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Woman Successfully Grows Ear From Arm
An anonymous reader writes "In 2008, Sherrie Walters, now 42 years old, discovered that she had rapidly spreading basal cell cancer in her ear. The disease is a type of skin cancer. The doctors pursued an aggressive treatment to combat the destructive disease, removing her ear, part of her skull, and her left ear canal. Though Walters was left without an ear, she was still able to hear with the help of a special hearing aid. A few months ago, doctors from the renowned Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore decided to try a new procedure on Walters. Using cartilage from her rib, the doctors stitched a new ear to match her right one. Then their creation was implanted under the skin of her forearm, where the ear grew for months. ...Doctors attached the ear and blood vessels surgically. Another surgery, conducted this week, gave the ear shape and detail. Dr. Patrick Byrne, a revered plastic and reconstructive surgeon, says that after the swelling goes down and the ear heals, Walters will have an ear that both looks and functions normally."
Was that JUST the canal regrown or the Cochlear as well??
what did all that cost?
I like the idea but I would prefer some external vat to grow my replacement organs.
Woman Successfully Grows Ear on Arm from "other body parts".
to "don't put anything other than your elbow in your ear".
Politician successfully grows arse from elbow. Or .... was it elbow from arse? he doesn't seem to be clear on this one?
You've got an ear on your arm now, can you really call that a success?
renowned Johns Hopkins
a revered reconstructive and plastic surgeon.
I hope it's just an oversight by the poster rather than the revered doctor that has left the "ear" implanted under the skin of her forearm.
Check the photo of the ear in the arm. Awesome times we live in!
Anyone can get inked or pierced . . . but an extra ear or two . . . ? That is surely something that will annoy your parents:
"Why can't you just grow your hair long, like we did in the hippie 60's, or cut it short and color it green, like we did in the punk 80's?"
Right now, this was done to replace something that was missing. Will this technology advance, so you can add features that you didn't have before? Like, webbed feet and gill slits?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
...was the first thing I could think. Why not just a slideshow. Then I opened the powerpoint and understood :-/ that's your typical NSFL medical science going on there.
Woman Successfully Grows Ear From Arm
This could bring new meaning to that silly gesture/expression "talk to the hand."
I find it amusing that the converse of that headline would read "Ear Doesn't Grow On Woman's Arm." Nothing to see here. Please keep moving.
Or is that, IS ENVIOUS ??
"the renowned Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore" ...
"Dr. Patrick Byrne, a revered plastic and reconstructive surgeon"
Was this article submitted by the JHU marketing department? The words "renowned" and "revered" are being used in an interesting way to color our perception of this event. Sounds like someone really, really wants us to have a good opinion of JHU. Check your own opinions of JHU at the door. No reporting bias here.
As someone who has seen incompetent doctors at the JHU medical center (and quite a few good ones) I think the blanket worshipful attitude is a bit overdone. It's a good university hospital. No need to get on your knees, though.
Awesome times would be when they can grow a vagina on my hand.
Is this kind of like a mediocre version of what doctors could do if stem cell research laws weren't so retarded?
Grow nose from asshole?
She was left without an ear and without a left ear.
Fortunately for the rest of the world, they never offered me a job. They have so many profoundly brilliant people there, I'd have drug the place down. Much much kudos to those involved in the research that led to breakthroughs like this one.
I worked with her up to a year ago when she was transferred. She wore a compression sleeve over the ear on her left arm, but was cool with showing anyone who asked about it.
Rumor has it you may need a little extra ear after that hit you took last week
It would have been much more impressive (and much more headline-worthy), if she and her medical team had grown a replacement arm from an ear, or other pieces of her body. After all, not even $deity can do that.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I think the more they use this technique, the more likely you can use your own body for replacement parts. Granted, if you need a heart transplant, you might need it right now, but for something like congestive heart failure, which would allow time, you could possibly use your own tissue to grow a new one in a lab, then have it transplanted, and avoiding the use of antirejection drugs for the rest of your life.
I know some body art/piercing people who are running out of places to punch holes in their ears. They could grow like 5 or 6 ears along each arm and be set for piercing locations for life!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
to have good health insurance in the USA
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I know you're all thinking it, so I don't even need to post the actual thought...
There is a specialist in Sao Paulo who can do this.
- You get kidnapped, they cut an ear, send it to your family as "proof".
- Your family pays, you go home, you visit the specialist, he makes your a new ear from cartilage from your rib.
I actually saw once an interview from a women who was kidnapped twice and saw the specialist twice. No kidding.
.. was what I was reading from "when the ear heals".
Maybe I need eye-surgery? Brain surgery?
bjd
When a person has a medical excuse for not knowing their ass from their elbow.
Didn't God create an entire woman from a rib?
Half the population are growing anchovies but that ain't on their arms.
See sub. ;-)
First comment
We've been doing it for at least a century already. Any time you go to a hospital, if you pay your bill, you're effectively paying for the people who can't or won't pay for insurance.
That is what the foreskin does, and in doing so sensitivity is greater enhanced (er, restored, to a point).
Eh, sort of. What it really does is make it easier to ram it into an unwilling vagina. It's an evolutionary trait which doesn't really serve any useful purpose in human society (for the most part) and hasn't for a very long time.
The drawback to the foreskin is that it contributes to a much higher rate of yeast infections and urinary tract infections, especially in infants and boys around the age of puberty.
But no matter what you've heard, having or not having the foreskin has absolutely no bearing on the size of your erection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacanti_mouse
I remember the earlier story where a mouse grew a human ear. It's great to know this mouse didn't suffer in vain.
Now, an arse from an elbow can't be too far away!
@peetm