Our brains may have sections that, when damaged, can be repaired by inserting new tissue or computer implants.

Science fiction has always been at the forefront of imagining extraordinary innovations in every aspect of life and technology. Just as the eminent science writer/physician Michael Crichton envisioned in his mind-expanding books, science's future promises astounding abilities to replicate body parts or even clone individuals.

Now that we've accepted the extraordinarily expensive cloning of dead, favorite pets, when can we expect to clone whatever individuals we may need? We may be closer to Plato's three types of human groups than we have ever thought.

These remarkable technological advancements have made it workable to test a spouse for genetic diseases and sell one’s eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars. Nowadays, someone else may own our DNA. If an unwary person or family happens to have specific valuable genes within their chromosomes, individuals can track them across the country to steal them. Whoever thought there would be gene-stealing thieves? But that's where science fiction meets criminality, which is a very unpleasant thought.

Thanks to new technological discoveries, assisted by artificial intelligence, more is being revealed about medicine's potential and the speed at which change can be achieved. Speed is vital in healthcare to save lives and treat neurological disorders. No, the research isn't in the future; it is here now.

Stem Cells Come Into Play

One area that is available for making replacement parts, either of organs, the brain, or specific needed cells in organs, is found in stem cells. Little had been known that our bodies store biological implants and we can assign fresh stem cells waiting to be activated into whatever task biological implants assign these stem cells. Where are these wonderful little cells? There are several repositories in the body where they reside: brain, blood, bone marrow, muscle, skin, heart, and liver tissues. In these areas, they lie dormant until needed.

It appears that Neurona Therapeutics’ treatment will be a significant change in stem-cell research. To create new, healthy tissue, stem cell researchers use either human embryonic cells or cells modified to look like embryonic cells.

The embryonic stem cell movement has been a hot topic for 25 years, yet nothing has happened yet. Scientists are getting closer to offering a treatment, but progress has been delayed due to research bottlenecks and political disagreements.

Stem cells direly need a victory. Many unscrupulous medical facilities claim that stem cells can treat any illness, and many people actually believe them. However, developing therapies from these cells has been a sluggish research endeavor that has yielded no authorized treatments thus far.

In fact, the use of stem cells has created a new subspecialty in medicine, regenerative medicine. Stem cell treatment stimulates the body’s natural healing processes in damaged, malfunctioning, or sick tissues. It is the next step in organ transplantation, and it uses cells rather than donor organs.

But there are roadblocks. Researchers must ensure that embryonic stem cells will develop into the desired cell types before employing them, and they have discovered techniques to convert embryonic stem cells into cardiac cells.

One issue presenting challenges is that uneven growth or spontaneous cell type specialization is possible in embryonic stem cells. To bring these cells under the desired control and with the expected result, controlling embryonic stem cell growth and development is being studied but more needs to be accomplished.

The recipient’s immune system may fight embryonic stem cells as foreign intruders, or the cells may fail to operate as planned, with unclear implications. Researchers have investigated ways to avoid these consequences, and using a patient’s own stem cells may circumvent this disruption.

Scientists can cultivate stem cells in controlled laboratory environments today. In these environments, they program stem cells to differentiate into several cell types, including those found in the heart, blood, and nerves.

The next step is to transplant the specialized cells into a patient. For instance, it is possible to inject the cells into the heart muscle of a patient with cardiac illness. The damaged heart muscle could then receive some help from the healthy cells that were implanted.

And Now the Brain

Recent developments in brain cortical stem cell transplantation have shown promise in brain repair. The circuitry of neurons formed from transplants can encode valuable functions for the host, but existing models of the transplant have not shown this to be the case. This is probably because the grafts lack certain cell types, have an imbalance of cell types, have a flawed cytoarchitecture, or have inadequate vascularization. But the map is ready for new research to fill in the missing bits to create functioning parts.

But there’s more here than simple brain repair. Potential uses for the brain regeneration concept include helping people who have suffered a stroke, which causes them to lose some brain function and recover. According to Jean Herbert, a scientist at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine who wrote Replacing Aging, the only realistic way to delay or prevent death due to old age is to replace the entire human anatomy, including the brain. Are we thinking of a “body shop” where you’d pick and choose or actually grow new body parts? Both are, once again, in the realm of science fiction with more than a tinge of reality mixed in.

According to Herbert’s account, he believes that in order to live forever, humans need to figure out how to replace all of their bodily parts with younger ones, just like a high-mileage car gets new struts and spark plugs. But is living forever a viable concept, and what would we do with all this additional population explosion? Are we foreseeing starting new colonies on distant planets to take up the excess? It sounds like the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Total Recall.

In the future, supplements won't keep our aging bodies in youthful condition, and we will gradually begin to replace those parts that can be fitted with new tissue or computer components. Is it far off? Reality and science fiction are merging into a new concepts of medicine.

We have to wonder how healthcare insurance companies will view these innovations and if only the wealthy will live longer and healthier lives. The promises, therefore, are not only scientific and medical but also present questions about economic inequality and politics.