First, back to Putin’s proposal: the idea of continually replacing aged organs to stay young. It’s a simplistic way to think about aging. After all, aging is so complicated that researchers can’t agree on what causes it, why it occurs, or even how to define it, let alone “treat” it.
Having said that, there may be some merit to the idea of repairing worn-out body parts with biological or synthetic replacements. Replacement therapies—including bioengineered organs—are being developed by multiple research teams. Some have already been tested in people. This week, let’s take a look at the idea of replacement therapies.
No one fully understands why our organs start to fail with age. On the face of it, replacing them seems like a good idea. After all, we already know how to do organ transplants. They’ve been a part of medicine since the 1950s and have been used to save hundreds of thousands of lives in the US alone.
And replacing old organs with young ones might have more broadly beneficial effects. When a young mouse is stitched to an old one, the older mouse benefits from the arrangement, and its health seems to improve.
The problem is that we don’t really know why. We don’t know what it is about young body tissues that makes them health-promoting. We don’t know how long these effects might last in a person. We don’t know how different organ transplants will compare, either. Might a young heart be more beneficial than a young liver? No one knows.
And that’s before you consider the practicalities of organ transplantation. There is already a shortage of donor organs—thousands of people die on waiting lists. Transplantation requires major surgery and, typically, a lifetime of prescription drugs that damp down the immune system, leaving a person more susceptible to certain infections and diseases.