This is just odd. They have no idea why this girl is a 16 year old toddler.
quote: Doctors Baffled, Intrigued by Girl Who Doesn't Age Years Pass, but Brooke Greenberg Remains a Toddler. No One Can Explain How or Why. By BOB BROWN June 23, 2009 131 comments Font Size PrintRSSE-mailShare this story with friendsFacebookRedditTwitterStumbleUponMore Brooke Greenberg is the size of an infant, with the mental capacity of a toddler.
She turned 16 in January.
Share At 16, Brooke is old enough to drive, but still rides in a car seat.
More Photos"Why doesn't she age?" Howard Greenberg, 52, asked of his daughter. "Is she the fountain of youth?"
Such questions are why scientists are fascinated by Brooke. Among the many documented instances of children who fail to grow or develop in some way, Brooke's case may be unique, according to her doctor, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine pediatrician Lawrence Pakula, in Baltimore.
CLICK HERE to see photos of Brooke through the years.
"Many of the best-known names in medicine, in their experience ... had not seen anyone who matched up to Brooke," Pakula said. "She is always a surprise."
Related WATCH: Girl Who Doesn't Age 'Infant' of FamilyPHOTOS: The Girl Who Doesn't AgeTop 12 Most Baffling Medical ConditionsBrooke hasn't aged in the conventional sense. Dr. Richard Walker of the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa, says Brooke's body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why.
In a recent paper for the journal "Mechanisms of Ageing and Development," Walker and his co-authors, who include Pakula and All Children's Hospital (St. Petersburg, Fla.) geneticist Maxine Sutcliffe chronicled a baffling range of inconsistencies in Brooke's aging process. She still has baby teeth at 16, for instance. And her bone age is estimated to be more like 10 years old.
"There've been very minimal changes in Brooke's brain," Walker said. "Various parts of her body, rather than all being at the same stage, seem to be disconnected."
Brooke's mother, Melanie Greenberg, 48, sees a different picture. "She loves to shop," Greenberg said. "Just like a woman."
Brooke rides in a stroller while her mom shops for clothes in the infant sections of department stores near their home in a Baltimore suburb. That Brooke is in her mid-teens is so mind-boggling that if another mother with a toddler asks Greenberg how old Brooke is, she usually doesn't try to explain.
"My system always has been to turn years into months," Greenberg said. "So, if someone asked today, I might say, she's 16 months old."
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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The weirdest part is that different parts of her body age at different rates, and that she survived a stroke and tumor with no apparent damage to her body.
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I'm still wondering how this girl has escaped the Media Spotlight when innane shit like "Octomom" are such a rage.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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That's scary and sorta making me a little sick to the stomach. Is this girl internally 16!?! Is she inside desperatly wanting to be a 16 year old yet she's perpetually treated like an infant!?! Is some sort of sick prison her mind would be trapped in!
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
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It says her brain isn't growing, so she still has a mental age of about one or two. That, in and of itself is hardly unheard of, when I was a kid there was a 17 year old girl on my street who had a mental age of six and that what she's going to be like her whole life. The unusual part is that the body usually ages normally, whatever the mind is up to.
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Ahh ok, even still that person is accumulating a life-time of memories (or perhaps not??) I wonder though, if treating her continually as an infant is a good thing??
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
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She's probably getting fairly regular MRIs, I'm sure they'd know if she gains any extra mental capacity. As for treating her as an infant, there really isn't an alternative.
It's got to be such an emotional strain on the mom in particular- she's getting pretty old to have a toddler.
Just from a strictly scientific POV, I wonder what the girl's lifespan will be- she has medical ailments from her organs ageing at seperate rates but her ability to bounce back from medical procedures seems pretty amazing (as most children recover better than adults). She's almost like an opposite number to those poor kids that suffer premature ageing.
I also wonder if these types of conditions are result of environmental factors (chemicals, hormones in food, EM fields-whatever) or if this has happened before and was mis-diagnosed as something else and so we never heard of it before. Certainly the girl's family history must have been throughly investigated by now for simmular cases.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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