The Military Plans To Regrow Body Parts

Ponca City, We Love You writes "The Department of Defense has announced the creation of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine to 'harness stem cell research and technology... to reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers.' The government is budgeting $250 million in public and private money for the project's first five years, and the NIH and three universities will be on the team. The military has been working on regrowing lost body parts using extracellular matrices and scientists in labs have grown blood vessels, livers, bladders, breast implants, and meat and are already growing a new ear for a badly burned Marine using stem cells from his own body. Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker explained that our bodies systematically generate liver cells and bone marrow and that this ability can be redirected through 'the right kind of stimulation.' The general cited animals like salamanders that can regrow lost tails or limbs. 'Why can't a mammal do the same thing?' he asked."

eeeeeeek!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

I wonder if they're going to grow that ear on a mouse. [southparkstudios.com]

Re:eeeeeeek!

[Johnny5000 (451029)]

I'm wondering if they're going to be getting that million dollars from PETA. [slashdot.org]

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

Yeah, what purpose does the military have in growing all natural 'breast implants'? Licensing it out to the porn industry could be a good source of funding I suppose, but it's not like they need any more money than the US government is throwing at them :s

I think the whole subject of regrowing limbs (or perhaps adding extra ones?) brings a whole new meaning to the term 'Armed Forces' anyway ;)

Milspec breasts

[sjbe (173966)]

Yeah, what purpose does the military have in growing all natural 'breast implants'?

Weapons of mass distraction!

Re:eeeeeeek!

[jimicus (737525)]

Yeah, what purpose does the military have in growing all natural 'breast implants'?

(Note: I'm not a woman, so both the ladies on /. are free to flame me until I resemble a lightly toasted small buffalo.)

Joke all you want, but lots of women are very upset at the prospect of losing all or part of a breast through cancer.

It's not a particularly big leap to apply such concern to losing part of a breast through injuries sustained in combat. And breasts were invented for reasons other than "To give /.'ers something to furiously fwap over", y'know.

In which case, being able to regrow them could prove very helpful for morale amongst injured female soldiers.

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

I think the only real solution to the mental and psychological trauma is not to go through it in the first place. Not very practical, but otherwise the only solution would be precision removal of the experience from your memory.. but other parts of your brain other than your memory will have been scarred too - you can't just take a full backup of someone's brain before a war and then restore it afterwards. Well, maybe someday we will be able to, but when we have that level of technological sophistication, w

Re:eeeeeeek!

[jpellino (202698)]

Recall that: that was not a human ear (the cartilage cells were from a cow) and it was in the shape of an ear because it was molded that way, not because any genes in the structure were expressing for "human ear".

It is a neat way to grow cartilaginous body shapes, and isn't a bad starting point.

One *little* thing

[damburger (981828)]

Being able to do something and being willing to pay for it are two seperate things. Just because the military is pioneering this research doesn't mean they are going to make it available for free to the young men and women they are responsible for maiming. They could just try and make a profit from it.

Furthermore, 300,000 soldiers are coming back from Iraq with some kind of mental disorder. You can't grow a new happy mind in a petri dish.

Re:One *little* thing

[chuckymonkey (1059244)]

I will say this about the military, and I would know as I was deployed to Iraq twice in the Army. The medical care is not bad and you don't pay for it while you're in the military. There are a lot of amputees out there with top notch prosthesis and they didn't pay a dime for them. Yes, there are a lot of horror stories about how bad the military can treat its wounded, and yes most of those are pretty true. The thing is though that they are actually a small percentage. Another thing that's cool about the military is that they are really good about pushing state of the art in medicine. Anything to keep wounded troops alive. Fake blood? Tested in the military. High speed care? Military. So on so forth. Oh and no they can't make you happy. I know, I have to live with that every damn day.

Re:

[BlowHole666 (1152399)]

From one slashdotter to another, thank you for serving.

Re:One *little* thing

[CRCulver (715279)]

The medical care is not bad and you don't pay for it while you're in the military.

I served in the Navy and I think the military care was terrible. There were never enough doctors, the facilities were old and badly maintained, and the staff had no bedside manner because I guess actually acting like you care about the patient is against military discipline or whatever. FWIW, it's not a problem of "free" medicine. I now live in Finland, where the medical care is also basically, but doctors are actually pleasant to visit.

Yes, there are a lot of horror stories about how bad the military can treat its wounded, and yes most of those are pretty true. The thing is though that they are actually a small percentage.

