Brooke Greenberg: The Girl Frozen In Time

16-year-old Brooke Greenberg is only 2 ½ feet tall and weighs only 16 pounds. Looking at Brooke, you would think that she has been frozen in time as a 4 or 5-year-old.

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Like her peers, Brooke enjoys music and shopping. However, unlike her peers that are getting their drivers license, excited over their first date, eating pizza, and enjoying high school….Brooke travels in a toddler stroller, is excited about her swing, is so fragile that it takes her 10 hours a day just to eat, and still wears diapers.  She spent 65% of the first five years of her life in the hospital.


 
Brooke is a medial mystery. She has essentially just stopped aging. Doctors aren’t sure how or why Brooke developed this mutation of the gene that controls aging and development. Her bones are the size of a 10-year-old child. Her teeth are like a 6-year-old child’s. Her brain is the equivalent of a 1-year-old child’s. However, her hair and nails grow normally.

Some people may find it ironic, but aging and development are actually controlled by the same genes. When we are children, these genes initiate structure and function and coordinate change. These genes are not suppose to turn off, they are supposed to cause the body to “erode” over time. Brooke’s aging and develop genes have apparently been turned off.

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Brooke’s three siblings- Catlin, 19, Emily, 22, and Carly, 13 do not share her mutation. They are all normal in development and size.

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Dr. Richard Walker, a biomedical researcher and editor-in-chief of Clinical Interventions in Aging, began following Brooke’s case in 2006. He has been able to determine that Brooke’s aging and development genes have been “turned off,” but he doesn’t know the why’s or how’s of it. Dr. Walker says, “There’s no hope for her {Brooke}, but what she brings to science is information on how we may be able to delay aging.” They hope to find the mutation,  manipulate it in animal experiments, and possibly find a way to extend the lifespan of the animal.

While I agree that Brookes’ genes could hold the key to possibly expanding the life of a human, and there is no doubt that would be one of the largest medical breakthroughs of history, I am very uneasy about the lack of concern  or “hope” for helping Brooke.


For more information about Brooke Greenberg:

Wikipedia
TLC
People.com
Discovery News
Fox News Video