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: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.