Read the future in your bones.

Byline: Graeme Addison

BIOSCIENCE Read the future in your bones Regenerative medicine, which allows the body to renew and replace missing or injured organs, is at the cutting edge of 21st century bioscience, writes SURELY the most common symbol of mortality is the grinning human skull, perched atop our strangely athletic-looking skeleton with its long bones and delicate fingers and feet. No matter how a lady may look in the flesh during her lifetime, as Shakespeare's Hamlet said while exclaiming over the skull of poor Yorick: To this favour she must come. And so must we all. The thought that our life hangs on a bony frame seldom occurs to any of us until you slip and fall, and feel your bone crack. Or maybe you won't feel it, depending on how bad a fracture it is. You don't have to be old and suffering from osteoporosis, or brittle bones, to crack a limb, as all players of sport know. What many do not realise is that genetic and environmental factors, including diet and lifestyle …