories. Here parents send off a small sample of the newborn's child blood from the umbilical cord and deep freeze it. The original idea was that if the child developed leukemia, you could use the cord blood to restart the bone marrow after you killed all the cancer
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You can store blood, properly prepared for up to 10 years at -65C. You have to use glycerol as a storage medium. People with rare phenotypes can freeze their own blood for use later when they need it. Athletes can freeze their blood to use it for doping at the appropriate time (see Tyler Hamilton's book The Secret Race for more of this type of usage).
Fresh blood can be stored from anywhere 35-42 days, depending on the storage solution used (e.g. CPDA-1 or CPD + additives).
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Not quite the "Quadrupling of life span".... (Score:3)
... that they got from another study: http://www.grg.org/SMelov.htm [grg.org]
but at least these mice weren't genetically engineered to only live a week to begin with so this result may have a (lot) more relevance.
Fortunately despite the worries of the (first!) poster, hopefully we won't descend into a civilization where the old literally becomes a vampiritic parasite on the young. They've already identified, isolated and synthetically produced (the?) protein which causes this effect so we'll be able to get the benefits without bloodletting. Still makes (made?) a great premise for science fiction/vampire movies.
As an aside, I'm impressed by how Harvard, a decade or two ago, seemed to make the decision not to go into (what I thought) was the trendy/hot science of genetic engineering but instead has invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into becoming the(?) center for stem cell research. Meanwhile, genetic engineering seemed to have been sidetracked by "junk DNA" and epigenetics and in general the overwhelming complexity of the human genome (although the invention of CRISPR is a major major advance). Was it obvious to biologists that this was the right decision? Go Crimson!
bathing in the blood of young peasants (Score:4, Funny)
maybe vlad the impaler's wife was on to something!
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You've got to give him points for attributing it to the wife and not to Vlad the Impaler himself :)
But i don't mind the Bathory chick being mixed with Vlad - leads to more tourism.
Overlords! (Score:1)
I, for one, welcome our new vampire overlords!
Plasm + brain action (Score:3)
The focus is on the protein GDF11, which seems to cause improvements. The article suggests it will be three years before human testing of GDF11.
Isolate the Protiens (Score:1)
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Salty protein injection joke here...
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This is not a hoax, though it's reported as one.
http://campalicious.tribe.net/... [tribe.net]
Ladies, swallow. It's for your own good.
Forgot where I was for a second. Show the study to your moms and give them my #.
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I tend to trust Snopes on this one:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/... [snopes.com]
Sadly.
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What you believe isn't really key to the discussion? What does your woman believe.
Actually, not really a new thing here... (Score:4, Informative)
Isolate the protiens the young mice have that the old mice don't have. Blood transfusions aren't necessary... Just saline and protien.
The previous studies that had the same result eventually concluded that it was the pluripotent stem cells in the blood which had come out of the marrow as part of normal blood production.
On this basis, a treatment was developed (and insurance approved) using autologous stem cell transplantation; it's a common treatment for some types of cardiac events. There are also transplants involving harvesting of marrow stem cells, and then separating leukotic stem cells from those which are non-leukotic, and then growing and storing them while the patient undergoes radiation or chemotherapy to kill of their remaining marrow (this requires frequent transfusions to keep the blood volume of functional cells up, as the body is no longer replacing them itself at a high enough rate). Subsequent to this, the saved and separated cells are then transplanted back into the long bones (the rest of the interior areas of the smaller bones are allowed to be recolonoized by stem cells that escape the long bones). Since the treaments are autologous, you about conditions like interstitial pneomonitis, or the need for anti-rejection therapy, which is sometimes problematic when using a heterologous cell source.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
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Stem cells appear to be a non-renewable resource, and there are signs in the very elderly that as the remaining count approaches zero, so does the life expectancy.
Would that not imply that transplants and transfusions prolongs the life expectancy and quality of the recipients while at the same time reducing it for the donors?
In other countries, the blood and marrow of aborted foetuses might be used as a source, but here in the magic-thinking US, that won't fly for several more generations.
So who is going to
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It might not be that the young mice have something the old mice don't. It might be that old blood has too much debris -- malformed platelets, histamines, hormones, viruses, and rubble from collapsed cell walls. That junk could be gunking up the metabolic works in the elderly. Then you're not looking for a protein factor, you're looking for a filter, which is much more difficult to develop.
The blood of a virgin .... (Score:1)
Wait ... I can just use my own :(
When do we do human trials? (Score:2)
We need to progress this technology quick. We need to progress human trials. It is important we know if this method could improve human function as well such as doing endurance sports like cycling.
Dayam! (Score:1)
I just saw a Spiderman movie with a similar plot
Thieving American Scientists!!!!! (Score:2)
Stealing advanced Romanian scientific discovery!!!!!
Saw this with my mom. (Score:5, Interesting)
She would recover for about six weeks.
But on the third time- she died of blood poisoning- which is a risk from getting a blood transfusion.
But it was kinda like I got to see her again after she had been gone for a long time, replaced by a sort of dotty, eccentric person. She was suddenly sharp, intelligent and the fuzziness went away.
Re:Saw this with my mom. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry for your loss :(
May I ask why was she getting blood transfusions in the first place, and how old she was? And recover from what?
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The way I understand, it was high ammonia levels from her body not cleaning her blood enough. So probably a liver issue of some kind.
She was in her early 70's.
For several years she'd gotten kinda dotty and spooky. We had all assumed it was just part of the aging process. The first time she had to get a transfusion- she recovered her faculties. It was like going from a 100iq to a 120iq.
The way she described it was "foggy thinking" and "hard to think". Apparently nothing they could do with the underlying
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Yeah, that sounds about right:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... [nih.gov]
a paper found by a google search on amonia regulation in the body. It mentions that amonia is important for creating "hepatic coma" and high amonia levels are correlated to "meat intoxication".
It's interesting that the symptoms sounds remarkably similar to the dementia old people often get. I wonder if one could treat exess amonia with dialysis?
Good for the economy? (Score:4, Insightful)
At the end of the day, life extension is one of the major goals of modern medicine, and aging itself is increasingly be viewed as a disease. Whether or not this pans out, eventually something will, and we will then enter into stranger times then we already live. Cheers to the future for better or worse.
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You don't generally get paid for whole blood. But they do for plasma, which can also be donated more regularly.
There's also a cancer risk (Score:2)
Most of the coverage of this story is reporting the "Happy happy joy joy!" aspects (cure heart disease! reverse aging! improving mental agility!), but a few outlets are reporting that there's also a risk for cancer.
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Next Google investment (Score:2)
https://plus.google.com/+Larry... [google.com]
.
It's a trick... (Score:2)
It's a trick to get the world's powerful sociopaths to worry about global warming.
Mouse blood for humans? (Score:2)
Does this work across species? Does this work if you inject young mouse blood into old humans? How about pig blood? As creepy as it sounds, I could imagine an enterprise that harvests animal blood and sells it to humans.
Could you inject old human blood into young people as some sort of punishment? Or to educate them about what it feels like to get older?
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Yeah, I can even imagine an enterprise that harvests animal flesh and sells it to humans.
So South Park was on to something... (Score:2)
In "Krazy Kripples", Christopher Reeve comes to town to promote stem cell research. In order to 'cure' his quadriplegia, he is shown sucking the fluids out of fetuses from a medical bio-hazard container. With each fetus he sucks dry, Reeves becomes healthier and more dependent on them for his developing super human strength.
You kids .... (Score:2)
On second thought, come on over and play.
Muhaaahaaahaaa!
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I actually saw the pilot of that series as a kid.