okay okay...it's been more than a month since my last post. Boo! sloppy! self-shaming complete and moving on..
So, I was thinking about regeneration the other day in that half-sleep thing in the early morning. I was thinking about regeneration...not half-sleep or early mornings...er...anyway.
So! Regeneration. It was, like, brilliant what I came up with while half-asleep. The ideas and the arguments and the tangents and everything. What I have salvaged from that brain storm are these thoughts:
1). Since they can now grow ears on mice, why can't they grow ears on people? Like, ears on people missing ears? Really. It hardly makes sense to grow the ear somewhere else and then attach it to the person. Why not just get that thing started up and growing on the person in the first place? I am no whatever-term-ologist that deals with growing replacement body parts on rodents and stitching them to live person-flesh; but I feel like there has to be an easier way than that.
Is this like that whole pig valves and baboon hearts thing of the 80's and 90's? Remember when that was a thing people talked about and did? Putting pig heart valves into faulty rich white guy hearts? I am pretty sure that was a thing, anyway. I was a bit younger and more susceptible to mixing up movies and other fictional media with real news stories. But I am pretty sure about the pig valve thing. The baboon heart may just have been a Christian Slater movie, but I can't be sure. Anyway!
The biggest issue I would have with this growing a body part on an animal or using a pre-existing animal body part for people is that I had no idea that animal and people blood types were compatible. Do you have to find an A+ pig if you want to use the valves? Or is it flesh-typing? Can you get the right flesh-type for baboon hearts? I can see that maybe...but the ear on the mouse thing, I totally don't see that happening. Mouse blood types and people blood types can't be near the same, can they?
Grow a new ear! Grow a new nose! But maybe grow them yourself, however it is they grow them on rats in labs.
2). Now that there are 3-D printers, people are muttering about the possibilities for the future with printing body parts for transplant or creating food from dyes and such. I have seen some of these print outs of 3-D things, but they use some sort of plastic to make the prints. How would you print out a heart, anyway? Wouldn't you need the right combo of proteins or something? I mean, a viable heart. Because I think printing out a perfectly shaped heart wouldn't be that hard to do. You could program the machine with your protein glop and set it to print out your new heart and have it done in a couple of hours. But I don't know if that would just be some sort of nasty gallery art piece, or an actual working heart. What sad person would have to try that thing out as the first recipient of the printed out heart?
3). If you could combine the mouse-ear thing and the print out thing, maybe you could actually regenerate something, like an ear or kidney. Maybe you could grow your own tissue in the mouse (why is it always a rodent? Wouldn't you get more pay-out off of a larger animal, able to produce more ears per square inch?) for the ear then take it to be finished off in the printer with the perfect little curls and whorls you need for your ear?
4). I feel like, at some point, people will unlock the gene buried deep down in our ancient DNA that regulates regeneration....like tadpoles! Or worms or something. Maybe those salamanders that drop their tails and grow them back. Anyway, at some point scientists are going to unlock that gene and then find a way to jump-start your body into regenerating that pinky you lost in wood shop. Or the skin you lost on your calf from that nasty biking accident. Or the kidney that failed you on your way to diabetes...and so on.
It would be cool to grow out your arm again, after losing it to the lawn mower. I wonder how long it would take? Would it take as long to grow an adult arm as it took to grow it in the first place? I bet it would hurt like crazy with the growth spurts and the nerves and stretching and all. Accelerated growth would probably hurt even more...But still, it would be pretty cool to see the transformation of the tiny finger nubs to a working hand and elbow and muscles.
At the very least, it would be a great conversation piece! Much unlike animatedly discussing growing ears on mice and printing out human hearts from a protein slurry. That...that doesn't seem to win anyone over in the conversation department.
Also, maybe a magical 'Arry Potta spell for regenerating! Crescere Aurem! Whoosh! Tah dah! Watch me wiggle this!
