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Nina In New York: Bloooooooooood

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

File this under groundbreakingly creepy.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that the blood of the young may hold the secrets of eternal youth.

I'd like to pause here to be certain that every time you read the word "blood," you say it in your head in a Dracula accent as "bluuuuhd." Glad we're all on the same page.

As reported in The New York Times, the process by which Stanford University researchers studied this is as creepy as the resulting theory. Basically, they sewed old and young mice together so that they could pass blood to each other. Gross! Science. Anyway, the good doctors Moreaux observed that older mice dosed with the blood of younger mice healed faster and grew new stem cells at the rate of a much younger buck. Mouse. You get it.

On the other hand, healing and stem cell regeneration slowed in the younger mice, who had probably been all cocky and rude to the older mice because they thought they had time and health and immortality on their side.

Joke's on you, younger mice. You just got reverse Benjamin Buttoned.

Anyway, I think we can all see where this is going. First come the life-saving, world-changing medical innovations. Then comes the morally dubious Beverly Hills doctor who quietly introduces a cosmetic treatment in which rich women in their seventies go in, get transfused with and/or bathed in and/or ingest the blood of poor, young actresses who will do anything for a buck and come out looking forty again. Then come the super rich people who, rather than visiting a blood spa like the rest of the normals, jump on the trend of employing private blood-givers. It makes total sense. This way, they can be certain that their supply will never run dry and they can be assured that their blood is of the highest quality, because they'll feed their blood youths lots of kale and goji berry juice and stuff. Also if you do the math and add up the cost of individual blood spa packages month after month, you quickly realize how cost effective this method really is.

Once the super rich have figured it out and popularized stem cell blood-bathing, it's only a matter of time before an even more morally dubious doctor figures out a way to perform the treatment on the cheap and opens up a lower priced franchise model. Before you know it, we're living in an episode of True Blood, except instead of vampires preying on humans, it's desperate people over fifty salivating over twenty-somethings, what with all their naturally plentiful collagen and hearty immune systems.

You heard it here first, people.

Now in your heads, play me out with the eeriest version of Sinatra's "Young at Heart" you can muster. Gah.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!

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