US wants to grow new ears, skin for war wounded

[buckthesystem]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4486438a12.html

Teams of university scientists backed by US government funds hope to grow new skin, ears, muscles and other body tissue for troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The $US250 million ($NZ317 million) effort aims to address the Pentagon's unprecedented challenge of caring for troops returning from the war zones with multiple traumatic injuries, many of which would have been fatal years ago.

"We've had just over 900 people, men, some women with amputations of some kind or another since the start of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Many have also suffered burns, spinal cord injuries and vision loss.

"Getting these people up to where they are functioning and reintegrated, employed, able to help their families and be fully participating members of society, this is our task," he said.

Under the initiative, the Pentagon launched the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine made up of two teams

[Rick-Parker]

Good plan.

[Guest]

If this plan works in would mean good news for everyone who gets seriously injured in the future. Its ironic that many medical advances in the past have been developed because of warfare. Antibiotics are a good example.