44 Responses

1. emilypk said,

   May 1, 2008 at 2:38 pm

   I did wonder about that one. Many of the sotries showed and after picture but none a before–and one saud he losy half an inch of finger–doesn’t look that way to me.

2. CynicalWill said,

   May 1, 2008 at 2:40 pm

   Is it just me or is it staggeringly obviuos that this chap has not had his finger cut off. I mean I’m sure press ofices get bombarded with hoaxes all the time, but this one seems particularly obvious. In all of the photos you can see all three sections of finger. This just beggars belief…

3. used to be jdc said,

   May 1, 2008 at 2:45 pm

   I have no idea what Mr Spievak is considering here:
   

   “I don’t plan on cutting anything more off to find out if I can grow that back,” Mr Spievak insisted.

4. Allo V Psycho said,

   May 1, 2008 at 3:59 pm

   There is an huge literature on regeneration in salamandars and other animals – presumably Badylak has no acess to scientific search engines. There is even a rather ancient review on growing back finger tips (McLachlan, JC & Usman, T. (1992). Prospects for human digit regeneration. Clinical Anatomy 5: 119-125), which suggests that the trick is not to have gung ho casualty officers sew up the wound with full thickness skin. There’s nothing intrinsically impossible about the idea that an extra-cellular matrix powder could accelerate regrowth, but I would be reluctant to invest in a researcher who doesn’t seem able to design a trial or read the literature. But the REAL point is that we kitties is not rational animals, but story telling animals. We’re fictogenic (just made that word up). It’s the phrase ‘pixie dust’ and a gruey picture that tells and sells the story – truth is not the point in the mind of the writer or the reader. It’s us rational types who are aberrant.

5. Jut said,

   May 1, 2008 at 4:05 pm

   The key point here is Ben’s selected quotes from The PA,The Mail and The Guardian…they are identical (even though The Guardian has changed their web version of the story now, to indicate this is piss poor science).
   Nothing more than the result of churnalism; recycling material from the wire and calling it your own. No research, no interviews, no fact checking; just cut and paste.

6. Andrew Taylor said,

   May 1, 2008 at 4:25 pm

   jdc,

   Whatever he’s thinking, the Darwin Awards people will be disappointed.

7. maninalift said,

   May 1, 2008 at 4:37 pm

   I do like BBC radio 4 news, they generally have the sense to get information from an independent expert up until now that was the only place I saw/heard sensible coverage of this.

8. perspix said,

   May 1, 2008 at 6:15 pm

   Not quite Oddbod in Carry On Screaming, is it.

   It’s quite clear, from the available video, that the chap lost the tip of his finger consisting of some skin, subcutaneous fat and some nail.

   You can lose 1cm (down to 3/4 or more of the nail) of your finger and have it all grow back quite normally. Doesn’t look like this chap lost any muscle or bone.

   No doubt the powder concerned has some clinical value worth looking into but the real marvel of this story is nature itself.

   But that doesn’t stop the researchers involved cashing in on the publicity. Perhaps hoping for some funding.

   Media suckered as usual. Rather like Nasa’s periodic “Life on Mars” stories.

9. emmer said,

   May 1, 2008 at 6:22 pm

   I think reason is returning to the land:

   But Professor Stephen Kaye, a consultant plastic and hand surgeon at Leeds University, poured cold water on Dr Badylak’s claims.

   Asked if he was surprised that Mr Spievack’s finger “grew back” he said: “Not in the slightest.”

   Prof Kaye added: “The pictures I’ve seen on the web show a wound I would have expected to heal and regenerate in any case.

   “The end of the finger is extremely good at regeneration. The pictures we’ve seen on the web show no evidence of loss of bone, nerve or tendon material, but regeneration and repair of skin – which is exactly what the fingertip does.”

   He added that the photographs appeared to portray a “very commonplace transverse amputation of the very end of the fingertip” and not someone who had lost the last phalanx of his finger, as Dr Badylak claimed.

