Big bladder heals. Vegetarians at an impasse.

April 30, 2008 2:38 PM

Video of man regrowing finger.

Although covered before, we now have video. WATCH THE VIDEO.

posted by Alex404 (52 comments total)

Internal dialogue: "I'm not going to watch this. Really, it's gonna be gross. Not going to watch it, nope. Not ever" *click*
posted by 0xFCAF at 2:46 PM on April 30, 2008

well, video of a slideshow of pictures of a wounded finger at various stages of regrowth. still, I'm really quite happy to know that I'm living in the future.

next stop: robot sex slaves.
posted by shmegegge at 2:46 PM on April 30, 2008

I did what 0xFCAF did. Yes, it's gross, but it's also completely awesome.
posted by blacklite at 2:50 PM on April 30, 2008

That's incredible.
posted by Nattie at 2:51 PM on April 30, 2008

Guess what else you could rub the powder on after its been cut off?
posted by Xurando at 2:56 PM on April 30, 2008

So much for whywontgodhealamputees.com then.
posted by xmattxfx at 2:56 PM on April 30, 2008

Hurry up science, I want my bio-engineered regenerative body now dammit.

Not to mention my post-scarcity economy and weakly godlike AIs.

*taps foot impatiently*
posted by Skorgu at 3:02 PM on April 30, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

So, while I want this to be non-bogus, I only count about three photos in that "slideshow" and the ones I think are most interesting are the ones not shown.

Essentially the steps between "hunk of meat" and "fully formed fingernail" are sort of missing, and I think they're the most interesting in terms of what this "pixie dust" does or could do.

I'll check out the "before" to see if any of my questions are answered...
posted by abulafa at 3:03 PM on April 30, 2008

The powder was from his brother, not God, so whywontgodhealamputees.com is still in the black.
posted by JibberJabber at 3:03 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Something's fishy about this--I can't quite put my finger on it.
posted by resurrexit at 3:04 PM on April 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Hell yeah science!

Big bladder? Was the pig obese?
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 3:05 PM on April 30, 2008

...orrrr I flashblocked the "How It Works In Detail" video.

I do adore the fact that they bothered to make it into a form which belongs in the Examples section of a Clarke-obsessed meeting of futurists.
posted by abulafa at 3:14 PM on April 30, 2008

I want to see more angles of the cut-off finger.

To me, it looks like he just clipped off the tip at the hobby store, leaving his gross old-guy fingernail intact above. What "grew back" doesn't look any different from what I "regenerated" after I got my finger too close to the cheese grater once.

I will officially be impressed when someone grows a finger back from a knuckle forward. This, not so much.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 3:18 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

MC Lo, the article says "It took the end right off, down to the bone, about half an inch." that 'gross old guy fingernail' is probably -just- the nailbed. That's how much finger he lost - the entire tip. Half an inch - which doesn't seem like a lot but if you clip off half an inch of finger you don't get half an inch back.

From what the article says - this guy did.
posted by FritoKAL at 3:26 PM on April 30, 2008

I'd say it's pretty clear that the original "amputation" didn't destroy the nail bed. What the powder did (and did impressively well) was to get the fleshy part of the finger to grow back to (I assume) somewhere near its original state.

If you look closely at the first slide, I think it's pretty clear that the part of the finger that was cut off was a pretty small portion, and it was at a fairly severe angle (not orthogonal to the finger, probably closer to 45 degrees).

Again, this treatment looks fairly impressive, but it's not mind-boggling, and it also doesn't seem to do anything to real tissue differentiation (like building a whole new nail bed).
posted by chimaera at 3:30 PM on April 30, 2008

This is going to fucking revolutionize the penis enhancement industry.
posted by quin at 3:37 PM on April 30, 2008

Next up: video of man who got your nose.
posted by Elsa at 3:40 PM on April 30, 2008 [10 favorites has favorites]

Pull my finger.
posted by bwg at 4:10 PM on April 30, 2008

What I want to know is when this will be available to the public.

Or, you know, the public with enough insurance.
posted by bettafish at 4:12 PM on April 30, 2008

I heard that the regenerative "pixie dust" was actually just a packet of Sea Monkeys.
posted by ...possums at 4:24 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thanks to the miracle of science, he can finally, fully, flip-off others once again.

An unintended side-effect has been the sudden deterioration of his own driving.
posted by Toekneesan at 4:31 PM on April 30, 2008

Whatever. I could do that.... I just don't feel like it.
posted by kbanas at 4:32 PM on April 30, 2008

Pixie Dust? Evidently Jerry Garcia used the wrong kind.
posted by Tube at 4:35 PM on April 30, 2008

I remember my 6th grade teacher told the story of how, when he was in high school, he lost the tip of his finger in a lawnmower mishap, but it grew back partially. He would then bite his finger as hard as he could, and there was no pain or feeling at all.
posted by zardoz at 4:39 PM on April 30, 2008

Will this work if I cut off my nose to spite my face?
posted by dhartung at 4:46 PM on April 30, 2008

If he has to cut his nail every two days because it's growing too fast then I would definitely think cancer is going to be a big problem with this "miracle cure".
posted by banished at 5:02 PM on April 30, 2008

Piccolo!!!
posted by saxamo at 5:03 PM on April 30, 2008

Wow - as much as I'd like to believe this, it just screams HOAX(!) to me. I hope it's true, but I'm going to wait until this is published.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 5:03 PM on April 30, 2008

he lost the tip of his finger in a lawnmower mishap...

30 years ago I lost my three middle toes mowing. Where the heck was MY pixie dust?

