Hello, every Sina net friend!

Host: Hello every Sina net friend!  Welcome to watch brand interactive column of Sina broad frequency.  I’m host, Yizhen Liu.  If one day, some one asks what you’d like to do when living for 300 years?  Don’t be so surprise, because such  day is coming.  On August 16, 2002, Chinese life scientist, Dr. Rongxiang Xu, announced that he and his scientific research group had finished reproduction in situ of 55 human organs, or experiments on animals in vitro, and would strive to realize complete reproduction in situ of 206 human organs in 5 years.  Now we have invited Chinese life scientist, president of MEBO International Group, Prof. Rongxiang Xu to visit our studio.  Prof. Xu, please make greetings to our friends!
Pro. Xu: Dear net friends, how are you!
Host: Prof. Xu, we just learned that you had proposed a great hypothesis 5 years ago, which both domestic and oversea experts believe would be accomplished in at least 15 years.  Five years have past, one month after August 16.  What do you think of the results?  Please share them with us!
Pro. Xu: Okay!  Primary experimental study of this results had been completed five years ago.  Another five years was mainly needed for repeating this scientific study.  As a matter of fact, this scientific conclusion had already existed five years ago.  From the perspective of scientific research, it’s necessary to spend another five years in validation of confirming this outcome.  Today’s results are the conclusion.
Host: it means you’ve thoroughly and successfully reproduced 206 human organs, right?  So, what do you think this successful reproduction means for human being?
Pro. Xu: Based on the scientific commonsense, everybody can imagine and judge these results with that whether our life span is prolonged. Another way of thinking of these results is from the point of view of life science that it’s a possibility left for scientists to consider, a possibility of life nature, a possibility of technique, which will definitely result in doubt.  By which means could life be extended?  It’s not the way described in network or magazines.  Life elongation, however, is reached by self-regenerative potency, by means of self-cell cloning organs to replace aging life.  This law will occur not only from our middle age, but also from the birth of our next generation to extend life cycle.  The crucial success of experiments on rats with life extension equals that human life expectancy has been prolonged to two hundred years.  Experiments on rats were designed to imitate human body’s model, in which no experiment on rats has refused to recur in human body.
Host: Now that success has been achieved in rats, which can also be applied to human body.  That’s common knowledge.
Pro. Xu: Of course!  Regeneration technique in situ has been employed clinically by many hospitals.  We’ve also introduced it into clinics to cure gastro-intestinal ulceration, which has equally been used largely.  Everybody has got information from network that broken finger can obtain regeneration.  The magazine, nature, just published an article that it’s impossible for human broken finger to regenerate.  But it  comes true now, and has occurred many years ago.
Host: Although it’s maybe out of our imagination, but not unrealistic. Five years ago you provided supposition of soilless culture of human body that you have promised to perform now.  While many people challenge this remarkable research, because they doubt how we could live permanently?  Would you please to explain it in detail from technical respect?
Pro. Xu: Professionally speaking, three conditions are required to realize organ regeneration.  The first is human cells have the ability of regeneration.  The second is what can activate such kind of cells, or if there are any nutrient substances for promoting regeneration.  The third is there must be life environment, which is of extremely important for cell growing, as marine fish cannot breathe in river.  So, it’s essential to have these three key elements.  Human cells have the regenerative ability, which was formerly believed to exist in lower animals, that also belongs to higher animals proved by the present evidence.  The second condition is regenerative substance that is not contained in our diet by the evidence.  Self-renewal ability can take effect provided that human body intakes this regenerative nutrient substances.  The third is the creation of life environment.  It’s to mimic living surroundings of embryo to realize the skin regeneration.  So the results of implementing our technique in treating burns clinically are different, depending on doctors’ qualification, though the skin can grow on the whole.
Host: Actually, this technique has been involved in the field of life science.  At present, what status is this field in across global countries?
