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I accidentally bumped my foot against the side of a mirror as I was hurrying to the kitchen, and ended up with a small gash in my toe, and blood dripping all over the kitchen floor. It seemed at first that it wasn't going to stop bleeding, even with me pressing against the cut with paper towels. But after about 20 minutes, it had slowed down enough for me to clean it and put a bandage on.
If such a small cut can bleed that much, I wonder how doctors deal with really big cuts... how they get those to stop bleeding. Just bigger bandages, I guess.
.
I was thinking today about old bodies versus young ones... about an old person's cells versus a young person's cells. How are they different? They must be different, otherwise the old person wouldn't seem aged. No dry wrinkly flabbly skin, no gray hairs... but how are they different? Cells regenerate in old people too, don't they? Do certain cells just stop working, and don't regenerate new working versions anymore, when one gets old?
Some parts of aging might not be the cells, but the other stuff in one's body... accumulated toxins... plaque in the arteries...
And then I was thinking about how a forty-year old man and a forty-year old woman can have a baby, and the baby's body is brand new, not forty years old. Two old bodies producing a new, young body. How is that possible? What is so special about the egg and sperm cells, that they produce a new young body, as opposed to another old body? And if 2 old bodies can produce a new young body like that, why can't they regenerate their own bodies with young cells, to avoid all the unpleasant side-effects of aging?
And then I was thinking about that sheep they had cloned, and wondering how exactly they had done the cloning, because I don't remember the details.
And I was thinking about how women in the future who hadn't found any compatible male partners to have a family with, might decide to have a child-clone of themselves; no-one else's genes involved. Men would have a harder problem doing the same, as they would need to find some female willing to carry the clone-baby to term, and give birth to it, unless they come up with a way of developing babies in the future without the whole pregnancy part.
If such a small cut can bleed that much, I wonder how doctors deal with really big cuts... how they get those to stop bleeding. Just bigger bandages, I guess.
.
I was thinking today about old bodies versus young ones... about an old person's cells versus a young person's cells. How are they different? They must be different, otherwise the old person wouldn't seem aged. No dry wrinkly flabbly skin, no gray hairs... but how are they different? Cells regenerate in old people too, don't they? Do certain cells just stop working, and don't regenerate new working versions anymore, when one gets old?
Some parts of aging might not be the cells, but the other stuff in one's body... accumulated toxins... plaque in the arteries...
And then I was thinking about how a forty-year old man and a forty-year old woman can have a baby, and the baby's body is brand new, not forty years old. Two old bodies producing a new, young body. How is that possible? What is so special about the egg and sperm cells, that they produce a new young body, as opposed to another old body? And if 2 old bodies can produce a new young body like that, why can't they regenerate their own bodies with young cells, to avoid all the unpleasant side-effects of aging?
And then I was thinking about that sheep they had cloned, and wondering how exactly they had done the cloning, because I don't remember the details.
And I was thinking about how women in the future who hadn't found any compatible male partners to have a family with, might decide to have a child-clone of themselves; no-one else's genes involved. Men would have a harder problem doing the same, as they would need to find some female willing to carry the clone-baby to term, and give birth to it, unless they come up with a way of developing babies in the future without the whole pregnancy part.