A few years ago I had this idea for an idea that could add a little character to the world before the Crash and Big Death, and maybe play on how it might impact the world of After the Bomb.
Seeing as how the world was experiencing a golden age of Bio Science, I thought that it would be great if they had come up with a way to grow you a new body to order. "Bored with your current body? New You can grow you a new one to order." You would be able to everything from height, weight, eye color, skin color/tone, gender, facial appearance, etc...
The crazy thing is we are already ridiculously close to being able to do just that. Well, to an extent.
Gone will be the days of organ donors and the possibility of passing along infectious diseases. In the last decade or two we've been able to grow replacement organs, ears, and skin grafts, but this often required the use of a host organism (usually a rat or pig) for the replacement tissue/organ to be grown. Recently, it was found that you can strip the existing cell tissue from a donor heart, coat it with stem cells from the recipient to regrow a working organ, and the resulting organ won't be rejected since it is now covered with the recipient's own cell tissue.
To sweeten the deal, researcher have found that they can more easily reprogram adipose [fat] cells into stem cells. An since stem cells can be turned into any other cells in your body, all you need to do is put on some weight before hand and have it harvested when you need it, or put in a bank for future use.
We aren't just limited to soft organs either. We are now learning how to regrow teeth, and bones!
Throw all this together and what's to stop someone from growing you a whole new body? Just transplant the brain and you've got yourself a "New You". Sure, you and your new body will need to go through some physical therapy to operate properly, but you can get past that in the realm of science fiction.
To take this on an even wilder ride, why limit your new body to that of a human. Why not buy an anthropomorphic body, or something entirely alien. It appears that this idea is used in the movie Avatar (though instead of transplanting the brain, they use a mind link interface). Imagine transplanting yourself into the body of a centaur, mermaid, or winged human!!
You could take this to the extreme and figure that someone could use this technique to life forever, if it weren't for that pesky problem of deteriorating brain tissue, but who says that has to be a problem anymore? Brain tissue is pretty much just like any other in the body and should be able to be regrown. the problem is that you wouldn't just (or might not) be able to just grow yourself a second brain and swap out the old one due to the fact that (as far as we know) there is no way of transferring your consciousness from your original brain into the new one. One possibility I can think of is that you could periodically have new brain tissue grown within your new (larger?) skull to compensate for the loss.
However, again, in the realm of science fiction anything is possible...
So, there you go the basis of the idea that would be Regenesis: The New You, a company that can grow you a new body -- built to order.
Oh yeah, what about your old body? What if you want to go back to being the old you? Well, they will keep that for posterity in cryogenic storage, for an added fee.
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