Pro. Xu: It’s easy to describe this status.  We just talked that 125 unknown questions were published in Science magazine on June 1, which scientists believe are unclear.  They listed more than twenty of these unknown questions, one of which is whether an organ could regenerate, whether our life span could be prolonged?  That’s the query of Science magazine.  I’m not out of exaggeration, or nationalism spirit.  What level has our technique reached?  You can get answer from the information that our technique of organ regeneration has acquired patents authorized by US.
Host: And we know related technique of this patent in organ field got seven patents in US, two patents in EU and Japan respectively, and inspected by China.
Pro. Xu: That’s it!  Our patents have got copyright and are protected by law.  We have to publish all our materials and we would not have achieved these patents from US without scientific conclusion.  If your result exceed others’ thinking, then its level is advanced, its conclusion level has created another way.  Our present researches rely on the accordance with life science methods.  These researches were finished by the cell cultivation.  So a new thinking way, a new level has been born in scientific thought.
Host: It means the direct benefit for us is we could live longer than before after your success in cloning organs.  So our talk about living for three hundred years is not a dream.
Pro. Xu: Right! The possibility of life span of three hundred years, or one thousand years is permissive as a scientific imagination.  But today I want to tell you that it’s an experimental result, instead of an exaggeration.  We successfully conducted the experiment on life span of rats that equals two hundred years of human longevity.  Experimental rats have lived for such a long time, but the rats without treating died earlier.  Rats with organ regeneration live not only much longer, but are young of their organs, which proved are resulted from regeneration.  This result partially complies with people’s supposition that how long on earth we could live?  A worldwide-received academic theory of chromosome telomere is that telomere shorfttn a bit after each time of cell division.  When dying, two thirds of this telomere has not been used.  This explains we have the great potentiality of living longer.  People will utilize experimental control of telomere retraction to make cells live permanently, which is the accepted result by public.  Cell life span is at least three hundred years.  Human body is consisted of cells.  If we were able to realize such cell life, then you can suppose your life span.  This, however, does not mean we will be as senile as three hundred years old.  It’s just the elongation of life cycle.  Next we will conduct regenerative experiment on full range cells from birth.
Host: Is it true that a criterion of our life originally is longevity, and living standard is width.  And now we have increased this area.
Pro. Xu: Yeah!  We regard a thirty years old person as the beginning of ageing, as the senility starting of his cells.  We will be free of worrying about the ageing some time later.  Of course, our conclusion is only from animal experiment to date, and another period of experiment on human body is needed.  But the result of experiment on animals could at least demonstrate this probability.
Host: If I were three hundred years old, I don’t want to appear senility and dotage of the aged.
Pro. Xu: Life span extension doesn’t mean senility.
Host: For instance, if I accepted the treat of this technique when thirty years old, whether it’s possible for me to keep young state of this age with time passing by?
Pro. Xu: I think so.  The time spent in experiment on human body is not long enough to make this conclusion.  But the regularity of this conclusion has appeared and it’s sufficient to make us happy about that era of longevity is coming soon.
Host: You just mentioned that the way of human death is confined to four modes.  Please introduce it to us.
Pro. Xu: Since birth, human beings begin to develop till thirty years old. In fact this development ceases when twenty-two or three years old.  It’s too frightening to learn that the stable state of human body is only about ten years, and ageing starts rapidly after thirty years old.  In this ageing process after thirty years old, cells have four directions to go, except accident death.  One consequence is ageing continuously till dying of being sixty or seventy years old.  The second direction for cells going is of canceration, and its production leads to man killer in the end.  The thtird is cell aging itself doesn’t occur, while organs of these cells work badly.  The fourth is cell apoptosis, which means loss.  that is ten cells are reduced to five after two years.  The other five cells are lost.  What’s about senility?  We should clearly know senility is not a simple aging.  It’s a sort of disease, a severe disease.  Because you shouldn’t be aging, and there is still one or two hundred years for you to live.  It’s a pity that you are old now.
