This sounds like something out of a 1930’s monster movie — or an episode of Star Trek — but if it works, it could be wonderful news for medicine… if not for mice and rats.

Two teams of scientists published studies on Sunday showing that blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice, rejuvenating their muscles and brains. As ghoulish as the research may sound, experts said that it could lead to treatments for disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease.

“I am extremely excited,” said Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research. “These findings could be a game changer.”

The research builds on centuries of speculation that the blood of young people contains substances that might rejuvenate older adults.

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“We can turn back the clock instead of slowing the clock down,” said Dr. Toren Finkel, director of the Center for Molecular Medicine at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. “That’s a nice thought if it pans out.”

This reversal could occur throughout the body, the new research suggests. “Instead of taking a drug for your heart and a drug for your muscles and a drug for your brain, maybe you could come up with something that affected them all,” Dr. Wagers said.

But scientists would need to take care in rejuvenating old body parts. Waking up stem cells might lead to their multiplying uncontrollably.

I don’t know the first thing about neurology or medicine other than what I learned in first aid class, so I don’t know if it’s a real possibility or just something in the lab.  What I do know is that somewhere there’s some fundamentalist whack-job who’s going to raise some kind of holy stink about it being against God’s will and demand that no tax dollars go towards this kind of research.