   Prof Kaye said extra-cellular matrix was an acknowldged way of promoting wound healing, but pointed out that there was a “big difference” between healing and regeneration.

   “I don’t want people to have false hopes,” he told the Radio 4′s The World Tonight news programme.

   And according to the Daily Mail:
   “He turned down a skin graft in favour of the “pixie dust” recommended by his brother, a former surgeon and the founder of the firm that makes the powder”.

   Phew!

10. muscleman said,

    May 1, 2008 at 6:31 pm

    I did exactly the same thing to only a slightly higher level. I was squaring across a piece of wood with a marking knife, I moved the square up to the knife sitting in the notch and ran the knife down the edge of the square completely removing the tip of my left index finger that was holding the blade of the square in place. I had not noticed that the tip was overhanging the edge and my scary sharp (TM) marking knife neatly took the end off with hardly any resistance.

    The end grew back, except for the fingerprint at the very tip, which was the deepest part of the cut so the dermis was gone so no information to replace the fingerprint.

    NO pixie dust, no antiseptic even (my tools are VERY clean), just a loose dressing not actually touching the wound (removing the first one: OUCH!!!).

    So my regrowth was in fact even more miraculous since it was achieved without pixie dust or even prayer.

    The youngest has had a recent similar experience wrt her thumb, a serrated knife and a frozen bagel. Maybe we are mutants? the wife and I have always wondered whether the youngest was an alien foundling…..

11. muscleman said,

    May 1, 2008 at 6:38 pm

    Now I think of it the afforementioned Youngest went to the A&E and they dressed it, but not before putting a meshwork they said was made from seaweed over it which I found interesting and assume was probably a sort of artificial clot encouraging the cessation of bleeding.

12. emmer said,

    May 1, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    I do admire the manufacturers for their audacious claims – if I was going to market a miracle powder I would’ve gone for a less testable outcome. Will it make me look younger if I sprinkle it on my crows feet?

13. stever said,

    May 1, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    I noticed on the news footage that when they asked the dude how much of his finger he lost that he indicated on the front, near the first joint saying along the lines of ‘up to here’. This, combined with the photo (which to the untrained eye does – from that angle look like the whole top has been chopped off) gave the impression that the entire top portion had been severed – no one made any effort to clarify this so this confused matters since in fact a diagonal slice of skin across the front is what actually was removed.

14. deadmanjones said,

    May 1, 2008 at 8:19 pm

    Pig’s bladders? Isn’t that what fools wave on sticks?

15. pv said,

    May 1, 2008 at 8:56 pm

    When I was 11 years old, sometime in the last century, I did a similar thing to one of my fingers when I crashed my bike into a concrete lamp post. With a bit of first aid at the hospital, said finger returned to “wholeness” (plus a disgusting scab) after about a month. The only reminder now is a small scar.

16. Robert B Estrada said,

    May 1, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    30? years ago I had an encounter with a table saw that took my right thumb from being 6mm longer than the left to being (healed)7-8mm shorter. It “trimmed’ a fair amount of the bone off. It required surgical repair. but while it healed, no “regrowth” has occurred. I have recovered 99% of function although it took me years to relearn how to use chopsticks and even longer to pick up thin flat objects. I still have trouble with restaurant reciepts andcredit cards. Perhaps they should take on a real challenge and work with veterans with amputations. May be they can do better than prayer. Or since Enzite and “BOB” have been pulled off the market, that gives them a lucrative opportunity.

17. Dr Aust said,

    May 1, 2008 at 9:31 pm

    Yes, I smell a marketing gambit.