I think most of the protest is against how the military treats veterans after they have been discharged but who still bear the scars of military experience. VA hospitals are not happy places, and VA benefits can be hard to win.

Re:

[CRCulver (715279)]

Sorry, that should have read ...basically free....

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

The military gives some of the best prosthetics around to their maimed soldiers. They certainly get a lot better limbs than most other amputees can afford. I agree with you about the mental stresses of war, and how they are pretty much irreversible, but they do as well as they can on the physical healing side. Feel from to correct me if I am wrong, but from what I have seen, the limb replacement initiatives for the US military are about as good as you could hope for, apart from not losing the limb at al

Re:One *little* thing

[Ucklak (755284)]

Lobotomy, lobotomy, lobotomy, lobotomy!
DDT did a job on me
Now I am a real sickie
Guess I'll have to break the news
That I got no mind to lose
All the girls are in love with me
I'm a teenage lobotomy

Slugs and snails are after me
DDT keeps me happy
Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em
That I got no cerebellum
Gonna get my Ph.D.
I'm a teenage lobotomy

Re:One *little* thing

[damburger (981828)]

I get modded troll for making a valid point and this joker gets modded insightful for not knowing what I'm referring to when I say 300,000 troops have mental disorders?

Go educate yourself, fucking moron:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080418/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/troops_mental_health [yahoo.com]

After displaying a horrific ignorance and having that ignorance mistaken as insight by lobotomised moderators, you then go on to accuse me of politicising the issue. Fuck you, twat face. I wasn't talking about people coming back with conservative beliefs, I was talking about people coming back with PTSD.

Re:

[HisMother (413313)]

The military isn't responsible for maiming their own soldiers. It's the enemy that is. So we should just present Iraq or who ever we declare as the enemy with the bill for regen on all our soldiers.

That's like me throwing eggs at my neighbor's house, then asking him to pay for the eggs because, you know, it was their house they broke against.

Re:One *little* thing

[somersault (912633)]

Petri dishes are too small - you need a decent sized brain jar if you want to grow brains!

Two of these things are not like the others

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

blood vessels, livers, bladders, breast implants, and meat

Really? I didn't think that people lost breast implants in accidents very often.

Re:

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

blood vessels, livers, bladders, breast implants, and meat

Really? I didn't think that people lost breast implants in accidents very often.

Well if the seat belt doesn't hold it back in a crash...

Interestingly the Australian Navy does pay for breast implants [wired.com] on occasions.

Re:

[jollyreaper (513215)]

Really? I didn't think that people lost breast implants in accidents very often.

No, but a woman can get her tits blown off, the same as a foot or hand or face. Imagine how a guy would feel with his nuts blown off, that doesn't even show when dressed. A woman without her breasts not only feels disfigured, she'll look it as well. I bet you'd find guys would rather have suffer a disfiguring face injury than lose their nuts. People are sensitive about this sort of stuff.

In the future battlefield...

[javilon (99157)]

Mmmmm, I thought I had already killed that one...

Re:

[weber (36246)]

If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

What's next?

[SickHumour (928514)]

Adamantium skeletons?

Hulk smash

[ChowRiit (939581)]

..isn't this the plot from The Hulk?

Re:

[Recovering Hater (833107)]

I don't know about that but Dr. Conners A.K.A "Lizardman" thought the very same thing in The Amazing Spiderman and look how things turned out for that guy.

Re:

[techpawn (969834)]

Lizardman? Doc Conners was called "The Lizard".... And if he has his meds he kept his transformation under control... of courses that meant he lost the ability to regrow his arm.

Bang Bang

[Fixerbob (593680)]

...Oh well, time for a trip to the respawning tank...

WooHoo!!

[Capt James McCarthy (860294)]

Does this mean that when this is perfected, I will be able to live as long as my bank account can afford it? It may be like maintaining your car. New heart every 60 years, new lungs every 70 years, new nerves at around 50 years, new skin every 30 years, new eyes every 40 years, new glands every 30 years, new joints every 30 years,...etc...etc.. They better get humping since I'm running out of time.

Re:WooHoo!!

[Psion (2244)]

I would. There's too much to do in this world for one lifetime. Especially when you're a procrastinator from the start. Plus, I want to see the future ... the first manned Mars landing. The first interstellar probe. The singularity. Who knows what else. Just because you're happy with a handful of years and a geological instant, doesn't mean everyone else is.

Re:

[Eccles (932)]

Who would want to live forever?

