To fix hearts we had to kill hearts
A team of researchers led by Dr. Jonas Frisen of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have measured the rate at which the human heart cells renew during a person’s lifetime. The findings overturn what was previously thought: that the heart cannot produce new muscle cells and so people die with the same heart they were born with.
Dr. Frisen and his team found 1 percent of the heart muscle cells are replaced every year at age 25, and that rate gradually falls to less than half a percent per year by age 75. This is significant because these researchers hope to use this information to create new drugs (yes drugs) that might help speed up the process of regeneration (the heart does not replace the cells that are killed due to heart attacks).
A New York Times Article states:
Cell turnover rates can easily be measured in animals by making their cells radioactive and seeing how fast they are replaced. Such an experiment, called pulse-labeling, could not ethically be done in people.
But we can ethically experiment on animals? Why? Because that animal is less of a living thing than a human?
Why do people believe that the other animals on this planet are here for our use? Someone tell me where this philosophy originates in the human condition.
Hate to repeat myself here but if we would STOP eating animals then we could REDUCE heart disease and then we wouldn’t have to TORTURE and KILL animals looking for a cure.
Just a thought. Sigh.