    Dr Alan R Spievack MD (who someone further up the thread indicated was the patient’s brother) is a co-author of several papers with Dr Badylak (e.g. here). Spievack’s address is listed on the papers as a company called Acell who make extracellular matrix products as scaffolds for tissue re-growth. They don’t, according to their website here, have anything on the market for humans just yet… but one suspects they are, erm, keen to drum up positive PR and investors to help them move their portfolio forward. Dr Badylak’s name appears frequently in the company’s listing of preclinical proof-if-principle work, so he seems to be their main academic connection.

    As ever, the credulousness and lazy lack of fact-checking of multiple “churnalists” is at the botton of this. Plus the “eeew!” factor – it reminds me of those grisly photo-stories mags like Nuts occasionally run on “the man whose knob had to be sewn back on – full shocking pictures inside”

18. Dr Aust said,

    May 1, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    Seems this story is also rather old – it appeared in Esquire last September, complete with the photos.

    I wonder what triggered the world-wide wave of media interest now? There is an interesting study to be written somewhere on how these “copycat” science story-waves get started and propagate across the media-sphere.

19. Dr Aust said,

    May 1, 2008 at 10:03 pm

    PS The Esquire version, BTW, has the benefit of being a much more interesting read than the various derived versions.

20. Sili said,

    May 1, 2008 at 10:05 pm

    Thank you for this. I’ve been waiting to see a sane commentary after I saw the Beeb’s blurb. And kudos on using “outwith”. LanguageLog would be proud (for the BBC mocking as well).

    Twenty odd years ago I got two fingertips crushed in a cogwheel. Nails have been ruined ever since. They grow together with the skin too – cracks and get sore at irregular intervals.

21. Jamie Horder said,

    May 1, 2008 at 10:29 pm

    What is it about Bad Science readers and horrible finger injuries?

22. jodyaberdein said,

    May 1, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    The Guardian would seem to have it about right:

    www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/01/finger.claim

23. projektleiterin said,

    May 1, 2008 at 10:57 pm

    Hey man, even for a science blog that picture is gross. You’re not trying to emulate the sensationalist display of surgery on TV?

24. mjs said,

    May 2, 2008 at 12:11 am

    The 11:00 a.m. credulous version of the Guardian story.

    Thanks to Google cache, almost no story is ever truly lost.

    bonus text-only old version

25. mjs said,

    May 2, 2008 at 12:20 am

    well, this is strange. my previous comment (#24) disappears when i log out, is still invisible if i reload the page, but reappears when i log back in. hm.

    anyone else have this?

26. Ben Goldacre said,

    May 2, 2008 at 12:23 am

    heh interesting. i think the grauniad come out of this better than any other paper, tbh, even in the original. although the mail, to be fair, did at least have a plastic surgeon pointing out that flesh heals.

    anyway, for anyone interested, compare:

    11.15am BST
    Did a man grow his finger back?

    * David Batty and agencies
    * guardian.co.uk,
    * Thursday May 1 2008
    * Article history

    About this article
    Close
    This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Thursday May 01 2008. It was last updated at 11:33 on May 01 2008.

    A man’s fingertip has been regrown by US scientists using a powder made from a pig’s bladder – according to the company behind the research, and the finger’s owner.

    Lee Spievack, a hobby store salesman in Cincinnati, Ohio, has claimed the treatment stimulated the regrowth of his right hand middle fingertip, which was severed by the propeller of a model plane.

    Spievack, 69, described the powder as “pixie dust”. It was developed by a company co-founded by his brother Alan, a former Harvard surgeon.

    Spievack said that within four weeks of using the preparation, his finger had regained its original length, and four months later “it looked like my normal finger”, though it was hard, as if calloused, with a slight scar on the end, and the nail was growing at twice the speed of his other nails.

    “All my fingers in this cold weather have cracked except that one,” he said.

    Acell, the company behind the claim, said it had already used the extract of pig bladder to treat ulcers and other wounds, and to help regrow cartilage.

    The powder was mostly collagen and a variety of substances, without any pig cells, said Dr Stephen Badylak, a regeneration expert at the University of Pittsburgh and scientific adviser to ACell.

