Turnabout (20 page)

About a decade later a Russian scientist, Alexey Olovnikov, suggested that the shortening telomeres
just might be that internal clock. But the scientific world didn’t embrace the idea immediately. Part of the problem was the old chicken-and-egg question: Which comes first? Scientists weren’t sure whether the shorter telomeres caused the cells to age and die, or whether the cells aging and dying caused the shorter telomeres.

But in January 1998, when I was about halfway through writing this book, researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and Geron Corporation in Menlo Park, California, announced that they had figured out how to restore telomeres—preventing the cells from dying. Using an enzyme called telomerase, they allowed otherwise normal cells to divide many times past the Hayflick Limit.

The headline for the
USA Today
story about the announcement proclaimed, ‘
FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
’
FOR CELLS DISCOVERED
.

I was more than a little freaked out by the notion that my book might be obsolete before it was even published.

But the 1998 announcement just concerned cells in a test tube, a far cry from experiments on elderly people in nursing homes. Also, some scientists worried that the telomerase might cause normal cells to begin acting like cancer cells. After all, it’s telomerase that some cancer cells use to stay immortal.

And many questions remain about translating test tube results to real humans. The relationship between cells living and dying, and humans living and dying, is still not completely clear. Just to give one example: The cells of the brain and heart—certainly two of our most important organs—stop dividing in youth. So how could telomere loss be blamed when brains and hearts age and die?

As I write this, research continues. The Geron Corporation scientists are hoping their work will lead to “therapeutic opportunities for age-related diseases,” according to the
New York Times.
As far as I know, no one is expecting to produce anything like PT-1, if that’s even possible. Although some observers hype the potential for immortality, most scientists are looking at narrower changes: combating cancer, treating hardened arteries, growing new skin for burn victims, reversing vision loss, eliminating wrinkles. For the foreseeable future, at least, people will still die—the telomere research might just help them live longer and stay healthier before death.

So your great-aunt Enid’s chances for complete unaging look pretty slim. Your parents’ odds aren’t much better. But will people who are kids today ever face the kind of decisions Melly and Anny Beth faced?

Beats me.

Would you want to?

MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX
is the author of many memorable novels for young readers, including
Just Ella, Among the Hidden,
and
Running Out of Time.
Her work has been honored with the International Reading Association Children’s Book Award, American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults and Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers citations, and several state readers’ choice awards. Margaret graduated from Miami University with degrees in creative writing, journalism, and history, and has worked as a newspaper reporter and a community college instructor. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband, Doug, and their children, Meredith and Connor.

Where did the idea for
Turnabout
come from? “I bought a card for a friend, joking that it’s actually good that we get older, not younger, on our birthdays because—as the punch line went—who would want to live through puberty twice? It made me wonder: What if someone had to? I already had age and aging on my mind because I’d just attended my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday party, and I’d recently visited my husband’s grandmother in Kentucky, a month before her death. Somehow all those things—the card’s question, the ninetieth birthday, the Kentucky visit—meshed in my mind.
Turnabout
was the result.”