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."

Comments

Re:One *little* thing

[CRCulver]

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:What about brains?

[MichaelSmith]

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.

relation to SciAm article?

[UnanimousCoward]

I just read this Scientific American article 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?

[Luyseyal]

And there was that guy who grew a new jaw bone on his back.

-l

Re:relation to SciAm article?

[mentaldrano]

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 you get isn't necessarily what you wanted.

Re:eeeeeeek!

[jpellino]

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.

Re:One *little* thing

[damburger]

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

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.

Milspec breasts

[sjbe]

Yeah, what purpose does the military have in growing all natural 'breast implants'? Weapons of mass distraction!

Re:WooHoo!!

[dwye]

> 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:eeeeeeek!

[somersault]

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, why not just put the copy of the brain into a robot and let it do all the work?

For example these recently started 'wars' in Afghanistan and Iraq really weren't exactly 'necessary' were they? The need for war these days isn't really there (in my opinion and observations). A lot of countries are well past that phase, having learnt a lot in the World Wars, and developing friendlier trade and political relations (the internet surely is helping to create friendlier relations between countries too, just by breaking down communication barriers). There are of course still countries like North Korea (and to an extent Iraq, but I don't think it really posed a significant threat to the country which actually attacked it) which pose a possible threat to the surrounding nations with Nuclear or biochemical tech. War with these countries may be the only option if they have declared agressive intentions.. but I don't think that Afghanistan and Iraq were much of a threat to the US at all, and the invasions were all about politics and resources, rather than fighting to defend ourselves or an ally against an aggressor. Personally I think that's the only situation that I'd choose to fight. I was considering joining the armed forces just to get myself fit and more disciplined (I have a gross disrespect for basically all authority, which isn't really doing me any favours), but as for helping out in Afghanistan/Iraq or something, I just don't agree with it..

Re:eeeeeeek!

[cpricejones]

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.

Muscles and Nerves

[DynaSoar]

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.