    It formed microscopic scaffolding for human cells to occupy, and emitted chemical signals to encourage those cells to regenerate tissue, he said. The signals did not specifically say “make a finger” but cells picked up that message from their surroundings, he said.

    “We’re not smart enough to figure out how to regrow a finger,” Badylak said. “Maybe what we can do is bring all the pieces of the puzzle to the right place and then let mother nature take its course.

    “But we are very uninformed about how all of this works. There’s a lot more that we don’t know than we do know.”

    ACell is planning to see whether the pig extract can help people injured in accidents or in combat, such as firefighters and soldiers. Even if someone who had lost several fingers could grow just a small stub, it could allow them to pick things up, brush their teeth or button their clothes.

    Another US government-funded project is trying to unlock the secrets of how some animals regrow body parts. David Gardiner at the University of California, Irvine, is studying the secrets of the salamander by growing extra arms on the creatures. The amphibians can regrow a severed arm in a matter of weeks.

    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .

    with:

    .
    .
    .
    .
    .

    3.45pm BST update
    Regrown finger is ‘junk science’

    * David Batty and agencies
    * guardian.co.uk,
    * Thursday May 1 2008
    * Article history

    About this article
    Close
    This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Thursday May 01 2008. It was last updated at 15:57 on May 01 2008.

    A leading plastic surgeon today dismissed claims that a powder made from a pig’s bladder caused the regrowth of a man’s fingertip.

    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”.

    Lee Spievack, a hobby store salesman in Cincinnati, Ohio, has claimed the treatment stimulated the regrowth of his right hand middle fingertip, which was severed in 2005 by the propeller of a model plane.

    Spievack, 69, described the powder as “pixie dust”. It was developed by ACell – a company co-founded by his brother Alan, a former Harvard surgeon.

    Within four weeks of using the preparation, he said his finger had regained its original length, and four months later “it looked like my normal finger”.

    But Kay, consultant plastic and hand surgeon at St James’ University Hospital, Leeds, said Spievack’s injury did not look to have been serious from studying before and after photos.

    “It’s a ridiculous story – absurd and over-egged in the extreme,” Kay said. “It looked to have been an ordinary fingertip injury with quite unremarkable healing. All wounds go through a repair process.”

    ACell, the company behind the claim, said it had already used the extract of pig bladder to treat ulcers and other wounds, and to help regrow cartilage.

    The powder was mostly collagen and a variety of substances, without any pig cells, said Dr Stephen Badylak, a regeneration researcher at the University of Pittsburgh and scientific adviser to ACell.

    He said it formed microscopic scaffolding for human cells to occupy, and emitted chemical signals to encourage those cells to regenerate tissue. The signals did not specifically say “make a finger” but cells picked up that message from their surroundings, Badylak said.

    “We’re not smart enough to figure out how to regrow a finger,” Badylak said. “Maybe what we can do is bring all the pieces of the puzzle to the right place and then let mother nature take its course.

    “But we are very uninformed about how all of this works. There’s a lot more that we don’t know than we do know.”

    Kay said there was “no evidence” that ACell had manipulated the regenerative capabilities of the human body.

    “There’s no clinical evidence to support the claims,” he said. “It really is junk science.

    “If you could regenerate body parts like this, your first port of call would be a serious science journal like Nature because it would be a Nobel prize winning revolution.”

    British scientists have led the way in research into genetic treatments that could enable humans to regrow limbs damaged by accidents or surgery and allow patients to recover from wounds without scarring.

    A charity, the Healing Foundation, which funds research into pioneering scientific techniques, set up a 25-year project in 2005 with the University of Manchester to advance the understanding of wound healing and tissue regeneration.

    The Healing Foundation Centre aims to unravel the genetic quirks that allow certain amphibians, such as frogs and salamanders, to recover from severe injuries by generating fresh body tissue. By identifying the genetic mechanisms involved, the researchers hope to develop medical treatments that do the same in humans.