When I woke from surgery I asked the doctor if I'd walk with a limp. "No" he said, then grimly, "But when you swim you'll just kind of paddle in circles."
posted by hal9k at 5:27 PM on April 30, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Wow - as much as I'd like to believe this, it just screams HOAX(!) to me. I hope it's true, but I'm going to wait until this is published.

Well, I've always found BBC to do pretty good science journalism, relatively speaking (which is to say, not completely offensive to those in the know).

Also, the 'pixie dust' was provided by biomedical researchers at the University of Pittsburgh.

Also...

Did you even try google?

There's umm... a lot being published on this.

But it's all good. More regenerative pixie dust for the rest of us.
posted by Alex404 at 5:34 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yeah, this may have been a lot more viscerally impressive if someone bothered to take some decent photos. A foreshortened finger pointing at the camera in every shot but the one with the fully healed finger doesn't helpfully communicate how much is missing.
posted by dgaicun at 5:58 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ooh, banished raises an excellent point. It would really suck to get your hand back and then die of cancer.
posted by bettafish at 6:06 PM on April 30, 2008

Oh my god, that was so much of an understatement as to be completely idiotic, wasn't it?


I'm going to bed.
posted by bettafish at 6:07 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I wonder if more people will start doing things like this (sfw, slightly NSFQueasy), this (fairly NSFW/Q), and this (NSFW/Q).

Previously here, and previously there.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 6:26 PM on April 30, 2008

Pixie dust? Come on...

Oh, it's the scrapings from a pig bladder. Well, that's better.

There's no such thing as pixie dust.
posted by Balisong at 6:28 PM on April 30, 2008

Pigsy dust.
posted by abulafa at 6:33 PM on April 30, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Nice digital future tag.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 6:34 PM on April 30, 2008

After a well-placed bite from a Brown Recluse spider when I was 13, the top half of my big toe came off, down to the bone, just like someone had filleted it. We didn't have any pixie dust. Heck, we didn't have anything but rubbing alcohol, because my folks didn't take me to the doctor. And it all grew back just fine, nail and all. But good god was it gross for a long time.

And the plastic bag taped around my foot while I was at summer camp did surprisingly little to boost my popularity.

And thanks, conservation agent who said "oh christ -- they're going to have to amputate your foot!" That was *exactly* what I wanted to hear.

But anyway, yeah. No pixie dust. And I got my toe back.
posted by ewagoner at 7:10 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Another example of Ohio trying to steal attention from North Carolina.
posted by Stylus Happenstance at 7:29 PM on April 30, 2008

I'm just glad I can now finally join the yakuza without fear.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 7:30 PM on April 30, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

And not worry as much about the reliability of your Zippo when making bets.
posted by Stylus Happenstance at 7:37 PM on April 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ok... I have a problem. I saw the headline and thought it said "Video of man removing finger." My first thought was, "That's nothing, I've seen a video of a guy cutting off his own dick." Then I immediately realized that I'd never be able to un-see or forget about that...

I fucking hate the Internet.
posted by educatedslacker at 7:44 PM on April 30, 2008

quin - This is going to fucking revolutionize the penis enhancement industry.

That is, until they realize they're going to have to chop off part of their penis, first.

Extracellular matrix from pig bladder? Makes sense, kinda. I'm just surprised that there wasn't any massive sudden xenograft reaction.

(Human) Kids can regrow fingertips naturally up to a certain age. I wonder if the mechanism of this exogenous zeno-extracellular matrix material has anything to do with the natural regenerative capabilities of young humans?
posted by porpoise at 8:27 PM on April 30, 2008

Oh yeah - didn't surgeons during the American civil war try using pig skin grafts to close off amputations?

I remember that went horribly, horribly wrong.

Perhaps the purified (?) pig bladder ECM was antigenically benign enough?
posted by porpoise at 8:30 PM on April 30, 2008

Perhaps the purified (?) pig bladder ECM was antigenically benign enough?



Or maybe not.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 9:03 PM on April 30, 2008

Oh, living in this era is awesome! :D
posted by Phalene at 11:32 PM on April 30, 2008

educatedslacker: My first thought was, "That's nothing, I've seen a video of a guy cutting off his own dick." Then I immediately realized that I'd never be able to un-see or forget about that...

I saw a film like that many years ago; an anthropological film about rites of passage from boyhood to manhood in Top End aboriginals.

I saw it at school. Primary school. I was about 11...
posted by Pinback at 12:49 AM on May 1, 2008

did the brother get authorized to send this guy the ECM powder? i find it hard to believe it was okay to just send this stuff off willy nilly.

and why were the scientists not there every freaking second documenting this "regrowth"? i mean, that would get your name in the journals for sure, but all we have are some shitty pictures at questionable angles? fuck that. when it's in the nejm let me know.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 7:40 AM on May 1, 2008

Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre just wrote about this. He is unimpressed.

There seems to be very little reason to suppose that anything unusual is going on here.
posted by dansdata at 8:55 AM on May 1, 2008

Professor Simon Kay, professor of hand surgery at the University of Leeds, said the claims by the US company that developed the powder were "junk science".
posted by grouse at 1:12 PM on May 1, 2008

Professor Simon Kay, professor of hand surgery at the University of Leeds, said the claims by the US company that developed the powder were "junk science".

Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre just wrote about this. He is unimpressed.

Thanks for following up on this guys.

...

AND RUINING ALL OUR FUN!
posted by Alex404 at 12:48 PM on May 2, 2008

This theory has great explanatory power
posted by homunculus at 8:46 PM on May 3, 2008