The Military Plans To Regrow Body Parts 257
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! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:eeeeeeek! (Score:5, Funny)
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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 (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:eeeeeeek! (Score:5, Insightful)
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
In which case, being able to regrow them could prove very helpful for morale amongst injured female soldiers.
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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 is the military investing in those sorts of options? I dont know. I wonder if they are only considering "cosmetic" rehabilitation because it benefits them the most. I don't know how the funding is assessed, but I remember seeing a Frontline episode by PBS that emphasized the lack of attention to psychological issues. An able body is no good to a disabled mind, and it's probably more expensive in the long run to pay attention to the soldiers' mental health.
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Re:eeeeeeek! (Score:4, Informative)
It is a neat way to grow cartilaginous body shapes, and isn't a bad starting point.
One *little* thing (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
Too true. My father (a vietnam vet) makes extensive use of the VA facilities and army hospitals. I have know these many army hospitals and VA facilities to try their best but they are seriously understaffed and at times underpowered or even worse. By 'even worse' I mean that prior to my dad's liver transplant he was ejecting blood from both ends (sorry for the mental image), I had taken him to a army hospital and it was THREE HOURS in a barely packed ER room (there were perhaps 2 other patients to be
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Re:One *little* thing (Score:4, Funny)
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
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Why not?
Re:One *little* thing (Score:4, Insightful)
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On the other hand, if they can put someone's leg back on, they might be happy that they once again have an active, trained, soldier.
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.
Yes, but not doing this wouldn't help them either. And men
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Deserving of suspicion if not outright paranoia as any branch of the US Government might be, I honestly can't think of any reason besides treating their own wounded the US Army could possibly be wanting this technology for.
Who might ? The US Army is publicly funded and doesn't need to
Re:One *little* thing (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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You have problems, anger issues and so forth...
Also, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is common to ALL wars/police actions/cops shootout with drug dealers/etc. just look at the name "Post TRAUMATIC", any traumatic event (where life is threatened) can trigger this, it's just the soldier in war who gets most of it because they regularly go into circumstances where their life is threatened. I've known several soldiers with light PTSD, you just don't make any sudden noises/moves around them and you're all good.
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I don't hold the services responsible for the wounded. That is the responsibility of the Administration, and Congress, and the american people for tolerating our misbegotten government.
Two of these things are not like the others (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? I didn't think that people lost breast implants in accidents very often.
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Really? I didn't think that people lost breast implants in accidents very often.
Interestingly the Australian Navy does pay for breast implants [wired.com] on occasions.
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The battlefield of the future is going to be quite different.
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1. beer, lots of it.
2. kebabs, lots of them
3. pizza. yup, lots.
you get the idea
I've no idea who Bronski is, but I'm guessing you're not referring to Bronski Beat.
In the future battlefield... (Score:5, Funny)
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What's next? (Score:2, Funny)
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Hulk smash (Score:2)
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Bang Bang (Score:2, Insightful)
WooHoo!! (Score:2)
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Re:WooHoo!! (Score:4, Interesting)
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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!
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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.
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Re:WooHoo!! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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You really believe that a longer perspective would make people CARE about the environment and the rest of humanity? Perhaps I've grown too pessimistic, but I have little hope for the general population.
You really want to go to work every day for the next N years? Even if I had a great job, I still would
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http://www.amazon.com/Altered-Carbon-Richard-K-Morgan/dp/0345457684 [amazon.com]
PS: No, not a paid referrer link.
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Hmm. Transexuals? (Score:4, Interesting)
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What? Oh, it's just I have a friend, y'know, who, er, might be interested...
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Yes, I understand the appeal to transexuals. I can only hope they have the self-restraint not to use such a thing.
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tour of duty (Score:5, Insightful)
good for morale
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good for morale
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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 (Score:2)
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... (Score:2, Funny)
So soon those penis enlargement ads won't be just a scam?
Not that I need anything like that...
Hai Mr. Military Dr.! (Score:2, Insightful)
K, THX!!!
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And that's why he's a general. (Score:2)
He should have consulted a whole raft of references to find out just how much has been done and how much is known.
This is typical PHB behavior and along the lines of "We have to build a roller coaster - why can't we just use old railroad track and some Yugos?"
A leadership based remark would be more like "we have good reasons to believe it's possible - and for the sake of these
Opportunities.... (Score:5, Funny)
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-l
relation to SciAm article? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:relation to SciAm article? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Yes, when the military wants something they push ahead regardless of incidental failure, but as with all research projects, what
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And there was that guy who grew a new jaw bone on his back [www.cbc.ca].
-l
The real agenda (Score:2, Funny)
Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
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obDrWho (Score:2)
The cost for us (Score:5, Funny)
Respawn times are too looong! (Score:2)
I request this glaring bug to be corrected by next patch.
your tax $ @ work - breast implants (Score:2)
Imagine how many more soldiers they will get with (Score:2, Funny)
Growing body parts/growing people? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is it that this is just surprising everyone all of a sudden? Growing body parts has been on the agenda for years and years and years. That was the original intent in the beginning of stem cell research. This is obviously a first step in getting the acceptance of the public.
While people are vocal about saying no to stem cell research, they are also saying yes to re-growing their body parts. I find this hypocritical, to say the least of this.
I'm thinking of the future, here, and I wonder when I will h
Just Another Military Contractor Handout (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
new comedy pilot... (Score:2)
M*A*S*H*U*P
I think this has already been done... (Score:2)
Curt Conners (Score:2)
Excuse me? (Score:2)
Muscles and Nerves (Score:3, Informative)
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? (Score:4, Informative)
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For example, when people lose their personality due to Alzheimer's disease, the location to where their personality is stored isnt damaged per-say, they end up losing synaptic connections between the neurons and neurofibrillary tangles start to develop. If these were restored through stem cells, the personality is restored.
So I guess what I'm saying is that as long
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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
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