Pentagon Plans to Regrow Human Body Parts

Pentagon Plans to Regrow Human Body Parts

www.foxnews.com

Soldiers wounded in combat will someday regrow their limbs -- if the Pentagon has its way.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has just given Massachusetts' Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) a $570,000, one-year contract to get a mammal, preferably a human, to regenerate a large body part such as a finger or even a limb.

That's Phase II of DARPA's "Restorative Injury Repair" project, which according to the DARPA Web page "will culminate in the restoration of a functional multi-tissue structure in a mammal."

WPI's CellThera for-profit unit has already achieved Phase I, which according to the school's press release "succeeded in reprogramming mouse and human skin cells to act more like stem cells, able to form the early structures needed to begin the process of re-growing lost tissues."

"The goal is to genuinely replace a muscle that's lost," WPI bioengineering researcher Raymond Page told Wired News. "I appreciate that's a very aggressive goal."

Some salamanders can regrow lost limbs, and some lizards lost tails. But humans can generally regrow only their livers, and have to have at least one-quarter of the previous one still intact for it to happen.

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What on earth do they think they are doing? I wonder what other types of experiments they are doing we don't know of?
Assuming they succeed in doing doing what they want, can we still can those soldiers human. X man is no very far away........It is very dangerous what they are trying to do and I hope things does not get out of hand.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Lets hope they succeed and they can grow themselves a few brains.

reply to post by rattan1


Um, honestly this isn't any surprise to someone like me and others who have been keeping a mental note of this "technology."
This started sometime a year or two ago with a guy in the UK who cut off a few of his fingers. His doctor recommended he apply a gel substance made from powdered pigs bladder on the decapitated finger stubs. He ended up regrowing his lost fingers and has normal usage of them like before.
The US Army got wind of this and began launching research into the technology.
As it turns out from my understanding, the reason your bladder can stretch and contract so much without damage is because of the proteins found inside the tissue that attract stem cells and encourage the growth/repair of the organ or whatever else.

You can't expect the DoD to think of everything ahead of time, sometimes they miss something or a civilian gets lucky and then the military gets interested.

Really, I thought growing body parts was, you know, ILLEGAL
I guess the pentagon can get away with anything!

Humans can regrow fingers?

When a hobby-store owner in Cincinnati sliced off his fingertip in 2005 while showing a customer why the motor on his model plane was dangerous, he went to the emergency room without the missing tip.
Months later, he had regrown it, tissue, nerves, skin, fingernail and all.

Would you like to know more?


Further Reading...
The man who grew a finger! With PIXIE DUST? (ATS)
Human Regeneration (ATS)
Science Finding Ways to Regrow Human Fingers (FOX)


These are some of the stories being referred to in this thread.

[edit on 27-3-2009 by Kaytagg]

Civilian research at Wake Forest SOM in this area was just highlighted on Oprah this week, and it's amazing how far along it has come. Not sure if it was the same gentleman mentioned above, but a man who lost his fingertip which was regrown with an extracellular matrix pixie dust powder was also on the show.

How One Man Grew a New Finger

Over the years, Dr. Atala's researchers have grown nearly two dozen different types of body parts, including muscle, bones and a working heart valve. "I think if we start combining things like better prevention, better care, doing things better for your body, and just with regenerative medicine, we may push [our life spans] up to 120, 130 years," Dr. Atala says.

Innovations in Regenerative Medicine

The video is worth watching and shows some of the techniques used for guiding stem cells.

IMO, this will revolutionize modern medicine.

[edit on 27-3-2009 by AlphaTier]

Interesting that months after a man regrows his finger...the military steps in to make this available to soldiers and grants them 500k to make it happen. It seems $500,000 is nothing with an already proven case where the product has worked. Maybe this $500k is really just to keep the technology from becoming public. You would think this kind of information would be on every medical show everywhere. People that have their limbs removed due to diabetes or combat could benefit from this.

I wonder sometimes about this health care bill. maybe the government knows we are on the breakthrough of so many health initiatives that will do wonders for the world that if they don't mandate people to be on insurance the whole system will collapse, as everyone will have good health.

I may be in the minority here, but I think this kind of medicine is amazing and should be pushed to the limits of study.

I wonder if this technique could be used to battle and cure cancer? It would make sense, given the information posted. It's used to stimulate cell growth, repair and regeneration, then in theory it could also be used to stimulate growth, repair, and regeneration of cancer sticken cells and organs.

Maybe even used to treat brain damage, blindness, loss of hearing, HIV & AIDS.

A natural cure for all disease.

I say GO FOR IT!!