Seems to me a lot of religions are centered around achieving eternal life.

(See Matthew 19:16-17; Mark 10:17-19; Luke 18:18-20 for Christianity, for example.)

While I agree eternal life sounds like more than I'd want, I think I could tolerate living a few hundred or even a few thousand years. After all, I want to play Duke Nukem Forever one day!

Re:

[dwye (1127395)]

> Who would want to live forever?

Accidents will get you, eventually. Someone (I forget who) calculated a few years ago that perfect long-term medical care and a total absence of disease just raises the Average Life Expectancy to about 400 years. Less if cancer cannot be cured, just treated (especially brain cancers).

Anyway, you could always refuse extraordinary measures, even when they have become as ordinary as hydration and intravenous feeding is now.

Re:WooHoo!!

[Angstroem (692547)]

Go, speak for yourself.

Just because *you* are bored with your current existence and don't know how to fill another livespan doesn't mean others will feel the same.

I'd definitely welcome a society of eternal life, because that means that people will need to drive away from current quarter-based, short-term oriented thinking. Instead, the long-term perspective becomes focus again, therefore potentially leading to real breakthrough as opposed to "look, this mobile phone now comes in fluff and it even has a camera attached!" kind of technological advantages.

Also, we then *desperately* need to find a way to (a) optimize our resource use (harvesting e=mc^2 instead of just burning oil) and (b) spread to other planets, at least spread over our solar system. Both things I've been told as a kid to be lucky to experience by Y2K -- still, I await that badly to happen.

They probably don't fit into a quarter-based revenue plan...

Plus, by not aging conventionally, I may be able to decide to learn something entirely new every 20, 30 years when my previous occupation starts to bore me.

So why again do you think somewhat eternal life will become dull? There's so much to see.

Besides, you'll always have the option of riding the Suicide Booth.

Hmm. Transexuals?

[splutty (43475)]

I wonder if this can be used to grow certain bodyparts that transexuals for a very obvious reason are missing.. Not entirely sure whether you can mess around enough to be able to do that, but it would be very interesting to see if it's possible.

tour of duty

[sveard (1076275)]

get shot up, get repaired, get sent back in

good for morale :)

Re:

[Fizzl (209397)]

Freedom from... ?

American army is not for defense. When have you defended against any potential threat that could have taken away your "freedom"?

I hate that patriotic bullshit.

These people are a bit scary

[pzs (857406)]

I was at a (molecular biology) conference once where a guy was talking about pouring connexin proteins onto damaged skin. This promotes communication, which apparently speeds up the healing process.

This was all well and good but then he said that he was funded by the Navy and "of course they have quite a lot of people with damaged skin at the moment - teehee!"

Possibly the most bad taste "joke" I have ever heard at a conference.

Only a matter of time...

[R2.0 (532027)]

"scientists in labs have grown ... breast implants..."

So soon those penis enlargement ads won't be just a scam?

Not that I need anything like that...

Opportunities....

[Zocalo (252965)]

So, the US military is looking to fund a project to re-grow body parts, including meat, and PETA is offering money to someone who can create artificial meat. That sounds like a match made in Soylent Heaven to me; "It's your *own* meat; how could it not be ethical to eat it? You didn't suffer did you?"

Re:

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

You are what you eat when you eat what you are.

relation to SciAm article?

[UnanimousCoward (9841)]

I just read this Scientific American article [sciam.com] on the subject, and it seems a lot farther away than the Slate article is implying. I wonder if some of the funding is going to the researchers who wrote the SciAm article.

Re:relation to SciAm article?

[Loki_1929 (550940)]

The military can often push the boundaries of technology far more rapidly than those inspired purely by curiosity. The military sees only an objective and plans to achieve it. It pushes ahead toward that objective regardless of any failures or problems unless and until it becomes obvious that said objective is either impossible to reach or is not worth the effort.

There's something to be said for military-inspired scientific work. Look at how quickly the Manhattan Project took some then-wild and crazy scientific speculation and turned it into a functional technology. If you'd told scientific spectators what they were planning to do at the start of the project and the timeframe for completion, they'd be laughing at the author as some sort of ignorant fool who had no idea of the kinds of technical and scientific challenges that lay ahead. Of course, the beauty of the military was that it didn't give a damn about the challenges - it wanted its bomb.

