Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Scientists Regrow Teeth
54mc writes "APL reports that Canadian Scientists have created the first device able to regrow teeth and bones.
The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada."
This was a 2 phase discovery:
:)
Phase 1 - Invent a sport where a piece of equipment that, at times, travels towards your face at 160 km/hour and weighs only 170 grams.
Phase 2 - Invent a way to grow teeth back due to resulting injury from Phase 1
It's a Canadian make-work program
- - - "Some people hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers."
This notice hereby notifies you, Tooth Fairy that you are hereby no longer needed as your job has been outsourced to Canada. We hope you will find our severance package of 6 months teeth as well as full dental to be more than generous. Also note that you are hereby banned from acting in the capacity of ortho-collector for a period of 8 years, and any attmpt to circumvent this will lead to a termination of the aforementioned benefits.
-The Management
here
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
"Canadian Scientists Regrow Teeth"
A group of Canadian scientists in the age from 4 to 10 has successfully regrown their teeth after they mysteriously lost them.
> Chen helped create the tiny ultrasound machine that gently massages gums and stimulates tooth growth from the root once inserted into a person's mouth, mounted on braces or a removable plastic crown.
As several of my teeth have gone the way of the fairy, I wonder how this "treatment" copes with teeth that have been root canal filled.
And what colour does the new tooth grow back at? It it's pure white - fantastic as it'll put lots of whiting products out of business, but bad as it'll have the pringles effect; once you start you'll have to have all your front/visible teeth done, even if they are just discoloured.
What with all those hockey players losing teeth. It was either there or Kentucky where people also don't have teeth. Interestingly that's where the toothbrush was invented. Otherwise it would have been called the teethbrush.
Thanks, I'll be here all week, enjoy the veal.
(Disclaimer: I am a Kentuckian)
until they prove it on these (currently) toothless specimens:
1. The Justice dept. (SCO vs IBM)
2. The anti-trust dept. (MS vs US)
3. Other suggestions welcome...
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I'm far away to know something about odontology, so i ask to the slashdot doctors:
This stimulation process could be used to cure bone illness, like Osteoporosis or Osteosarcoma ??
Thanks in advance.
Rock and Roll
We can grow teeth now. Next step, growing teeth in places not the mouth.
Now all those nightmares I have about a woman with teeth in her vagina are going to come true.
Thanks a lot Canada!!
Fantastic rant. It's logically inconsistent, substitutes opinions for facts, uses examples that don't illustrate your point, and sets up strawmen as its main thrust. Absolutely Slashdottian.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Horse hockey on the "growing a new tooth" thing, but I can see repairing damaged teeth, depending on the cause of the damage. You need the presence of odontoblasts, etc in order for a new tooth to grow. That guy Chen is an engineer, not a dentist. I'm thinking he doesn't really understand how teeth form and grow, so he's got high hopes for his invention. The root structure of teeth is covered in cementum and dentin, which are repairable, so it makes sense that teeth with root resorption may be fixed by the ultrasonic thing. But to completely grow new teeth, you'd have to have "tooth stem cells" in the area, and those stem cells would have to know what size and shape of tooth to form for that area. I don't see that one happening. I also don't see damaged enamel being fixed by this thing; once enamel is gone, it's pretty much gone.
Thweet!
I've complained before and will again, that dentistry has been the most underwhelming of 'sciences' for the past 100 years. What advances have we seen since the use of anaesthetics to reduce the pain? We got ultra-violet whitening systems.... and veneers.
So finally there's some progress. First was the company in florida which has since sort of gone into hiding... they showed a solution of genetically engineered oral bacteria that would take over control of the mouth by out-competing the native breed.. but were engineered to not create cavities. Haven't heard much on that front recently though. Maybe they got bought up by the makers of Crest or something...
Now we have a device that can regrow eroded tooth material... well it's something at least.
Maybe I can stop thinking of the whole practice of drilling and gouging and filling in with metals as the most barbaric so-called treatments of any human health problem. Dentistry is still at the equivalent stage of just cutting off the leg when it's broken, rather than fixing it. Hopefully that is about to change.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Yes. He's a manager, they can do that.
No, low frequency ultrasound means they just speak to the jaw gently until they convince it to regrow a new tooth.
It's the canadian way; american scientists would come to the same results by menacing the offending jawbone with a large-caliber pistol and shouting at it.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.