Pixie Dust Regeneration
I don't understand how ground up pigs bladder (aka pixie dust) can regrow body parts, but I wish they had given it to one of the thousands of limbless war vets we have coming home.
I can understand how the flesh and bone regrew, it was already there. How did the finger know to grow a new fingernail?
The man who grew a finger
In every town in every part of this sprawling country you can find a faceless sprawling strip mall in which to do the shopping.
Rarely though would you expect to find a medical miracle working behind the counter of the mall's hobby shop.
That however is what Lee Spievak considers himself to be.
"I put my finger in," Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model airplane, "and that's when I sliced my finger off."
It took the end right off, down to the bone, about half an inch.
"We don't know where the piece went."
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.
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 second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger. It took about four weeks before t was sealed."
Now he says he has "complete feeling, complete movement."
The "pixie dust" comes from the University of Pittsburgh, though in the lab Dr Stephen Badylak prefers to call it extra cellular matrix.
The process he has been pioneering over the last few years involves scraping the cells from the lining of a pig's bladder.
The remaining tissue is then placed into acid, "cleaned" of all cells, and dried out.
It can be turned into sheets, or a powder.....
I don't understand how ground up pigs bladder (aka pixie dust) can regrow body parts, but I wish they had given it to one of the thousands of limbless war vets we have coming home.
I can understand how the flesh and bone regrew, it was already there. How did the finger know to grow a new fingernail?
The man who grew a finger
In every town in every part of this sprawling country you can find a faceless sprawling strip mall in which to do the shopping.
Rarely though would you expect to find a medical miracle working behind the counter of the mall's hobby shop.
That however is what Lee Spievak considers himself to be.
"I put my finger in," Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model airplane, "and that's when I sliced my finger off."
It took the end right off, down to the bone, about half an inch.
"We don't know where the piece went."
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.
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 second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger. It took about four weeks before t was sealed."
Now he says he has "complete feeling, complete movement."
The "pixie dust" comes from the University of Pittsburgh, though in the lab Dr Stephen Badylak prefers to call it extra cellular matrix.
The process he has been pioneering over the last few years involves scraping the cells from the lining of a pig's bladder.
The remaining tissue is then placed into acid, "cleaned" of all cells, and dried out.
It can be turned into sheets, or a powder.....