    Professor Enrique Amaya, a tissue engineer at Manchester University and leader of the project, is investigating the regenerative capabilities of frogs. Frog embryos share the human embryo’s ability to heal wounds without scars in a matter of hours. Frogs can also regrow appendages.

    David Batty ftw!

27. Robert Carnegie said,

    May 2, 2008 at 2:33 am

    Makes mental note not to come back to look at comments to this article any more – the “Readers’ Knives”, um, section. Yikes!

    I think the original story will have struck most of us as odd – a bit small-scale for a great scientific breakthrough which it obviously should be. Regenerate like Doctor Who… or like Wolverine.

28. Simon Howard said,

    May 2, 2008 at 9:32 am

    Has anyone asked if he had regenerated from a previous incarnation within the past 76 hours? Remember that Doctor Who grew a whole new hand!

29. Dr Aust said,

    May 2, 2008 at 9:57 am

    For those just reading here, and not the actual stories, the weirdest thing really is how this story has been kicking around for ages and now has “exploded” across the worldwide media.

    The injury itself apparently occurred back in Aug 2005. The first major story I have been able to find about it is from the Press Association in February 2007, pointed out yesterday on Nature’s “Great Beyond” blog here.

30. Ben Goldacre said,

    May 2, 2008 at 10:31 am

    yeah it’s amazing isn’t it.

    i mentioned that earlier when giving it some chat on the today prog

    www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/

    7:43am

    the miracle cure story is 3 years old, with three flurries of media coverage already, feb 07, feb 08, and now may 08. and still no academic publication, and still no clearly documented story on what the injury was, or what the miracle was.

31. kim said,

    May 2, 2008 at 11:43 am

    Heard you this morning, Ben – thought you got all the points over very well. But what I’m interested in: what is Evan Davies REALLY like?

32. Birdman said,

    May 2, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    The April issue of Scientific American has an article on the potential of human limb regeneration – ‘Regrowing Limbs: Can People Regenerate Body Parts?’ by Ken Muneoka, Manjong Han and David M. Gardiner (available at www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=regrowing-human-limbs)

    The following comes from the article.

    ‘Potential at Our Fingertips.
    One of the most encouraging signs that human limb regeneration is a feasible goal is the fact that our fingertips already have an intrinsic ability to regenerate. This observation was made first in young children more than 30 years ago, but since then similar findings have been reported in teenagers and even adults. Fostering regeneration in a fingertip amputation injury is apparently as simple as cleaning the wound and covering it with a simple dressing. If allowed to heal naturally, the fingertip restores its contour, fingerprint and sensation and undergoes a varying degree of lengthening. The success of this conservative treatment of fingertip amputation injuries has been documented in medical journals thousands of times. Interestingly, the alternative protocol for such injuries typically included operating to suture a skin flap over the amputation wound, a “treatment” that we now know will inhibit regeneration even in the salamander because it interferes with formation of the wound epidermis. The profound message in these reports is that human beings have inherent regenerative capabilities that, sadly, have been suppressed by some of our own traditional medical practices.’

33. pv said,

    May 2, 2008 at 3:07 pm

    The profound message in these reports is that human beings have inherent regenerative capabilities that, sadly, have been suppressed by some of our own traditional medical practices.

    I can see this being taken up in CAMworld as another excuse to flog their own pointless, useless interventions. In fact it’s a good example of how doing nothing (almost) is sometimes sufficient. Unfortunately, “nothing” in CAMworld is not free. The more “nothing” you want, the more you pay for it!

34. used to be jdc said,

    May 2, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    Haha, that’s brilliant. Help! Help! I’m being suppressed!

    “The more “nothing” you want, the more you pay for it!” – Wot, like the high dilution homeopathic non-remedies?