Host: So, I’ve got the feeling that Pro. Xu is urgent out of his inmost point.
Pro. Xu: I’m anxious deeply that faces of many rich people are too senile. How do you do with a lot of money?  Please invest in our research.
Host: Have you ever thought that longevity is not only the question of science and technology, but also related closely to economy, politics, and ethics.  What will we do from the perspective of this relation?
Pro. Xu: I have.  Somebody said there will be war soon.  But remember, human life span is becoming longer and longer from the view point of law of life cycle, and you won’t be ageing by thirty years old.  You could make more creation.  You need no worrying about that every day you have to study, you become old after twenty years of receiving education, you have to retire after only twenty years of working, you have to accept medicines for several decades.  From the angle of analyzing energy sources, the energy contained in food ate by one person in one day could actually support three to five people.  What’s the reason?  Energy of food ate by you into stomach intestine, especially by people in middle age, will be wasted a lot.  For example, when you are forty years old, though facing delicious food, your stomach intestine is too old to intake most of its nutrients, which are discharged.  The intake amount of energy by people only occupies ten to twenty percent contained in food. Digestion of food could consume seventy percent of your energy, reducing seventy percent of your longevity.  It’s very hard for people to live.  They are tired to death by eating.  With the help of these energy sources, we all don’t need to be anxious about whether present food could support you to live for three hundred years.  It’s enough!
Host: I couldn’t agree with you more.  Thirty years old man begins aging, being bothered by illness.  Before thirty, however, we study very hard, and after that age our health begins walking downward.
Pro. Xu: Right!  Besides raising baby, supporting family is more tired. Now, it’s okay for you to have babies twenty years later.
Host: How would you arrange your life, if you could live for three hundred years?
Pro. Xu: I would feel better and easier.  I’d plan my life more thoroughly, especially applying my knowledge in the creation of people life.  Politically speaking, this is the basement of realizing communism.  What’s the goal of living longer?  It’s of doing kind things for human beings.  We should create conditions for life and living of each other. Former life has no time to make it before dying.  Now you could take it easy.
Host: You just said our life would not end soon without illness.
Host: Yeah.  You would not die if you control those four problems.  Just as I said most diseases are caused by one problem, that’s the ageing of cells.  When heart doesn’t work well, it’s not because of its decaying, but of the problem of its one spot.  Everybody knows the concept of organ.  Don’t distort this concept.  Function is kept by a little cell.  With common medical knowledge, we all understand this concept.
Host: We want to know whether these regenerative nutrients are very expensive, very far from us, and when all of our civilian could use them?
Pro. Xu: Not far away.  We just finished working conference of scientific research. We eat crude food with refined method.  That’s to allocate food nutrients well.  Now that we managed to cultivate organs, and no doubt, we should eat what organs eat.
Host: But we are accustomed to that food is the first necessity of the people.  And where are diets speciality and delectable flavor going?
Pro. Xu: Delectable flavor is a custom.  If you choose one kind of food today, and another tomorrow, then you would be tired to death.
Host: Is it realistic for us to live healthier and to last our life by this way?
Pro. Xu: Sure.  Recently I discussed with US capitalists that you could earn money through spreading these substances to let civilians to eat them.  I’m anxious badly now.  I don’t dare to release this technique without discovering it, without getting results.  Now I’ve uncovered it, and I hope you take it.  People, who believe it, will eat them.  People, who don’t believe it, can wait and see.
Host: Pro. Xu gives us a feeling of his deep self-confidence.  You believe contemporary direction of science is wrong.  Very little people can speak in this way.  Why are you so confident?
