But the real goal for anti-ageing researchers — for our imaginary Dorian — would be to find the master mechanism in the body that controls ageing. Find the pendulum and stop it swinging or, at least, make it swing more slowly.

Some clues may come from the American teenager Brooke Greenberg, who is the nearest that science has to a real-life Dorian Gray. The 16-year-old is the size of an 11-month-old baby. She stopped growing in the conventional sense while still a baby, although some parts of her anatomy continued to mature. Brooke has baby teeth but the bones of a ten-year-old (in cellular age, not size). She cannot talk or swallow normal food; she is fed through a tube to her stomach. Her condition, named Syndrome X, is thought to be unique and possibly results from the absence of a master gene that regulates how the body grows, develops — and ages.

“Without being sensational, I’d say that this is an opportunity for us to answer the question (of) why we are mortal, or at least to test it,” says Professor Richard Walker, a specialist from the University of South Florida College of Medicine, who, along with geneticists and other developmental experts, is baffled by the cause of Greenberg’s condition. “If we are wrong, we can discard it. But if we are right, we have the golden ring.”

Brooke may be frozen in childhood but her inability to age normally has a price. She has suffered strokes, seizures and tumours, and has been close to death on several occasions. Her existence teaches us something that Wilde’s Dorian quickly discovered, and that scientists, transhumanists and ageing billionaires may yet encounter: be careful what you wish for.

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