35. heng said,

    May 2, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    I chopped the end of my finger off when I was about 11 getting it caught in a massive iron gate. It removed a good centimetre down to just above the root of the nail (the nail was ripped out at the same time). The end of the bone was nicked.

    To my surprise, the consultant just put it in a bag full of some white goo (pixie goo?) and wrapped the whole thing in a bandage. I had to go back every week or so to get the dressings changed. After about 8 weeks the dressing came off permanently and there was my finger more or less the same as before. Although I now have a bit of a talon rather than a nail.

    The point is, my finger grew back, and I’m not in the paper. Where’s my publicity?

36. Pseudonym said,

    May 2, 2008 at 11:44 pm

    The same photos turn up in this short lecture on regenerative medicine, apparently from 2006:

    www.ted.com/talks/view/id/142

    I agree that the “regrown finger” is not impressive. However, the rest of the talk looks scientifically informed. So what’s going on?

    Has it been exaggerated for a bit of publicity? Is it bad science reporting of a “revolution” rather that the reality of baby-step progress? Or is the whole talk above just bogus?

37. jhayes said,

    May 2, 2008 at 11:57 pm

    Although the story ( in its latest incarnation ) emerged on April 31st on BBC Television News , it was effectively demolished on The World Tonight (www.bbc.co.uk/worldtonight)
    the same day ( 10pm )by Professor Simon Kay of Leeds University . You can hear him via ” listen again ” . His comments formed the basis of the Guardian putdown published the next day .

38. ScottishNaturalist said,

    May 3, 2008 at 6:37 am

    What a shock, the media gets it totally wrong.

39. leo said,

    May 27, 2008 at 11:52 pm

    [URL=http://edition.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/05/26/regrowing.body.parts/index.html#cnnSTCVideo]Another pixie dust tale[/URL]

40. thelimpingtoad said,

    June 2, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    Its amazing how quickly people ignore facts and make assumptions…
    firstly let me say that I read this and wanted to find out if it was a hoax or not… so you see i did what anyone that claims this is not possible should have done… I researched the subject.

    So let me first say that extra-cellular matrices has been used in veternary medicine as well as similar techniques used in humans for a long time.

    ——————————–
    From wikipedia on ExtraCellular Matrix:
    In terms of injury repair and tissue engineering, the extracellular matrix serves two main purposes. First, it prevents the immune system from triggering from the injury and responding with inflammation and scar tissue. Next, it facilitates the surrounding cells to repair the tissue instead of forming scar tissue.
    ——————————–

    Published in 1994 Journal of Biomaterial Applications:

    jba.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/1/21

    Application of combining herbal medicine and biomedical material science to nerve regeneration is a new approach. In this study, we describe a novel use of purified genipin, which can be extracted from Gardenia jasminoides Ellis, fixing the gelatin to be an extracellular matrix for peripheral nerve regeneration. A 10-mm gap of rat sciatic nerve was created between the proximal and distal nerve stumps, which were sutured into silicone rubber tubes filled with either the genipin-fixed gelatin or collagen gel. Silicone rubber tubes filled with saline were used as controls. Six weeks after implantation, regeneration across the nerve gaps occurred in 80 and 90% of the animals from the groups of genipin-fixed gelatin and collagen, respectively, whereas only 30% in the control group. Large numbers of myelinated axons were also seen in the genipin-fixed gelatin (5104±3278) and the collagen groups (8063±1807). These findings indicated that the genipin-fixed gelatin could be an acceptable extracellular matrix for nerve regeneration.
    ——————————–

    The method is patented:

    Title:
    Method of producing a biological extracellular matrix for use as a cell seeding scaffold and implant

    Document Type and Number:
    United States Patent 5916265

    Abstract:
    Tissue is procured from a human or animal donor. The tissue may be fixed by application of a fixative. Cellular components which would cause rejection are removed from tissue by a chemical treatment that allows the extracellular matrices (ECM) to retain their original shapes, biological structures and ultrastructures, locations and durability. The resulting ECM serves as a cell scaffold on which living cells are seeded to form a lifegraft for implanting or for allograft reconstruction.
    ——————————–

    there is already an FDA-approved material using ECMs that has been used to “repair and reconstruct damaged and diseased tissues and organs in 160,000 patients worldwide”. www.pitt.edu/~msrc/bioeng.pdf

    They’ve also been using this in veterinary medicine for a long time to repair tendons and damaged organs.