Pro. Xu: Absolutely.  It means I challenge life science of the world.  It’s asking for death (laugh).  Why did I speak it out?  It’s because I cannot help releasing my discovery of this scientific information.  I’m not urgent to spread this technique, but anxious about scientific direction.  If the fact proved I’m right, others will be wrong.  If I’m wrong, it’s okay to kill me.  Since science has no time to continue in wrong way.  In contrast, if this scientific direction were proved wrong, his continuing would kill human beings.  So I’m of extremely urgent.  It’s to fight to the bitter end between others and me, but not a war.  I’d like to test the law by myself.  Don’t curse me any more.  It’s meaningless.  We should realize this result.
Host: I think this anxiety of yours is just like when somebody suggested earth is globular, everybody was skeptical of it.  But the fact has proved it’s globular indeed.

Pro. Xu: The results of our experiment are opposite to that of the experiment by other scientists.  Either I am wrong, or they are wrong. If I am mistaken, humans can be saved by killing me; but if they are proved wrong, who should be killed?  The entire world holds the same conception, so it is necessary for human beings to make revolution spontaneously.     
Host: You also proposed a presumption to conquer the subject of cancer five years ago.  Then what are the experimental results till now?
Pro. Xu: The experimental results have been publicized on the press conference, in order to encourage others to repeat the experiment and see the results instead of disputing.  Simply speaking of the results, the research of cancer was actually by no means our original intention.  It was carried out just because that we tried to test the regenerative substances, which should be proved nonpoisonous and not to induce cancer.  Thus we performed three experiments i.e. genetic toxicity, cellular toxicity and animal toxicity and found no toxicity in the regenerative substances, which then can be taken as food. Meanwhile, another good news is that it does not have the property of carcinogenesis.  Then the experiment on cancer was carried out by us to find the efficacy of regenerative substances on cancer cells.  Some well-known carcinoma cell lines were taken for experiments of various regenerative substances.  The results were that carcinoma cells died when provided with human regenerative nutrient substances while normal cells grew when provided with it, which was opposite to the current domestic conclusion that carcinoma cells and normal cells feed under the same conditions.  Our discovery was that carcinoma cells and normal cells feed on different substances, thus came our conclusion.  Just as I have said: either I am wrong, or they are wrong. If I am mistaken, humans can be saved easily by killing me; but if they are proved wrong, how can human beings be saved? 
Host: What do you consider the direction of life science research should be?
Pro. Xu: I will not state the researching direction of others is incorrect, but my stand point is that I recommend the conforming experimental study.  By conforming study I mean it is necessary to make people alive first and then to find out whether there is any potential in human body.  What if no regenerative potential is found in humans?  Continue to explore the principle of life.  Take food as an example, we don not know exactly which kind of food is good for our health, and the eating is always based on experiences.  Then we step further by finding that cells are the standard of diet, diet of human should depend on the diet of cells.  But now I am bothered that people are destroying the body without even knowing the nature law of it, it’s like somebody useing a screwdriver to fix the computer, which will definitely destroy it, right?  Thus it makes the same sense with the scientific research. Of course the research in the opposite direction can also be carried out, but it is better not to claim the so-called application results before real research outcome is attained.
Host: What kind of support do you want most now? 
Pro. Xu.: It is not that important to talk about support or not, since I have devoted myself to the scientific research. However, I want the following two kinds of supports most: Firstly, there are too many life scientists on conforming life study now, thus I hope some of them will take actions to repeat the experiments of mine to find out whether I am a fraud or not.  If not, they can take their scientific arm to save humans; secondly, certainly they can also develop new research directions.  For those scientists in different directions, you should make efforts to prove I am wrong, in exchange for your awareness.     
Host: To tell the truth, we are touched by your words, since all of us can understand your raring wishes and responsibility consciousness.  You must have gone through uncountable difficulties and even suspicions and disputes over the past five years while you were fulfilling your promises.
