A Miracle or a Freak of Nature?

Sixteen year old Brooke Greenberg doesn't age. She doesn't grow, physically, or get sick, like everyone else. In fact, the only parts of Brooke that grow normally are her nails and her hair. She can't speak, but uses the sounds that a toddler might use to vocalize what she wants. She must also have a tube in her stomach in order to eat, since her esophagus hasn't developed to handle "grown up" foods. Her doctors are baffled but her family believes she is here to help us answer the questions of mortality. You can read more about Brooke here.

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Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over forty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. Contact Us

Posted By: Nethie - Fri Jun 26, 2009
Category: Family | Health | Medicine | Science

Comments

I realize that I am going to offend people by implying that she is a freak of nature. Such is life. I mean no offense. The dictionary defines freak as "a person or animal on exhibition as an example of a strange deviation from nature". I couldn't have defined Brooke's situation better myself. So to answer my own question, is she a miracle or a freak, I think she qualifies as both.

Posted by Nethie on 06/26/09 at 02:31 AM

Seems like she's stuck in a bad place. Too small and underdeveloped to help herself. Now, if she were stuck somewhere between 18 and 25 ......

Telemiers (little wiggly things on the end of strands of DNA?) seem to control how we rejuvenate (or not) our cells. The shorter the thingie the less time you've got.

Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 06/26/09 at 02:46 AM

Telemers. Yeah that's the basic idea kinda.

Posted by Pablo on 06/26/09 at 12:23 PM

Isn't Maggie Simpson 20 year old? She hasn't aged a bit!

Posted by numb in Philadelphia on 06/26/09 at 12:47 PM

Jess, I did think of it. I actually considered using a poster from the movie as the image on this post, but decided I'd probably be busting someone's copyright somewhere and went with clocks instead.

Steph, I agree that the journalist who wrote the story for ABC keeps switching the two as if they were interchangable. Maybe we should sic William on him 😉

Expat, are you saying we can go get a scientist to look at our telemers and figure out how long we're going to live?

Posted by Nethie on 06/26/09 at 08:03 PM

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