Life extending bacteria?

[padren]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1142564/Pre-historic-Viagra-Siberian-mammoth-DNA-boost-sex-life-let-live-longer.html

 

This sounds like a movie plot: extinct bacteria found in ancient ice has massive life extending and enhancing characteristics to lab mice. Oh, and it improves sexual activity or something but that is hardly mentioned in the article.

 

When they make claims like:

 

'Some elderly mice demonstrated a growth of physical, mental and sexual activity, while some females even had babies aged at the human equivalent of 70.'

 

...are they sensationalizing some edge cases or saying the results are really this big? If this ends up impacting medical science, it just goes to show how scientific research in one area can have profound unexpected results.

[Mr Skeptic]

No scientists were involved with that; it is pure journalistic sensationalism. Really old bacteria have been found frozen or dried in salt, but no one would test to see if they could extend life ... why would they? It's not even like these bacteria have long lifespans, only that they can survive freezing and thawing.

 

A quick search for Anatoli Broushkov bacteria shows lots of bull about prehistoric viagra and nothing to do with science (eg the bacteria name, an accurate description of the experiment, etc).

[padren]

No scientists were involved with that; it is pure journalistic sensationalism. Really old bacteria have been found frozen or dried in salt, but no one would test to see if they could extend life ... why would they? It's not even like these bacteria have long lifespans, only that they can survive freezing and thawing.

 

A quick search for Anatoli Broushkov bacteria shows lots of bull about prehistoric viagra and nothing to do with science (eg the bacteria name, an accurate description of the experiment, etc).

 

It seemed pretty strange to me and I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't published on April 1st... I can't imagine anyone making a connection between cell life in a bacteria strain and expect to extend a mammal's life - I thought they were saying they found that side effect in mice while they were doing tests.

 

I honestly don't understand how the media get away with this sort of thing. Choosing to promote a story due to sensational appeal is bad enough (such as abducted cute-white-female syndrome) but to distort or poorly cover facts for sensationalism is just inexcusable in my mind.

[Royston]

The only UK newspaper I'd trust with science news would be the Guardian, mainly due to Ben Goldacre's column...http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/badscience.

 

Personally, I despise the Daily Mail, with every fiber of my being.