Pro. Xu.: Many people were laughing at us during the past five years, but no authentic scientific professionals did, because they know there was a regularity in it.  Nevertheless, we did encounter a lot of difficulties.  For example, my major is in clinics instead of basic research, thus I have to recall some scientists to help me on the basic research, which involves the organization of the research, i.e.  one researching on life protein, another on fatty acid, and still another on other substances, in order to attain one result by gathering various scientific researches together.  The biggest difficulty on the level of the scientific technique is the creation of life condition.  How to imitate the inner environment inside the human organs to create an identical extraneous environment, only which can kelp the special human cell to grow into a certain tissue organ.  And regenerative nutrient substances can not be found until that result is attained.  Since we can not search for the substances in living human body, the only thing we can do is to take the human cells out and cultivate them into a functional unit of a tissue, which is then used to test the nutrient substances.  The one that can promote the regeneration is the best for this organ.  And the primary requirement is to create a culture condition for it, which is the most difficult. Subsistence is the first attribute requirement when life is studied, thus results can never be got if there wasn’t in the right environmental condition.  A person can only be taken as healthy when he is not ill, in order to achieve this goal, various environmental conditions for human body should be created.  The current conception of health is no index of primary diseases according to the physical examination.  Therefore, systemic influential factors from the whole body should be taken into consideration when in vitro experiments is taken and extraneous environmental condition is created.

Host: That means the cell must adapt to the entire environment surrounding it, right?
Pro. Xu: Yes.  It is simple to get all kinds of informations, such as cell culture is quite simple, but normally, the cells were cultured by vituline blood serum instead of human serum.  Then it’s not the right condition!  It is a secret, which is first disclosed today, and there are still many other secrets in our tests, will released later.  Just let people debate on it, for modern thoughts are different from the conventional ones.   
Host: Actually, Pro. Xu is known to many of us as a burn surgeon.  It is known to us that MEBO International Group of yours has retained high-level achievements on the research of burn treating techniques.  Is it true that there is no need for burn patients to receive any skin grafting since then?  Wound you introduce for us your burn treating techniques?
Pro. Xu: Organ regeneration results will not be attained without the burn research.  Therefore our scientific research is repeated again and again: explore the mechanism from the results of burn research, and then use this mechanism to find other results.  It is not the case of disputing or willingness, for the radix of the research is involving the experiment performed from result to result.  Now burn treating is easy performed though there are still some differences between clinical operation and laboratory research.  In laboratory, all the organs can regenerate from the primary cells in human body.  Firstly, we propose one theory that an unconverted part of human body will be kept during the process of human development.  In our research of the growth of the skin, we have found the ancestor of the skin is the primary stem cell, which has its ancestor further.  It is shown by our result that this ultimate ancestor is a copy of the histocyte in any normal tissues, which dose not differentiated since produced.  When the necrosis of peripheral cells occurs, this copy cell can initiate its ability of regeneration into an identical cloned cell in agamic way to replenish the void part.  Therefore, that theory is the ultimate fundament, from which came the burn treatment.  Our clinical specialists are required to achieve the laboratory level in the clinical treating of burns.  The current medical level has realized the skin wound healing as long as the existence of bones without scar formation for common burn wound.  I believe our medical techniques will be improved gradually to reach the laboratory level. In addition to the application in burn treatment, that theory and technique can also be applied in the treatment of dermatosis.  Skin can be maintained young and injured skin can be replaced by a neo-regenerated skin, thus a brand new medical system of dermatosis treatment will be established in the aspect of skin regeneration.
Host: As is well-known that MEBO International Group has attained substantial achievements in a number of fields.  Then could you tell us about your research team? 
Pro. Xu: Some reporter once asked me if he could interview someone in our group, and my answer is it is difficult, since some scientific researchers are not allowed to receive interview.  So this is the first time our team is disclosed in public.  The team is established as a small core, and then a big one scattered to all over the world.  A lot of experiment methods of us are conventional, so we pay certain laboratories some money for the experiment results.  Since we just provide them with some sample for inspection or cell cultivation, the experimenters can not tell what we have done.  While the core of the team is in our own MEBO group, which is composed of more than just the researchers.  The experimental results repeated in three places in both sides, which refer to both sides of the Pacific Ocean instead of the bilateral relation between China and Taiwan. (Laugh)  The two places on this side are Shanghai and Beijing in China and America is on the other side.  Of course some of our clinical experts are already known to you and they have gained more results, which are turned back for new research, which is called conforming research.  Our team is like this and there are still several secret teams where some people are serving as part-timers by performing experiments.  It is well known that nearly every hospital in America has such stem cell laboratory.   