    Steven Badylak:
    www.pitt.edu/~msrc/personnel/faculty/steven_badylak.html
    ——————————–

    Scarring is (theorized to be) evolution’s answer to infections in wounds. If we had never developed that particular ability our bodies would being doing this naturally. No it isn’t a perfected technique, no it most likely can’t grow back an entire digit, limb, etc. YET. but the fact is that this is a very real medicine and Millions of patients worldwide have had tendons regrown, ulcers fixed, tears in hearts etc. fixed. Vets have used it in horses, dogs, and many other animals to do incredible things such as:
    Regrow tendons, Fix bladders, fix a horse’s face that had a huge gaping hole in it etc.

    So really… before everyone goes flapping their mouths about how it must be a hoax since the “patient” (that wasn’t really a test subject, just happened to be the brother of the man that is in charge of the project) wasn’t in a scientific case-study, the fact they haven’t published yet (which obviously they aren’t ready to yet), and those of you saying that the finger wasn’t severed 1/2 inch below the tip (i’m sure you’re all medical experts), should really just go do some reading on medical research that has been going on for the past 20 years.

    BTW: the reason i bet most ppl even think this is a hoax is because that crazy old man called it “pixie-dust” as a nickname. Please note that this was not a product that is being marketed, it was simply something that the man’s brother was able to provide.

41. thelimpingtoad said,

    June 2, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    oh yeah… and a few more things:
    ACell isn’t the one who “leaked” the story. In fact they openly admit that this wasn’t a clinical test and i’m sure Dr. Badylak would admit that his finger tip COULD have regrown on its own. The fact is that another doctor suggested that they cut some skin from the plane hobbyist’s back and create a nub out of it. The brother just suggested to use this instead.

    As for the “Expert” Prof. Simon Kay, I am skeptical after researching him (www.plastic-surg.co.uk/about-sk.htm) that he is even qualified to comment on biomedical engineering since he is a COSMETIC SURGEON.

    But there is evidence of his knowledge of chickens as seen in his 2003 Publication titled, “Happy hens lay bigger eggs”.

    I won’t sit here and say that he could have a particular interest in instilling doubt that there could be a revolutionary technique which would make his job obsolete… but well… he sort of has a bit of a conflict of interest, right? I think his claim that it is “Junk Science” is a bit premature and uninformed. He might have just left it that the man could easily have regrown the tip without the ECM. But to suggest that regenerative medicine is “Junk Science” is totally off-base.

    It is funny too that in 1984 he worked on a paper called, “Spontaneous healing and relief of pain in a patient with intractable vasculitic ulceration of the lower limb following an intravenous infusion of prostacyclin”….

    and according to this source:

    “Prostacyclin plays an important role in inflammatory glomerular disorders by regulating the metabolism of ECM” content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Doi=54201

    Sooo… i’m no scientist but it sort of sounds like the paper he worked on supports the use of ECM as regenerative medicine.

    But when all the dust clears maybe Dr. simon kay may have a chance at an acting career since he is now listed on imdb for his 15 min in the spotlight.

42. dustypixie said,

    June 7, 2008 at 10:21 am

    The story is obviously not a hoax when you dig deeper.

    I put it on the other page and here it is again so nobody misses it.

    www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/05/26/regrowing.body.parts/

43. dustypixie said,

    June 7, 2008 at 11:02 am

    To the Editor:

    Please prominently display a retraction for each of your finger regeneration articles.

    See the comments for the reasons.

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