Unauthorized Human Testing Department: Man Regrows Severed Finger

This story alternately horrifies and fascinates me. A scientist working for the Army on methods of stimulating tissue regeneration offers a highly experimental compound to his brother (who accidentally lost the tip of a finger in a model airplane accident) and has the fingertip regrow, according to the London Daily Mail:

The dust, actually a collagen powder derived from pigs' bladders, appeared to provide a suitable "matrix" or framework, stimulating regrowth of the tissues and division of the cells, to enable Mr Spievack's finger to grow back - in just a month.

And not just a stump - flesh, tendon, skin, fingernail, fingerprints and all.

It is an extraordinary story because, if it can be confirmed, it will point the way to a breakthrough in one of medical science's greatest problems: the inability of humans to regenerate lost tissue.

One organisation with a keen interest in tissue regeneration is the U.S. Army. Military researchers are reported to be working with University of Pittsburgh scientists who developed the pixie dust to find a way to allow injured soldiers to regrow lost fingers, skin, and even whole limbs.

With hundreds of U.S. soldiers coming home injured from Iraq every month, such an advance would be leapt upon by the Pentagon.

Dr Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh is the scientist who developed the pixie dust. It consists of a mixture of protein and connective tissue which is already used by surgeons to repair tendons.

The U.S. Army has invested millions of dollars in regenerative medicine, and Dr Badylak - and Mr Spievack's brother - could become very rich men.

The powder, he has said, "tells the body to start the process of tissue regrowth".

Odd that this didn't appear in an American paper. Hmmmmm . . . If it's true, it has amazing application for re-designing tissue growth process as we know it. Burn victims, especially, may be saved from a life of deformity and pain.

But I'd still like to know how an experimental compound NOT approved for human testing made it's way out of the lab and onto a hobbyists finger. I smell a security breach.

~~JD~~