Host: I have kept imaging your laboratory, which must be very mysterious with a lot of blue tubes bubbling mysterious air bubbles. (Laugh)
Pro. Xu: What you described is a kind of science fiction.  You can come to visit our laboratory when you are free, for our core laboratory can be shown to you, as it was once shown to academicians in 2002.    
Pro. Xu: Longevity will be realized in the future, but it is coming soon.  We have completed such experiments in animals.  As it was mentioned before, the results of the animal experiment conform to that of the human experiment in the field of life science.  For the moment, none of such experiments on albino rats has not been fulfilled, but it will indeed cost 300 years to gain the authentic conclusion from human experiments.  However, we can do research in stages with five years as a circle.  Thus the ultimate systemic sensibility and state of diseases of a person can be verified on the current basis of his cells.  By “coming soon”, I mean we should explore the application of the results to the human body with five years as a circle.   
Net friend A: Is it possible to replace some of our organs with new ones freely? 
Host: I suppose his main idea is to change the organs whenever it is needed. 
Pro. Xu: He must have been influenced by commercial propaganda. Change of an organ freely can only be found in Science fiction, for any part of human beings can not be changed casually.  Organ changing in the highest level currently is heart transplantation and renal transplantation, even for the cloning of humans or organs in the future.  Therefore, the human body can not be taken as composed of different parts, unless the integration of the human body will be lost.  Human cells have the ability of self renewal, and it is proved by the experimental method that the tissue organ begins self-regeneration which is not controlled by us.  But there is one condition that the body must be provided with life regenerative nutrient substances necessary for cellular renewal from time to time.  Once the overall nutrient substances are taken in our daily meals, they can be used by cells whenever they are needed or removed by metabolism if not needed.                          
Net friend B: Why are there still a number of hospitals performing skin grafting? 
Mr. Xu: It is not convenient to talk about that issue.  But it possibly has bearings on economic benefits.  Maybe it is not conscious enough of me to comment like that, but with our regenerative technique which has been spread by the Ministry of Health for over ten years, the treatment of large area burns with TBSA of 90% domestically costs less than 100,000 RMB; On the contrary, skin grafting costs 1,000,000 RMB with disablement of the patient.  I hope this issue can be investigated by people since I can not tell it clearly here.
Net friend C: How great you are, Professor Xu!
Host: Another question for you.  Why is your company named as MEBO?
Pro. Xu: It is mainly because I praise highly the burn ointment which was invented by me occasionally when I was a sophomore in the university.  During my further research, I tried to find whether these cells are different from others, and what kind of cells they are once they were proved different, thus bringing the establishment of our current science.  The English mane of “湿润烧伤膏” is Moist Exposed Burn Ointment, with initial name as MEBO. Because MEBO sounds pleasant with identical  pronunciation in various countries, it is decided as the name of our group.  We have the first plan to complete the research of primary full-scale nutrients of humans. In the future, people will not take in food lack of nutrition.  And cheap materials like cabbage can be used in the research of crude food, which will come out soon.       
Host: That is all the civilians will have the excess to it within five years.
Host: So you have made another promise here.
Pro. Xu: It is just an exploration instead of a promise.
Host: We hope there will be another good news five years later.  Thanks very much for Professor Xu’s attendance in our Sina live studio.  I believe he has brought us a really wonderful hope, and I also hope we can reunite here 300 years later.  Thanks for your attention.  See you next time.