DARPA Sponsoring Limb Regeneration Research

fragmentate writes "Wired News is reporting: 'In response to the hundreds of soldiers coming home from war with missing arms or legs, Darpa is spending millions of dollars to help scientists learn how people might one day regenerate their own limbs. Prosthetics are getting better all the time, but they will never be as good as the limbs we were born with. So two teams of scientists at 10 institutions across the country are competing to regrow the first mammalian limb ... The researchers' first milestone is to generate a blastema — a mass of cells able to develop into various organs or body parts — in a mammal.' Apparently this is a relatively new area of research, even Wikipedia's stub on blastemas is very terse."

Comments

Stub.

[Wordsmith]

Wikipedia's stub. I get it. Hah.

Re:Stub.

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Jokes aside, if they can regenerate limbs, surely its just a hop skip and a jump to regenerate organs? If we can do that, immortality is just around the corner...

Wikipedia's stub on blastemas is very terse

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be more accurate to say Wikipedia's stub on blastemas is embryonic.

can we grow some extra limbs in advance?

[porky_pig_jr]

so, say, if one hand is blown off, I still have a few more left, no need to rush to hospital. an extra head won't hurt either. (with a possibility of starring in Hitchhiker).

I sense a disturbance in the Force

[GungaDan]

as if a million stumpfuckers suddenly cried out in protest.

Re:Don't underestimate prosthetics

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

That's a bold statement of fact, considering even the most avid proponents of evolution refer to it as "theory".

Not a great troll... poignant, with a hint of maple... but lacking in the body and depth that a really rich, warm troll should have... I'll have to give this one star, I'm afraid.

How about some hair regeneration?

[glrotate]

Let's focus our efforts on something a little more important.

Thanks.