A baby is born to a 2000 year-old mother. It’s exactly that. It’s a date palm seed that germinated earlier this year, and it is thriving. Israeli researchers who are cultivating the historic plant have informed this. The plant is nicknamed Methuselah after the oldest person named in the Old Testament of the Bible. The sapling is now 80 centimeters [3 feet] high with nine leaves. Sarah Sallon, director of the Hadassah Medical Organization’s Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center (NMRC) in Jerusalem, to see if the ancient tree has any unique medicinal properties no longer found in today’s date palm varieties. With all hopes, Sallon says “Dates were famous in antiquity for medicinal value.” “They were widely used for different kinds of diseases-cancers, TB [tuberculosis]-all kinds of problems”, she added. If this seed survives, it can be of some real good medicinal value. Scientists have kept their fingers crossed.