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A brilliant young scientist believes that if we preserve our brains, they could be revived in the future, helping us live for centuries
Elizabeth Hughes Gossett shouldn’t have survived beyond 11, the age at which she developed type 1 diabetes. Born in Albany, New York, Gossett received her diagnosis in 1918 when diabetes had no known treatment. Tragically, her life expectancy was just a matter of months. Her parents desperately searched for any way to keep their daughter alive. A New Jersey physician had developed a radical course of action: keeping the blood sugar levels of diabetic children low by feeding them the bare minimum needed to survive. This could see a prognosis of months extended to years. These young patients weren’t exactly living, but they were alive.
In the spring of 1919, Gossett went into this starvation clinic. She’d have been constantly cold and hungry. Emaciated, unable to move or grow. At its lowest, her weight dropped to 20kg. Three years later, Gossett was lingering on death’s threshold but, crucially, hadn’t crossed to the other side.
“And as result,” Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston explains to me, “she was still alive when, in 1921, what had hitherto seemed impossible was achieved: insulin treatment was developed.” Gossett received her first injection of the hormone in 1922 and started to eat again, move again, live again. She survived into her 70s, taking about 42,000 insulin shots in that time.
“You see,” Zeleznikow-Johnston says, “for millions of years, people just died from diabetes, something that was thought to be inevitable. Unchangeable. Then suddenly, from nowhere, this was no longer true.” In Gossett’s case, there was a limbo period: years between her diagnosis and a treatment becoming available. “In 1918, most kids diagnosed with type 1 diabetes died. Elizabeth didn’t, because the pause button was pressed and, as a result, a future was bought for her. That’s what I’m advocating for.”
www.theguardian.com
Elizabeth Hughes Gossett shouldn’t have survived beyond 11, the age at which she developed type 1 diabetes. Born in Albany, New York, Gossett received her diagnosis in 1918 when diabetes had no known treatment. Tragically, her life expectancy was just a matter of months. Her parents desperately searched for any way to keep their daughter alive. A New Jersey physician had developed a radical course of action: keeping the blood sugar levels of diabetic children low by feeding them the bare minimum needed to survive. This could see a prognosis of months extended to years. These young patients weren’t exactly living, but they were alive.
In the spring of 1919, Gossett went into this starvation clinic. She’d have been constantly cold and hungry. Emaciated, unable to move or grow. At its lowest, her weight dropped to 20kg. Three years later, Gossett was lingering on death’s threshold but, crucially, hadn’t crossed to the other side.
“And as result,” Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston explains to me, “she was still alive when, in 1921, what had hitherto seemed impossible was achieved: insulin treatment was developed.” Gossett received her first injection of the hormone in 1922 and started to eat again, move again, live again. She survived into her 70s, taking about 42,000 insulin shots in that time.
“You see,” Zeleznikow-Johnston says, “for millions of years, people just died from diabetes, something that was thought to be inevitable. Unchangeable. Then suddenly, from nowhere, this was no longer true.” In Gossett’s case, there was a limbo period: years between her diagnosis and a treatment becoming available. “In 1918, most kids diagnosed with type 1 diabetes died. Elizabeth didn’t, because the pause button was pressed and, as a result, a future was bought for her. That’s what I’m advocating for.”
‘With brain preservation, nobody has to die’: meet the neuroscientist who believes life could be eternal
A brilliant young scientist believes that if we preserve our brains, they could be revived in the future, helping us live for centuries
