And what would happen if it actually works
Like a little white Lazarus with red eyes, the paralyzed mouse was walking again.
A few days earlier, the mouse had been sprawled on an operating table while two Chinese graduate students peered through a microscope and operated on its spine. With a tiny pair of scissors, they removed the top half of a fingernail-thin vertebra, exposing a gleaming patch of spinal-cord tissue. It looked like a Rothko, a clean ivory rectangle bisected by a red line. Cautiously—the mouse occasionally twitched—they snipped the red line (an artery) and tied it off. Then one student reached for a $1,000 scalpel with a diamond blade so thin that it was transparent. With a quick slice of the spinal cord, the mouse’s back legs were rendered forever useless.
Or they would have been, except that the other student immediately doused the wound with a faintly amber fluid, like the last drop of watered-down scotch. The fluid contained a chemical called polyethylene glycol, or peg, and as the students stitched the mouse back up, the chemical began to stitch the animal’s nerve cells back together.
Two days later, the mouse was walking. Not perfectly—its back legs lurched at times. But compared with a control mouse nearby—which had undergone the same surgery, minus the peg, and was now dragging its dead back legs behind itself—it puttered around brilliantly, sniffng every corner of its cage.
If peg ever proves effective in humans, it will be a near-miraculous therapy: Despite spending many millions of dollars on research over the past century, doctors have no way to repair damaged spinal cords. But that’s not the only reason the man directing this research—a surgeon in Harbin, China, named Xiaoping Ren—has been garnering attention in scientific circles.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
A Brief History of Yuval Noah Harari - How the scholar became Silicon Valley's favorite guru
"About 14 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being." So begins Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, and so began one of the 21st century's most astonishing academic careers. Sapiens has sold more than 25 million copies in various languages. Since then, Harari has published several other books, which have also sold millions. He now employs some 15 people to organize his affairs and promote his ideas.
Boat Fish Don't Count
The wild, obsessive, dangerous pursuit of Montauk's biggest striped bass
The Anti-Rock Star
Leonard Cohen's battle against shameless male egoism
Rachel Kushner's Surprising Swerve
She and her narrators have always relied on swagger-but not this time.
Men on Trips Eating Food
Why TV is full of late-career Hollywood guys at restaurants
You Think You're So Heterodox
Joe Rogan has turned Austin into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other \"free thinkers\" who happen to all think alike.
What Abortion Bans Do to Doctors
In Idaho and other states, draconian laws are forcing physicians to ignore their training and put patients' lives at risk.
THE LOYALIST KASH PATEL WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP WANTS.
A 40-year-old lawyer with little government experience, he joined the administration in 2019 and rose rapidly. Each new title set off new alarms.
THE RADICAL CONVERSION OF MIKE LEE
IN 2016, HE TRIED TO STOP TRUMP FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT. BY 2020, HE WAS TRYING TO HELP TRUMP OVERTURN THE ELECTION. NOW HE COULD BECOME TRUMP'S ATTORNEY GENERAL.
HYPOCRISY, SPINELESSNESS, AND THE TRIUMPH OF DONALD TRUMP
He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.