Re:

[mentaldrano (674767)]

The Manhatten project was functional? Yes, in the sense that they made two bombs that exploded. What they did not do, was develop a process for manufacturing bombs. After the original team left and went back to academic research (mostly), we had ZERO bombs ready for a couple of years. If the Soviets had found out, Europe would have been a nasty place to live for quite a while.

Yes, when the military wants something they push ahead regardless of incidental failure, but as with all research projects, what

Re:

[Luyseyal (3154)]

And there was that guy who grew a new jaw bone on his back [www.cbc.ca].

-l

Seriously?

[Guerilla* Napalm (762317)]

I can see it now... an Iraqi dissident is hiding in a ditch near Baghdad, determined to ambush the next American patrol, then reconsiders because he's distracted by the sergeant's spectacular breasts....that might just work. Hooraay! Fake Tits for everyone!

The cost for us

[RESPAWN (153636)]

I wonder how much it will cost the general public once the technology matures. An arm and a leg?

Just Another Military Contractor Handout

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

How can we be expected to believe these contracts will do anything but make some "biotech entrepreneurs" rich, without ever showing any medical benefit to the general population, when Bush's Pentagon won't even fund normal veterans services [google.com] like healthcare, insurance, education, or even reasonable salary increases?

I know the Pentagon is sending badly wounded soldiers back into fighting [buffalonews.com] in Iraq. But how do they expect people to volunteer to go through the ringer without keeping our promises to these making the ultimate sacrifices, especially if the only medical care they'll get will be to rotate their tires after they get blasted to bits, until there's nothing left to put together and send back?

Although I guess a draft combined with regrowing body parts could do the trick. "Frankenstein's Army" for the 21st Century. I'll be scanning the Pentagon budgets for new funding for zombies, the real cutting edge.

Muscles and Nerves

[DynaSoar (714234)]

Growing new muscle tissue is a waste of time, unless one solves the problem of regrowing nerve tissue, including getting it to reconnect at the severed spot as well as migrating through the new tissue to its intended connection target. Without nerve connection the muscle is useless and will atrophy. To see what happens, look at Stephen Hawking. His illness is MOTOR neuron disease, loss of nerves that operate muscles.

We *can* regrow neurons as we have natural stem cells that do so. The problem with either natural or induced growth is getting them to follow the path they're supposed to rather than grow into a tangled heap called a neuroma. Those can be more of a problem than no regrowth, as they can regrow nerve endings on the tangle, and so be extremely sensitive in the wrong place.

I had a damaged nerve in my foot excised. The end of the nerve grew a neuroma. If I ran, or even walked too hard, it was like stepping on a nail. Couldn't run, so couldn't fight. The Army put me out. Over the next 10 years the neuroma faded away. And the nerve regrew properly. I now have full feeling in the area served by that nerve. This is not the usual course of healing -- I was just damn lucky.

The military is willing to pay to have human tissue regrowth rather than lose the entire investment in a service member. They paid around $200,000 total for all my training. When I was capable again, I was too old. If I'd have been able to have this happen over the course of a year or so I could have been kept in and on medical leave, returning to service when finished.

My concern is that the military will effectively experiment on its service members by applying this technology to their healing before it's perfected. Someone still in service has a duty to try to continue, and they carry implied consent to take necessary medical treatment, by passing informed consent when pressure to accept treatment is applied. Refusing treatment can be taken as refusing to serve through one's contract. If the treatment were being offered through the Veterans Administration, fine. Through the military, I'd be wary until it's proven good enough for the civilian market.

Re:What about brains?

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

Brain injuries are one of the bigger problems now that survival of concussive blasts is so much better. And if you can put in new brain cells; can you give a person their personality back?

Only if they made backups.

Re:

[TehDuffman (987864)]

There is plenty of research that is paid for by the military (through taxes) and then comes around to benefit civilians in the long run.

I can think of a few off the top of my head...

1) The internet (ARPA)
2) Jet power and most anything involving aviation
3) Many types of cold weather gear
4) Alot of medical research was done to save people in uniform
5) Satellite technology

If it wasn't for the military alot of these things just would not have gotten the funding they deserved because they wouldn't h

Re:

[Big_Breaker (190457)]

There is in fact research into regrowth of fatty breast tissue from stem cells. There are a number of reasons for pursuing "natural" materials for reconstruction. For total reconstructions due to mastectomy, birth defect or injury the man-made implants are not cosmetically convincing. Some women are allergic or otherwise do not tolerate silcone in the implant envelope. Many women are not excited about having foreign material implanted in their bodies and especially for mastectomies would prefer to be re