The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he’d lost it for good.
Today though, you wouldn’t know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it’s all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.
‘Pixie dust’
How? Well that’s the truly remarkable part. It wasn’t a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder – or pixie dust as he sometimes refers to it while telling his story.
Mr Speivak’s brother Alan – who was working in the field of regenerative medicine – sent him the powder.
For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.
[…]
The process he has been pioneering over the last few years involves scraping the cells from the lining of a pig’s bladder.
Full Story: BBC (includes videos)
(via The Agitator)
May 4, 2008 at 9:17 pm
happened many years ago and many times ago , pig bladder they say might have sped up the process but it’s a fingertip not much lower than nail if at all that was cut, this part regenerates all by itself regardless o’ pig bladders.
May 4, 2008 at 9:31 pm
“You can understand why doctors said he?d lost it for good.” meme plagiarism.. maybe doctors just cracked up saying they can’t help.. probably helps itself anyway and pig bladder won’t reconstruct bone.
May 4, 2008 at 9:46 pm
“this part regenerates all by itself”
In 4 weeks? Without scarring?
From further down in the article:
“I think that within ten years that we will have strategies that will re-grow the bones, and promote the growth of functional tissue around those bones. And that is a major step towards eventually doing the entire limb.”
They also think it will be useful for people who suffer 3rd degree burns.
May 5, 2008 at 8:19 am
khe khe Klintron , hari rebel you , i rather be cheesing than do Jenkem.
May 6, 2008 at 2:28 am
Looks like Valentine may be right: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/01/finger.claim
Also, I misread the original article as saying the process took 4 weeks rather than 4 months.
Still, it seems like you’d have serious scarring from something like that…