RE:In my 61st year on the planet
St. Louis Firm to Map Ozzy Osbourne's DNA
By George Sells FOX2now.com
9:57 PM CDT, June 30, 2010
ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI - FOX2now.com) - A St. Louis genetics firm is about begin seeking the answer to fascinating scientific question: how in the world is heavy metal star Ozzy Osbourne still alive? Osbourne wants to know and is donating a DNA sample for scientists to examine.
Osbourne is sixty-one years old, and has done more to abuse his body than most of us have ever considered. Drugs, booze, smoking, even biting heads off of bats! So the question is, is there something special in his dna that's keeping him alive? That's what scientists hope to find out.
"One of the interesting things would be to take the variation in his DNA sample and compare that to patients that have had cancer and patients that have passed away from other diseases," Jon Armstrong of Cofactor Genomics told FOX 2.
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This time they're going to test the guy who survived, seemingly against all odds. A Massachusetts company will do all the analysis, but it's in a St. Louis lab, at Cofactor Genomics, where Ozzy's DNA will be analyzed and mapped out as they try to get to the core of why he is able to continue living a relatively healthy life.
They key here in St. Louis is to provide good data, not figure out the answers, but they say this might be an experiment that shows DNA is only one element to our health, and other outside issues take just as much a toll.
"Ozzys been a touring guy," Armstrong says. "He's been in a band. He's kicked back on a bus. He's drinking four bottles a day of vodka or whatever. The responsibility and the amount of stress that he's had in his life is probably less than yours."
They say the goal is to go into these things with no preconceived notions. But we had to ask, could Ozzy's DNA provide some key to the fountain of youth? They say it's always possible.
Ozzy's blood for the experiment will be drawn Thursday, and they hope to have results by year's end.
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