It's the stuff of sci-fi and really
crappy awesome horror films, but now it looks like regrowing damaged skin and limbs isn't so far-fetched -- in fact, it's already happening. A certain 69 year old Lee Spievak lost half an inch of finger to an aggressive model plane blade, and doctors had little hope for the appendage. Lucky for Lee, his brother Alan works in the field of regenerative medicine, and sent him some powder (which lee calls "pixie dust") to apply to the finger. Four weeks later Lee had grown back the entire finger, as good as new. The pixie dust is actually modified cells scraped from the lining of a pig's bladder cleaned into a general-purpose tissue generator -- the cells basically tell the body to grow instead of scar. Doctors have high hopes for the cells, for everything from amputees to burn victims to cancer patients. We're just waiting until they can program these cells to grow that third arm we always wanted.
Update: These claims are
being called "junk science" by some folks in the UK. We don't know who to believe, but the claims above are certainly sensational, and the critics are right about calling this some Nobel Prize-winning research if is indeed legitimate, and therefore it's certainly odd that this research has bypassed the mainstream of science. Dr. Stephen Badylak, who mailed his brother the cells, says "we're not smart enough to figure out how to regrow a finger," and credits this freaky success to nature doing its thing. Science fight!
posted May 1st 2008 5:01AM
I've been sprinkling this on my girlfriends chest for months - but only on one side.
Yeah, I 'm mean like that.
This stuff really is great. I know one of the guys who works by the office.
FYI,
sprinkle some on your toilet paper after you do your thing. I powder my ass with a pound of this stuff after taco nights, just for insurance.
"A guy's brother who had contact gave a powder", yeah ok, and did you know elvis actually is on the team that developed it?
No, the guy's brother is the head of regenerative medicine at U. Pitt or something. Just watch the Youtube video.
I don't know.... Something about this story just doesn't seem Kosher.
PHOTOSHOPED!!!
I got a nail that looped half way over the tip of my finger, and if this thing works a professional can tak my nail out and make it regrow like new.
Nah, i'm afraid it's a bit more serious. It means that, in future, there wont be any intelligently designed new species n stuff... ah well. :-P
So if I lop off my pinky, and pixie dust the severed pinky, will it grow up into another me?
This is great stuff, but now I can only imagine a new genre of spam arriving in my In Box.
P****S DUST, grow your appendage larger. Satisfy your woman, and don't look like a pixie any more!
Did you just censor the word penis? Or does EG do that
Mr Bobbit could have used this 15 years ago.
Sign me up, I think I lost some cockles.
Some of us can restore the foreskins that the penis chopping Jews took away from us. Make it into a 2% cream please.
No. So far, it only regrows tissue.
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I could have SO used a third arm yesterday. DAMN springs!
This is frickin' awesome!
This is all well and good, but how does this relate to gadgets at all?
Pixies ARE real! Now this man just has to think happy thought, and it's off to Never Never Land!
A finger will re-grow if lopped off above the joint. In this guys case the cut was VERY close to the joint but still above. This would have grown back no matter what. There is nothing amazing here. It would change modern science if a finger cut into the second joint were to fully regrow. This is bullshit article.
I will say that the powder probably helped speed things up for the guy though...69 year olds don't usually heal very quickly.
You make a broad sweeping assumption about a NEW technology you know ZERO about besides the article, and then claim that same article is "bullshit".
If the premise (article) is "bullshhhh", then the conclusion based off that premise must be equally flawed. By your own logic, your conclusion is bullshit.
You sound like a constipated, bitter, jerk.
That makes no sense Nikola. So to make an observation of something flawed means the observation itself must be flawed?
You sound stupid.
This was on Gizmodo months ago. After some research into it I found out that certain body parts in humans grow back naturally. Tips of fingers grow back all the time. The sprinkling of stuff on his finger produced the same results that not sprinkling the bacon powder would have produced. Look into it Engadget!
you just love to ruin things and take away the magic don't ya!
Is that guy giving us the finger?
Old, old news. This "technique" is a hoax, see this article on fingertip regeneration in Scientific American:
"Potential at Our Fingertips
One of the most encouraging signs that human limb regeneration is a feasible goal is the fact that our fingertips already have an intrinsic ability to regenerate. This observation was made first in young children more than 30 years ago, but since then similar findings have been reported in teenagers and even adults. Fostering regeneration in a fingertip amputation injury is apparently as simple as cleaning the wound and covering it with a simple dressing. If allowed to heal naturally, the fingertip restores its contour, fingerprint and sensation and undergoes a varying degree of lengthening."
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=regrowing-human-limbs&page=4